Diocese of Ely applies to chop down eight sycamores in Chatteris conservation area

An application to chop down eight sycamore trees in a Cambridgeshire town will be considered by Fenland District Council (FDC).

The row of trees at The Vicarage on Church Lane in Chatteris falls within a conservation area.

This is an area where there are tighter controls on cutting down or cutting back trees, even when they're not owned by the council.

The trees in fact belong to the Diocese of Ely, which will need permission to cut the sycamores down.

The Diocese applied to do this in December last year, but its request wasn’t acknowledged until seven months later.

It will now have to wait longer for FDC to review the application and make a decision.

The Diocese has given various reasons for wanting to fell each of the trees, including them being too close to a wall separating the vicarage from the street, the wall being damaged by some of the trees and trees hanging into the road or public car park.

Some also have poor form, the application says, or poor unions – the point at which branches meet the trunk.

The Diocese is also applying to cut back four more sycamores, as well as an ash and an elm.

One of these – a sycamore – hangs over the car park and should also be removed in future, the application says.

The Diocese has previously been granted permission to cut down an ash tree at the vicarage as well as to cut back a maple tree and two cherry trees which had been affected by bacterial canker, a disease which can kill a tree’s branches.

This separate application was made on the same day as the application to cut down the sycamores but determined two months later.

Conservation areas are aimed at preserving the character and appearance of areas with “special architectural or historic interest”.

There are 10 in Fenland, with Chatteris’s covering much of the town's High Street and its immediate surroundings.