Council fells trees in controversial Armada Way move

Campaigners serve injunction with just a few left

Plymouth City Council used the cover of darkness to chop down around 100 trees in Armada Way in the city centre on Tuesday evening, before being stopped through a court injunction taken out by campaigners against the work.

The council wants to regenerate the area and insists the trees have to go.

They delayed the work last month for a short consultation with the public, but brought that to an end within days and began the work without notable advance publicity.

The council had published a statement on its own website, but did not distribute a press release to organisations like Radio Exe which runs the Local Democracy Reporting Service for Devon, nor inform journalists on the scheme.

Last month campaign group Save the Trees of Armada Way (STRAW) collected thousands of signatures against felling the trees.

But as the news of the work filtered through, the group applied to the High Court to stop it. Around 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning, the group served contractors with the injunction. By this time, only around a dozen or so of the 100 trees were left standing.

At the time of the pause for consultation last month, Conservative councillor for Budshead and cabinet member for transport, Jonathan Drean, said: “My previous pause of the scheme was a genuine attempt to look at how many of the existing trees could be kept without unduly compromising other benefits of the scheme.

“I recognise we need to ensure everyone has a chance to have their say, whether they support our modified scheme or not. Ultimately I have had to balance a number of different views and opinions on the best way forward for the Armada Way scheme."

In its statement on its website on Tuesday, the council wrote: "The Armada Way project will restart – but with more trees and further changes to the design.

"An executive decision has been signed today giving the go-ahead to the scheme with the final design to include 169 semi-mature new trees, a revised tree planting schedule and a commitment to investigate wider tree planting in the city centre.

"This means an additional 19 semi-mature trees, including more evergreen and wider canopy trees as well as keeping another existing tree. The amendments follow from the engagement programme held to ensure people had a chance to make final comments before the scheme got underway.

Assistant Chief Executive Giles Perritt said: “We need to get on with this scheme. We’ve listened, we have made more environmental improvements and have added more trees but our core priority has to be creating a smart, business friendly, attractive, city centre. We cannot lose sight of why we wanted this scheme to happen in the first place.

“We know some people will not be happy with this but we hope that the majority of our residents will appreciate that we have done all we can to address people’s concerns.”

Early on Wednesday, it added: “We can confirm that the Council received an injunction at 12.57am to cease the further removal of the trees on Armada Way. We instructed contractors to stop work immediately. We will be obtaining legal advice once we have received the claimant’s application, as directed by the court.”