The council own the land, and leased it to the restaurant. They claim the Toby Carvery "has broken the terms of the lease which requires Toby Carvery to maintain and protect the existing landscape"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/16/toby-carvery-cou...

There's no need to see malice where indifference and incompetence will do. You need to do a box-ticking exercise, you buy in an expert. The expert says you need to do X, you don't press too hard against that. They say they can do it for you. You assume they know what they're doing and say "OK, do it".

We'll have to wait for the courts to find out exactly who said what to who, and who made what decision, but this is about as much as we can infer for now. The tree's still gone.