It was always our intention to clear the site as soon as the trees were felled, however the injunction obtained by STRAW and the following High Court hearing meant we were unable to clean up.
We understand from media reports that STRAW want us to ‘get on’ with removing the felled trees, branches and stumps but we have not been able to do so until we received the final court order setting out what the Council is able to do and how it must be done.
We have today received that order which says we must commission an independent ecologist to carry out a review of the branches / fallen trees and tree stumps and put together a methodology for their removal.
The ecologist report and methodology must then be sent to Alison White for her ecologist to review. Ms White then has 48 hours to review the report and come back with comments.
The Council will then be ensuring that it will consider the responses fully and respond to all Ms White’s comments, make any resulting arrangements that the Council considers are required as result, before the clean-up can then begin.
The court order specifies that an expert appointed on behalf of Ms White should be permitted on site during the removal of the logs and branches.
Whilst neither Ms White nor her ecologist have a veto, her ecologist is able to attend in order to observe that the removal works of the logs and branches is carried out in line with the methodology outlined by the Council’s appointed expert and ecologist.
It is likely to take a few more weeks to commission the ecologist, get the reports written and shared with and deal with any comments from Ms White.
Once the felled trees and stumps are removed, we will be in a better position to consider the regeneration scheme going forward.