Edgar Street Trees

I'm still trying to work out how this possibly makes sense!
Herefordshire Council paid a company from Birmingham to come at 7am on a Sunday morning to cut down ten healthy lime trees that they said were in the way of widening the road near the roundabout. They would have cut down all the trees if there hadn't been a lot of protest about it.
Now, the same company have been paid to come back, under cover of darkness, to plant ten new lime trees.
Wouldn't it have been cheaper and easier to just leave the original lime trees alone?