Lack of progress by the town council with a street trees project for the centre of Wellington was criticised this week.

The council agreed two years ago to spend up to £9,000 for three trees to be planted to kick-start a scheme put forward by Transition Town Wellington. Although locations for the planting were identified no trees have yet been put in the ground.

Assistant town clerk Alice Kendall admitted that councillors progress had been ‘slow’, which she said was due to ‘other projects’. Ms Kendall said she had been chasing Somerset County Council’s highways officers to carry out high-level scans to show if there were any underground services to prevent any of the locations from being used. However she said the highways people did not seem ‘very keen’ to agree the work.

Town Cllr John Thorne said: “we have missed two planting seasons already and we need to be ready to do it when the next one comes in the autumn.

“We have climate change policies where we want to reduce the town’s carbon footprint and this is a brilliant way of helping with that.

“This is driving me nuts that we have not done it yet. We do not need highways permission to do the scans so if they will not do it then we need to go out and find a company who will.”

Councillors agreed to delegate authority to the town centre committee chairman Cllr Janet Lloyd, the Mayor Cllr Mark Lithgow, and town clerk Dave Farrow to tender for the scans and approve a contractor to do the work.