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Wrong tree given the axe

Brian Lashley
21/ 7/2008

IT seemed a fairly straightforward task for experienced tree surgeons {ndash} chop down a diseased silver birch on a suburban street.

But instead of the rotten specimen getting the chop, a perfectly healthy one 50 yards away was brought crashing to the ground.

To the horror of residents on Heaton Road, Heaton Moor, Stockport, the workmen had been given the wrong address.

The team from SK Solutions failed to spot the 60ft tree they were cutting down was perfectly healthy.

When the blunder emerged, they had to sheepisly return to cut down the one that should have been felled.

Now council chiefs are promising to replace the silver birch, believed to have been more than 50 years old, with a sapling. Andy Lineham, 35, a printer whose home was shadowed by the tree, said: "I rang the council up to find out what had happened. I got a message on the answering machine from the contractor saying the address should have been 101 but he wrote down 107. Everyone on the street is absolutely disgusted. You assume the people who turn up know something about the trees and common sense would come into it and they would say to themselves `there's nothing wrong with this tree'.

"With all the legislation and paperwork the council has when it comes to anything to do with the environment you would think they could get something like this right."

His wife Jo, a project manager, said: "It was like one of those Jeremy Beadle-type things and I couldn't believe it.

"I was amazed and stunned and that gave way to anger and frustration that something like this can happen on the edge on a conservation area."

A Stockport council spokesman said: "We will be investigating and will respond."