Trees have undoubtedly risen up the agenda significantly in both local policy-making, recognition of benefits, delivery and research. This session looks at some of the approaches taking place across the UK.
England – Urban GreenUp
This EU funded project aims to develop, apply and validate a methodology for Renaturing Urban Plans to mitigate the effects of climate change, improve air quality and water management and increase the sustainability of our cities through innovative nature-based solutions.
Northern Ireland – Belfast’s 10-year tree strategy
Developed after extensive public consultation, the Belfast tree strategy’s vision is: “That Belfast is a city which focuses on protecting, enhancing and expanding its woodlands, hedges, and trees, connecting people to nature, and ensuring that these continue to be a major asset to everyone who lives, works in, and visits our city” – a vision that 97% of consultees ‘definitely agree’ or ‘agree’ with.
Scotland – Clyde Climate Forest
We have identified 16 ‘Target Neighbourhoods’ across urban parts of Glasgow City Region which have low levels of existing tree canopy cover and are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In each of these areas we will run a ‘1000 Trees’ Campaign aiming to plant 1000 trees in each of these local neighbourhoods.
Wales – Trees and Planning
Future Wales – the National Plan 2040 is a development plan for addressing key national priorities through the planning system. In Wales The Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 influences the planning of new development and land use. Woodlands for Wales aims to ensure that trees and woodland play a greater and more valued role in towns and cities to improve quality of life and surroundings for people who live in urban areas.
I’m going to hand over to Tony Kirkham I’m sure you all know him he was the former head of the Arboretum Gardens and Horticultural services at Q where he worked for many years um and he’s vice president of the albor culture Association he is a trees and design
Action Group Patron and I think we can say he’s a Titan of the tree world so Tony over to you thank you Sue and uh welcome everyone to uh to this session this tag meeting on a time for optimism uh and tree stories from around the uh the
UK um I suppose it’s uh that time again where we’re coming up to election year uh and in the manif manifestos that we’re going to be seeing uh coming out probably shortly um we’re going to start to see um tree planting targets and uh and different parties trumping each
Other for the number of trees that we see planted um at a at a recent uh conference Autumn conference for the rhs I I was keynote speaker for that conference and the conference was on trees and one of the things that I said was that we need to
Get rid of the term tree planting and there was quite a few frowns around the room and and query looking faces and I said we need to change the ter the term tree plant into tree establishment um and ensure that what we plant um successfully establishes and
That any kpis and targets should be for tree establishment and I’m pleased to say actually that the new environment Minister Rebecca pow in her uh new role after the reshuffle has actually taken on board what I said and she’s going to start looking at uh at budgets uh
Particularly after care so that the trees that we’re planting whether they’re Woodland plantings ecological plantings hedge RS Urban trees are uh given the attention the care and attention after care that they needed to uh to um establish so there is optimism and uh and I hope that um this gets
Taken on board and the targets of the set by the parties are realistic um that those trees are here for us to plant and that we have the people to plant them and the uh people to look after them the Personnel to look after them so you know there there is some
Optimism I’m sure that we’re going to hear few more things about targets Etc and tree faning uh through the process of uh of this meeting uh and it’s quite exciting and thank you to tag for asking me to uh to chair um today’s meeting so
I’m go straight in uh and I want to introduce uh Alan mcfey uh the senior Woodland and Recreation advisor for Belfast City Council and John Rose a senior Urban consultant for Tre economics um who’s going to talk to us about belfast’s new 10-year tree strategy um led by public consultation
To connect the city’s residents to Nature so um over to you Allan and uh and John thank you very much um Tony for that introduction um this is going to be as as as Tony said it’s a joint presentation uh my name is Alan mcaf I’m the senior Woodland and Recreation
Officer for belfa City Council and um I’m joined in this presentation by my good colleague and friend John Rose who’s a senior Urban Forest consultant for Tre economics um John’s going to kindly uh move the slides along for me during my presentation and then John will uh once I finish my John will
Continue on for the other half of it but it’s a it’s a pleasure to be here it’s a pleasure to speak uh and thank you very much for the opportunity so we’ll go to the next slide please John um just a we bit about ourselves in
Belfast um I currently have a team of four uh qualified and experienced Woodland officers um it’s taken me quite a few number of years to get a team like this um we look after all the trees uh Street trees Park trees we also look after the high H heads legislation and
Uh we also look after playground maintenance so was quite a bit of work but for me having uh the four uh Woodland officers is good because it’s good for succession planning it’s important to think about that you know for any organization to have people coming up behind um I have an annual
Budget for both the park trees Street trees the park trees obviously cover your day-to-day printing maintenance emergency work tree planting establishment um the difference with uh the highway trees or the street trees is the council don’t own them over here in Northern Ireland it sits with central government so it’s the department for
Infrastructure that actually own Street trees uh but the council manage them on their behalf and we’ve had that arrangement for the past 40 years we have an inventry of all our trees um uh both Street trees and park trees and we started our surveying back in 2007 um
However we’re missing one thing I I felt and know we didn’t have any structure or guidance or policy on how we should be man managing our trees going forward next slide please John um just to start us on the journey with the tree strategy uh we firstly had
To uh appoint a consultancy firm um and we uh were very blessed to to be able to get um Tre economics um they had done a lot of work with Birmingham city council in their master plan and certainly we like the layout of the report and we
Wanted something you know the flow like that for Belfast so with uh tree economics engaged with us we then Linked UP various meetings with internal and external stakeholders such as the Woodland trust who actually part funded the tree straty the Belfast Hills partnership Queens University uh the department for infrastructure and then
Internally our colleagues in climate resilience for the 1 million trees um the the purpose of the tree strategy obvious was to give us structure and Direction and managing trees going forward um the tree strategy itself uh we wanted to give it a 10year lifespan uh and we uh were looking at 37 key
Prior priorities or actions which we can talk about uh later on uh and within the tree strategy we actually have Incorporated an annual in or an independent review on year one and then an independent review of where we’re going and how we’re performing uh every three years thereafter that would
Take us to the 10-year uh Milestone the tree strategy is broken up into three areas and basically it’s going to be uh trees and urban Forest structure uh Community framework and sustainable Resource Management approach next slide please on so the actual engagement in the consultation uh we firstly uh went out
Uh by way of a questionnaire to the citizens of Belfast uh from July uh 2022 to 27th of August 2022 one month um and we put a number of questions out there and you know for a questionnaire there’s a lot of questionnaire go out from local authorities but we were delighted when
We got 615 written responses which is actually very good for questionnaire um one of the questions there you can see there we wanted people to to sort of rank where they felt trees should uh their priority and where how important trees are to them so we had a
1 to 10 and you’ve got habitat right through to you know noisy roads privacy property value you know air quality and so on um but that was a that was a good indicator for us and what people were sort of uh thinking about we’ll have the next slide please John and
Um one of the questions there we asked was basically thinking about Belfast today do you think there are too many uh or too few about the right amount of trees across Belfast and you can see there there was um 93.5% said there were too few trees so
It give us a very clear signal on on what we should be uh thinking about going forward uh with the consultation next slide please John within this uh the questionnaire and the various discussions we had and looking at the tree strategy we wanted to come up with a strong vision statement as
Part of the tree strategy uh and and to bring out to public consultation so our vision for Belfast was that Belfast is a city which focuses on protecting enhancing and expanding its Woodlands Hedges and trees connecting people to Nature and ensuring that these continue to be a major asset to everyone who
Lives in works in and visits our city and that’s something that uh we brought with us on the public uh consultations next slide please John we hosted five public consultations uh it was a 12we duration uh and one on North Belfast South Belfast East Belfast and West Belfast and we finished off in
The city center um part of the consultations we actually presented the the actual U draft uh tree strategy we also had a planting um event at most of the venues we had a tree giveaway uh as part of the consultation exercise and also we had like a tree uh maintenance
Workshop or clinic to give people a bit of advice and so on and trees and on the city center one we actually had over 800 footfall on the day again it shows you you know the how uh the importance people uh Place trees and the importance they are to them as individuals and
These uh the consultation was really really successful um there’s a few comments on the next slide please John these are sort of this is this feedback we were getting um the goals are great but work needs to be done to ensure their implementation too often we’ve seen Tre of strategies as a whole
Just put on the Shelf after we uh it’s produced we don’t want to do that we want to ensure that we follow through and we Implement what we’ve set out to do people were saying they love seeing more more and more trees plant in Belfast please keep this going it’s
Important to keep the greeny for future Generations acting now decisively is the best way we can offer our next Generations and one was very appointed for us was a volunteer drive would be fantastic to engage the community in the drive to increase trees as well as a
Scheme to teach people how to plant trees in their own Gardens safely we had something similar many years ago through the forest of Belfast initiative so what we’re going to push for is part of the Belfast tree strategy and listening to the consultation what people are saying
We’re going to set up a tree Warden scheme and we’re currently putting uh grow growth proposal uh forms in now for a post for that and we’re determined to drive that on and get more and more people involved next slide please John and then on the 5th of October 2023
We launched the tree strategy uh formally over in botanical gardens in Belfast and I must say the publicity uh this the tree strategy got was very very positive indeed we had it was on BBC newsline lunchtime news Tea Time news it was uh on the various radio programs uh
And was also in most of the Lo or the newspapers across Northern Ireland and really on the back of this there’s been lots and lots of other local authorities asking us how we went about with our public consultations and so on so it was very very um positive indeed and we were
