A LEAFY Menston street has become the subject of one of the fastest tree-felling bans to be brought in by Bradford Council.

A Tree Protection Order (TPO) document - legally preserving all trees in the street - was hand-delivered to each house on Leathley Road just hours after a ward councillor called for the tree-felling ban.

Councillor Chris Greaves (Con, Rombalds) asked Bradford Council officers for an emergency TPO at 9am on Maundy Thursday, after hearing rumours of a developer wanting to build houses on private land in the street.

Just seven-and-a-half hours later, council officers had drafted a block TPO protecting every tree in the street, had had it approved by the council's legal services department, and had hand-delivered it to residents.

The block TPO means residents cannot cut down any of the trees in their gardens - although they have the right to make official objections to the Order.

Coun Greaves said: "This must have been one of the quickest orders. I think for it to be any quicker, it would have to be somewhere in the centre of Bradford."

He promised the block TPO will be reviewed by officers if necessary, and broken into smaller, specific tree protection orders, which will preserve most of the trees, while allowing residents to cut down diseased or damaged trees which could fall.

He says he had heard a housing developer was interested in building several houses in the grounds of one or more properties in the street, possibly buying the existing homes and grounds, and cutting down the trees prior to submitting a planning application.

His fear was that residents would agree to speculative housing developers' offers of large sums of money for their house and grounds, and this could pave the way for an influx of new houses.

And there was concern that council offices were closed over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend - so any application for a protection order would be held up several days, effectively giving free rein to any developer to cut down trees with the property owners' permission.

Menston villagers have previously called for residents to ask for TPOs on trees in their gardens, to help preserve the character of the village, and also as a bar on infill housing developments. However, some spoke out against the idea of seeking TPOs on neighbours' or other residents' land.