Welwyn Hatfield Council has been criticised after its contractor left a popular green space “resembling a building site”.

Lib Dem candidate for the Handside by-election, Siobhán Elam, pointed the finger at WHC after Maydencroft completed work in Welwyn Garden City’s Parkway without heeding advice to avoid churning up the grass.

She said: “Parkway, with its lawns, trees, statuary and flower beds, is a gem of which other towns are truly envious. But do our council value it as they should? The evidence here seems to be no.

“The council’s own contractors, as part of their work to cut down the poplar trees, have allowed their vehicles to churn up a long trail of the turf, leaving ugly tyre treads.

“If they had been properly advised to put down the necessary ground protection treads, this need not have happened, and our lovely green space would not now resemble a building site.”

The local authority had been felling 19 mature trees in Parkway as part of a renewal programme, which included tree stumps being ground out before the grass is restored.

A council spokeswoman said: “The tree work was on such a scale that the mats suggested were not appropriate and those commonly used by Maydencroft would not have been robust enough for the weight of the timber hauled off the site.”