Trees chopped down to make way for £22m company headquarters

The trees were chopped down on Wednesday mornin

Concerns have been raised after trees were cut down ahead of work on a new £22m headquarters for safety equipment supplier Arco.

The former car park, off Humber Street and Blackfriargate, in Hull, is being turned into a 55,000 sq ft new headquarters office for Arco, one of the city’s largest companies.

It also includes a 350 space multi-storey car park, 28 more homes and some small retail/leisure units.

But people have asked why the tree belt - consisting of 25 London Plane, Lime, Swedish Whitebeam, Prunus and Cotoneaster - which was outside the perimeter fence - has to have the chop.

Hull is said to be the UK's least wooded city, with only 0.2 per cent of land covered by trees. The average for England is 10 per cent.

One local resident said: "Those trees have been down there many years. Are they going to replace them with other trees?

"It is looking more like a concrete jungle - they are taking away all the greenery."

A spokeswoman for Arco said they took their environmental responsibilities very seriously.

A report said they had "good visual amenity value" Picture: Google

She said they had carried out a full arboricultural assessment, adding: "We are putting in a scheme to mitigate the removal of the trees.

"We haven't finalised the scheme yet.

"We will discuss it with Highways England and Hull City Council to make sure it fits in with their strategy for the wider public realm to make sure we have a consistent design approach."

Hull City Council was approached for a comment.

Arco plans to relocate its headquarters from Waverley Street.

Buildings on the existing Arco site were being purchased by Hull City Council, working with Highways England to support the A63 Castle Street improvement works.

The proposals is set to bring more than 500 office, retail and leisure jobs to the regenerated waterfront area plus a large number of construction jobs.

A decision record from earlier this year showed that the council had loaned £4.4m to the Fruit Market Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), made up of £1.2m from the Growing Places Fund, which supports infrastructure projects, and £3.2m from the council itself.

In February the council, which owns 50 per cent of the LLP, said it was to fund the multi-storey car park, and interest would be paid on the loan.