On Thursday 26 September 2024 Waterstones at The Galleries launched Our City. This book chronicles community activism in Bristol through multiple campaigns described in eighteen individually authored chapters.
Suzanne Audrey pulled the whole project together, edited the book and contributed the introduction and conclusion. The book is well worth buying. It tells a story of the diversity and resilience of Bristol communities when faced with threats usually emanating from the council which should be looking after them. The Bristol Tree Forum was asked to contribute. During the launch event, contributors were each given three minutes to describe their work. This is what we said:
Saving Bristol’s Urban Trees by Vassili Papastavrou
In Bristol we are seeing the loss of hundreds of important urban trees each year. They cannot be replaced and it will create a city that is unliveable – we need them to keep us cool now.
I’d like to illustrate the problem with two willow trees which grew not far from here. Two years ago, during National Tree Week, they were chainsawed by Bristol City Council. Highly visible and next to Temple Meads, the trees should have had Tree Preservation Orders but the council does not TPO its own trees, claiming that it is a responsible landlord and that its trees are safe.
I was brought up in Cambridge. Along the banks of the river Cam, willows are such a feature of the city that no one in their right mind would consider chopping them down. But in Bristol they were removed without a moment’s thought.
The removal was filmed by Martin Booth and got a lot of coverage but in reality it was just another ordinary day of tree removal in Bristol. Martin tweeted, “This is so sad to watch. One of Bristol’s most beautiful trees, a majestic weeping willow is being chopped down this morning”.
Trees compete for space with other uses of the city. In Bristol mature urban trees are given lowest priority, so when plans come up, trees are removed. As this incident demonstrates, they have zero value to the Local Planning Authority or the council.
The willows never went in front of the Planning Committee where there could have been a debate as this was a “delegated decision”. Effectively Bristol City Council was giving planning permission to itself in a backroom deal. The planning application was snuck through with no mention of the trees in the title, no arboricultural report from the council, no tree officer report from the local planning authority. The council passed judgement on itself.
And after the deed had been done, was there any recognition that a terrible act had been committed? An inquiry to make sure that this kind of thing would never happen again?
Silence. For in Bristol there is no one in a position of power who cares about retaining important urban trees.
You will all have seen young trees planted in vacant tree pits in the streets of Bristol. These trees are replacement trees. There was once a tree growing there before – maybe some time ago.
These replacement trees are paid for by sponsorship, or by funds paid by Developers when they have felled trees on a building site and there is no room to replace the felled trees on the building site. In the latter case more than one tree has been “lost” – the one on the building site and the one that was previously in the tree pit.
In order to increase Bristol’s tree canopy – vital in this time of a climate emergency – we must see trees being planted in new places as well as getting all the “old” sites being filled more quickly.
Trees for Streets
To try to get this initiative going, Bristol has joined Trees for Streets.
Quotes from the Flyer for Trees for Streets
‘Bristol City Council has joined the Trees for Streetsnational street tree sponsorship scheme, which aims to plant thousands of additional trees in streets and parks across the city, by supplementing the council’s tree budgets through public and corporate sponsorship.’
and
‘Trees for Streets is the National Street Tree Sponsorship Scheme from the urban tree charity Trees for Cities, funded by the government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund and City Bridge Trust. The project uses technology to empower people and makes it easy for residents and organisations to get involved in greening their communities.’
and
‘Our mission is to fund the planting of more than 250,000 additional street trees nationwide over the next ten years by hosting online tree sponsorship schemes on behalf of local councils and delivering local promotion and engagement activity to bring these schemes to life.’
Comment
Bristol has long had a Tree Sponsorship scheme, run by TreeBristol (part of Bristol City Council).
In the 2021/2022 planting season £456,000 was spent by Bristol Council in planting of trees. A portion of this money is retained by BCC for maintaining the trees planted 55% of this money came from mitigation funds paid by Developers who had felled trees somewhere in the city in order to build on the land released. (So, the money was not being spent on NEW trees, just on replacements).
