Islington Green Party has this week lodged a formal complaint with Islington Council after four Labour councillors stepped in to require officers to fell a healthy pear tree in Gillespie Road, Highbury.
Last week, the local press reported that Islington Council had ignored its own officers and policy to chop down the mature tree, which was estimated to be 80 years old, and was valued at around £10,000.
Islington Green Party has now obtained the documents underlying this shocking decision which reveal the following chain of events:
• A Labour ward councillor in Highbury West asked for the tree to be removed on the basis that it was supposedly attracting wasps and that a nearby family were allegedly allergic to wasp stings.
• The Council’s own tree officers investigated the situation in response to the councillor’s request. In their report they said that there was NO evidence that wasps were living in the tree; and NO evidence of anyone being stung by wasps near the tree.
· Accordingly, officers recommended that the tree should NOT be removed.
• The three Labour ward councillors for Highbury West, together with the Executive Member, Cllr Paul Smith, then intervened to require that the tree nevertheless be removed.
• The tree service continued to advise that there were no arboricultural reasons to remove the tree.
• The tree was nevertheless removed – on the basis that councillors had INSISTED on this course of action.
Emma Dixon of Islington Green Party said:
“These shocking events show Labour councillors behaving as though they are above the law. The tree in question was valued at £9,173. That’s nearly £10,000 of council tax-payers’ money. To replace its value immediately would require the planting of nineteen further trees, on the Council’s own figures.
“But this chain of events raises issues going beyond the felling of a single tree. Councillors have no right to intervene in this way to force a decision for which there is no reasonable basis. We believe that the councillors’ actions amounted to an abuse of their position as councillors and a breach of the Council code of conduct, and that the decision to remove the tree was unlawful. We will accordingly be submitting a formal complaint to the council as a first step to a complaint of maladminstration to the Local Government Ombudsman.”
Read coverage of the story in the local and national press here:
Islington Tribune letter
Islington Tribune news
To add your name to the formal complaint please email us at Islington.greenparty.org.uk
