Dear supporters. A federation has been set up under the name Sheffield Tree Action Groups (STAG). This is to act as a hub for people to share and access information from the many tree campaign groups across the city, ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL! The Facebook link is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/392913244219104/?fref=ts. 'All-out' elections May 2016, means that all councillors will have to stand down and every council seat is up for election - everyone's seat is up for grabs!! Voters get 3 votes instead of the usual one! So if you are unhappy with the inertia of this Labour Council and their councillors over bringing Amey to task for felling healthy trees - then this would be the time to vote for someone else. Doing so could improve the likelihood of getting a council that will commission alternative highway engineering specifications, that could enable the safe, long-term retention of many, of the thousands of larger-crowned street trees currently scheduled to be felled before 2018 . Alternative highway engineering specifications, drafted by competent highway engineers, working in cooperation with registered/ Chartered arboricultural consultants, would help preserve the ecological, economic and social benefits that street trees provide, which benefit our health and well-being. This is a generational opportunity to get rid of an entrenched, embedded Council that completely ignores the wishes of it's constituents! If you want our highway trees to be managed in a sustainable manner, or if you would like greater honesty and transparency, or if you are fed up with having all enquiries secretly converted to Freedom of Information requests, then subsequently dismissed as “vexatious” and “manifestly unreasonable” - voting may be your best opportunity to change things for the better (btw, yes, this IS the way ALL tree related enquiries that relate to the £2.2bn Amey PFI project, are now being handled!). If you want our council to adopt current and widely accepted industry guidance and recommendations, as befits “The most wooded and treed city in Britain” (SCC, 2015), or if you would like to see that officials ensure that their decisions are soundly based on available evidence and not unduly influenced by transitory or exaggerated opinions formed by vested interests, voting may be your only opportunity for positive change! You can find out more about these things online, by visiting Stocksbridge Community Forum and following the link to the SORT letter to Cllr Fox, dated 14th July, 2015: https://www.stocksbridgecommunity.org/news/streets-ahead-stocksbridge-trees. As always, thank you everyone for all of your endeavours, wherever you are, for the trees of Sheffield - each of your individual efforts are seen and very much appreciated by the rest of us! All the best SORT