• VANDALS cut down a healthy mature tree in Downside Crescent last week.

The vandals were Camden Council’s tree section. A notice posted on the tree stated: “this tree is either dead, dying or hazardous”. These justifications were untrue.

The council’s own website (tree section) stated that the reason for the tree removal was “unsuitable species – Turkish hazel”.

Wikipedia notes that the Turkish hazel is “well suited for use as a street tree in urban areas”.

This particular tree had been in place for more than 40 years. Why was it suddenly deemed “unsuitable”?

I telephoned the tree section on three separate occasions to ask for an explanation. I was told to email my objection. So I emailed the tree section asking for this tree not to be removed. The online form was headed “Council and democracy.”

I received no reply. So next day I went to see one of my local councillors Maeve McCormack at her regular surgery. She did not turn up. So I sent her an email too, explaining the issue, and asked her to stop the tree removal. I received no reply.

The tree was duly cut down four days later.

Camden has planted a presumably “suitable” skinny twig as a replacement – no compensation for the previous leafy pollution-combatting specimen. What is the lesson of this episode?

It is that on even the smallest issues, let alone major ones like the monstrous Swiss Cottage tower and West Hampstead overdevelopment, residents are unable to exercise any influence over Camden Council, whose contempt for local democracy and local concerns is blatant.

The only “unsuitable species” I can see in this little saga is the species bureaucratus unresponsivus which infests parts of Camden Town Hall.

Can it please be removed?

TONY KERPEL
Downside Crescent, NW3