The university said Sheffield Council officers may have wrongly identified particular species and identified low-value trees for protection - while omitting some more important ones from protection.

The council implemented the Tree Preservation Order after carrying out a survey of the site in Crookes earlier this year. That followed the refusal of planning permission to bulldoze the hall and turn the site into housing.

"Those trees which were prominent from a public area and contributed towards visual amenity were included in the order," a council officer said.

But the council's survey was inconsistent with a study conducted by surveyors Popplewell Associates on behalf of the university in 2005, and updated this year.

Carrie Warr, of Sheffield University's management, said: "There was a lack of clarity about which trees the Tree Preservation Order is proposing to protect and there were many inconsistencies in the TPO survey compared to our detailed knowledge of the trees on site."

Among the discrepancies were the council identifying one tree as a Himalayan Pine when the university survey said it was a Scots Pine.

And Ms Warr questioned why trees classed as category C in terms of importance were covered by the TPO when some more important category B trees were not included.

She added the university was not against the TPO and that the details needed to be made clear "in the interests of the trees".

A meeting has since taken place between the council's and university's tree experts to resolve the inconsistencies and the new order is set to be approved at a meeting of Sheffield Council's city centre, south and east planning board on Monday.



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