COUNCIL plans to pull up healthy trees in a popular park because they block the view of a restoration project are a disgrace, say outraged residents.

Historic Belle Vue Park, next to the Royal Gwent Hospital, is being restored to its original glory after receiving £2.8m of lottery money. But that means pulling up 100 trees so that the park matches the design set out by Thomas Mawson, a famous landscape architect, when it was first opened a century ago.

A council estates officer said trees that are blocking views or are "inappropriate to the visual effect Mawson was seeking to achieve" will have to go.

The council has marked the trees - some of which are diseased or overcrowded - to be removed by spring, 2004.

Peter Davies, 59, spokes-man for Newport Tories, said: "Many people are upset about this. Some have been walking there for years.

"It's disgraceful that the council will turn down residents asking for a tree blocking their view to be removed but here they are cutting down trees because they are spoiling the view. It's one law for the council and one for the citizens. If trees can be kept they should be kept."

A spokeswoman for Newport council said some healthy trees would be replanted elsewhere in the city and other trees would be brought into the park.

She added: "Some trees are affected by diseases that can make them dangerous and need to be removed.

"Others are growing too close together and cannot form good specimens."

She said random planting of inappropriate species over the last century had led to overcrowding and "a blurring" of Mawson's design. Plans to restore the park were initially approved by the council in December, 1998.