‘Europe’s greenest city’ has lost 5,000 trees, chopped down by a private company despite furious local protests. Michael Gove calls the destruction “bonkers”. Now, after a brief truce, the chainsaws are about to start their work again …

It’s just after nine on a bitterly cold Wednesday morning and university lecturer Paul Norman has been patrolling a Sheffield street for more than an hour. Between glances up and down the road, he is marking students’ papers, pleased with the gloves that let him use his phone’s touchscreen, in case he needs to call for backup.

An hour later, another academic, Sheldon Hall, has replaced him at his post. With everything still quiet, he reads a textbook on early cinema.

The next morning I meet joiner Paul Brook in a different part of town, on Meersbrook Park Road. Three other residents are nearby, also on watch. “It’s a bit thin on the ground today,” Brook says. But in the biting wind, it seems a good turnout.

These are some of Sheffield’s tree protesters, members of local groups coordinated by the Sheffield Tree Action Groups (Stag), which are at the heart of a dramatic story of local government gone wrong. They have made it their mission to protect the trees from council-backed felling crews in what is often hailed, with a pinch of Yorkshire hyperbole, as Europe’s greenest city.

The fellings are part of a 25-year, £2.2bn PFI contract. Signed in 2012 between the Labour-led council and a private company, Amey, the Streets Ahead programme is intended to upgrade “the condition of our city’s roads, pavements, streetlights, bridges …” – no small feat in a place that was known as “pothole city”.

The contract has serious implications for the city’s 36,000 roadside trees, which have in effect been privatised until the late 2030s. Amey, a subsidiary of the massive Spanish company Ferrovial, has so far removed around 5,350, including oaks, elms and limes. Alison Teal, a local Green party councillor, believes she knows why many were chosen: “I can only assume that because it’s a 25-year contract, they’re felling mature trees because they are more expensive. They cause pavement and road disruption and a hell of a lot of leaves fall off them.”

Hundreds more trees were earmarked for felling by the end of last year but have so far eluded the chop; they tend to be the “really good ones”, according to Stag’s treasurer, Chris Rust, a retired professor whose house is decorated with Stag posters and tea towels. They line the avenues of many of the city’s most staunchly defended areas.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A tree is felled by an Amey contractor on Rustlings Road: three people were arrested for protesting. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

For each tree cut down, another is planted – saplings of the same species “where appropriate”, in the words of Amey operations director Darren Butt. Sitting at her kitchen table, however, Teal says it is nonsense to think you can replace a mature tree with a sapling and expect the same environmental benefits. Trees, she says, “produce a lot of oxygen; better than that, a lot of carbon dioxide is absorbed. They’re actually good at clearing out a lot of pollutants.” Given the difference in size, she says, you need to plant seven or more young trees for every mature specimen that’s cut down. And it will take decades for them to be as striking, or to provide the same shade.

For many Sheffielders, the trees make the city. Poet Sally Goldsmith, a member of Stag in Dore and Totley, on the fringes of the Peak District, says it might be “an unfashionable thing to say”, but it’s about beauty.

And it’s a bond felt by Jarvis Cocker, who has declared his favourite tree to be a “bowl-cut” weeping beech in Endcliffe Park – a familiar sight to many from the city – because “it looks like bad hair”. Former Pulp bandmate Richard Hawley finds it harder to choose: “I like ’em all, like I like all my kids, dogs and guitars … They’re all boss.”

It’s a situation that has made unlikely bedfellows. Michael Gove – who called the felling “bonkers” on a visit to the city last year – praises the “tireless efforts of communities in Sheffield to halt the destruction”.

Much of the criticism of the programme centres on the numbers. The 2006/7 independent survey that formed the basis of the tree-replacement programme stated that around 10,000 trees required “some form of remedial treatment”, with around 1,000 recommended for replacement – not surprising, given years of neglect. But by 2016, the council had increased that figure, saying an estimated 6,000, or 17% of the city’s street trees, would need replacing by the end of 2017 – to be followed by an unknown number more over the next few decades. “Until the surveys are done, I cannot give any prediction,” says Butt.

