Sheffield Street Tree Partnership: Helping the city move on from tree-felling scandal

After a long and painful battle between campaigners and Sheffield City Council – which has been approached for comment –negotiations to find a better way forward began in 2018.

Now Christine is one of the members who sits on the Partnership, an organisation set up to enable open dialogue between different organisations involved in the decision-making process. It contains representatives from groups such as Amey, which manages Sheffield’s highways, Sheffield City Council, Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust, the Woodland Trust and residents who act as Street Tree Wardens.

“I wanted to be on the Partnership because I wanted to carry on our work,” Christine says.

“My thought was always about future trees and the need to safeguard them.

"I am an information analyst and I thought that at some point, having someone who knows how to deal with data was going to be useful.”

Christine says that when the initial negotiations began “pretty much no one trusted anyone” and that the campaigners were concerned that the Sheffield Street Tree Strategy “would be a greenwash”.

She says: “Through the Partnership we have an opportunity to ensure the strategy doesn’t just sit on a shelf getting dusty. Instead of being spectators, residents can take an active role in making change happen.”

The Environment Bill, through what is known as the “Sheffield Clause”, now requires public consultations before any street tree can be removed.

If the result of that consultation is that residents have an issue with whether a tree should be removed or not, or with the replacement species or location, that’s when the Partnership steps in.

“We talk together and come to a view based on resident opinion and expert advice,” Christine says.

“That feels right – we shouldn’t be standing between organisations and the public, that’s not democratic.”

Dr Nicky Rivers is a development and advocacy manager at Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust.

She joined the Partnership in December 2021 after Liz Ballard, CEO of the Wildlife Trust and founding chair of the Partnership, stepped down.

Dr Rivers believes the combination of expertise on the Partnership, which meets monthly, is allowing Sheffield to think more strategically about the future of street trees.

“It is not just about managing the trees we have,” she says. “It’s about identifying where the gaps are and what species would fit well in different locations.

“This is an exciting time for the Partnership,” Dr Rivers continues. “The first phase was writing the strategy, now we are getting on with delivering it. That involves community planting, species selection and the street tree warden scheme. There’s always a lot to talk about, and a lot of work goes on between meetings.”

With the release of the damning Lowcock inquiry report earlier this year, Christine understands why there remains so much anger in the city around the felling of street trees.

“It is everyone’s right to feel whatever they feel about what happened in the past. People’s experiences of that time are deeply traumatic so I’m not going to deny anyone feeling that.”

However, Christine also believes the work of the Partnership is crucial in finding a positive way forward for the city.

“I personally think that if you’re not careful you become a monument to pain and past experience, and I think most people don’t want to feel like that,” she says.

“Being in this partnership has helped me personally with that but I think now we’ve done the initial work we need to step outside of ourselves a bit and promote the work we’re doing. The challenge is to do that without it being viewed as greenwashing. That only comes from clearly communicating what is happening, and being open about some of the challenges we face.”