10% of that money came from sponsorship, with 6.5% coming from private sponsorship (individuals and groups) and 3.5% coming from business sponsorship. Even then a lot of that money was spent on replacing trees which had been lost i.e., not on providing trees in new sites. It is a difficult “sum” to achieve. Money from Developers is for the replacement of trees lost to development. The Bristol Tree Replacement Standard achieves an amount for replacement trees based on the size of the trees lost. Eventually the trees may grow to a size which more than compensates for the environmental value of trees lost. But it remains true that each replacement tree goes in to a tree site that has lost a tree formerly growing there – so the Council is spared the expense of replacing lost trees that it owned.
Representatives of the Bristol Tree Forum have attended two meetings now where this new scheme has been explained and described.
The Trees for Streets scheme is not going to fund the trees, nor plant the trees, so we would have worded the sentence “Our mission is to fund the planting of more than 250,000 additional street trees…….” slightly differently with instead “Our mission is to facilitate and organise the funding of the planting of more than 250,000 additional street trees…”
The Trees for Streets scheme is similar to Bristol’s former scheme in that it will provide a web based choosing and ordering and paying for system, whereby residents and organisations and businesses can find available tree sites for planting trees in Streets and Parks.
There are differences between the Trees for Streets Scheme and Bristol’s former scheme, and they are:
Bristol’s former sponsorship scheme was largely one of replacement for trees lost. A sponsor (an individual, a group or a business) would select, from the Council’s mapping, a site where formerly there had been a tree, and would pay for its planting. New site planting came from One Tree per Child (whips) or from national grants where Bristol would win a bid for a grant and spend the money.
The new scheme hopes to facilitate, through sponsorship, the planting of a new tree in a new site. These sites have to be found, and checked for Services (underground utility provision), and then put forward in the Council mapping for planting with a tree.
Residents, and other types of sponsor, will be able to suggest new sites for trees by answering the question “Where would you like to see a tree planted?” with their own suggestions. The sponsor would need to pay for the tree, but Trees for Streets might be able to assist with organising the funding, using their funding know how.
Initially this kind of new planting of Street Trees will only be possible in streets that currently have green verges, or in new sites in Parks.
(Trees in “hard ground” – pavements, plazas, city squares, etc. will need to be planted in engineered tree pits – and that is expensive. If a sponsor (which can be an individual, a group or a business) is prepared to meet that cost, then efforts will be made to agree suitable sites and then check them for Services and other criteria, such as the width of the pavement.)
Trees for Streets has national funding and this gives it an improved platform with web support and advertising which could see many more trees sponsored. Maybe businesses reached by the advertising will see a role in supporting tree planting in the more “tree poor” areas of Bristol?
Bristol is to offer residents the option to water their sponsored tree when it is outside their property – at a reduced cost (£160/tree v £295/tree). It gives people an option at a lower cost – and it avoids trucks driving about with lots of water in a bowser. It has worked elsewhere, and Bristol is going to try it.
DEFRA has provided funds for the setting up of Trees for Streets, and maybe future DEFRA grants will be channelled through this new national scheme. Bristol has, by making individual bids, obtained grants for tree planting from DEFRA in the past, and will still want to continue to make these bids for new funding for the actual purchase and planting of trees for new sites.
Choose the location of your tree from the map or suggest a spot in a grass verge in your street or neighbourhood. The questions on the website take you through the choices.
Answer a few questions about the location and you.
If all works out your tree will be planted during the next available planting season.
Bristol Tree Forum’s Tree Champions are to be offered training from Bristol’s Tree Officers so that they can help residents, organisations and businesses with determining the suitability of sites that are suggested.
We recognise the fundamental importance of the natural environment, the value that nature has in an urban setting and the global threat posed by the ongoing climate catastrophe. We also recognise that trees are a crucial component in all these concerns.
However, we have a real concern that the commendable words are not being matched by effective actions.
A principle aim of the BTF is to promote the planting and preservation of trees in Bristol for the well-being of its citizens, the sustainability of urban habitation, the enhancement of nature in the cityscape and as our contribution to combating climate change (see A Manifesto for protecting Bristol’s existing Urban Forest).
A recurrent concern we have is the continued loss of trees as a result of environmentally insensitive developments that are not sympathetic to the City’s declared commitments outlined above. On the other hand, the BTF supports developments that favour a sustainable environment over high density occupancy, and those that prioritise retention of existing trees.
