Some of you may have noticed that a large tree in the south east corner of the Grove Hall Park memorial garden has been cut down.

FCARA members have asked the council for some explanation: it seems it’s been removed because it’s too close to the residential development that is underway in that corner (you may remember our partially successful efforts to get this development scaled back and our concerns about its impact on the park and memorial garden).

The planning application was approved on the condition that a “head of agreement” was put in place to make the developers pay for replacement trees in Grove Hall Park and the memorial gardens if any trees needed to be removed, die or were seriously damaged as a result of the development, but didn’t indicate that any trees would HAVE to come down. In fact, the applicant’s own arboricultural submission states it intends “all existing trees and shrubs located within Grove Hall Park be retained during the proposed construction works.”

We’ll let you know when we find out a) why a healthy (if not perfect) tree was chopped down b) what they intend to replace it with and c) when that will happen. Oh, and what other trees they are planning to hack down, despite the arboricultural statement saying otherwise.

Watch this space….