YP Comment: Sheffield campaigners fight on

They do so with the backing of the former deputy prime minister, and local MP, Nick Clegg.

This is a long-running dispute that‑ has become so heated it has even grabbed the attention of the national media. On the one side is Sheffield City Council which is proposing to fell 20,000 trees as part of a city-wide tree replacement programme and on the other is a growing band of vociferous campaigners.

The council says the trees being removed are either diseased, dead or dying or causing damage or obstruction to pavements and are replacing them with new ones. But campaigners claim many of these removals are unnecessary and argue that the best way to help tackle pollution is to keep the existing trees.

There is no doubting their commitment to the cause. The action group now has more than 5,300 members, which has nearly doubled since November, and at the weekend hundreds of people formed a human chain around Sheffield Town Hall in a peaceful protest against the chopping down of the city’s trees.

If the council thought its tree felling programme was going to be straightforward then it failed to take into account the passion that can be generated when people feel the wellbeing of their local environment is under threat. As one local resident said: “We are thinking about our children. It’s about the landscape they are going to grow up in and their children are going to grow up in.”

Campaigners form human chain in protest at Sheffield tree felling