Council plans tree cull

A London council has caused a furore after threatening to cut down one in five of its trees. Ealing council says the 4,500 lime trees are too expensive to maintain and are the cause of large insurance payouts because of the "compensation culture".

But this has provoked fury from residents and environmentalists, who fear the borough's reputation as the "queen of the suburbs" will be destroyed.

Secret plans have been drawn up to reduce the number of lime trees in Ealing - almost one in five of its tree population - because they cost at least ?55,000 a year to maintain.

The Labour-run council promises to replace each lime it removes with two new trees, but campaigners say this is an inadequate alternative to trees that have stood since Victorian and Edwardian times.

One resident, Leana Pooley, who wrote to council leader John Cudmore to complain, said: "Ealing is supposed to be the queen of the suburbs because of the trees and street planting. They were planted to look a part of the estate. It was an early garden suburb."

Graham Simmonds, chief executive of the Trees for Cities charity, which aims to plant a million more trees in London by 2010, urged the council to "think very carefully" before agreeing to a wholesale cull.

He said: "If the motive is to save money on tree maintenance then this needs to be weighed up against the financial benefits that trees bring."

Mr Simmonds said that insurance claims for subsidence were far more likely to have been caused by poor foundations than the effect of tree roots. "We do not believe that two young trees in place of one mature tree, which may have taken 100 years to grow, is adequate."

Mark Dixon, of the National Urban Forestry Unit, said: "Urban trees do get an unfair press in terms of being hailed as the scapegoats for causing subsidence. In the majority of instances these are probably not causing the problems, especially in the South-East where you have got London clay that does swell and shrink with the seasons."

Nigel Sumner, Tory environment spokesman on Ealing council-said Ealing town centre could lose 40 per cent of its trees if the cull went ahead.

He feared other species would be targeted next.

"The hurricane of October 1987 devastated Ealing," he said. "Some 3,500 street trees were destroyed - 1,500 were lime trees. Eighteen years later we have just about caught up but now we face another hurricane."

But Mr Cudmore claimed the trees were a problem because of their "vigorous" growth and attraction to insects, whose droppings made pavements slippery. He said the limes looked like "cabbages on sticks" because they have to be severely pruned back every three years.

He said the council received "many, many complaints from residents" and said a radical solution was needed to limit the cost.

In a response to Ms Pooley, he wrote: "We have to decide what is the most sustainable way of managing these trees.

"Is it to keep pouring council taxpayers' money into this programme or to act on a longerterm solution and look to a new generation of street trees to replace them?"