Council to spend £4.5m to cut dieback

Up to £4.5m will be spent dealing with diseased ash trees at risk of collapsing onto roads and public spaces around the city.

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Leeds City Council is set to award a four-year contract to survey and remove trees with ash dieback disease.

The exotic fungal disease destroys up to 95 per cent of trees that become infected,

A council report said more than 1,000 trees affected by the condition had already been removed and 236 pruned.

It is said to be the most severe tree disease since Dutch elm disease, which took hold in the UK from the 1960s onwards.