Path maintenance due to tree growth

From reading the accounts of the tree saga over the past 12 months, my interpretation of events is that Sheffield City Council could not have included pavement maintenance due to tree growth in their budget nor in the subsequent tender document which Amey quoted against and were awarded the contract.

I, therefore, surmise that the council were taken unawares by Amey’s estimate of the ongoing cost of such pavement maintenance. The reason for tree felling is not diseased trees but because the council did not budget for pavement/tree maintenance.

I have just returned from Dublin where similar trees growing within a pavement area are properly managed. Likewise, where my son lives in Islington, North London. Please find attached photograph from both cities. Why has not Sheffield City Council carried out similar management over the years?

That aside, it is outrageous that the council should get the police to wake up residents in the early hours of the morning to move their cars or have them towed away. These people must have feared the worst seeing police at their door at that hour. To whom does a citizen turn when the local councillors ignore the democratic view of the electorate, the local MP appears powerless and the council engage the police to carry out their will?

Pensioners arrested and put in a police cell for seven hours under the spurious use of employment law legislation.

This is the spectre of a totalitarian state, reminiscent of the tactics of the Nazi party or the Soviet Union. Do Sheffield councillors represent their electorate or themselves?

John Jenkins

by email