Several residents of the Rockingham Estate have contacted their councillors to complain about the fact that Lend Lease have been planting trees on the green spaces.
You might wonder why they would complain.
- There was no consultation or indeed warning about this. The first I knew was when contractors with diggers began fencing off the green outside my window. Nobody was ever told anything beforehand. You would think that as this is ostensibly a good thing that Lend Lease and the council would have wanted a big fanfare of publicity.
- They have been planted very close to windows and in some cases will form a screen blocking out light and heat from the sun. Nobody seems to have given this any thought. Quite clearly a lot of them are in the wrong place.
- Lend Lease seem to have also attached tags to trees that they have not planted.
- Residents could have been involved in the decision process as regards the location and choice of trees but were given no opportunity to input with local knowledge.
- We can only think that this has been done so that they can chop down trees on what was the Heygate but say that they have planted replacements, but this is totally disrespectful of Rockingham residents to just plonk them inappropriately on our precious green spaces.
- Nobody is against the planting of trees per se. What infuriates us is that we are obviously of no importance whatsoever in the process of regeneration because they don’t even need to let us know that they are making changes to our area. It’s not the council who did the planting. It was Lend Lease.
Martin Gabriel, via email