School telling us to remove nut trees from community orchard

[Calling]

We are in a local voluntary group and local people planted an orchard in the grounds of a school, for the school.

Now, the school has written to say that we have to remove the nut trees because one pupil has a bad nut allergy.

There are fruit and nut trees, that the local people planted some years ago and we have put a lot of work into weeding and watering. The yield was actually for the kids and we are volunteering with the school with and nature sessions outside.

Before anyone says we are potential child killers, we do understand the importance of safety. There is a management plan in place, but the school has been asked by a parent to remove our trees.
I do feel disheartened - nobody in the school said no to nut trees originally.

There was a case of a mature and important walnut tree that had a TPO on it, the school applied to have it felled but the council rejected that because there could be a management plan and the kid told not to go near it. The values of the tree were important and the kid could be protected.
However, our 8 nut trees won't be allowed to grow large enough in the school grounds...

To be fair i work in an infant school and one child pulled up daffs and ate one. We have had multiple 'i ate a glue stick"

But the scary one has been dairy allergy. Of all the tragic allergy deaths recorded, dairy was the biggest cause not nuts

All the infant free school milk and a child with anaphylatuc reactions was hard to manage. We had switched to jugs and cups to reduce the amount of cartons and straws but had to switch back as it wasn't safe. It kept being spilled.

If the tree is on the schools land, it belongs to the school and they can arrange to have them removed at their own cost. Maybe the parent in question is happy to pay.
Don't fight this, beyond pushing back on cost, it won't make your group look good.

Clearly not as Benedict Blythe and Karanbir Cheema both died in school from dairy allergies .

No children have died in schools from nut allergies.

If they are life threatening allergies that cause the person an anaphylactic shock response, they should be treated with the same caution. It’s not a competition between allergies here! Of course safety measures should be sensible but if a nut tree has the potential to drop nuts in an area the kids are walking and they could bring the nuts around the kid with the allergy etc etc. it seems perfectly reasonable that this would be a concern for their parents.

I see what you say. We are only a few people and some hardy volunteers are in their 70s and 80s, so I have to find younger volunteers to save the trees instead.
It's a big responsibility as I am supposed to dig them up, keep them safe, find new home and so on.

People like to be photographed planting trees (which is easy once the holes are dug and so on) but disappear when asked to weed and water...

No, I wasn't. Another poster did. I replied.

I am an allergy parent. I would be terrified if the nuts my DC is allergic to were in the school field. All it takes is for one child to pick it up and bring it into the classroom. Four and five year olds don’t know what they’re doing and what it all means. The school has a duty of care and sadly the nut trees need to go. They should never have been approved for planting in the first place. Apples, pears, plums etc lovely but not nuts. Not with the rise in allergies. It’s just not worth the risk. The parents aren’t entitled, they’re probably terrified. When your child is at school you have so little control over what happens and you’re entrusting other adults to respond speedily in cases of anaphylaxis. It’s just not worth the risk.

I think it's the right call. Nuts aren't allowed in schools and so many kids could bring these in.

I know you've invested a lot in these trees but ultimately it's not your land and so these are not your trees. Don't make it your problem to remove them. Ask the school how they are going to respond to the risk assessment as you do not have the wherewithal to respond.
Once the school realise it is a them problem they may rethink or re examine the risk assessment. Hazelnuts and almonds are from different tree families for example. You are simply not in possession of all the facts and you are not a qualified tree removal outfit either

How would you feel if you didn’t remove them and the child died?

I agree with this: They should never have been approved for planting in the first place. It seems a strange choice in the first place (for school grounds, not for other spaces, I understand the appeal of them as trees).

I can’t really understand why you wouldn’t remove the tree. I gather that you (the community group) just recently planted it? So why can’t you volunteer to remove it also? You planted it with great intentions but it turns out to be unsuitable. I understand it might feel that the school doesn’t appreciate your efforts but I don’t think it is that at all. If the tree is a risk to a child then it surely needs a new more suitable home.

Nuts are allowed in schools

You don't want to rehome the tree because its gonna be to much work, or it's too pretty, or you just love the particular trees? Rehome them at your own house if you have garden space, perhaps?
If you don't wanna spend the work removing them then someone else can and will, surely?

That is the kind of thing plenty of people would love to come dig up and rehome, it's (i think I read) 5 years old? so not overly too established to dig and move (and no I ain't volunteering)

I had a very good friend with a nut allergy who died after eating at a restaurant and I watched for years how the blame was passed from person to person.

If I was you i'd rather have absolutely nothing to do with ever being the protentional reason, even though you would never actually be to blame, people would happily say you are fault, it's just how the world is. It would be the parents sending the kid to school, the kids at school, the kid knowing they've got allergies, the school didnt do enough, the volunteers decided to keep the trees, the neighbours of the school said no to change, and so on and so on.

I'd just do your part if you love the trees so much move them to somewhere where you can still appreciate them

No I don't think this is on. Can a child not enter a shop in case there are nuts there and of course there will be.

I have not said I would not remove 8 trees and they have not only just been planted. I have been told (but nicely) to remove them and find homes for them and to help the school plant replacement trees...

The removal of nuts from diets and the environments is the exact thing that is fuelling new nut allergies in babies and young children.

It's already been shown that the advice for pregnant women to avoid peanuts has actually resulted in babies born with nut allergies.

I know it's tricky when there is a child with nut allergies in school, but we have to protect the child without creating sterile nut free environments for the majority of the world that don't have nut allergies.

No, you brought all of those up,

The other poster mentioned only daffodils, not bulbs, not bluebells or laburnum.

Tell the school that you are happy to plant and care for whatever replacement trees they supply, but that you are neither skilled nor insured to remove trees.

That way you don’t fall out, but you also don’t accept responsibility for removing 5 year old trees. Hazels can grow quite big in 5 years if they’re in suitable soil and moving one that hasn’t been coppiced is quite a different proposition from planting a young sapling. Root removal is not for the faint-hearted.

If they are 5yo trees I think you will be ok digging them out and transplanting them.

If you don't want to do that I think you should tell the school they need to cut them down themselves.

People with nut allergies don’t tend to be allergic to nut trees. I think you need to do some research on this and present your findings to the school. And they need to educate the children to not bring in the actual nuts into the school.

That's ridiculous. The child doesn't need to go near the tree. Are they expecting supermarkets to clear their shelves of nuts? Should nuts be banned from every shop and cafe? There has to be some common sense.

Erm are you even sure the tree can cause an allergic reaction?

Dangers of plants are something that has come up a number of times through my work and never once have tree nut allergies come into that extensive conversation.

If so it’s news to me and something else to add to the endless list.

Then it needs to be fed back to the parents and the school that there is no resources to remove them and they'll have to figure out the cost on their own