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New - Bombshell Local Government Ombudsman investigation finds Sheffield Council misrepresented expert advice, acted with a “lack of honesty” and misled the public over its controversial strategy to fell thousands of street trees in the city. https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/sheffield-council-misled-public-and-acted-lack-honesty-over-tree-felling-scandal-damning-investigation-finds-3002854
Rarely do Twitter threads but I feel the context of this newly-released Local Government Ombudsman report is worth explaining...
Reminder - The dispute over Sheffield tree felling reached such a nadir in early 2018 that dozens of police officers and private security guards were called out to support council operations each day and one protester was even arrested for blowing a toy horn
Sheffield Council spent large sums of public money attempting to send demonstrators said to have breached a civil injunction barring protests directly under threatened trees to jail. Two of them received criminal records and suspended jail sentences.
The council ultimately spent more than £400,000 of public money in pursuing various legal proceedings against tree campaigners. https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/sheffield-council-spends-aps400000-legal-battles-tree-campaigners-45336
Sheffield Council also set up an independent panel to advise it on tree fellings, rejected most recommendations to save trees and paid contractor Amey £700,000 for delays the process caused - after attempting to blame protesters for extra costs. https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/sheffield-council-pays-aps700000-compensation-bill-tree-felling-delays-1760961
The new Local Government Ombudsman investigation centres around a complaint about the council’s handling of tree-felling work on Rustlings Road in Sheffield in November 2016 where they infamously conducted a ‘dawn raid’ supported by police officers.
But the LGO report doesn’t just condemn the handling of that incident - it finds more widely that the council acted with a “lack of transparency, openness and on occasion, honesty” during the entire years-long saga and calls for an unreserved public apology to be made.
The council has just issued a statement accepting the LGO findings - I will leave people to decide for themselves whether what is written constitutes an 'unreserved apology' https://sheffnews.com/news/council-apologises-for-street-tree-complaint-handling
The LGO report is worth reading in full (can be downloaded via the link) - pretty much the only punch it pulls is no council official or representative is named https://www.lgo.org.uk/information-centre/news/2020/oct/council-should-apologise-for-tree-controversy-ombudsman-says
Sadly, the Rustlings Road resident who made the initial complaint to the LGO, a man called Alan Robshaw, earlier this year and hasn’t lived to see his concerns vindicated. The council has been told to apologise to his family.
This is far from the first time the council has found itself in hot water - in 2019, the LGO found its contractor Amey “deliberately set out not to reveal the true advice it had received” from an expert who had said a tree due for removal should be saved https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/sheffield-council-apologise-after-residents-deliberately-misled-about-tree-felling-report-42711
The Forestry Commission also found that the council may have felled around 600 trees illegally (but ruled there was not strong enough evidence to prosecute) https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/five-damning-findings-sheffield-trees-investigation-485487
Going to stop the thread there but those examples are the absolute tip of the iceberg - there are so many more examples of decision making by the council that could kindly be termed ‘dubious’ on this issue.
