RESIDENTS are celebrating the news that a venerable sycamore tree at Great Ayton Tennis Club has been saved.

The club had applied to Hambleton Council for permission to cut down and replace two sycamore trees, between Mill Terrace and Stokesley Road, because they shed their leaves on the courts.

The move stirred Mill Terrace residents into action and more than 100 signatures were collected on a petition against the proposal.

But the district council confirmed on Wednesday that a preservation order had been placed on the larger, more mature of the two trees

Yvonne Simpkins, who lives in Mill Terrace, wrote to the council requesting the preservation order. She said: "When we heard the news we were so excited and pleased, because this is the tree that we were most concerned about."

Another Mill terrace resident, Danny Laws, said: "The tree that is going is not that big, anyway, and not that mature.

"We are just relieved that the other sycamore is being preserved and the council has used common sense."