UPDATE

You may have seen the media coverage of the shocking destruction of our urban forest on Armada Way on the night of Tuesday March 14th. Thanks to a last-minute high court injunction, which we were able to serve at 1am, the felling was immediately stopped. Sadly it was too late for 117 trees which Plymouth City Council (PCC) managed to destroy in just 5 hours. 

It was truly unbelievable. We have now filed for a judicial review to hold PCC to account for what they have done and before this, we have a hearing to determine the fate of the dozen or so trees currently covered by the interim injunction. This will now, almost certainly be a long and expensive journey we had hoped to avoid, but the shocking actions of our council left this only option. We were covered by every major national newspaper on the 16th of March along with radio interviews with Jeremy Vine, Nick Ferrari, and Adrian Chiles and had TV interviews with BBC News, ITV News and Channel 5 News. We are proud that we have saved some of the trees and hope that the death of the others won't be for nothing. Their sacrifice will hopefully save other trees from the same fate and set a national precedent for other urban trees.

https://youtu.be/A4YbRDr3mLU

https://facebook.com/strawPlymouth

_______

We are raising money for legal support to bring a case against Plymouth City Council (PCC) who are planning on the almost entire removal of an urban forest in the very heart of our City Centre.

Our initial fund raiser is for £2,000 but for a judicial review we will be looking to raise £30,000

We started a campaign group called STRAW (Save the Trees of Armada Way) to try and urge the council to rethink the plans for Armada Way and to incorporate as many of the 137 healthy, mature, much loved trees as possible. The campaign has gathered much local support with the largest petition Plymouth has ever seen (currently 16,000 signatures), support from local and national tree and environmental experts, and forming a passionate and knowledgeable group of local people to come together to share our feelings and information about the issue.

PCC has failed to follow their own policies in many areas (critically public consultation) and has cut corners to rush through this scheme in order to receive some funding from the DfT.  Since starting the campaign group PCC has failed to respond properly to scrutiny requests and FOI requests and has embarked upon a "meaningful community engagement" which was not fit for purpose and probably a box ticking exercise. We are hoping that with some legal support we can bring a case against PCC to stop the crazy decision to remove these largely healthy mature trees.