Delighted with uh the launch and also the response from the public public and others and then just my final slide please John uh I talked about the 37 key actions um these These are the actions under trees Nur and Forest um Community framework and sustainable Resource Management approach you know we’re
Looking at uh these are all broken down in more detail but this is just a summary of what we’re working at and working to over the next 10 years and we have started to work uh on a number of these PR much right away we’re hit the
Ground running um and this is really what John’s going to talk about next because Tre economics um have been very instrumental in helping the council in producing a tree establishment strategy uh and I take on board there um what was said Tony at the very start not tree
Planting but tree tree establishment and I think that’s key so that that’s where we are at the minute so I’m going to hand it over to John and John’s going to take you through the next stage of we are looking at one or two of these actions on the tree strategy thank
You right thanks Alan that’s brilliant um as you can probably appreciate the the biggest win for me is not really that all come up with a plan or the strategy it it is very much getting everybody on board so they think of it as their plan and in that way it gets
Its own momentum and then obviously you have to do something and the first thing on Allen’s list was the tree establishment strategy I this this document and we were just discussing the final this morning so I’m going to share a few aspects of this so this is the slide you just seen
With a little bit of variation the whole document is really captured in that R8 the bit with the long arrows um whilst it contributes to individual actions under several of the other um headers those were the short arrows the point here is really that the linkages from the big overarching strategy to the
Lower level document are clear and in the bottom left is just a little extract of page seven as it happens um immediately after the introduction and that shows for somebody using the document how they can get to to each of the actions so you can navigate it very
Easily I you can connect everything up so for example um canopy cover assessments and goals um the first challenge is to understand what we have today and this is a map of the canopy cover for the whole city broken down by walls massive variation from just over 4% at
One end to over 40% at the other end um obiously it’s many of us will appreciate the figures at Ward level could be a little deceiving as to what’s actually on the ground one end of the ward could be very tree covered the other end can be can be uh very
Sparten the uh another example T3 the species diversity uh and again the first requirement is trying to understand what we have today where are we now and it’s quite interesting this slot if you look at the top 10 trees across Belfast as a whole and compare them to the street
Trees those top two bar charts Belfast being the one on the left and the streets on the on the right there is almost no overlap in fact the only uh Tree in common is cherry and in terms of diversity the city as a whole is far more diverse than the street tree
Population as you might expect the most dominant tree is less dominant Ash is only % of the city whereas common lime is 20% 21% of Street trees the all others proportion is almost half on Belfast only a quarter on Street trees and in that chart at the bottom the
Curve is longer and shallower for the city as a whole um which indicates it’s a a more diverse population and you can see that uh Belfast has a very similar curve to London sort of blue dotted one underneath and they both lie somewhere between a tropical Drive forest and a
Tropical wet Forest which is kind of an interesting aspect but perhaps one for another another time um getting to the heart of the challenge of where to plant we use a hotspot model that works in a similar way to the sort of Woodland trust tree Equity model um but we used things that
Are explicitly based on local priorities and trying to get a little bit more granular so we upweighted for example areas in close proximity to the arterial roads that feed the city as there of a particular Focus um for for the council and hotpots will map down to a set of 20
Meter by 20 meter tiles and on the left there you’ve got all the factors that we we fed into that the resulting map is on the right and sort of more orangey yellow uh red areas are those were the most what I would think of as Urban challenges when you when you put
Everything together if you jump past a whole lot of GIS modeling you get to a couple of outputs expressed by Ward so we have plantable space in hectares in soft Landscapes and defining that very simply that’s where you could stick a spade in the ground tomorrow ignoring uh who owns
The land for a second and on the hard Landscapes it’s plantable locations as a number of sites and that’s looking in the Pavements and the verges that are alongside the roadways in both cases they’re ordered by the amount or a number of high priority sites which
Driven off the mapping that we saw just a second ago as shown on the colored scales um now whilst there are quite a lot of subtleties at ground level if we put these things together at Ward level it ties in with a way that people think about the city and understand the city
And very importantly the representative decision-making structure of the council and the same information at a higher level is then shown on a a w byward um basis to make it easy to understand for example by Ward counselors so all the key metrics at a ward level are shown on the right the
Maps are then a simplified version of what it’s much more detailed available that’s uh mapping that’s available to Allen’s team and they show current canopy potential plantable space in soft Landscapes and plantable locations in in hard Landscapes and thus we get to a point where there’s a real decision-making tool that exists that
Allows for Effective prioritization and and and implementation and then in conclusion I’d really say that I think what Allan and the team Belfast have achieved for me is next level when it comes to consultation and engagement and they’ve built a real sense of momentum and and that’s being leveraged very quickly or
By very quickly moving to execute the first set of actions from the main document which is creation of this second half here tree establishment strategy and that building that sense of momentum can therefore slowly be converted into one a sense of inevitability of course it’s going to happen we’ve discussed it we’ve agreed
It let’s now just get on with it so if you want to see the tree strategy there is a link in the top right corner which I hope we’ll put on the chat um and then in I guess what is effectively breaking news U effective Just A Week Ago um I
The team Belfast have just been named as one of the United Nations Tre cities of the world so this program if you don’t know it recognizes cities and towns committed to ensuring that their Urban forests and trees are properly maintained sustainably managed and duly celebrated uh which I think is a really
Good note to end on so thank you thank you uh Alan and John uh excellent presentation I I tell you what I can’t tell you how uh encouraged I am to see um the tree establishment document rather than a tree planting document that’s uh music to my years and
Uh the more of us that can enable something like that uh and get people talking about tree establishment rather than tree planting um the better um we have time for a few questions um let’s see uh question for Allan is the split between the infrastructure Ministry uh and the city council a
Problem or are there Financial benefits I.E Ministry support um down that we have a very very good work and relationship um with central government in terms of uh tree planting and tree maintenance it’s something we’ve built up over uh the past 40 years uh where they have given
As a commitment that they will support and they have given us a good budget even though storm it isn’t up and running at the minute for a year and a half they’re still committed to the trees and they’re still making amends and and you know taking money elsewhere
To put it towards the trees so the commitment is absolutely there um and it’s something then that I’d be able to take this tree establishment strategy I’ll be able to take it to them and say look these are possible opportunities for the future we’ve got 10 years here
You know let’s let’s plan this in and I have no doubt whatsoever that they will continue with their commitment to this brilliant thank you thank you another question for you Alan uh when you looked at the street tree species did the species support the type size of Street
And then they did they seem appropriate choices okay uh the most were appropriate choices at the time there are species for example um if I I could take it back 10 years ago where we were planting a London plan uh they would sit in a tree pit and just sit there for
Three or four years hardly any growth but with climate change and the and the warming temperatures within the city that particular species of trees is jumping out of the ground now they’re growing so fast so what we are learning and this is going to be part of the tree
Establishment strategy and we’re trying to Future proof we’re trying to look ahead what we’ll do what species will do now will what will uh be better in 2050 and so on so we have to keep on thinking about that it’s all about the right tree the right place for us and the that’s
The the way we’re going and and I suppose with your tree strategy for the another R right tree right place right reason y that takes one of the boxes of those uh uh th those lists that you put up on that first slide which is is very
Good um does Belfast have good maps of underground utilities and what’s happening there okay uh again because we have the good work and relationship with the department for infrastructure who are the highways Authority uh they have good details they’ve got good working relationships with all the utility organizations whether it be water
Electricity cable tail fiber optics BT whatever um they have a good Network built there so we rely on the DFI for that information so if we go out for example and we see a street we would like to plant new trees in we work with
The DFI to do all that work for us all the investigations they already have that set up it saves us chasing after them and they do have really really good records um I’ve only had one or two near misses out there over the years with utilities but you know really could
Count in one hand it it is quite good good and and on on top of that sorry could I just ask just mention here Tony because um yes me Morgan said that you know you can’t do things within certain distance of gas Mains and so on and
We’ve been exploring that a lot and that seems to be things invented by the utilities it’s actually not what’s written in law and I think we all should understand that so that we’re not bowled over when they say you can’t do it well maybe that’s another tag meeting topic to underground services again
Again it’s has to be keep being repeated sorry I just thought I wanted to mention that no thank you thank you oh yeah I’ve just seen your comment that this is invented by the utilities not legal yeah um good well I I think um I’ve got I I’ll do one more question
Uh the duration of our establishment uh that’s a comment um the duration of our establishment after care is largely related to planning conditions but we do extend the Lesser period of five years in specific situations for larger specimens including Street tree planting we also have uh defects liability warranties
That apply for annual Replacements throughout the specified duration that’s from Julian Francis so um thank you thank you everyone for the uh the the questions and uh again thank you Alan and John for that um really interesting um Talk uh presentation on uh your uh your tree strategy and uh very very
Interesting to hear thank you and I’m sure there there will be other question questions I’m sure you’ll take them and uh uh you know after after this meeting you you’ll probably get some uh questions from from people or or comments so thank you um I’d now like to
Uh to welcome the next two speakers uh Juliet Staples who’s a senior project manager for urban Greenup with Liverpool city council and Elaine Creswell director uh reshape of reshaped landscape architecture um they’re they’re going to talk to us uh about Urban Greeno lessons from Liverpool so thank you Juliet and uh and
