Community-Suported Treesitting in Yorkshire: the way forward

27.9.11
An old beech tree has been occu­pied since Tues­day 20th Sep­tem­ber, to stop it’s felling, with a change-over of occu­pi­er last Sat­ur­day, whilst bor­ough and coun­ty coun­cil bat­tle it out in the courts over whether the tree should be felled or pre­served.

Back­ground

The local com­mu­ni­ty has been protest­ing against the destruc­tion of an 80+ year old Beech Tree in Irton, North York­shire for sev­er­al years.

Irton is a vil­lage which has a strong com­mu­ni­ty spir­it. Res­i­dents and out­siders have come togeth­er to show their oppo­si­tion to a North York­shire Coun­cil deci­sion which goes against com­mon sense.

One vis­i­tor to the vil­lage stat­ed “ I went pre­pared to think it was just an ordi­nary tree …. But it is excep­tion­al! It is beau­ti­ful – it adds grace to the vil­lage. Los­ing it would make a huge dif­fer­ence.”

The tree has a ‘tree preser­va­tion order’ on it, which pre­sum­ably means that tree experts feel it should not be destroyed. Despite this as well as local oppo­si­tion from res­i­dents, local coun­cil­lors, the gen­er­al pub­lic and envi­ron­men­tal experts, — North York­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil has decid­ed to fol­low legal pro­ce­dures to destroy the tree. ….

Why is the tree being destroyed?

Occu­piers of a near­by house state that the tree roots are affect­ing, or may affect in the future:

• The bound­ary walls
• The drainage sys­tem
• The cur­rent own­ers access to the prop­er­ty

Why these are not valid rea­sons

The bound­ary walls
• There is no vis­i­ble sign of dam­age to bound­ary walls.

“ It is not in any way affect­ed – it is per­fect­ly upright” says one inde­pen­dent observ­er. House own­ers need to pro­vide evi­dence that dam­age has hap­pened. This con­cern can­not be tak­en seri­ous­ly.

The drainage sys­tem
• 2 expert reviews or ‘tech­ni­cal reports’ have appar­ent­ly been con­duct­ed. Alleged­ly, the first report found that the dam­age to drains pre­ced­ed the tree, and the sec­ond report found that the drains were being dam­aged by the tree.
o Who has com­mis­sioned these reports? No infor­ma­tion has been pro­vid­ed to the pub­lic about who did these reports. Why aren’t these in the pub­lic domain?
o A local tree stu­dent has explained that any dam­age done to walls or drains can nowa­days be dealt with by localised meth­ods – the affect­ed roots can be treat­ed and there is no need to cut down an entire tree.

The cur­rent own­ers access to the prop­er­ty
• The cur­rent occu­piers can move their access point, or con­sid­er using sus­tain­able meth­ods of trans­port.
o Long term res­i­dents of the vil­lage have stat­ed that the prop­er­ty entrance was orig­i­nal­ly well away from the tree, and only in recent years has the gate­way been altered.
o Res­i­dents have indi­cat­ed that the cur­rent own­ers wrere pre­vi­ous­ly inter­est­ed in prop­er­ty devel­op­ment on the site – they sub­mit­ted a plan­ning appli­ca­tion for the devel­op­ment, of sev­er­al dwellings…… but were declined.

North York­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil may have fears about the finan­cial impli­ca­tions of deci­sions they make now, how­ev­er it is unac­cept­able to make the fear of an indi­vid­ual home own­er suing the coun­cil over­ride the rights and needs of nor­mal cit­i­zens.

The pro­test­ers

This protest is entire­ly peace­ful, and there was a feel­ing of con­fu­sion amongst pro­test­ers sur­round­ing the con­cept that what they are doing is a law­break­ing activ­i­ty.

“We felt the tree had been con­demned. We need­ed to stop it hap­pen­ing. It is dis­gust­ing.”

The protest includes a tree-sit in. 2 res­i­dents have been resid­ing in the tree in order to save it.

“We got lad­ders, and stood them up the tree. An hour lat­er, the con­trac­tors turned up. There are 60 and 70 year olds who real­ly do not want this tree cut down. Come and have a look – there is no evi­dence of dam­age.”

Pro­tes­tors in and out of the tree have been sup­port­ed by a strong com­mu­ni­ty, pro­vid­ing moral sup­port, food, drink and warmth, as well as the oblig­a­tory wee jar.

The views

“This is real­ly mov­ing all the bystanders…. Their expres­sions are amaz­ing…. It can’t be wrong to make a peace­ful protest.”.
“There is no defence for killing this tree… I can’t find any defence.”
“ It can’t be right…. Peo­ple in pow­er mak­ing decisions….it just seems very wrong…. It is very wrong. ”

Pro­tes­tors are cur­rent­ly being advised by the Envi­ron­men­tal Legal Foun­da­tion.

More pho­tos

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