Bristol’s policy on replacing trees lost to development – adhering to the Bristol Tree Replacement Standard (BTRS) – is widely well regarded. As such, decision makers believe that tree loss is mitigated by subsequent tree replacement. However, recent studies undertaken by the BTF have shown that this is not the case over the timescales committed to by Bristol City Council and the Green Party.
Typically, tree planting undertaken under the BTRS takes between 30 and 50 years to recover the biomass (and therefore the CO2e) lost by felling, well beyond the 10-year commitment on carbon neutrality, and even beyond dates set for doubling the tree canopy or doubling wildlife abundance.
The BTF study has been developed into a versatile online tool for calculating the extent and timescale of the carbon deficit, with a wide range of inputs. This can be accessed via the link Tree Carbon Calculator, and we encourage you to try this yourself. See also the BTF blog Tree replacement and carbon neutrality.
In the example shown here, a mature tree felled in 2020 is replaced by four trees (as per BTRS) of the same species. The carbon released (2 tonnes CO2e) is not recovered until 2064, a full 34 years beyond the date Bristol aims to be carbon neutral.
This model can also be used to determine how many replacement trees are needed to recover lost carbon within a particular timescale. In the example shown, to be carbon neutral by 2030, a reasonable expectation as this is the declared aim of BCC, the felled tree would need to be replaced by 37 plantings of the same species. Scaled up to, for instance, 500 trees, new plantings would need to number 18,500 to mitigate the lost carbon.
This new information represents a fundamental change in the evidence base for tree replacements, and emphasises the need to retain existing mature trees, and not to consider replacement by new plantings as adequate mitigation.
We request that you consider this new information with urgency and make a commitment to oppose developments where mature trees are removed and tree replacements do not deliver carbon neutrality by 2030.
We want to put on record our congratulations for the successful bid that your Parks Strategy team led for Bristol City Council to the DEFRA Urban Tree Challenge Fund (UTCF). It has been some time in the resolution, but it is great that we now know for sure that it has succeeded.
We are delighted that there will now be more funds available to plant and maintain trees in the streets and green spaces of local communities that have perhaps been been overlooked in the past.
Thanks to you and to your excellent tree planting team, the Council has built an enviable reputation for planting urban trees across the city. Long may it continue!
We look forward to helping you with the planning and consultation that will be needed for adding these UTCF trees to next winter’s tree planting season.
We also applaud your decision to involve us in the collaborative partnership preparing the initial bid. As the only group specialising in protecting and caring for Bristol’s urban forest, we are very pleased to have been able to:
Survey a representative sample of some of the 1,471 sites you have identified across the city, thereby relieving overstretched BCC officers who simply didn’t have the time to undertake this work.
Develop our Tree Care site which communities will be able to use for post-planting tree maintenance and care – an important part of match funding the UTCF grant.
We have also developed a comprehensive network of ward-based tree champions who are ready to be involved both in engaging with their local communities in the planned consultation and in helping with the ongoing care of newly planted trees.
As you can imagine, it was a lot of work, but we believe that it provided the sort of detail that helped clinch the bid.
Now that the funding has been secured, we look forward to meeting with you and the other partners to help with the next important planning phase of engaging with local communities and getting trees actually planted come next winter.
We invite all candidates standing in this May’s Mayoral and Councillor elections to endorse our tree manifesto which we set out here.
Bristol has declared a climate and ecological emergency. An emergency means making radical changes now – in every council department, by every developer, and by all those who own or care for trees.
Everyone from all sides of the political spectrum is talking about planting trees. We fully endorse this, but it will take time for these new trees to mature. In the meantime, retaining existing trees will have the biggest immediate effect.
We propose that
There needs to be genuine community engagement in Bristol’s tree management decisions. The council needs to listen to communities that want to save trees, not just to those who want to remove them.
Urban trees (planted or self-sown) have a tough life. Many bear the wounds and scars of previous damage or interventions. These trees, though they may not be perfect, should be valued for the ecosystem services they provide and retained with appropriate and careful management wherever possible.
