Street scene will change for years

Southgrove Road, Sheffield, S10

As everyone in Sheffield will know Ecclesall Road is one of the most visited streets in the city. It’s well known for its vibrant mix of shops, cafes and bars.

However, what many of those visitors will not realise is that the council, as part of its Streets Ahead programme, will be felling 13 of the mature trees on this attractive thoroughfare so loved by Sheffielders and visitors to the city alike.

What they may find most shocking about this is that none of these beautiful trees is dangerous or diseased.

In fact most of them are earmarked for the chop merely for causing minor damage to kerbs or pavements which could be easily rectified using the engineering solutions already available and paid for in the contract the council has with Amey.

The proposal to fell these trees is currently with the Independent Tree Panel but, if previous experience is anything to go by, even if the panel recommend that the trees are saved, the tree fellings will go ahead anyway.

The council claim they will replant new trees but the benefits of these young trees to the environment, cleaner air, wildlife and the general attractiveness of the street scene will be nothing like the benefits of the mature trees we’ll be losing for a very long time to come.

Some of the local residents of the area are very unhappy about these proposals that will change the street scene on this well known road for many years.

If readers of this letter agree, perhaps they’d like to sign the petition we’ve set up on change.org which will commit the council to debate this again if we collect 5,000 signatures.

We have 2,000 already in just two weeks.

The petition can be found online at bit.ly/ecctrees