We asked the public for this week’s Word On The Street what they thought of the debate about the St Mark’s elm trees and the accessibility of planning applications.

After approval was given to cut down 25 trees to create more access on Braaid Road, many Manx residents protested the decision and, as of Friday last week, Environment Minister Geoffrey Boot and chair of the planning committee Martyn Perkins met with the owner of Ballavarne Farm and an alternative access is now being sought that would avoid cutting down the trees.

Lucy, aged 18, and Sandra Corkish, 48, of Ramsey were aware of where to find planning applications but felt they should be more publicised.

Sandra said: ’They’re quite difficult to get to, it’s not easy to find out what exactly they’re planning and if you didn’t keep on top of it, you wouldn’t be aware until the bulldozers appeared.

’It’s like a well-kept secret unless you go fishing for it, it’s hard to find.’

She continued: ’If they can put sales of houses in the paper, they can put applications a bit clearer in the paper for people to see. ’

The government used to pay for planning application details to be published in newspapers.

Now it relies of people seeking them out online.

’It’s not on - trying to cut down trees and no one knew about it,’ Lucy added.

Sandra said: ’It’s just been outrageous. I would definitely say that more people should have been made aware of the full story because I’d just heard it was to do with road safety.

’I’m completely against those trees being cut down.’

David and Helen Renecle, both 61, thought the process had been very ’secretive’.

Helen said: ’It’s sneaky, why didn’t people know about it? Are people going to look for that kind of thing?

’It should be more publicised.’

David added: ’I just don’t agree with it.’

Jan Dyson, aged 54, is experienced with planning applications but still felt more could be done to make them ’accessible’.

The Douglas local said: ’My husband checks weekly because something has been built behind our house that we’ve objected to for quite a while, a lot of the trees in our back garden are going to be impacted so that’s sort of personal to us.

’They could do more. I suppose there’s a lot of older people who don’t have the internet or mobile apps and they might not know where to look, but I don’t know how they would go about publicising it more.’

She continued: ’If they were building a hospital or something like that you could understand there may be a need for trees to be lost but to me it didn’t seem to be that there was a need for them to go.’

Ken and Rose Hunter and Carol Kaneen, all from Douglas, didn’t like the way it was done.

Carol, 71, said: ’It was kept very quiet.’

Seventy-year-old Ken added: ’I didn’t like that at all.’

’I think there should be more consideration for the island but then again, people will do what they want and what’s most convenient for them, that’s the attitude,’ Rose, 72, said.

She added: ’They should be left alone, we need more trees putting in, not more trees cutting down.

’It’s time we started to think about the environment and a little bit less about money.’

The trees won’t be removed as long as the alternative access is approved.