I sympathise with your correspondents who are sorry to see the felling of the London Plane tree in St Mary Magdalen churchyard. However, they are wrong to imply that the city council employs a bunch of gormless lumberjacks hacking down trees all over Oxford for fear of being sued by anybody brushing against a branch. The city council knows that trees help to make Oxford an attractive place. That is why we have placed 50 Tree Protection Orders on trees in the city so far this year. We have also planted far more trees than we have felled. The officers responsible for carrying out the work are qualified arboriculturalists. There was wide consultation with people in advance, including the Forest of Oxford, the vicar at St Mary Magdalen, local shops and the bus companies who were affected by the street closure.

The tree had lost several branches and had structural problems and fungal infection. Tests showed that there was decay in the main stem and that it could lose branches in high winds.

To remove a large part of the crown would only have left us with an ugly tree more prone to wind damage. It would have continued to decay and would still have needed to be removed in a few years time.

Had anybody been injured by a falling branch the City Council would have quite rightly been accused of negligence by the public as well as facing heavy legal costs. I believe that we made the right choice in placing people's safety above the preservation of a diseased tree. Mary Clarkson, Dunstan Road, Headington