RESIDENTS in a Tavistock lane appear to have won their battle to save six trees from being felled, but five more could still be cut down after a felling application was revised to include only those trees closest to dwellings.
A site inspection to view five trees between Wyatts Lane and Cole Moore Meadow, Tavistock which are the subject of an application to be felled, will be held by borough councillors today (October 24) to decide if they should be retained.
The original application to fell eleven ash and sycamore trees in Wyatts Lane has been revised to just five ? three trees adjacent to the lower dwelling in Cole Moore Meadow and two more adjacent to a garage in the Meadow.
At last Tuesday?s planning and licensing committee meeting, councillors supported a recommendation by Cllr Dennis Bater to visit the site before any decision on the future of the trees -all currently protected under tree preservation orders- was taken.
Landscape officer Dave Chapman had recommended the refusal of the application to fell the trees. ?There is little doubt the trees are worthy of safeguarding with a Tree Preservation Order on grounds of visual amenity,? he said.
Wyatts Lane resident Jude Lawrence said other residents felt ?disturbed, annoyed and outraged? at the thought of the trees being felled. She said the builders had chosen to build too close to the trees, and cutting them down would render the Tree Preservation Order irrelevant.
Suzi Allen, independent landscape expert, who carried out a tree survey submitted with the application, said the trees were ?merely an overgrown hedge.? She said they had been singled out for preservation in 1990 and allowed to grow, and if they continued to do so, they would require ongoing applications for tree works. She said the average height of the trees now reached six metres, although their crowns were fairly narrow, some of the trees extended over houses, and many were heavily ivy-infested.
However, a multi-stemmed ash on the corner of the junction of Wyatts Lane and Glanville Road, which is causing actual damage to the pavement will be felled. The Highways Authority has been contacted and the tree will be felled in the near future. In this instance, the planting of a replacement tree was felt to be impractical.