Environment secretary hopes for ‘decent conversation’ with council, but says he is also exploring ‘legal or policy avenues’

Michael Gove has asked government officials to explore ways of stopping the “bonkers” felling of thousands of roadside trees in Sheffield.

The environment secretary said the government would examine “legal or policy avenues” to end the scheme that has triggered months of protests by residents.

On a visit to the city on Wednesday, Gove said he hoped a “decent conversation” with Sheffield city council would help solve the dispute. But he added: “It is also the case that we will explore what legal or policy avenues we have.

“In some respects time is marching on and with every week that passes more trees are designated for felling but I’ve asked the [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] lawyers and policy officials to let me know what we can do either now or in the future to cause the council to pause, think again and go down a different route.”

Gove’s intervention comes a month after Sheffield city council dismissed his demands to halt the programme, which involves 6,000 trees being chopped down as part of a 25-year £2bn highway maintenance scheme.

It also emerged on Thursday that the council has spent £250,000 on legal fees in defending its tree-felling operation, including £149,660 on costs connected to a high court order barring people from standing inside safety zones erected around doomed trees.

Council bosses say the programme is essential if the city’s 36,000 street trees are to be managed for future generations. It insists the trees earmarked for felling are dying, diseased or dangerous – a claim disputed by residents and campaigners.

Gove met two pensioners and a Green party councillor who are among those who have been arrested while trying to stop council contractors chopping down trees.

Speaking after the meeting, he told the Yorkshire Post: “Having listened to people who have been on the frontline, it seems to me clear that the council has no adequate defence for continuing to cut down trees in the way that it has been.

“Sheffield is losing, we are losing, an amazingly valuable natural resource and the justification for it seems as flimsy as an autumn leaf. The idea that because tree roots might potentially cause a kerbstone here to be slightly out of alignment or might theoretically pose a risk to someone’s mobility and therefore that justifies felling trees that have been here for generations is bonkers.

“What the council should be doing, I think, is trying to work with the contractor, Amey, to find different solutions rather than cutting down trees.”

The council pays me to protect trees from destruction – but for how long? Read more

Sheffield city council has been approached for a comment. Speaking before Gove’s statement, Bryan Lodge, the council’s cabinet member for the environment, said: “We hope that following his visit, Michael Gove will now have a more informed understanding of the work we are doing, in partnership with his government on the Streets Ahead programme, which will transform our roads and pavements and ensure long-term benefits for the people of Sheffield.”

Last month the council obtained a high court injunction in an attempt to prevent protesters from standing in the way of tree-felling contractors – a new legal avenue following a spate of arrests in scenes compared by Nick Clegg, the former Sheffield Hallam MP, to “something you’d expect to see in Putin’s Russia”.

Campaigners have vowed to continue their opposition, blockading a council depot to prevent tree-felling workers from leaving hours after the injunction came into force last month.