The battle to save Sheffield’s grandest, most memory-laden trees, started out slowly: “A lot were gone before people realised the extent of felling, or in areas where people were less fussed,” says Brook. But from cherries on Abbeydale Park Rise – chopped with the Christmas lights fundraising for a local hospice still on them – to a massive ash known as Milly near Millhouses Park, residents grew increasingly restive as leafy characters were removed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sheffield Green councillor Alison Teal. Photograph: Chris Saunders

The encounters began civilly enough. Initially, protesters would simply stand or park their cars under the condemned trees. And relations with the fellers were warm, Goldsmith says: “If you were standing under the tree, they’d say: ‘Oh, all right, we’ll not take it, then.’”

Many cite “the battle for Rustlings Road” as a turning point – following a pre-dawn raid and scenes that the former local MP Nick Clegg described as “something you’d expect in Putin’s Russia”, pensioners were arrested for peacefully protesting. Eight trees were chopped down.

It has been a long and gnarly road to today’s situation, with frustrations running high. In 2016, arrests of peaceful protesters started under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, which criminalises anyone who persistently stops someone from carrying out lawful work – in this case, tree surgeons contracted by Amey. “We have the harsh irony of Thatcherite anti-union law being used by a Labour council against its own citizens,” says Ian Rotherham, professor of environmental geography at Sheffield Hallam university. “Only about 30 years on from Orgreave, our local councillors seem to not see the bitter twist in all this.”

We have the harsh irony of Thatcherite anti-union law being used by a Labour council against its own citizens

None of those arrested have ever been prosecuted, however, with the Crown Prosecution Service saying there was insufficient evidence. Then, last summer, the council brought an injunction against nine named protesters – including Teal and Brook, as well as “persons unknown”. It prohibits protesters from entering safety zones around condemned trees, or encouraging others to do so, either on social media or in person.

In a subsequent case accusing Teal of breaching the injunction, the judge clarified its terms. As Brook sums it up, protesters are only banned from crossing an unbroken barrier erected on public, rather than private, land. This made patrolling important: “We have to be there first, because if they get there first and set up all their barriers, I can’t go within it without being in breach of the injunction. But if I’m there first, then I can try to reduce their chances of getting a complete barrier up.”

It has been a cat-and-mouse game since, with protesters becoming savvy to ways they can legally protest. They talk of “geckoes”, who try to cling to walls that are right up against, but outside, safety barriers, and “gnomes”, who sit in private gardens overhung by street trees, but again outside safety barriers. Then there are the “bunnies”, who dare to hop over the safety barriers and break the injunction; they often wear masks.

It was towards the end of last year that Amey brought private security staff to the fellings, authorising them to use “reasonable force” to remove protesters entering a work area. Butt cites “intimidation of my staff or threats of violence” as reasons for the escalation.

When I meet him on patrol, Paul Norman is still smarting from an encounter with one of the security staff. His hand is in a splint; he says it was “yanked” back by someone he believes “intentionally sought to cause me physical harm” as he clung to the outside of a safety barrier. Butt says he cannot comment while police are investigating.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters hold a vigil to save an oak. Photograph: David Holmes

Brook, who lives on Meersbrook Park Road, where the alleged incident took place, says that since last November, “this has been the main battleline”. He tells stories of the more colourful protesters, such as 87-year-old Maureen, who “stood under a tree for five hours with her stick”, and her husband Gordon, initially reluctant to join the campaign but who eventually announced: “Somebody’s told me you’ve got to do everything once in your life and I’ve never been arrested.”

The encounters reached a fever pitch in January. “People just said: ‘Enough’s enough, the only way we’re going to stop them is if we push down the barriers,’” Brook explains. “Some people went in, made a ring around the tree and started singing songs in open defiance of the injunction, saying: ‘Go on, then – do your worst.’” The crews haven’t been back to the street since, but patrols continue, just in case.

