From Jennifer Saul "For the last two years, with the backing of the Sheffield City Council, the multinational corporation Amey and its subcontractor Acorn have been engaged in an increasingly reckless, dangerous, and violent campaign of felling healthy trees across the city. The methods used to fell these trees have become increasingly and shockingly unsafe. In August, a tree was felled on Myrtle Road, directly into a private garden, without the resident’s permission or even knowledge. This led to Acorn and Amey being placed in special measures by the Health and Safety Executive. One might think that after this incident the tree felling crews would be especially careful. But in recent weeks all respect for health and safety seems to have been abandoned. In incident after incident, trees are being felled directly over protestors’ heads, or having half their branches lopped off in order to leave them in unsafe condition. They are being felled without adequate safety zones, in the middle of the night, and directly over cars without any notice of parking restrictions being given. The work is being completed with such haste and recklessness that a child outside the safety zone was hit by flying debris. These are shockingly bad practices, and the pressure to engage in them perhaps explains why so many of the crews that used to be willing to fell trees for Amey are no longer to be seen in Sheffield. Only Acorn, it seems, is willing to take these grotesque healthy and safety risks."