A FRUSTRATED pensioner is calling for the towering trees surrounding her flat to be cut back after a falling branch narrowly avoided damaging parked cars.

Jennifer Linstead, 72, was awoken at around 5am to a loud snapping noise.

The branch of one large Acacia, which looms over the road outside her flat, had fallen away from the tree, landing between two parked cars.

She said: “If a mother had been walking underneath with a pram they could have been killed.

“It is pretty terrifying when there is a storm and this enormous tree is waving about.

“It is dangerous, as this incident proves.

“That particular tree stretches right out across the road.”

Jennifer, of Winnock Road, Colchester, has been locked in a battle with a neighbour, Ian Bell, over cutting back several trees surrounding the block of flats to a “less dangerous” size.

She said: “It is scary to think one of them could come down on the building and kill me, but he won’t have the trees touched.

“The issue is the trees have preservation orders on them and this is a conservation area, so we must have permission from the council for any alterations.

“The council won’t act unless we are all in agreement - this is a shared freehold.”

Mr Bell, who has lived in the block of flats for 50 years, said he was not sure the trees were a threat to safety but added he was not necessarily opposed to having them altered.

He said: “It goes without saying if you come to live somewhere like this one of the reasons is the nice nature and trees surrounding the place.

“I would not be opposed to having them reduced, if it is to be done on the basis of expert opinion.

“I would be the first to say the trees have been neglected but I don’t want to see them chopped down.”

A spokesman for Colchester Council said: “We are aware of the issue with the trees surrounding a block of flats and have advised residents work can be undertaken to make the tree safe as an exemption to the application process after which they could apply to undertake other works.

“At no point have residents been told that work to any tree covered by a preservation order or within the conservation area could not take place.

“Colchester Council does not have the power to intervene in neighbour disputes involving trees nor to serve an enforcement notice on properties to undertake specific work.”