COUNCILLORS have been left stumped after planned costs to brighten up the town centre by planting new trees have escalated.

Members of Wellington Town Council’s town centre committee have been looking at installing 12 trees in the High Street and Mantle Street to help make the area look more attractive and enhance the environment.

Initially they were told that it would cost somewhere around £3,000 a tree, but now that price has rocketed to up to £8,000 a tree and that could work out at an overall cost of £90,000-plus.

Deputy town clerk Alice Kendall told members of the council’s town centre committee on September 6 that she had been discussing the project with a company called GreenBlue who are specialists in urban design and tree planting.

And she indicated that there could be trouble ahead for the project, as scans of the streets have shown that utility companies would have to move pipes and cables to accommodate the planting work – a costly exercise.

“The biggest issue is that as the utilities are at a reasonably shallow depth, they will be going straight through the root ball zone, which should always be avoided,” she said. “GreenBlue have asked if it is possible to re-route any of the services, but this is likely to carry a significantly large cost.

“The cost to carry out the scans was £749. In early discussions with GreenBlue, before the scans were received, they gave me an indicative cost of between £5,000 and £8,000 per tree – so that would work out at between £60,000 to £96,000 overall.

“Plus there would be costs for installation and ground works which is quoted on a case by case basis and is dependent on what can be installed at the same time.”

Councillors were left somewhat shocked at the news at the massive price hike in the anticipated project.

“Somewhere between £60,000 and £90,000 is heck of a lot of money to spend on trees,” said committee chairman Cllr Janet Lloyd. “And that’s without digging up any power lines.”

Cllr Marcus Barr said: “This is just not value for money and people would not be happy if we spent that sort of money on trees.”

Sean Pringle-Kosikowsky, a former town councillor but still a meeting of the town centre committee, said: “When this first came up two years ago I was a great advocate for this project, but back then we were looking at £3,000 a tree. But these new figures are just crazy.

“Climate change is a ticking time bomb and it takes years for trees to grow. Let’s just buy a plot of land and plant loads of trees.”

He said that spending somewhere close to £100,000 on trees during a cost of living crisis was “nuts”.

Cllr Lloyd later told members of Wellington Town Council on Monday that the street trees project would not be going ahead because of the costs involved. But Cllr Mike McGuffie asked whether, as an alternative, the council could look at installing some wooden planters to “add some greenery” to the street scene.