He may be one of Sheffield’s best-known pop stars but Jarvis Cocker has become the unlikely frontman of a bid to secure the future of the city’s trees amid a long-running battle with council bosses.
The former Pulp singer is fronting a competition to find the city’s greatest tree, as part of a campaign to save hundreds of roadside trees from being felled by council contractors.
Cocker, who was born in Sheffield, has teamed up with his former bandmates Richard Hawley and Nick Banks, as well as the BBC presenter and naturalist Chris Packham, in the latest attempt to save the trees.
The row came to national attention in November when council contractors summoned people out of bed to move their cars and police detained protesters – including a 70-year-old emeritus professor and a 71-year-old retired teacher – as eight trees were chopped down in Nick Clegg’s constituency of Hallam.
It was, said Clegg, “something you’d expect to see in Putin’s Russia, rather than a Sheffield suburb”.
The competition was the brainchild of Rob McBride, the self-styled “Treehunter” and campaigner for the protection of trees across Britain.
The fight for Sheffield’s trees has its roots in a £2bn private finance initiative (PFI) deal signed by the Labour-run council in 2012. The contractor Amey is tasked with maintaining the city’s 36,000 roadside trees as part of a road maintenance agreement.
The council has repeatedly refused demands from residents – including Clegg – to disclose an unredacted version of its contract with Amey.
Now the Guardian has learned that several of the city’s most senior councillors – including the council leader, Julie Dore – have not seen the unredacted contract despite publicly defending it.
Speaking at the launch of the Great Trees of Sheffield 2017 competition, Clegg told the Guardian: “If it turns out to be true that Julie Dore has not seen a full copy of the contract, it calls into question her own competence. You would have thought the one thing you would do as leader of Sheffield city council is to actually examine it.
“Secondly, it calls into question the grounds on which the council has refused to meet any of the demands made by the campaigners. The council has been hiding behind this mysterious document for months and months. To discover this document has not even been read by the leader of the council just rubs salt into the wounds.
“If that text on which they rely so heavily hasn’t even been read by the council it calls into question whether the reasons they have given for the destruction of the trees hold any water.”
Clegg said his favourite Sheffield tree was one of 23 trees on Western Road threatened with felling. They were planted in 1919 as a memorial to local soldiers who lost their lives in the first world war.
“It’s very poignant for kids now who are learning about the first world war in local schools because they are able to go up and see a plaque commemorating the loss of youngsters and look up at a tree in their own neighbourhood which connects them to this history. It’s living history,” he said.
The former deputy prime minister said the council was reconsidering whether to fell the war memorial trees but added: “If these trees were made of bricks and mortar they would be untouchable. For some reason they are not treated with the same respect as other memorials.”
Cocker nominated a large weeping birch in the city’s Endcliffe Park as his favourite tree and nicknamed it “the bowl cut” because “it looks like bad hair”.
Hawley, who still lives in Sheffield, said the city council had “dropped a colossal bollock” with its handling of the tree-felling scheme. “It boils down to something really simple,” he said.
“Do you like breathing? It’s quite good. It’s called being alive. What we exhale they inhale and what we inhale they exhale. The end.”
Hawley said taxpayers were being “hauled over a barrel” and urged the council to disclose the full terms of the 25-year PFI deal. “It’s like something is beyond the Wizard of Oz curtain that only a few people know about – not even the elected councillors know about it,” he said. “The man on the street, or the man in the pub doesn’t know about it. It seems as bent and wonky as a tree to me.”
A spokeswoman for Sheffield city council said the contract ran to more than 7,000 pages and that commercially sensitive information had been redacted. She added: “Sheffield city council’s chief executive and cabinet members for finance and environment and transport at the time were fully briefed on the scope of the contract and the negotiated deal prior to the contract being awarded.
“Cabinet members from both this administration and the previous administration were involved at all of the decision-making stages of the procurement process and relevant cabinet members continue to be briefed and consulted on issues with the contract, making decisions as and when required.”