Elaine hello just checking you can hear me loud and clear okay lovely just can you see my screen yes okay right thanks everybody thank you for asking us to come along to tdag meeting today I’ll just start by saying um I’m not a tree expert so I do feel I’m here under a
Little bit of false pretenses but I’d like to talk to you about the uran urban Greenup project that we’ve been running in Liverpool so uh I will start the presentation and I’m the senior project manager and then our contractor and my colleague Ela cresa who’s director from reshaped landscape architecture we’ll
Finish off with a complimentary project and I’ve put the website of our project there and it’s on the last slide as well if anyone’s interested in looking at any of the data so the agenda a quick overview of the project I’ll do a run through of some general tree planting schemes that
We undertook going to focus in on a tree sustainable Urban dra drainage scheme that we put in and then El’s going to tell us a little bit about a complimentary project on the pollinators so the Horizon Project it was worth about4 million euros to Liverpool and the city
Council worked with the University of Liverpool and the Mery forest and over a period of about six years we retrofitted trial and monitored a whole range of nature-based Solutions in the city uh we looked at the environmental social and economic benefits so these are projects I’m not
Going to talk about but to give you an idea of the kind of the breadth of the project we put in things across the city like water Retention Ponds Urban rain Gardens living green Walls floating islands and pollinated Terraces but what held all these together and the backbone
Of the scheme was around some of the tree planting so we did the usual soft ground planting in a whole range of spaces we took opportunities to also do some um planting some orchards in our parks and here we um put in things like um Walnut and other species that we
Wouldn’t normally plant and we created a new planting pallette that we’ actually replicated in other sites as well the project was very much about Innovation demonstration and research so we were allowed to try things and make mistakes uh we did some hard Landscaping schemes with colleagues in highways uh
And you’ll see here that these particular schemes the trees are labeled as shade Cooling and filter um this is very much an EU thing very much roundabout the project was looking at little bit artificial in some terms but we we used the knowledge of Mery Forest Myco college and actually the tag manual
To look at what was a shade and what was a cooling tree um and then the filter trees well I think in hindsight we would say that anything filtering here between the road and the uh the other the other the the road area to the left which is
Actually a pedestrian Cycle Way would need to probably be exhaust level to be effective um but the EU money was available and we were able to plant the trees we did some tree planting in some other hard Landscapes that were much smaller and I was on my own with these so I
Didn’t have the support of colleagues in highways it was a little bit harder but on the top picture there this is um an area outside of school it’s a Concrete Central reservation and uh parents and probably teachers probably uses as a parking space there is free parking just
Around the corner but um it was very close but it was quite dangerous for the pupils so that was preco and when they all came back after covid I dug it up um we’ put four trees in there that you can’t really see very well and some pollinated planting as well much nicer
And much safer for the school as well and then the example at the bottom is Stafford Street which is a retail area right on the edge of the city sort of forgotten to some extent really I suppose uh very devoid of any Greenery and I won’t take credit for this it was
Quite a challenging project there was a number of unmapped voids and other problems but colleagues in Mery Forest uh under the urban Greenup project put in these trees which literally transformed the street and then they commissioned some feedback on that as well so uh top figure there that 82% of
Those businesses thought that Greening the area benefited their business to some or a great extent uh and then along the bottom a whole range of figures but the one on the left 94% of local residents kind of rated the after almost twice as highly as the before so we very
Well received um we also um took up um this mobile Forest project um and you can see here on the top right we have an open hexagonal structure like plan view there like a small room and inside around the interior we’ve got a range of of trees actually in pots that we
Borrowed from a nursery and if you look at the bottom left you’ll see that you can squeeze a number of people into that space But what none of these um pictures show you is that behind the trees it’s fully mirrored so when you go into that
Space and you shut the door it’s like being in the never- ending forest and we use this as a way to engage with people to um showcase the benefits of of trees and forests in urban locations uh and we got some positive feedback and so William Worley who was the de Tre
Champion came and opened it for us which was great so collectively these kind of General projects um lots of environmental benefits around carbon storage air temperatures some modeled data as well socially we saw increases in activity um our modeling data predicted up to 26 lives saved per year
Across the whole project from all that increased activity and improved air quality people valued the um works very highly for mental health and these trees helped to form part of these new green CI roots and I’ve got an example of one of the roots on the right there so trees
Often a part of this or help to link together some of these other nature Solutions and thousands of houses and people benefited by having a new or improved green space view and we also able to use some of the models to um estimate economic Savings in terms of
Energy CO2 and and financial savings as well but the one I wanted to just dww on a little bit is what we called our urban catchment forestry or our tree sustainable Urban drainage scheme so this is a plan map of Liverpool I don’t whether you can see my mouse but this is
The liver building towards the top left there uh and I live in this building here normally which is the kunard building and very fortunately for me uh the two x’s Mark the Run of trees um where they were going to go in in this Central reservation so I was perfectly
Located to look out the window and watch this project progress so the idea here was to put 14 trees along that Central reservation to model it so that the water from the carriageways ran through the trench of those trees and to look at whether that improved FL in and water
Quality so it came about really because our highways were looking at this large connectivity scheme in the city they had quite a lot of money to do this um and I don’t again whether you can see the mouse but on the towards the middle and left of the screen there are three three
Carriageways and there’s also um here three carriageways and then this was a fourth carriageway but they’ve actually trans they changed into a pedestrian and cycle way but importantly for us there was the opportunity for 150 trees here so we turned to our colleagues at Mery forest and we looked at some GIS stuff
And we established that there was opportunities in the area for uh to tacal surface W flooding that there was a complete absence which is the white area of any kind of Real green infrastructure and that there were some areas um where we vulnerability to heat stress as well so it fitted perfectly we
Had an opportunity to do some SS so this is really this view is probably looking out of my office window down outside the building and the eight trees on the left were the working trees they were the trees that were monitored we had an inflow and outflow and we had some
Monitoring locations between each of the trees the six to the right were a visual control and we had some other visual controls elsewhere but this it was these 14 that we actually paid for uh as part of the project we made about a 300,000 contribution for the trees the Cil and the permeable
Paving so in terms of the choice of tree this was an entire afternoon um I would have liked to have had two different types of ss trees to to see if there was one that was better than another um but in the end we only managed to agree on
On one between the contractors and the officer and we chose dorm Redwood because it it likes damped soil and we were going to put it into a soil trench that was going to take lots of rain water also it had no lateral branches over the roads and that carriageways
Very busy so that was perfect we didn’t want to have to close roads to do maintenance there were no large leaves to fall and block the gutters so it wouldn’t um uh create problems around the drainage and also it was tolerant to low levels of salt and because that’s
The main Thor there we do do we do grit it quite a lot so that something that we had to consider as well um so I’m I’m talking to people that know way way more than me but we use these Dee root silver cells um retrofitted into the central reservation
I was thinking them as like an open Lego so we were able to put these in the soil filled trench the idea being that the water would um come in at the top and then from the road and then it would run through all the soil and the trees and
We would use the trees and the soil to reduce the water slow the flow and improve the discharge charge as well as add to uh biodiversity and other elements as well so lots of data here we haven’t got a lot of time so I’m just going to focus
On this probably this graph here at the bottom so the blue vertical lines are the precipitation and the top orange line that follows them is the water at the inflow and then you can see the corresponding water at the outflow so we are seeing kind of a soaking or a loss
Soaking up or a loss of all that water and that’s mirrored effectively on this on the graph to the right we’ve got uh the Water coming in and then the water going out and I’d love to be able to say that all of this difference is solely
Due to the trees and the sub scheme but I don’t think our Engineers trusted us completely and I know that they did build in an emergency overflow um so what I can say is that most of that water is due to the effects of the trees
So we have seen an impact in terms of water quality we had quite a lot of variable data but an overall average 13% reduction in metals heavy metals reduction of suspended solids 74% so a few anomalies so where we saw increased ammonium levels we eventually track that
Down to gly cleaning operations um and the selenity levels did remain high so the I would that we did choose the the trees that we did in the end and then the picture on the left the two test tubes this black oily stuff is the carriageway water going into the first
Tree and this is the this lighter more uh fluid uh water is um the water coming out from the final tree so there’s a visual difference there as well lots of environmental benefits about air quality shade cooling Etc but we also put in these soil life sensors
And we monitored at the top that the first tree here and at the bottom tree uh we monitor moisture pH conductivity temperature Etc to get a better understanding of how the whole system was functioning socially hundreds of houses again benefiting specifically directly with this particular project uh and we
Took the opportunity to put in some educational and interpretive signage so people that are stood there waiting to across the road now have the opportunity to read and understand about what the scheme’s about and how these trees are working for us and of course there will
Be some economic savings as well not as much water is now going to be treated so there’ll be some savings effectively there as well so I’m going to pass over to elain now and she’s going to tell you about another complimentary project as part of the urban green project but on
The very final slide I do have a link to the project and the resources page which will give you all the data around any of the tree projects so over to you elain and please let me know when you’d like me to press the button thank you Julet hi everyone I’m
