Review into tree felling about to open

PANEL CHOSEN FOR INQUIRY'S INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS

- WILLIAM TELFORD

AN independent inquiry into Plymouth City Council’s controversial Armada Way regeneration will focus on whether it carried out sufficient consultations and the financial implications of its actions. Three local government experts have been chosen to conduct the independent learning review into the council decision that led to the felling of more than 100 trees on Armada Way in March 2023.

The review will look closely at the decision, signed by the then Tory council leader Richard Bingley, to press ahead with the redevelopment scheme and the destruction of 129 trees. A court injunction stopped the work later that day, after 110 mature trees had been chopped down, and the scheme was later torn up with an entirely new project announced by Labour’s Tudor Evans, when he took over the council two months later.