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BCC Tree Surgeons Use Our Council Tax To Decimate Hundreds of Bristol's Trees

[Bristol] Tony Gosling | 27.05.2010 23:22

hundreds of mature street trees in Bristol have been hoplessly over-pruned in the Autumn and now appear to be dying
The Evening Post Front Page Picture Story That Never Was..............
I'm no expert but it's nearly the end of May and these heavily over pruned trees have not managed to produce anything like enough leaves this years to survive!
These trees are on Whiteladies Road and Cranbrook Road.
The Whiteladies Road Plane Trees are in a reall terrible state and look to me like they may not survive??
But there are many more on Fishponds Road and elswhere throughout the city.
Maybe a dodgy sub-contractor has been employed to prune these trees because their managers clearly know next to nothing about arboriculture. Might they have somehow cheated in the awarding of the contract? Maybe with help from their 'friends' who are council officers responsible for oversight of tendering process?
In the good old days the council would have done this work themselves and the people involved would have been caring, knowledgable and accountable.
Nowadays these sub contractors and the council hide under the cover of 'commercial confidentiality' we all know what that means.
"I have made a pact not to grass up my friends. "

I suppose the contractors have been paid now for a 'job well done'?
Will Bristol City Couuncil's Head of Legal Services Stephen Macnamara be able to get this money back for us?
Or is he too busy struggling to justify making such a diabolical mess, as the city's returning officer, of the recent general and local elections?
Or is he too busy trying to justify the continuing suspension of our honest Bristol Coroner Paul Forrest, for doing nothing more than speaking out early in 2009 about dead bodies piling up at Southmead Hospital awaiting inquests?

[Bristol] Tony Gosling
- Original article on IMC Bristol: http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/692507

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

It would Help

28.05.2010 00:51

If there were pictures to accompany this story. I am not disputing the claim at all. Indeed, excessive pruning does damage trees. However, it can look as if a hard pruning has resulted in a tree being "excessively" pruned. Trees can recover from "excessive" pruning providing they are given decent aftercare (it is the same as having major surgery: people need aftercare).

What might be of importance is to ensure that there is no second year of pruning. After hard pruning, most (not all) trees need a rest.Repeated pruning might be a larger problem.

A Former Biologist


No need to worry

28.05.2010 01:32

You need not worry about these plane trees surviving, such pruning is commonly carried out on them. The branches are cut off close to the trunk in the wintertime and fresh shoots appear the next year.

Some councils insist, for some reason, on pollarding their plane trees every year. The trees survive, but it does mean that for most of the year (late autumn to well into summer) the trees have hardly any leaves, thus surely defeating the point of a street tree.

Ed