And just like that. They were gone.

I've blipped before about the way our urban trees, that we take for granted to bring a little bit of nature into our everyday lives, can so swiftly get taken away from under our noses. The way that local planning seems incapable of protecting things like trees from rapacious development. And so this week on Portobello High Street. For some time now developers have been redeveloping the old Phoenix House offices. In the original plans, the trees out front remained. But apparently the developers got a tree expert in towards the end of last year to say that the trees were a problem - the roots were affecting underground services and the branches were a problem for the new housing being built on the site. Now, the former could be something that had only recently come to light but the latter was evident on the architects' drawings on the planning application. The trees can be clearly seen in front of the building, partially blocking some of the windows. Which makes the cynic in me think it is all just a little convenient and was quite possibly the plan all along - the developers can't claim to have 'just noticed' the issue of the trees in front of the house windows when it was in their own drawings. And while the original planning application included formal neighbour notification notices, the necessary permissions for cutting down the trees seem to have quietly gone through with the minimum of scrutiny. The community council say they did publish a link to the information online but aren't allowed to get involved at that low a level of detail. So who is there to represent the local community's interests in the face of continued development? It might be okay as the plans do mention replacing the trees with new ones but who is there to hold the developer to account if they don't? Too low level for the community council. And like happened on Stanhope Street it is hardly like for like when established trees are replaced with saplings. Okay, trees grow and may end up too big for a space but the drastic solution of chopping them down every decade or so seems a poor way of managing our local environment. I'll be watching the space over the coming months and years.