Islington Tribune - News: Trees axed

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Islington Tribune - by JAMIE WELHAM
Published: 14 September 2007

The remaining tree stumps in Old Street

Outrage as 100-year-old trees are axed at car park

Felling goes ahead two days before bid is due to be made to impose protection order

A GROVE of 100-year-old trees has been chopped down at a landmark Old Street site, two days before the Town Hall was due to slap a protection order on them.
Contractors working for offshore investment company Fusion Gold, which owns the three- acre site by Old Street roundabout, felled the six 70ft English plane trees on Saturday – a day after Islington Council says it was told they would not be cut down.
Angry residents suspect the trees – 10 metres outside Moorfields Conservation Area – were seen as an obstruction to any future development of the site.
Environmental campaigner Leo Chapman said: “We can’t have these offshore companies just cutting down our trees with impunity. They flagrantly disregarded the council’s request.”
The Islington Society vice-president Harley Sherlock said: “It is monstrous to cut down the trees. I am absolutely appalled.
“My immediate reaction is that they should be fined and the very least the council can do is ask them to re-plant trees.”
Council tree protection officers were called to the private car park in Baldwin Street, behind Moorfields Hospital, on Friday after concerned residents saw workmen preparing to cut down the trees.
They arrived just in time to halt the work and sought an emergency tree preservation order for Monday. They say they obtained a verbal agreement from contractors that the trees would not be cut down.
Councillor Lucy Watt, Lib Dem executive member for environment, said: “I am saddened that the property owner felled these mature plane trees. Trees are green lungs of the borough. I share residents’ disappointment that these trees have been felled.”
She added that, had the council been aware the trees were vulnerable, protection orders might have been sought earlier.
The council’s Old Street Roundabout Strategy, formulated in May 2006, states that trees in the area are to be protected and integrated into new developments but it is not a binding document.
Two trees at the front of the site are the subject of protection orders.
Fusion Gold, based in the British Virgin Islands, bought the site from Frogmore Property for £64 million earlier this year.
It plans to develop the existing two office blocks and build a mixed-use development which it hopes will become a gateway to the 2012 Olympics.
The current site includes BT offices and Somerfield, Superdrug and Peacocks shops.
As part of the plans, Old Street Tube station could be refurbished and the roundabout removed. No formal planning application has been submitted.
The Tribune was unable to contact Fusion Gold this week but it is understood there was an issue with vermin on the site and that the company believed that a tree protection order was not going to be issued.

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