Uh elen cresol from rehap landscape architecture we specialize in sustainable landscape design public engagement and impact assessment the really special thing about the Greenup project is the opportunity to go beyond research projects that say landscape is good and get real hard data that shows which aspects of landscape really make make a
Difference as a landscape architect I re really feel that the urban Greenup project redefin success and freed us to experiment get things wrong accidentally get things right and find more effective ways to improve the sustainability of our city next slide next slide sorry I’m pressing it’s not going sorry
Okay okay um M’s brief was to increase the abundance and diversity of pollinators on five Verge sites between Duke Street and Liverpool South docks our sites were typical of leftover spaces in Liverpool City Center and the hardest to develop they included a concrete rment bank with MTH gravel and
No soil a lawn under existing plain trees a dead shrub bed and moan roadside grass verges whilst it is UN is not unusual for cities to carry out these types of pollinator projects it is unusual for their impacts to be monitored and analyzed over a 4-year time span unsurprisingly Baseline surveys showed
That our intervention sites were not very diverse and they are mostly low value to pollinators next slide location of the sites to spread out and our small budget couldn’t hope to create a climate resilient Wildlife Corridor next slide in order to address these issues we adapted our brief and created a
Landscape character plan to link the green up sites with surrounding habitat stepping stones in community allotments future developments and Gardens our landscape characters were inspired by the S Coast and graded from open exposed sand to Woodlands and Gardens this enabled us to choose the plants which were suitable for local
Environmental conditions didn’t need much maintenance and provided the rich whole life cycle food shelter and hibernation resources that pollination pollinators needed next slide it was essential that we did know harm to the pollinators that we were trying to encourage and delivered on climate change objectives the urban Greenup project covid lockdowns gifted
Us time to develop and trial a number of experimental no chemical and low embodied carbon techniques this diagram shows the circular use of materials between all the pollinator sites you can see that we avoided vehicle movements by reusing material removed from one site to create another next
Slide I could talk all day about our interven itions but as this presentation is only 10 minutes long I’ll focus on the coastal strand site shown on my first Slide the coastal strand site is very exposed to Sun and wind and was covered by intensively moan lawn the soil was
Thin and largely composed of brick Rubble Baseline surveys showed that there were few clovers and buttercups in the expansive grass areas next slide in order to to avoid herbicide use and transportation of materials off site we cleared our intervention site by stripping the turf and the wheat seed
Bank from our planting area and place them by the site boundary you can see the um New weed weedy Meadow um Generation by the boundary the weed seed bank germinated and created a new um Meadow covered in geranium sunflowers and provided an important pollinator resource while we
Planted the rest of the site next slide here here are the deriums and the sunflowers next slide we then covered our intervention site with sand to shade out further weed seed germination which also had the effect of making hand weeding really easy promoted robust root growth capable withstanding a 40° Heat Wave and
Provided hibernation resources for ground nesting bees in Winter next slide our no chemical policy was carried through to every element of the project including restating adjacent trees with untreated Timber and drilling bee holes into the states next slide our pollinated planting was monitored using Quadra during the first
Two years of the project as a baseline during delivery and one year Post delivery next slide visually difference between our controlled lawn site and our planted intervention s are huge and you would imagine that this would also mean that our planting was better for pollinators the Fantastic thing about
Our Greenup project is that we don’t need to make these assumptions as we actually have the data to back up our ideas the bars represent average pollinator numbers found in each meter squared of the surface Way the Blue Bar represents the control site and the orange bar represents the intervention site next
Slide our data suggest that the 800% increase in flowers and plant diversity that we designed into the scheme has also led to increases in pollinator numbers there were 350% more pollinators in the intervention site than the control site in summer and 1,100% in autumn this automnal increase in pollinating numbers was very
Noticeable on site and directly related to the week when the native flowers stopped flowering next slide despite the low numbers of pollinators in Spring this chart shows that they were much much more diverse in the control site pollinated diversity Rose still further on the intervention site in Autumn after the native plants stopped
Flowering next slide a control survey showed that a few pollinators used buttercups and the daisies on the control site the ecologist noted however that they did not use the control site for long as the grassers moan frequently next slide whereas the pollinators on our planting were found on six different
Plant groups the eim being the most important species throughout the summer next slide after the eim and the other other native plants stopped flowering the pollinators all moved to the ornamental species that was still flowering the most popular of which were the Holly HW fennel and the aroke next
Slide I’m going to end of this beautiful picture of the planting in October I hope next time you pass a short moan grass birge possibly underneath a tree um that you will wonder if it could look like this and be full of buzzing and crawling pollinators and the creatur that feed on
Them Juliet and I have shared with you a lot of data today but if you would like to know more please follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter or um follow the links on the attached the next page thank you very much thank you uh Juliet and Elaine very
Interesting uh uh presentation there and uh great to see success in an urban situation like that with both trees and herbaceous plants as tree people usually trample to get to uh to get to trees so really um really exciting to see I haven’t really asked if there are any
Questions from uh our audience because there there seem to be quite a few coming through on on the chat so unless anyone’s got a really burning question um I I’ll just go through some of the questions or comments that are coming up on uh on the I’m sure you can all see
Them there’s one here which quite interesting um and it’s I sometimes found businesses were concerned that trees would obscure their signage discouraging customers did you find this was an issue and I think that’s probably for Juliet uh hello yeah um no not actually we didn’t actually but then having said
That although um we did plant trees into urban areas I don’t think we actually planted them other than that Stafford Street um directly in front of any businesses um but no they’ve they’ve welcomed it interesting that it’s a good it’s a good point but no we we didn’t
Get that as coming back to us as an issue I yeah I’ll just add to what Julian Juliet said I’ve just been looking through the the data and I think was it about 92% of businesses um really lik um being situated in um in in well tree green green areas and they they
Work on the planting um as an asset to their business yeah uh here’s here’s one for you Elan while you’re on um how large and interconnected do habitats have to be to designate them as a polin corridor good good question um I think it depends on which species
You want you want to move and what their home R home ranges it’s very species specific we only had 50,000 to implement the pollinated burges um and what we were trying to do is create demonstrator um sites to see to show the art of possible and try and innovate um on a
Small scale and show how it could be replicated what what we did in in terms that we we we turned that brief on its head and said actually you can’t have um kind of these small sites and of really robustly say it’s for a pollinator scheme so we created the the master plan
Which I showed which which can now be taken forward by planning F teach developers um section 106 and a cohesive um pollinated Corridor um created but I think what we have we have done is um we’ve added to the the number of stepping stones in the area the area
Contains quite a lot of private Gardens and we gave away about 2,000 pound worth of plants um as a start of a 10 to engage the public um in the pator scheme educate them and and start off our um habitat corridor good and uh Juliet how far in advance
Did you collect pre-t tree planting Baseline data on water quality Etc and did the program provide sufficient time for you to do this uh yes we it did because it was EU funded it was originally a five-year project that was extended to six because of covid we spent a couple of years
Basically planning and organizing and talking to our partner cities um and then we had a full year of pre-intervention data collection the interventions went in uh just as covid hit so rather than going in in within a six Monon period it took maybe 18 months
For all of them to go in but we had an extension and we monitored for two years after so we had some quite robust before and after data and the website there with the ww. erban green up. resources will take you to the data and it will
There’s also a number of kind of guides and info um pamphlets and stuff there as well so people might find that helpful or useful were were you surprised at the uh water quality that came out you know I secretly I kind of thought that they it would be quite a
Successful project I thought it had the ability that that the soil and the trees together would work to kind of reduce the flow slow the flow filter clean uh and that’s really what we saw I think the data if we hadn’t had covid the data would have been a little bit more robust
Um and we did I’ll be be honest we had some a number of technical issues um I think the contractors had never put anything in quite like this uh and they inadvertently filled up a lot of the monitoring holes which took quite a long time to get them to come and clear them
Back out so we could get the samples um but I think we’ve got enough data there to show that we would it’s something we would definitely consider doing again obviously has had a positive impact in the way we hoped right and I suppose that leads on to the the final question
Are there any plans to do more urban Greenup projects within the UK well as as we delivered the program we came we had the wonderful brexit so we came out of the EU and we were ineligible um there are there is talk now that we can actually uh look again
At follow one project so yeah we’d be very keen I think to to do another one if we could right and I’ll just finish before we go on to our next uh uh presentation by a comment that says certainly an excellent demonstration thank you and better than some roundabout schemes planted with colorful
Wild flowers that are not natives or pollinator friendly so we’ll finish on a high there and again and I’ll just if I could sorry just to just say yeah I very much agree and in terms of the pollinators all credit to Elaine from reshaped because uh it was very much she
Pushed at the boundaries of what we could do she encouraged me to go further than we originally planned and she’s very very modest but her work has just been recognized by winning excellence in biodiversity at the landscape Institute awards for that little 50,000 scheme so well done to her and we’re very grateful
For all data we’ve got from him well many many congratulations on that award well Des served and uh thank you Juliet and Elaine for an excellent presentation and and a real stimulating one as well that I think will encourage more people to uh to get out and do something
