My neighbour [50M] cut down a public tree and when my [26M] girlfriend [26F] tried to interject, he got aggressive.

This is in the north of the UK for reference.

My girlfriend and I have lived in this terraced house that backs on to a public wooded area for a few months now, and our neighbours on both sides have always complained since day one that they dislike the trees. In the last month or so they have begun to remove parts of the trees to "let in light".

These trees are on a council owned bit of land, and not much of them hangs over into our properties, so mostly we didn't care that much - until they decided that they were going to pull down one of the trees completely. When I was at work, my girlfriend saw them doing this and asked if they could leave the tree as it was, as we liked it.

At this point my girlfriend tells me that my neighbour told her to get lost, as "he's lived here 8 years and has wanted rid of this tree for ages". They then took down the tree. The details of this conversation I don't know for sure.

I have been trying to keep the peace between the two as I value the relationship with my neighbours over the tree, considering they are generally quiet and normal, and they could make our lives very difficult, with our houses being attached and all.

She has been saying that she wants to call the council and report the damage, but he will know we have done this and will cause our relationship to deteriorate even further!

While my girlfriend has been at work I have tried to knock on the door to talk to him about this and although I know he is in, he is ignoring the door. I only want to try and straighten things out, so I know what was said, and ask him to apologise to my girlfriend.

What should I do to either appease my neighbour or my girlfriend? I believe he is in the wrong but where do you draw the line with keeping neighbours on side?

TL;DR: My neighbour has cut down a tree on public land after my girlfriend told him not to, and he was rude to her in the process. How to I proceed to ease tensions between us all?

Edit: I see now that I really shouldn’t care about this guy at all. I’m reporting the tree first thing in the morning!

Submitted August 02, 2019 at 11:20AM by Nnorgarrd https://ift.tt/31hDO8q