Rustlings Road trees

17 November 2016

Cllr Bryan Lodge, Cabinet Member for the Environment, said,

“For more than a year we have worked tirelessly with Amey and the local community to find the right solution for Rustlings Road. We have written to every home, brought in a new survey process for the entire city and set up an Independent Tree Panel. Our approach has been assessed at the High Court on three occasions.

“We have made a final decision to increase the number of trees on Rustlings Road by almost 30%. We need to replace eight out of the 30 existing trees, but we will plant 17, which means the road is gaining an extra nine trees. We understand that this will be a difficult day for the tree campaigners, but this work is absolutely essential to ensure that Sheffield has healthy street trees for future generations.

“We carried out the work very early in the morning on the advice of the police to make sure it could be done safely. This isn’t usually needed but in this case it was considered the best option for the safety of the public, protesters and the workers.

“I understand there are strong emotions about this but have to stand by the decision to do this vital maintenance work. We’ve got 36,000 street trees in Sheffield and this programme means that in years to come we’ll have even more.”