Residents heartbroken over tree removal at Victoria Park in Latchford

1:10pm Friday 26th October 2012 in News

Residents heartbroken over tree removal at Victoria Park in Latchford Residents heartbroken over tree removal at Victoria Park in Latchford

REMOVAL of a range of tree varieties along the entrance to Victoria Park has has left many heartbroken at the loss.

The Warrington Guardian has been inundated with letters and e-mails from readers who are bereft with the loss of the mature trees as work on flood defences of The Mersey gets underway.

But the Environment Agency, who are behind the £23million programme of work along with Warrington Borough Council, say it is a difficult task to balance the differing needs of the community.

Keith Roddy, Environment Agency project team manager, said: "It is important to build flood defences to protect people and property from flooding and to avoid homes being blighted and devalued by the risk of flooding. It is also important to protect our environment and townscape.

"The loss of the trees is very regrettable but was necessary to allow new flood defence walls to be built. We will plant more trees than have been felled and I would hope that people are able to take a longer term view and look forwards to a time when we will have new flood defences, a new park entrance and the newly planted trees become established."

Residents living near the park had voiced their concerns about the number of trees being lost last year when the agency unveiled its plans.

A revised scheme was put forward to increase the trees being planted once the work is complete and an arboretum, a collection of fine specimen trees, will be created.

In the meantime a number of bat boxes and habitat piles have been created for wildlife in the park.

Once the flood defence work is complete the agency will be creating a new entrance into Victoria Park and the design team has been working to make the flood walls as attractive as possible and will include artwork by children from St James CE Primary School.

The development is part of a three-phase scheme to sure up defences along The Mersey and Victoria Park is expected to be completed in May 2013.

Phases two and three of the flood risk management scheme will be constructed in Howley, Padgate, Woolston and Cinnamon Brow with plans also being drawn up for new flood defences in Westy.

Comments(2)

notatcreamfields says...
2:59pm Fri 26 Oct 12

I'm positive that these same people would be kicking off and more than heartbroken if the Mersey burst it's banks at the point where the Environment Agency are putting these flood defences now, it may never have been a major problem in the past but i think that everyone can agree the weather systems that have been battering the UK over the past few years are far from usual but are reoccuring month in month out. The same people would be complaining about the amount of grit the Council purchased if the snow blizzard's didn't come but would also be complaining if the Council didn't purchase a large amount of grit and the snows did come. I think i speak for most people when i say yes it is bad when old trees that add to any area have to be cut down but we all understand why and it my sound selfish but if 100 trees needed to be cut down to protect 1 family having their home flooded and everything they own ruined so be it. The less work the Environment Agency do to prevent home's from flooding the less money the Insurance company can tack on to everyone's policy because at the moment with the deal they've got with the Government they can spread the cost over everyone's insurance company so even if you live on the top of a mountain which will never flood the Insurance companys will still charge higher premiums so the people at very high flood risk don't need to take the full hit for how much their insurance should be.

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MikeJT says...
10:32pm Sat 27 Oct 12

Given the plans that have been drawn up, it is highly unlikley that the Mersey would cause major problems is it burst its banks along the areas of human occupation. For many years Victoria Park has been a "flood plain" for the Mersey. The new walls along Knutsford Road will be ineffective as a barrier as the Mersey will have already burst near the weir onto the park. Walls along the whole stretch of this part of the river simply move any problem further up/down stream. You will NEVER beat mother nature, you can only learn to live with her.

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