Positive like you’ve uh demonstrated today so thank you thank you again uh our next speaker is uh Chris Stark the real Chris Stark because we had about seven Chris Starks in our uh in our U I suppose green room before we started so this is a real Stark who was
Head of Forestry and Land Services Gat and director of Clyde climate forest and um Chris is going to talk to us about uh Target neighborhoods of in the Clyde and climate Forest so uh welcome Chris thank you thank you let me just share my Screen right is that working y great right thanks Tony yes so um I have two hats and I split my time between uh both of these roles um at the green action trust and Clyde climate Forest um I don’t feel like an expert having only started a couple of months ago so um
They’ve been great presentations so far mine’s very much an overview as I don’t have the detail um that others have have been able to show but maybe I can come back back in Future um with some lessons learned and more experiences so so um although I was going to talk
About Target neighborhoods I will just do a quick H background and overview of the cly climate Forest so it was born out of the um Glasgow Clyde Valley Green Network blueprint and this is a strategic framework that focus on um access networks and also habitat networks in the Clyde Valley um there’s
40% um habitat U availability I suppose within the valley but it’s not very well connected so this is to look at how to improve that um and out of this um Str strategic sort of framework um CDE pands and CDE grasslands have have come out but also the Clyde climate Forest which
Was launched in 2021 and it looked at the woodlands that were identified within it so it’s an initiative and uh partnership very much partnership working so um there’s staff from the green action trust myself and program manager there’s someone from the conservation volunteers and trees for cities and we also have
Comms through the green GCB green Network um funding has been through the Woodland trust the um emergency tree fund provided staff funding and capital Scottish forestry also is supporting staff costs and um obviously there’s the forestry Grant scheme which contributes to lots of planting um around Scotland
Um and in our area um and they also have done funding for Farm Woodland assessments where we can identify areas where tree planting can occur um and most recently we’ve been successful in getting some Glasgow City region funding through the UK shared Prosperity fund uh there’s generally um good
Political support for this initiative and the chair of the program board is the chief executive of East barire um we also have a conord that we’ve signed with the leaders of all of the local um authorities so where is it it if you aren’t familiar with Scotland um the
Dark blue there is where the cide valley is and it’s made up of these eight local Authority areas and what is it aiming to do well to plant 18 million trees I should say establish 18 million trees over the next decade and obviously it’s the right tree
In the right place and we all know the benefits of those and um the reasons for planting them so there’s three delivery strands um within the Clyde climate Forest they are canopy connectivity and carbon we have these handy 20% targets associated with them so in canopy it’s um increasing existing um canopy covered
To 20% for the connectivity the habitat networks and increasing them by 20% and also to meet the target of 20% cover across the whole plaso city region so usually um we start looking at canopy first but I’ll just go backwards um and just talk briefly about carbon so
This has a target of a thousand hectares per year of new forests it’s very much um I suppose supported by the forestry and withen strategy for the Clyde Valley in the potential and preferred areas and as I had said before forestry Grant scheme money tends to um fund these that
Would be probably larger with the creation um Conifer plantations or anything that fell out with the sort of um connectivity and um Urban wiland establishment so activity um this is about um Native Woodlands mainly 230 they’re looking to plant um although I think we would take any really and it’s about migratory
Roots for wildlife so a lot of analysis was done in this and I’m I won’t go into it today because it wasn’t folus of the talk but this shows um the green dots are from the blueprint originally that were opportunities for Woodland creation and um there was um analysis done of the
Migration of species between um the South and the north of Scotland so there’s a lot of forest in the southern parts of Scotland there’s a lot of um Conifer plantations as well but then to the north is L lman and trusk National Park and lots of Woodland and how do
Species get through the central Bel of Scotland which is um heavily populated glasow is obviously a large urban center and there’s other obstacles like the pentland hills and Uplands so these corridors were identified and what was then done is um focused on um polygons from those areas
And where places could be filled in and so what we’ve done is taken that and targeted land owners to try and fill in the gaps of the habitat networks to create that around around the city to get to to for one continuous sort of network um there’s obviously some obstacles in that
The ground isn’t always um appropriate or there people aren’t willing to plant with it if it’s um agricultural some agricultural land um but it’s it’s a good way to focus sort of and and get the most benefit I suppose so then finally um canopy is the
Other uh strand which is um looking at 1.5 million new trees established I’m going to have to change all of these now that Tony said that um using uh urban areas local communities um and schools Etc so um the focus of this is obviously the urban area and um in order to identify
The best places to Target resources um Forest research um undertook an analysis of the tree canopy cover within the urban areas and this is the percent of cover Within in those for each of the local authorities so they did this using aeral photography height data and machine learning um and provided that across
Across everywhere I thought it would be easiest to look at one local Authority area for the Target neighborhoods so um North lire with its urban areas and this is its tree cover um 16.5% so there’s always room for improvement here um what what was done was then this was taken into um
Community Council areas and um much like Belfast although though I think more was looked at in the Belfast targeting um percentages were given and so um some low the lowest ones 0 to 6% and the higher ones up to 44% so it’s kind of similar similar to Belfast
Actually so to look at vulnerable postcodes which were then um combined with this data information such as the um Scottish index or multiple deprivation wereused and this ranks areas um on postcodes by um income and employment um Education Health accessible um accessibility to housing and um levels of crime so red is
Considered to be higher levels of deprivation and blue is lower level of deprivation um this was combined then with uh data from um climate ready Clyde and uh vulnerable areas to flooding and to heat um and it was mentioned uh previously about the tree equity and I
Thought I did put a slide in about that it’s recently launched and it’s it’s very similar and it comes out with those so I think that’s quite a good resource open source resource for people to look at um where this is showing much much the same as to what was done so the
Assessment that the Clyde climate Force did was was a couple of years ago and then this has come out which I think will help um also Focus um some of this So right so these vulnerable neighborhoods were then or postcodes were then put onto the um canopy cover for the community council areas and um we wanted to focus on the ones that had the least amount of cover So within North lantic Shure that was Bells Hill North motherwell and Central
Wishaw and you can see there the cover percent cover for the forests and or Woodland and um the number of vulnerable postcodes so if we look at just one um Bells Hill so this has the um vulnerable postcode in the canopy cover the four blue dots are um Google Street View so
Obviously so far this has all been done um on on screen basically and uh you want to ground TR some of them because it’s not always quite uh what it looks like and so these are the um the Google street view photos um from those those and you can see there’s
Opportunities for there’s imunity Green Space um there’s areas along uh Street um any of these could use use a few trees I think so we need to ground truth these um and uh so staff went out on the ground to check what was feasible um there’s the There’s issues with shading
Some people might not want trees there there’s obviously all of the utilities and having to figure out the best place to put them sight lines for traffic and so these were all um these were all checked on the ground in this area here we look at this one
Specifically this was a primary school and um there’s the air photo and there is some green space obviously off to the east when you you put up the um opportunities so school grounds and imunity areas it kind of helped to focus it and and we’ve been engaging with the
School and this is the second year that we’ve been doing planting um in this area and also we found local businesses have been really supportive um they’ve even um provided uh tags for trees so that people can adopt tree and make sure that it survives um so that’s been that’s been
Quite good we also have mapping of um private Gardens um which looks like like a good opportunity I suppose and I suppose in future is there the potential to um do more in people’s Gardens to provide provide better cover um because when you look at it like this there’s definitely opportunities
There so that was how um the target neighborhoods kind of came about and then that was applied to all of the different local Authority areas um and there’s 16 of them now depending on population was how many were done so um lower population there was only one target neighborhood and
Higher density population like in glasow City there’s four Target neighborhoods so um as the cly climate forest was only launched in 2021 there’s only been a couple of years and we’re obviously in the middle of one of the years at the moment so um in the first year four
Target neighborhoods were engaged with and um got a few pictures of lots of smiling kids which is always good you can see the numbers that were planted in all the engagement that happened um this year we built on that and the 10 Target neighborhoods in include the four from last year so
They’ve wanted to do more and it’s also led to more engagement with schools you know out with the planting season um and so I need to update these numbers once we get to the end of the year but there’s a few events coming up um and we
Tend to do a schools day on a Friday and then a community day on a Saturday and that’s about it for me if you want to see any more we have the website and I’m happy to receive any emails about this so that’s my address thank you very
Much thank you Chris uh for a very encouraging uh presentation uh I’ve got to say that looking at that Google street view um there’s I think it’s really good that you’re targeting areas like that that’s where we need uh to to plant trees and establish uh trees so
Thank you thank you for that um we’ve got a couple of uh comments here I mean if there are any questions coming from uh from the audience and you know I just flag flag up with your hand but um again we’ve got comments coming in and questions and then at the end of
The session after the last speaker we we’ll have an opportunity for uh for more questions to our uh to our speakers um someone got a comment here I like the concept of being able to try and make mistakes uh as the fear of getting it wrong can often stop us from exploring
How to get it right that’s uh that’s a excellent um idea um there’s a question here how was the data generated on saved lives Etc I think that’s for one of our previous uh speakers um so unless there’s any pressing questions Sue uh your as ever
As ever questions for me yeah I just wondered Chris on on the sort of financing of all the work that the Clyde climate forest does yes so we have um staff really costs get covered so like I said the UK shared Prosperity fund is providing funding and then also because it’s a
