Local tree rows and why they’ve become a big deal
This Is Why
Sky News
4.0 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2023
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Plymouth more than a hundred mature trees were chopped down despite public disapproval, and in Sheffield an independent inquiry found that the council's destruction of thousands of trees was misjudged.
National Highways, the government agency responsible for England's main roads, has also admitted that more than half a million trees it planted beside a single 21-mile stretch of new carriageway have died - with the cost of replanting them now £2.9m.
On the Sky News Daily, Sally Lockwood finds out what is going wrong with regeneration schemes in Plymouth and Sheffield with local campaigners, and speaks to our people and politics correspondent Nick Martin about why local tree rows have become such a big deal.
Producer: Soila Apparicio
Interviews Producer: Alex Edden
Digital Producer: Jada Kai-Meosa John
Editor: Philly Beaumont
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Uber drivers. Have you seen your pay go down while your fees to Uber go up? |
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| 0:30.1 | You know, when Helen used to get home from work, I'd ask, how are you? |
| 0:34.4 | Fine, she'd say. She clearly wasn't. |
| 0:42.3 | After 10 years in IT, she was on autopilot. Then she found this job, training up-and-coming tech wizas at the college, same skills but with new people, new challenges. |
| 0:49.8 | Now when she gets back, I get the full debrief. Can't get a word in. |
| 0:55.0 | Give your skills new life. Train others. Search jobs in further education. |
| 1:04.6 | There's a saying, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now. |
| 1:10.5 | But what happens when the cost of |
| 1:12.6 | planting those new trees is chopping down others that are decades old? Well, that's exactly what's |
| 1:19.1 | happened in Plymouth. More than 100 mature trees cut down for a regeneration project to transform |
| 1:25.1 | the city centre and supposedly make it more attractive. |
| 1:28.5 | Well, people there are furious about this. And in Sheffield, it's a very familiar story. |
| 1:33.7 | An independent inquiry said Sheffield Council's destruction of thousands of trees as part of a street improvement project was misjudged. |
| 1:42.8 | People in these two cities are really upset and trees have become a huge local issue. |
| 1:49.2 | Let's talk about why and just what's going on. |
| 1:52.6 | I'm Sally Lockwood and this is the Sky News Daily. |
| 1:56.6 | I'll be speaking to campaigners in both Plymouth and Sheffield. |
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