Distortions and untruths

Hardly a week goes by without more letters appearing in The Star regarding the City's Highway tree replacement policy, particularly on Rustlings Road.
Save the trees campaign on Rustlings Road in SheffieldSave the trees campaign on Rustlings Road in Sheffield
Save the trees campaign on Rustlings Road in Sheffield

One fact which I don’t think your readers have seen is that on September 5, 2008 when the Liberal Democrates ran our council and Lord Scriven was the leader, and the MP for the area was Nick Clegg, six mature trees on Rustlings Road were felled. No replacements were planted and there were no consultations with local residents. There were no complaints, protests, or court action.

In 2016, eight trees are removed to be replaced by planting 17 new trees.

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Result – all hell breaks loose with the Liberal Democrats and Green Party jumping on the bandwagon, with the Lib Dems having the gall to talk about losing community trust and turning it all into party politics.

The second issues which seems to have escaped your letter writers, is the fact that the council have been replacing highway trees now for four years, almost all with the support of the local communities and when the massive upgrading of all our highways are completed this year, Sheffield will be left with more highway trees than it has ever had.

The third issue that never gets mentioned by the critics, is that during 2015 Sheffield created 17 woodlands and planted 50,000 extra trees.

Our city is now reported to have four million trees within its borders,the highest number in Sheffield’s Industrial history.

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I am very proud of the Labour Party’s and our city’s record on tree planting.

We should be shouting it from the roof tops not running it down with distortions and untruths.

Councillor Peter Price MBE

by email