Residents have launched a scathing attack on the council after it inexplicably cut down a 25-year-old pear tree valued at £10,000 on Gillespie Road, against the advice of their own experts.
It was felled two weeks ago after Highbury West councillors were contacted by a resident who claimed the tree attracted wasps. This was despite the council’s own tree service finding no evidence of wasps.
Some residents first called for the removal of the pear tree in 2005 but they have been regularly overruled with tree officers warning that removing the healthy tree may establish a poor precedent.
The pear tree has become an increasingly contentious issue in the council. Greg Foxsmith, Liberal Democrat councillor for Hillrise, has asked to see the correspondence between councillors and council officers leading up to the cutting down of the tree under the Freedom of Information Act.
Islington Green Party and the Friends of Gillespie Park have lodged a formal complaint with the council’s Corporate Director For Environment And Regeneration
Paul Smith, executive member for the environment, has said: “We have merely replaced one tree with another one. We are in tough economic times, when people are being thrown out of their homes because of the bedroom tax. It’s a touch insensitive for people to be wasting scarce public resources with this kind of complaint.”
But Mr Foxsmith, who previously described the decision as a “chainsaw massacre,” has accused Mr Smith of “clearly trying to fudge it” and added: “Perhaps he can only can only think about one thing at a time. I understand what he is trying to say, people are suffering through hard times. But it’s not just one or the other.”
Emma Dixon, an Islington Green Party campaigner, has said: “Councillors have no right to intervene in this way to force a decision for which there is no reasonable basis. Their actions amounted to an abuse of their position as councillors, and the decision to remove the tree was unlawful.
Mr. Foxton wanted to request a restraining order stopping the action, but the tree was cut down ahead of schedule. He said: “It came from nowhere. The executive member removed that tree with a stroke of his pen.”
He added: “We have a leadership which seems to think there’s one set of rules for them and another for everyone else.”
Councillor Smith said he was too busy to comment on the matter for Islington Now.
This is not the first tree controversy in the area, two weeks ago the council branded those who had defaced local trees as “tree vandals”.
