SOUTHEND Council has insisted seafront palm trees are doing well, despite having to replace some.

The 9ft palm trees were planted early this year as part of the council’s City Beach scheme.

The trees have been planted in stages and in total there will be 100 planted, with the majority on the west of the pier, while a small number will go on the eastern side.

The council says it had to replace “a few” of the palms earlier this year, but claims their replacements, at £600 each, are doing well.

However, Jackie Callow, of Cambridge Road, Southend, said she thought the trees were dying and could not survive in the exposed location.

She said: “They are great, but they are not suited to our climate. The council is ripping out so many of our English trees throughout the town, like at Victoria Circus. I think it is quite disrespectful to put in expensive foreign trees.

“I would like to see native trees. It has ripped out a lot of perfectly healthy English trees in the Golden Mile, maybe it should put some of our indigenous trees back in.”

The council says the trees will take years to fully establish themselves.

Ian Brown, parks management officer, said: “Our seafront palm trees are generally settling in well and are becoming more and more at home as time goes on.

“A few trees have not responded so well to being transplanted, but these are natural living things and palm trees generally take up to three years to fully establish themselves.

“We are carefully monitoring them and are especially pleased to see strong new growth on those which were taking longer to flourish.

“Earlier this year we needed to replace a very few trees out of all those we planted, but this was a very small proportion of the total number. The replacement trees have taken very well to their new environment.”