A lack of rules and regulations around cabling by electricity companies is causing havoc underground and threatening trees, a key government environmental advisor has warned.

“At the moment any network operator can just rip up a street to see if there’s room for more cables,” Wouter Veldhuis, who advises the government on the physical environment, told the AD. “It’s first come, first serve, but we can no longer afford to do that.”

Veldhas said that unregulated cabling combined with an emergency operation to install almost 50,000 electricity substations to relieve pressure on the national grid will make matters worse.

Veldhuis said efforts to organise the energy infrastructure, including city heating pipes, will block important environmental developments, such as planting more trees to combat climate change.

Amsterdam alone has clocked up 30,000 unplanned cabling works a year. “Phone companies in particular are nipping in and out. It’s cowboy country,” the city’s chief planner Joyce van den Berg said.  “It never used to be a problem but now we need to organise and cooperate.”