Partnership it’s in kind um so working with um others from TCB entries for cities um so we all just kind of have to have to work together to deliver that always I suppose looking for future funding um at the moment we have funding up until March 2025 but I’ll definitely
Be looking for more um as I start to figure out what I’m doing in this new role you done very well for somebody newly into it but the other thing I I just wondered and there probably people on the call who know much better than me I’m really fascinated by these migratory
Patterns and how we try and get the right green links and so on so on that site have you you know looking at the limitations of it have you chosen the east side of Glasgow because that’s where the easiest migratory route could be I think it’s I think it’s both
Actually so the East and the west side but it was to identify specifically where they were I think there are limitations within that though like I said about trying to get the right ground and I mean it’s it’s even though the will is there um there’s often challenges already to try
And get planting so I wouldn’t want to limit it only to those and you know I think that expanding habitat networks regardless as to whether they’re exactly on the migratory route or not is still a good thing to be doing so yeah thank you Chris can I can I ask because I’m I’m
Very interested in uh tree establishment and Aftercare and I wonder how you uh determine your budgets for uh and the that for aftercare that would deter in your budgets for planting so you know how how do you work out what you can manage to look after and getting that
Balance between whips and standards Etc yeah I I guess it’s getting the communities involved I mean we’re looking at um things like tree wardens um you know and the schools and getting them involved it still feels like quite early days and and you know it’s an initiative rather than than a
Than a project that holds kind of um its own management of the site so like I said there was the tags um and businesses supporting things so we’re trying to get them adopted and we will be going out and kind of maintaining them it depends where the funding has
Come from but yes I I totally appreciate that you don’t want to take that and then then they all die um or get strimmed or things like this so we do a lot of Standards planting and we have a specification um to protect those because obviously there’s also
Antisocial behavior and things like this yeah I I I was going to ask actually I I have noticed an increase in vandalism uh around where I am in Twickenham um which seemed to disappear for a while but all of a sudden it’s sort of creeping back
In and we’re seeing trees snapped off or damaged uh and I wondered what that was like are people accepting these schemes in in in these urban areas yes they are I mean I suppose you’ll always get some um but actually I think there’s been a really good survival rate and also I
Think engaging all of the children at the schools you know and that getting them involved in the planting kind of hopefully ensures that later they’ll be a bit more wetted to those trees and look after them yeah I I I’m going to finish on um where is on on on a comment
That a great comment that’s coming that’s um this really highlights the need for the industry as a whole to engage with local communities all these initiatives are great without proper understanding I fear it could lead to false economy um but it seems that what you’re doing is uh is is
Is great and um and and it’s highly successful so Chris thank you uh for a great presentation and with there may be some more questions uh at the end when we um uh when we finish so thank you thanks for having me our uh our last speaker this afternoon is um Shon
Wilshire uh who is the planning runs a planning policy team for the Welsh government future whales um and she’s going to talk about trees and planning in in Wales so over to you sioban thanks Tony thank you very much and thanks for the promotion too sorry I don’t I don’t run the
Team team but one day only that’s funny um I’ll share my screen there there we go that comes through yes on slideshow yeah it just needs to go into slideshow yep okay thank you very much thank you um so PR good afternoon all um and thank you to tag for the in um
Invitation to speak today and tell you the story of what we’re doing um in Wales with regards to to treat policy so um as Tony said my name is shal milshire I’m a planning officer um I work in the planning policy team of Welsh government um our team is very small but um
Enthusiastically staffed and I cover General Environmental Policy topics so um green infrastructure biodiversity and Landscape policy um so I’m a generalist um covering tree policy but I suspect like many out there particularly planners as um tree issues do and can take up a significant amount of um of my
Policy work so this afternoon I’m just going to take you through what’s happening in Wales with regards to trees um with a particular emphasis on the planning system um I’ll outline a number of recent policy changes that we’ve published and I’ll close with one or two Reflections and next steps so before I
Jump into the planning policy on trees I just wanted to flag some of the wider more contextual policy on trees that we have in Wales so today in Wales around 50% of Wales is Woodland and the Welsh government has set out ambitious targets to increase um canopy cover um and this
Is supported by a program um of action built around our national forest and the Woodland for whal strategy so we’re a small nation and Welsh government are working with our Farmers with our stakeholders our voluntary organizations councils our environmental experts local communities to translate our Ambitions and uh our ambitious
Targets into action on the ground um so our targets are to plant um 43,000 hectares of new Woodland by 2030 um 180,000 hectar by 2050 and this equates to 50 hectares of new Woodland by um per anom but I think um I’ll have a chat with my colleagues
When when I go back now um particularly my forestry colleagues and see if we can reframe this language around establishment um it it’s the way to go it’s what we should be doing absolutely so our main delivery mechanism for um delivering our targets is the is the national forest um this is
A connected ecosystem of ancient and new Woodlands um it will create new woodlands and it will help to restore and maintain some of our ancient woodlands and the the map on the on the right of the screen there shows the um 14 existing sites um of the national forest
Network so whilst my area of expertise isn’t in um tree policy generally um in Welsh government I just want to give you a flavor of some of the initiatives that we’re pursuing um to achieve our Target targets so we have um initiatives such as um quo bark um our tiny Forest
Program um that’s a grant scheme to create 100 tiny forests between April of last year and March of 2025 um this scheme offers the potential for well-managed and accessible Woodlands to be part of the the national forest program and we’ve also run um a successful um Pro program whereby we’ve
Offered every household in Wales um a free tree to plant so in November 22 we um we offered almost 300,000 um broadleaf trees to households as part of the MIT tree R Forest initiative um and um householders were given the opportunity to plant the trees themselves in their Gardens um or we
Asked um there was there was a mechanism whereby kid kadu the Woodland trust could plant the tree on their behalf so the planning this this slide takes us back to the the planning framework um for trees in Wales and references the key documents that that
We have in place for trees so as always in Wales we we stretch from the the ancient to the modern quite comfortably um so we have a somewhat outdated technical advice note um dating back from 1997 on um tree preservation order and we have our most recent updates to
Policy that we published in the Autumn of last year the two key documents for us are planning policy Wales which is the the document in the the top um middle there and future Wales on the right hand side um I’ll talk at length about planning
Policy Wales in a moment but I just want to flag future whales for you um published in February 2021 um future Wales has the status and weight as um spatial National planning policy uh or sorry um a national development plan sorry um so in accordance with Section 38 of the
Planning of Poss Purchase Act um future Wales is part of the development plan we have some policies in there which would be a particular interest to this group um we contain a policy on biodiversity and green infrastructure and we also have a separate policy on the national
Forest not included within this slide um but worth mentioning is the work of the law commission um undertaken in 2018 which amongst many other things looked at the TPO regime in in Wales the law commission made a number of recommendations to wsh government um on on the TPA TPO regime and the
Recommendations were were mostly accepted by by government so the recommendations were drafted by Charles Miners and he’s working for us um in a sort of sment capacity as we’re preparing legislation now going forward that will um act upon some of those those recommendations that Charles and his colleagues at the law commission
Made so we will be having um a new planning consolidation bill um which will which will be coming out shortly um with later regulations and guidance so there’s there’s plenty um plenty going on in terms of um the planning framework for trees but I want to take you through
Some changes that we um we published in October of last year so within planning policy Wales tree policy sits within um the distinctive and natural um places chapter and we updated that chapter last year following um a 12we consultation um the chapter was um updated for for many reasons but
Principally the the nature and climate emergency um that we that we’re in and that we need to reflect in our policy and we need to take our policy away and move from away from a culture um of damage and and of impact and mitigate to one where we can carefully weave um
Development in amongst um alongside nature and work um and work with it creatively to deliver better quality development and a more biodiverse and resilient environment so we we published these changes last October um we updated a number of policy areas um on green infrastructure trip sis um we
Expanded and um clarified our policy on a net benefit for biodiversity and the stepwise approach and we also um strengthened our policy on trees and Woodlands if I can just go through the policy on a net benefit for biodiversity this will help to set the context then for our um changes to the
Trees and Woodland policy that that followed in the chapter so in Wales we have um a net benefit policy um we’ve defined net benefit as the concept that development should leave biodiversity and the resilience of ecosystems in a significantly better State than before um through securing immediate long-term measurable and
Demonstra demonstrable benefit primarily or preferably immediately adjacent to the site um this concept and this policy is driven by legislation it’s a qualitative approach and it’s important to state that it’s not a quantitative approach it’s a qualitative approach embedded in placemaking and focused on um
Outcomes um so how we do that in Wales is through our stepwise approach some of you may recognize this as um the mitigation hierarchy this slide that we that I have um up here now is is a simplified um illustration of of the policy approach um um and it outlines
The steps and the policy expectations that we have as governments are securing a net benefit for biodiversity so what we expect our decision makers our planners and our developers and applicants to go through is this policy in an iterative um way um looking to drop out at the earliest point in in in
In the approach so the the message the the policy puts emphasis on the outcome and the outcome is a net benefit for biodiversity um it’s it’s not the process it’s it’s the outcome it’s the qualitative um um information that um we feed into the the policy assessment um so what we’re looking for
Is for um essentially the avoidance and the minimization of detrimental impact upon biodiversity um and then um should um should there be an a an impact then we work through the mitigation and the compensation um stages but um we we we’re keen that we we stay within the the avoidance and the
