Last chance to have your say in city trees probe

INDEPENDENT INQUIRY INTO DECISIONS OVER ARMADA WAY

- WILLIAM TELFORD

PEOPLE only have a few days left to have their say about Plymouth City Council’s decision to chop down more than 100 Armada Way trees in March 2023. An independent inquiry into the regeneration has begun, and will focus on whether the authority carried out sufficient consultations and the financial implications of its actions.

Three local government experts have been chosen to conduct the independent learning review and members of the public, city groups, businesses and interested organisations are invited to submit written representations. But they must complete an online form by January 6.

The review will look closely at the 2023 decision, signed by the then Tory council leader Richard Bingley, to press ahead with the redevelopment scheme and the destruction of 129 trees. A court injunction stopped the work later that day, after 110 mature trees had been chopped down, and the scheme was later torn up with an entirely new project announced by Labour’s Tudor Evans when he took control of the council two months later.