A PLANT nursery forced to destroy 50,000 ash trees is suing the UK government for failing to be quicker in blocking imports of the tree.
Simon Ellis, managing director of Crowders Nurseries in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, said the Horticultural Trades Association wrote to ministers in 2009 warning about a new virulent strain of the ash dieback disease.
The UK government banned imports of ash trees last Monday, after 100,000 had already been felled following the discovery of the disease in March.
Mr Ellis said yesterday: “They should have taken it seriously at the time [in 2009]. They chose not to and now we have this really dramatic situation and unfortunately, by the sound of it, the ash tree disease has spread throughout the UK.”
The Forestry Commission Scotland, which has already found the disease in one of its woodland sites near Kilmacolm in Inverclyde, is taking part in a mass UK survey looking for further signs of a growing outbreak.
Preliminary results are not due out until this afternoon, but the number of confirmed cases of the disease is expected to see an increase as ongoing investigations are completed.