Cllr Bryan Lodge has issued an apology for the disgraceful events that occurred with the tree-felling at Rustlings Rd last month. That apology said nothing about the real underlying issue, which is that Sheffield City Council signed a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract with Amey and the contract is inadequate in terms of trees and consultation. It is probably inadequate in lots of other key areas too but no one is being allowed to see the contract so we just don’t know. The Greens refused to sign when asked to join in with cross–party endorsement in 2008 at the start of the process that led to the Amey contract. Labour and Lib Dem leaders Jan Wilson and Paul Scriven fully supported it and their subsequent leaders fully supported it through to the contract signing in 2012. Both parties then tried to claim the most credit for it – this tweet from current Cabinet member Leigh Bramall in 2013 “Both parties support Streets Ahead but we won it, (the Lib Dems) carried the baton, but we finished (the) contract and are delivering.”
It’s good to hear that Sheffield Central Labour Party members are raising concerns on healthy tree felling 4 years into the contract. But they can’t really complain about expensive and undemocratic PFI contracts – it was a Labour government that offered Sheffield the original deal.