Endeavour Energy has been forced to apologise to a Mangerton Road resident for its overzealous tree pruning.
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Boz Urukalo was left stumped in March when crews working for the power company arrived to cut back trees from power lines in front of her house and two other properties.
"They basically really got in and got really heavy-handed," Ms Urukalo said.
"They weren't touching [the power lines] - obviously they needed some trimming because in the next two or three months they may have been up in there. But they've never been cut so savagely as they were this time."
She said she had referred to Endeavour Energy's guidelines on tree-cutting and claimed the people cutting the trees on Mangerton Road "took it well beyond that".
Ms Urukalo said she and her neighbours were also upset that the trimmers allegedly also cut trees growing on their properties.
"They actually entered our properties and cut trees in our properties," she said.
"They asked my partner if they could come in and cut one branch and they took the whole top of the tree in our property.
"They entered our neighbour's property without any permission and cut the whole top of a massive big tree that wasn't near any power lines, nor would it ever be."
A letter was written to Endeavour Energy and, sometime later, Ms Urukalo said a representative from the company arrived at Mangerton Road.
"One of the guys came out and we did catch him out there looking at [the trees]," she said.
"He did say to us 'look we'd be silly to say what they've done was how it was supposed to be done'. Basically, he said they got carried away and cut it too far."
An Endeavour Energy spokeswoman said a vegetation specialist with the company, who is a qualified botanist, inspected the pruning.
"While the inspection found that the majority of trees in Mangerton Road had been pruned in accordance with our standards, three trees outside Ms Urukalo's property had been pruned excessively.
"Our vegetation specialist apologised for this occurring but did note that the trees would recover and re-establish a shape consistent with other nearby trees over the next six months," she said.
The spokeswoman said that Endeavour typically required a two-metre clearance between trees and power lines and the procedure was to prune branches back to the fork.
She said pruning staff were not supposed to enter private property to prune without permission.
"Except for emergency situations, our staff and contractors must obtain permission to enter private property," she said.
"They do, however, have equipment which allows them to reach in and prune trees without entering the property. In this instance, we apologise for not notifying Ms Urukalo before using this equipment."
