Legal action could be taken against Walsall Football Club after claims it illegally chopped down eight trees to make way for Europe’s biggest advertising hoarding.

Walsall Council is threatening to take the football club to court, with further allegations that four of the trees had a tree preservation order slapped on them. Permission had been granted for two 75ft high signs to be put up outside Banks’s Stadium, alongside the M6 southbound carriageway, to attract drivers and their passengers as they pass by.

But before they were erected, trees at the site were hacked down, infuriating residents living nearby.

Today club bosses denied they had cut them down to make way for the advertising hoardings, insisting the action was carried out for health and safety purposes.

But Walsall Council, which granted planning permission for the signs last year, said an investigation was now under way amid claims the club did not have a licence to carry out the work.

Simon Tranter, Walsall Council’s head of regeneration development and delivery, said: “This is currently the subject of an investigation which may result in legal action.

“Therefore it would be inappropriate for the council to comment further.”

But Roy Whalley, chief executive of the League One club, said: “We cut down the branches from these trees every three years – it is for health and safety reasons.

“We use a professional company to carry out the work.

“There are many visitors to the Banks’s Stadium including coaches and we don’t want to face paying out a lot of money in compensation if a branch goes through the window of a vehicle.

“The council has written to us informing us they are carrying out an investigation and we are in talks with them.”

It is the latest row concerning trees in the Black Country.

This week a group of residents went to Downing Street to try to win support for their campaign against the Highways Agency, which has cut down trees near their homes so it can widen the M6 so drivers to use the hard shoulder.