Residents in Sutton-in-Craven are up in arms after a number of trees were felled.

Wighill Street resident Lorna Palmer was angered when she returned home last Tuesday and discovered men with chainsaws felling sycamore and ash trees along Sutton Beck.

Total Tree Surgeons, of Cowling, who carried out the £2,000 job on behalf of Sutton Parish Council, cut down trees along the north bank of the beck from the bridge on Holme Lane to Walton Street.

Mrs Palmer said although the tree surgeons explained what they had done, she was unhappy with the council for not holding a “proper consultation” with residents.

“We shouldn’t have had to talk to them when their machines were going at full pelt,” she said. “That was the first we knew of it. I came home and discovered that half the trees were already gone.”

Another Wighill Street resident, Mary Cutting, said: “At first I thought they were chopping the trees back, but then I realised they were chopping them down.”

And Walton Street resident Fiona Johnson said: “If it had been explained clearly, maybe there wouldn’t have been a problem. It affects all of us and people were feeling that they had been bludgeoned into accepting something. We could have ironed out the issues if there had been a proper consultation.”

Chairman of Sutton Parish Council, Councillor Neil Whitaker, spoke with the residents last Wednesday morning.

He said: “I have apologised to them and said there should have been more consultation. But this was a decision made at a parish council meeting at the end of last year. We don’t make decisions like this on a whim. We thought we were doing the right thing.”

But Walton Street resident Michael York said: “If they didn’t want the trees to grow, why did they let them grow to be that size?”

In a letter to the Craven Herald, Wighill Street resident Caitlin Stringer wrote: “The parish council have sent me pictures of flooding on Holme Lane, upstream of the trees, and explained that this is why the trees were felled.

“Our streets have never flooded in 11 years of owning my property and the debris collected in the tree roots has actually prevented water from bursting through the holes in the wall, which is in severe need of repointing and gaps repairing.”

Coun Whitaker said the Environment Agency advised the council that removing the trees would help the flow of the beck and would prevent the tree roots from eventually growing under the houses and undermining them.

He said some of the trees, none of which were more than 20 years old, were hitting the gable side of the houses. Coun Whitaker also said the council carried out the work in response to residents’ complaints about poor lighting along the beckside footpath.

“We had received a number of complaints from different people about lighting along the footpath. It was very dark and the lights were being covered by the trees,” he said.