Some people went in, made a ring around the tree and started singing songs in open defiance of the injunction

In Nether Edge, residents are fighting to preserve one of the few elms in the country that survived Dutch elm disease. The Chelsea Road elm is adorned with yellow ribbons, flags and the lyrics for a Save the Tree Song: “You are big and you wear the crown, but Amey only wants to cut you down.” More than a century old, it’s home to a rare butterfly colony, which the council says it will seek to rehouse. While the protesters recently thwarted attempts to carry out what Amey said were merely “safety works” – a sign of the breakdown in trust between the parties – an agreement has since been reached to allow access for limited pruning. But the elm’s future remains in doubt – “That tree may well be replaced,” says Butt.

Lifted, wonky kerbstones and pavements cracked by roots are among the reasons given for the fellings. But there is a feeling among protesters that the 14 alternatives priced into Amey’s contract – from flexible paving to root pruning and pollarding – are being underused. Butt and the council dispute the claim. The council says it only resorts to removing trees if they are “dangerous, dying, diseased, dead, damaging or discriminatory” (meaning that they damage pavements and potentially obstruct disabled residents). Of the eight mature limes destroyed on Rustlings Road, however, the council’s own independent tree panel found that seven were in good condition with a good life expectancy. Rotherham thinks the categorisations are “for the most part misused … presented cynically as a smokescreen to justify the felling of perfectly good trees, which will easily live another 100 to 150 years, or more”.

It has been suggested that in some cases the council may be reluctant to reverse its approval to fell a tree because this could leave it newly reponsible for maintaining the highway. But the underlying issue, Rotherham says, is the nature of PFI. “We have lost all pretence at any local environmental democracy.”

The heavy redaction of the contract between Amey and Sheffield council doesn’t help. With many details kept from the public in the name of “commercial confidentiality”, there is no way of verifying, for instance, the council’s warnings of “catastrophic financial consequences” if the fellings are delayed. The gaps leave room for conjecture about why the PFI deal isn’t being called off, or its terms renegotiated. Protesters think they have found legal reasons that would allow the council to annul the contract – a recent petition focuses on Amey’s alleged failure to disclose a 2011 health and safety conviction following the death of an employee. A council spokesperson said it was aware of the death before the contract was awarded, but it failed to provide written evidence of that knowledge in response to Freedom of Information requests made by campaigners.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An avenue of limes that is under threat. Photograph: Isobel Stevenson/GuardianWitness

Teal’s opinion of local democracy is low – and no wonder, after a year in which the council on which she sits took her to court for breaking the injunction, only for the case to be thrown out. “This is a one-party state,” she says. “Sheffield has 84 councillors; 56 are Labour. They can’t be outvoted.” She mentions Nasima Akther, a Labour councillor who defied the whip to abstain on a vote about the fellings. “For her courage she was suspended from the party. It’s bullying and she subsequently resigned.”

Life expectancy if you live on a street with trees is around seven years longer

Ask Teal about the benefits of trees and you’ll get a pleasant earful. “Now you’ve asked for it. Life expectancy if you live on a street with trees is around seven years longer; better mental health; more likely to exercise, more likely to walk; aesthetically beautiful … habitat, birds, insects.” She’s sad about all the mating birds returning in spring: “They commonly try to return to the same tree … ”

The fellings were paused at the end of January, so Butt could “evaluate the safety of my staff, the stewarding on site and concerns for the protesters”, but Amey has announced they will resume this week and the police have promised an “increased presence”. “I see an awful lot of residents who want more trees out rather than less,” says Butt. “The protesters find it difficult to understand that people want the trees out because there’s no light in their property, or they want a better TV signal.” (Not legitimate reasons for fellings, he concedes.) But at what cost?

Brook is proud of his street: “People here actually stood up to them and said: ‘These are our trees.’ These councillors are only custodians of the trees that our Victorian ancestors had the wisdom to stick in the ground to try and improve air quality. These street trees are not old. They are in their prime.”