Minimization um steps the policy itself is supported by a framework we call it the DECA framework um this was developed by our environmental um advisor natural resources Wales and this is around um and understanding the attributes of ecosystem resilience and um understanding how how they can take us
Through um to securing a net benefit for biodiversity so the net benefit for biodiversity policy um is as I said has been um clarified has been um uh sort of um sort of additional information um sort of inserted into the policy to really set out what our expectations are and the
Policy now is is is stronger it’s more pres prescriptive and it’s clearer in guiding planning authorities through the process of securing a net benefit for biodiversity so as you saw in the previous slide there are six steps um within those steps we’ve um we’ve excluded designated sites from site
Searches we’ve included a definition of Irreplaceable habitat So within that definition now we’ve listed ancient Woodland veteran trees um ancient HED R and wet Woodlands the policy is looking to avoid damage to biodiversity and ecosystems um at all points we’re looking to maintain the largest area of functional and connected
Habitat and we want mitigation measures where we are in that that step to be designed to address the specific negative effect and we’re looking for compensation measures to be agreed um in advance um of the loss of biodiversity on site so supporting that policy we’ve also introduced three new principles um
That will affect the implementation of the policy so we’ve introduced a principle around establishing the Baseline um so that that is clearly understood and clearly um factored into the the polic the the policy considerations we’ve gotten new policy in there on preemptive site clearance Works um we’ve said that any preemptive
Site clearance Works um should not be undertaken as this will make it more difficult to secure a net benefit for biodiversity this is a tricky policy um to include um we had a lot of conversations with our lawyers um about this because um preite clearance Works do not come the definition of
Development within the planning legislation but it’s a real problem you know it’s a problem out there when sites are presented for planning consideration that have been very recently and very evidently cleared um so that all the biodiversity value has been removed so we’ve taken a policy position on that
It’s not a legislative position it’s a policy position but um we’ve put a marker in the sand that um it should not be done um and we’ve said now that all development must deliver a net benefit for for biodiversity so that’s the the context for then our policy on trees and
Woodlands so it’s avoiding harm and it’s maintaining um as much biodiverse um value on site as possible I’ll just take you quickly through the the changes to the trees and Woodland policy so there’s been additional policy strengthening linking back to the stepwise approach we’ve restated the functional importance of
Trees Woodlands groups of trees um we’ve outlined the ecosystem resilience function of native trees and hedge RS we’ve also given recognition to the importance of trees within the wider Countryside so the planning system often um focuses by its very nature on on Urban trees um but we’ve we’ve included um
Some narrative within the policy or entries in in The Wider Countryside um we’ve identified as I said ancient Woodlands seminatural Woodlands um individual ancient veteran and Heritage trees and ancient hros as Irreplaceable natural resources and we’ve reframed the general protection policy for trees so um we we now say in policy that planning
Authorities must protect trees hedge RS groups of trees in areas of Woodland where they have an ecological value contribute to to the character of an area uh to the character or imunity of a particular locality or perform a beneficial green infrastructure function we’ve introduced a new requirement for the planting of new
Trees hedge RS groups of trees areas of Woodland as part of new development we’ve introduced new policy requirements on the adoption of canopy cover targets for planning authorities so to guide um the maintenance of of of the the canopy of the canopy and also the protection of it we’ve included a
Policy on the retention of trees to be identified within all planning applications and where um uh surveys um establish that trees have a significant value these are to be retained and protected we’ve included a new policy on service lines to the site to be included within the application so this
Particularly affects uh renewable schemes whereby um surface lines to to infrastructure projects s should be um identified we’ve said that the permanent removal of trees Woodlands hedge RS will only be permitted where it would achieve a um significant and clearly defined public benefits and we’ve set a compensation planting ratio for trees
Lost at three for one and that um that compensation planting should be equivalent to the Quality environmental and ecological importance of the trees lost and we’re asking for that to be preferably on site or immediately adjacent to the s and we also have then a higher compensation ratio for Woodland and and
Shelter belt areas so there’s an awful lot of of new policy out there but um I hope you’ll see that the the guiding principle behind all of this policy is the avoidance of of tree loss um in the first instance so just to um to conclude and to to sum up
Um we recognize that the that change in practice is is challenging um we we we we understand the the difficulties that um particularly our local authorities are facing um in a different in a difficult Financial climate um but we have a we have a moment in time now in Wales we’ve published this
Updated policy we’ve published it outside a wider update of the hold of planning policy Wales there is momentum behind it um um so we we we are encouraging um our stakeholders to to think strategically and to think about the outcomes to think about the outcomes that they’re they’re
Trying to secure and think about placemaking placemaking and acting at the right scale will’ll get um we’ll get our decision makers to to the right outcomes just to tell you about next steps um the full planning policy Welles 12 is to be published shortly so the updates that I’ve taken you through will
Be included in the in in the updated version of planning policy um Wales 12 and we’re also looking to produce further Guidance with our colleagues in natural resources Wales um to develop um a common approach to measure whether um a net benefit will be achieved on site
There will also be um some guidance on enhancement measures and we’re looking to do um a potential FAQ document as well so that’s all from me so V and um yeah happy to take any any questions thank you uh shobon um very very interesting and a lot of
Work being done there I there’s there’s a comment here uh C saying certainly the TP legislation for England and also Scotland is in desperate need of review and redraft so it’s fit for purpose for the 21st century and in addressing climate change and it looks like uh the
Welsh government are are well ahead on that so uh it’s interesting to see what what is being done in Wales we we’re starting from a point further back than than our colleagues in in England and where in England in Scotland so um yeah yeah once we get the planning
Consolidation Bill through then we will we will have to um update our regs to implement the bill yeah thank you um another another question here actually um where um you’re offering trees uh to be planted in gardens every uh present issue when offering trees in gardens do
We have to be conscious of geology shrinkable soils given that insurance companies get very exercised about trees proximity to housing on shrinkable soils very tedious but potential problem which is why tag is trying to ask that going forward foundations are more tree resilient as well as lower carbon has
That presented any issues up to date um I don’t I don’t know it’s the honest answer but the the trees were given out with um working with the Woodland trust so it wasn’t a case that you know people went to um a non-expert to to get to to
To get their tree so they were given out with advice but um no we were very much conscious of um soil shrinkage and clay soils particularly in in in you know certain parts of Wales yeah I I I did a project at Q for uh Christmas and when
Children came to see Father Christmas and instead of taking away a toy or you know something cheap uh we gave them a Christmas tree a bag of compost and a pot excellent and it was uh piser airbe but driving that was about 30 years ago and driving around Twickenham now I see
Norway spruce springing up they’re going you know they’re above the houses now and I think I’ve started a project reforest in twickingham and then suddenly realize that yeah we’re creating we could be creating potential problems for people but you can’t plant enough so uh um this is uh another one
For planners in the audience have long felt that Wales is ahead of England would that be a fair assessment before the Six [Laughter] Nations as a civil servant I cannot comment but my my WhatsApp was going was going crazy today because we’ve just lost Reit um American football yeah big loss who
Knows who knows yeah getting out while at the top um Shor a preemptive site clearance work really agree but wonder how you enforce it um that that’s that’s the question and um that it’s that’s what we’re we’re going to be looking at now some of the
Giving details to that in our FAQ doc doent but it it’s it’s taking a policy position and it’s getting the messaging out there that you know act um securing enforcement notices and things is going to be difficult because there’s no legislation to pin it on so it’s messaging behavioral change cultural
Change that kind of thing but it’s it’s the start this is you know the best that we could do within the the the legal parameters that that we have yeah thank you well there are there are more questions for you and I may come to them
Shobon uh before we before we wrap up but I just want to uh thank you for a great presentation and uh and it’s very encour encouraging to see uh what steps sanish government are taking in in uh in terms of trees um I I’m I’m going to
Open up now and you know this is a seminar not a webinar and if um if anyone wants uh has any any questions they’d like to ask that they haven’t put on the um uh on the the meeting chat then please do Sue you’ve got your hand
Up so yeah I was just going to say if all the speakers would like to turn on their cameras we’ll see they there yeah and then if anybody wants to ask a question and puts their hand up if they turn their camera on at the same time I
Think they jump to the first screen that’ll be good because running back and forth yeah yeah we’ve got four screens and I can only see screen one so without jumping uh around so thank you um thank you for that Sue um I’ve got I’ve got something here and
I I suppose it could be for anyone really not just for Shon but our planners willing to ask um and and our our developers willing to provide all the data and long-term management plans uh and this person said I get a a bit of Kickback from both when asking
For info to satisfy biodiversity enhancement we don’t have net gain in Scotland anyone shioon your sh you’re not so you’ve obviously been yeah we um we’ve introduced a new Step within our stepwise approach specifically on long-term management plans because it’s it’s where the system can fall down if
Things are not um legally agreed if they’re not tied down if the funding isn’t committed so we’ve introduced a a new Step within our policy that sets out what we expect um to see within a management plan and how we expect to see it secured so it’s a policy requirement
For now but it it um it it we did introduce it as a specific step because of the issues that we have with with securing these these things long term thank you um another one for you Sian I’m afraid uh but again if any anyone wants
To come in uh do we have an issue with Outsiders um and that’s probably not just the English companies buying up land to plant trees for offsetting um and then this person has said of course I don’t support offsetting and I think it sorry that and and I don’t think that’s just um
Um you know land Upland Upland but also good agricultural land uh for tree planting uh and offsetting and any any other speakers if you want to if you feel you have a a burning desire to answer that then just put your hand up but Shor I’m throwing this at you first
