Inquiry finds city council legal leadership failed to question "what it was right or proportionate” to do in tree protest dispute

An independent inquiry into the management of the street trees dispute that engulfed Sheffield City Council has found the local authority's legal leadership focused on what the council was entitled to do, and "failed to pose questions of what would work or what it was right or proportionate to do".

The inquiry, which was conducted by Sir Mark Lowcock KCB, concluded overall that the council had adopted a "flawed plan" in its approach to street trees and there was "a serious and sustained failure of strategic leadership" during the saga.

Sheffield entered into a contract with infrastructure support service provider Amey in 2012 to deliver improvements to the city’s road network as part of its ‘Streets Ahead’ programme.

Part of the programme involved plans to fell and replace around 17,500 trees over the course of 25 years. However, the inquiry revealed that this initiative was based on a misunderstanding of previous analysis from a consultant.

It also concluded that the tree felling plan “largely ignored” the value of street trees and failed to anticipate the views of significant numbers of people across Sheffield.

By 2016, residents had formed opposition groups and launched a judicial review challenge which temporarily paused the council's efforts. However, the High Court later ruled in favour of Sheffield, leading the council and Amey to forge ahead with the plans.

High-profile protests followed, with some protesters forming a camp in a Sheffield park, but the council stayed its course and began issuing pre-action protocol letters to protesters that stated the local authority intended to seek both costs and damages.

The council was also granted an injunction against protests, which it later used to seek committal against protesters for alleged injunction breaches. At one point, the council decided to seek an injunction against an elected councillor.

The felling programme was finally paused in 2018, and mediated talks between residents, the council and Amey began.

On the decision to pursue injunctions and legal action against protesters, the inquiry concluded that the council did not adequately consider alternatives involving negotiation.

It noted: "Those pursuing legal solutions within the council may have felt that legal remedy through injunctions was a last resort. This is not the inquiry's view. Rather, it observes that the council did not adequately consider alternatives involving negotiation with the protesters."

It added: "Some in the Council saw a simple, binary decision between an injunction and abandoning a flagship programme. The council made these choices because it wanted to see through the Streets Ahead programme as initially designed or as close to it as possible."

The report said it was correct that it would have been harder to seek a new injunction than to preserve an existing one, with the process having to start again. Council officers had explained that they might still have needed to rely on the injunction if negotiations with protesters failed.

However, the inquiry observed a "large body of evidence" showing that the injunction was ineffective. "Yet officers chose to continue with it, in legal proceedings to pursue committal, and to extend the injunction, when it could have jeopardised their emerging plans for negotiation."

The inquiry later added that as the dispute progressed, "the volume of expensive legal activity increased, as did the level of protests on the streets".

It said this demonstrated that the council's strategy “was not effective in deterring protesters or resolving opposition to Streets Ahead.

"As one member of the Council legal team told the Inquiry, the Council's legal success was an example of how it could win battles but lose a war."

Ultimately, the inquiry found that alongside failing to resolve the dispute, relying on legal solutions caused the council wider reputational damage and cost a significant amount of money that could have funded compromise solutions.

The inquiry’s examination of the council's culture meanwhile revealed a "political culture that was unwelcoming of external input, interpreted anything other than positive endorsement as disloyal criticism, and was prone to defensive reaction".

In relation to governance, the report found that while the evidence provided to the inquiry did show that the processes for the Amey contract seemed largely to have been followed, there appeared to have been a reluctance to use the governance systems to ask important questions about whether there were alternative strategies that would have worked better.

“There also appears to have been a disconnect at times between the governance system for the contract and that of the Council’s most senior management boards. This also meant that checks and balances on the use of a local authority’s power did not always function as well as they could.”

The report noted that: "While the Inquiry did not find that the Council exceeded its authority or acted unlawfully, the relationship between the Monitoring Officer, Chief Executive and Executive Directors could have provided a greater level of challenge over whether the Council was using its authority wisely, proportionately and appropriately. For that, the Council's senior leaders bear responsibility.”

Speaking further on leadership at the council, the inquiry said: "[Effective] strategic leadership requires clear understanding of problems, the identification of stakeholder interests and likely behaviour, the analysis of options available to decision-makers and the development of solutions which are both likely to lead to a resolution and are a wise and reasonable use of authority.

"Against this benchmark, the council displayed serious and sustained failures in strategic leadership in its handling of the dispute between mid-2016 and March 2018."

It concluded: "The Inquiry did not find that the Council had exceeded the use of its authority (nor that there had been criminal conduct, contempt of court, or breach of professional standards), but considers that it did not use that authority in a proportionate or appropriate way."

The inquiry made eleven recommendations to Sheffield. In order to reconcile with objectors, it recommended that:

• The council should apologise for developing and adopting a flawed plan
• Amey should recognise and apologise for its part in developing the flawed plan.
• The council should issue a comprehensive and fulsome apology for the things it got wrong in the course of the dispute, especially between mid-2016 and early 2018, drawing on the material presented in the inquiry's report.
• In the spirit of reconciliation, the council should drop outstanding financial claims against protesters in order to relieve them of the financial and wider burdens these claims continued to impose.

The inquiry also recommended a set of measures to minimise future risks during the course of the 25-year Streets Ahead contract with Amey. These include:

• The council should provide more staffing and senior support for the Street Tree Partnership Strategy. Amey should put more resources into enhancing its effectiveness.
• While sustaining its current partnership mindset, the council should consider whether it has the skills and capacity needed adequately to pursue its interests in managing the contract with Amey.
• Amey should recognise that its part in the creation and sustaining of the dispute creates a moral and reputational obligation to be flexible and constructive in finding and resourcing solutions to legacy issues and such future problems as may arise.

Four further recommendations were made, which said:

• The council should sustain the emphasis it has recently placed on partnership, local engagement and consultation and consider what more it needs to do to ensure that a culture conducive to that is fully embedded.
• The council should keep under review its approach to the provision of pastoral support to staff in stressful situations so that it can consistently act in ways which staff perceive as both reasonable and fair but also supportive and kind.
• When considering future projects on the scale of the Streets Ahead programme, the council should look at the option of a corporate rather than service-led management structure.
• The council should consider whether its strategy and resourcing to improve information management – both its record-keeping and how it manages communication with the public – needs any adjustment in the light of the inquiry.

In a statement responding to the inquiry report, Sheffield's Chief Executive Kate Josephs and Leader of Sheffield City Council Terry Fox said: "We welcome the publication of the report and thank Sir Mark and his team for their efforts and diligence in producing a detailed, comprehensive report that will support truth and reconciliation and the continued healing of the city after this difficult and damaging period in our city's recent past.”

The pair noted that the council received a copy of the report at the same time as it was issued to the public, and will respond to the findings and recommendations made in due course.

"The council has already acknowledged that it got many things wrong in the handling of the street trees dispute, and we wish to reiterate our previous apologies for our failings," they added.

Adam Carey