This in my mail bag this morning from a local resident:
I don’t know if you are aware of the felling of all the mature trees in the BDC car park on Easter Sunday morning.
The time was clearly cynically chosen as an opportune time to evade any enforcement action – from 8am to 1pm on Easter Sunday – and was ruthlessly executed. I was alerted by the very loud noise which I had thought it was road surfacing, and went to have a look at midday. On phoning Haringey emergency services at about 12.30pm, they told me that other calls had been received and ‘would be passed on to the tree officer’. An hour later last vestige of these imposing trees had been reduced to tree stumps. I spoke to a shopkeeper and a stunned resident watching from nearby who had called the police – the police had no interest in intervening. All the people watching from the neighbouring Langham WMC were clearly aghast, too.
Context: I learnt from a shopkeeper that the main part of the BDC site has just been sold by BDC for a multi-million figure.
This is just totally depressing – another cynical developer exploiting the neighbourhood with no reference to the local community or for the quality of life and the environment on Green Lanes Harringay or (in this case) the amenity value of long-standing trees.
There must be some way of finding out who had bought the site and keeping a very close eye on any further works which they attempt to carry out as well as planning applications.
Regarding the loss of these wonderful trees (as a shopkeeper said, there is only one mature tree left in the whole of that stretch of Green lanes, now) - there must be a means of (a) fining the perpetrators, and (b) getting the trees replaced by similar trees., and (c) imposing scrutiny and restraints on any further activity on this huge site.
This is very worrying and I would like to suggest that this is raised on Harringay Online without delay, as it raises so many issues – not only the immediate response which should be forthcoming from Haringey, but also the imminent works and Planning Applications. First, the new owners need to be identified – there is probably somebody out there who knows how to track them down.
Tags for Forum Posts: 590-598 Green Lanes, BDC, hawes & curtis, tpo, tree protection order, trees
-
▶ Reply to This