Yeah it it is an issue that that that we um that we have in Wales and it’s um it’s politically contentious um in certain parts of Wales um it is tricky um we We have tree planting targets and we want to see the right tree in the right place that’s
What’s um guiding our our targets we have a national forest program um to help to help shape that but we do recognize the the sensitivities of um of some of this particularly um in very very rural um communities where um the there is an impact a potential a perceived impact on Welsh Welsh
Language okay interesting any would anyone has anyone else oh Alan I thought you were putting your hand up then but you’re you’re obviously going for a cup of tea or something um is is there a problem in Scotland where you you know at the moment our our improving tree canopy
Over the whole country or tree planting is sort of very heavily Scotland based and because you the only one’s actually achieving serious numbers um I think that’s definitely driving um a lot of planting investment um and they’ve tried to put measures in place I suppose with the
Wood and carbon code to kind of balance out some of that but land prices are really high as a result and um there is a lot of negative um press around that Definitely yeah I I i’ I’m watching quite a few um I suppose contentious issues in uh in Angus at present where companies are buying up uh Upland um mland etc for tree planting and then you you go into a pub and it say if you drink every pint that you drink we plant
A tree and I just wonder how uh successful that is actually you know how many trees are actually being planted how many trees are there a year you know five years one year uh one year later and that’s why I’d like to get rid of this term tree planting and bring in
Tree establishment and and quite a few of our speakers certainly today have um have been referring to tree establishment which is very very encouraging um I’ve got a question here and I suppose this this is really for anyone one um and uh you know Alan or
John you may like to comment on this with tree strategy should we also be promoting planting trees adaptable to our warming climate which may therefore not be deemed as native and this is something that I’m coming across more and more now where uh I’m being told I
Can’t plant that tree because it’s not native uh so it’s not good for biodiversity any comment um yes within within the the the Tre establishment strategy we have looked at that we’re looking at trees um and you know to Future proof for climate change um I’ve always been up against
You know a lot of the environmentalist too would say it’s always native Native Native that’s all I’ve ever got but this is why we’ve gone down the road you know right tree right place right reason uh so it’s not necessarily always native because um we we’ve looked at uh certain
Species are going to be affected Maybe by 2050 native trees of Northern Ireland um so we need to be really think thinking ahead of what we need to do and trying to change the mindset of people to say our climate is changing we do have to be adaptive to this and I think
That’s trying to get the right message over that way yeah does anyone else have Sue I was just gonna ask does does the um I mean obviously there’s a whole lot there’s some research going on with Andy Harens at Myco and Woodland Trust on trees and biodiversity value trees for a changing
Climate and biodiversity value and I just wondered if anybody I mean it’s he says it’s a very complex thing to sort out and I just wondered if anybody had had um come across anything any of the speakers where trees and their biodiversity value in a potentially changing climate because after all the
Insects will probably change as well you know things we can’t predict um you know whether there are any sort of information or data anybody had on that I I sorry no go on no I I um this is why why we we talk about planting the
Right tree in the right place and I add the the third R for the right reason and often we’re not planting trees purely for biodiversity uh there are lots of other benefits that we’re planting trees for it’s important that we get that right and and often especially now with
Climate change and the threat from pests and diseases that we uh broaden our um pallet of trees that we use and also we need to be looking forward to building a resilient tree scape uh to climate change and the threats from pests and diseases and that means
Diversity and uh and if we stick purely with British natives uh we’re not going to build on that diversity um and if we’re looking to increase canopy cover provide shed Etc then we need to be planting shed trees and not just purely pioneer species I mean driving down uh the 316 today
Um they’re plan in uh Birches in groups of Threes down the a316 there’s tons of space for big for bigger trees not Birches and they look so sad you know they they struggled through last year uh and they’re and they’re not happy and I think we need to
Take advantage of space where we can put shed trees in and unfortunately our native palet of shed trees is quite small uh and so we need to be looking elsewhere um I mean that’s my view and not everyone agrees with it um but I I you know in certainly in a rural area
Then a rural situation then yeah let’s let’s look at natives but also there’s no harm in integrating the two uh to build a resilient landscape and that’s what I think we should be doing es especially in urban environments but that’s probably another teag meetting well the other one is how
Do we overcome the resistance to large growing canopies trees when you’ve actually got the space for them yeah it’s so frustrating you see position I think people don’t understand the fourth dimension that trees grow so they’re fearful of what they might do and so they actually limit them immediately to
Avoid a problem which may never have occurred and then lose all the benefits that would have occurred so how do we overcome does anybody have any insights into how you overcome that reluctance to be as Brave in your planting as you actually could be yeah yeah I’ve got a
Good one here from mik actually uh Birmingham moved to the right reason right place right tree right way in their Tre establishment selections this makes more sense love it another R um and I think the more we get in the better and the more successful we’ll be uh for long-term
Establishment Tony can I throw a question back to Mack about that how do you how do you decide what the right reason is in the first place what mik is M there sorry ma yeah that’s not Emma thank you very much for banging that and anybody that know the
Answer to this question is probably Emma um as she’s a part of the Birmingham tree people group anyway um it’s we we ask the first question why are you planting the tree Yeah question we asked first is it for air quality is it for canopy cover is it whatever whatever
Whatever and then the guy then after that we start saying well where do you need to plant them if that’s the reason you’re planting them it’s the right reason that drives the right decisions and when you ask why you’re planting it well because we got to canab
Of a Target or we’ve got to plant 35 million trees if you live in Gloucester those aren’t sensible reasons and then we question the reasons and then have to go back and start again totally agree totally agree M and you know these these targets need to be sensible uh and
Achievable and for the right reason not just for the sake of planting a tree it’s easy to tick a box and say you planted a tree but is it is it the right one quite right we we we tried to avoid the term green washing but it’s
Everywhere now yeah so we’re trying to avoid green washing nice to see you mate anyway good to see you too I just ask a very boring question oh sorry I interrupted sorry Emma no that’s fine well my question might say well go on you go with your boring one first
Then I’ll do with mine okay so while we were just talking about targets there’s what about 33300 so everybody should be able to see three trees we should have 30% canopy cover and everybody should be within 300 meters of a green space I wondered if that’s just sort of an
Academic thing because it’s really easy for us to play with and do research around or whether it’s actually useful in the real world so that that’s my question to all the speakers and anybody else on the call wow well I I saw that on Instagram this week on no LinkedIn there was
Something on that from tree economics and uh from Kenton and I wonder in how many situations is that uh achievable as even as a benchmark before we start to planting trees so we achieve that i’ I’d love to know that actually because I thought you know it is it is
An interesting sta statistic and it would be wonderful but I wonder how many people can tick that as yes so I’ve had it out with um um cesil who cesil con unpronouncable who actually developed it yeah and we put it into trees Planning and Development section to because what
He said is this is not a prescription this is just actually trying to raise a degree of ambition yeah of what we might aim for not really expecting it to actually be achievable but hey if you even got one tree you know if you got
Part of it it would be a starting point but John you probably have worked on it a bit harder than I have I I think think for me the answer to the question is it’s very much not an academic thing it is very much about engaging with people
And giving for sake of argument politicians and those who are looking for targets to go stop banging on about just having tree planting here’s some slightly more meaningful targets that are based upon a NE and it’s not just 330 300 it’s at neighborhood level so it’s it’s about local stuff um and the
The the 300 and the 30 are pretty much backed up by science the three is kind of broadly plucked out the air because we think it talks to the current work being done on mental mental health but there’s no it doesn’t really have a solid basis yet however it feels
Reasonable and I think you can put numbers together and you can start a dialogue and you go from there yeah and surely covid showed us you know when when people couldn’t get to Green Space and things I mean just how critical having healthy cities if we’re all going
To live in cities we’ve got to make them healthy places yeah good yeah who was that oh that was me sorry I think it’s a powerful because it’s simple very simple to get your head round that’s what makes it good yeah good um I think we well we’ve got a
Another couple of minutes if uh if if there are any other questions but if not I’ll I’ll hand back over to uh to sue um I I will be back I’ll be back on the 15th of February to chair the next session uh on an international update so
Today has been a a local update uh tree stories from the UK um the next session is an international update and common challenges common barriers um which I think sort of naturally leads on from today and will be as interesting but I I’d like to thank all the speakers uh
For uh some great presentations all varied but all I suppose saying the same thing in a in a different way uh and thank you all for um being on good time and uh and making my job easy but I also like to thank everyone for all the questions that have come through on
Meeting chat that again have made my job easy um but also challenge some of our uh speakers so thank you all very much a really good turnout and uh I’d like to hand over to sue toh to conclude right well thank you Tony absolutely perfect timekeeping as others so thank everybody
For that because it was wonderful and very impressive um so you’ve already said about the next session I have put in the chat when it is I will take the chat which I think I’ve saved I’ll make sure I save it and I’ll analyze it so
That that will go on the website with the presentations and the recording um then I’m D will send out some notes following this meeting which will mainly be upcoming tag events other events that are coming on relating to trees and other information that tag members have kindly sent into me that
They think may be of interest um and I think that’s just about us for the 16th of January has anybody got snow I keep looking out the window it’s getting very dark none here right okay so thank everybody very much Emer and D have you got a moment to stay
On a little bit longer thank you D we can stop the recording