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Council tree felling...

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Report in the Star online that the Council are refusing to have a meeting with STAG for now . Council basically saying it would interfere with local elections . Are they running scared ? :)

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Report in the Star online that the Council are refusing to have a meeting with STAG for now . Council basically saying it would interfere with local elections . Are they running scared ? :)

 

Presumably with only 2 weeks to the local elections SCC, councillors, council officers have entered into a state of 'Purdah'.

 

It's a recognisable process in both national & local government in the run up to elections.

 

But SCC could still.be running scared?

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Presumably with only 2 weeks to the local elections SCC, councillors, council officers have entered into a state of 'Purdah'.

 

It's a recognisable process in both national & local government in the run up to elections.

 

 

We can't have facts cluttering up a sensible debate now.

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I stand by what I said ages ago, that this whole debacle is because of a cleverly worded contract in favour of Amey which the Council's legal team did not have the ability to see through.

I said then that the contract would have been handled and signed off by legal teams rather than councillors (who for the most part would not have understood a legal contract) and this would seem to be endorsed by:

"believes that the Streets Ahead contract should be fully disclosed......to enable all councillors and members of the public to see what has been signed up on their behalf". (SCC meeting 7th Feb).

So those councillors didn't have a clue.

That they are now saying (same meeting) "that council admin should work towards achieving greater flexibility, timeliness, cost effectiveness and improve safety whilst achieving better value for money from the Streets Ahead contract" is somewhat shutting the stable door when the horse has bolted. All the above should have been a necessary part of and included in the contract. Why should SCC think they have any right to start altering that contract because its now proving not what they thought? It doesn't work like that.

All boils down to Amey having a better legal team than SCC.

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I get the impression that most councillors have not been allowed to actually see the contract, which is really weird.

The original motion did go on to say that they should be looking for legal reasons to terminate the contract.

Bryan Lodge proposed an amendment which entirely changed the motion to be one in support of Amey though.

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The original motion did go on to say that they should be looking for legal reasons to terminate the contract.

 

There are a number of councils all across the UK terminating their Amey contracts early, so hopefully this will help SCC have the guts and backing to do the same.

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It's not really the civil contract that matters here since there is Statute Legislation, the CDM Regulations 2015 which overides all construction activity and requires Client and Contractor to put public health and safety, which the tree felling is detrimental to, first and foremost in all decisions.

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It's not really the civil contract that matters here since there is Statute Legislation, the CDM Regulations 2015 which overides all construction activity and requires Client and Contractor to put public health and safety, which the tree felling is detrimental to, first and foremost in all decisions.

 

I think your interpretation of health and safety is far wider than that intended by the CDM regulations.

 

AFAIK when Dave Dillner (on behalf of STAG) took SCC to court in 2016, environmental grounds were one of the challenges ie lack of an Environmental Impact Assessment in line with EU regs. This failed.

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Watch the tree felling accelerate on the 4th of may, any bets?

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It's not really the civil contract that matters here since there is Statute Legislation, the CDM Regulations 2015 which overides all construction activity and requires Client and Contractor to put public health and safety, which the tree felling is detrimental to, first and foremost in all decisions.

im confused are you saying that CDM covers the fact that trees being cut down have an effect on the publics health & safety..... or that CDM covers the fencing off and stopping of people/general public entering the site when cutting is in progress ?

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Both funnily enough. First decision..to fell tree or not? Felling healthy tree is environmental damage so shouldn't be done. Engineering solutions are environmentally friendly.

Second decision. The actual tree felling operation? Involves security/police/massing of persons..."dangerous" ..so according to CDM best avoided.

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