Alternatives to felling must be given priority, whether for street trees, or for those threatened by planning applications, or for other trees in the public or the private space.
We need to strengthen planning policies to help retain trees on development sites by building around them, especially when the trees are on the edge of the site.
Veteran and ancient trees require specialist management to ensure their retention whenever possible.
When surveys identify trees that present a risk, there should be consultation about the range of options available to mitigate the risk. This should always balance risk with the benefits the tree provides. Felling is only ever a last resort.
If trees must be felled, then more trees need to be planted to replace them. This should be based on well-established metrics used to calculate how to increase (not just replace) the natural capital of the lost tree.
Click here to print acopy of the manifesto. Candidates are welcome to download and use to support our aims.
Our Blogs contain many examples of the sorts of issues that have caused us to write this manifesto.
Bristol has declared a climate emergency. There is an urgent need for all council departments to re-think the way that they work.
At the time of writing, four of the trees in this image have been felled (two Norway Naples and two Indian Bean trees on a different plot). The value of the five maple trees along Lower Ashley Road was calculated at £200,000 using CAVAT. Local residents are desperately trying to save the three remaining maples.
This blog discusses six changes that are desperately needed to protect trees on development sites.
Planning Decisions regarding important or TPO trees should be considered by committee and not delegated to one officer.
It is practically impossible for local residents and other stakeholders to wade through all planning documents online. Planning Officers must highlight important tree issues and have a duty of care to act positively in favour of trees.
Bristol should implement policies to retain trees on development sites in the way that has been done in London, Oxford and elsewhere. This includes enforcement and a presumption to retain trees at the edge of development sites.
An emergency number to address immediate tree felling issues.
It is a false choice to say that we can either have social housing or trees. With clever designs, we can retain existing trees and have better social housing.
Replacing felled trees, even when applying the Bristol Tree Replacement Standard, is second best to retaining existing large urban trees. We get the benefits from existing trees now – we have to wait decades for their replacements to grow.
Over the last six months there have been half a dozen articles in the local press and now one Guardian article about the shocking planning decision to allow removal of five Norway maple trees with Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) on Lower Ashley Road, one of the most polluted streets in Bristol. There have been two meetings with the mayor who also visited the site and there is now a vigil by protesters on the site: police have been called on several occasions. All this indicates a planning process that has marginalised local residents and failed to take into account the value of the trees.
The Bristol Tree Forum appreciates the efforts by Mayor Marvin Rees to try and resolve the situation after the event. He visited the site and then convened two meetings in City Hall which he chaired. We have been impressed by his serious engagement and the way that he has brought all the interested parties into the room and handled the discussion. But, as we think he would agree, this is the wrong way around. Discussions such as this should happen before the planning decisions are taken so that there is community engagement in the decision making.
Planning Decisions regarding important or TPO trees should be considered by committee and not delegated to one officer
That we have got to this stage shows a serious failure of both Bristol City Council Planning policy and its implementation. The decision to remove the trees was taken in 2015/16 by one planning officer as a reserved decision. It did not go for to the Planning Development committee for a considered decision. Looking over the documents it doesn’t seem that any time or thought was given to the trees. The Arboricultural Report provided by the developer does not even state whether the trees had TPOs, and indeed there is no discussion of the TPOs in any of the documents in that planning application, with the only mention on the “constraints” page. In 2015, The Bristol Tree Forum commented in opposition to the proposal but even the BTF was unaware that the trees had TPOs. Whilst BCC insists that the decision was “valid”, without a mention of the TPOs there was insufficient information to allow intelligent consideration of the proposal, so we question that decision. Sufficient information for intelligent consideration is one of the fundamental principles of a “proper consultation” as decided by Lord Woolf*. The first mention of the TPOs in a document is in the Officer’s Report outlining the delegated decision.
Unfortunately this is not an isolated failure: trees all over Bristol are being unnecessarily sacrificed as a result of applying ideology from the 1960s. For example a single planning officer gave the green light for the removal of some 25 trees on the Redland Girls School site, in a conservation area, despite the fact that the removal is purely for landscaping.
Redland Green Trees: damage to tree roots caused by driving construction vehicles over them can result in the eventual failure of the trees. In a failure of planning, no root protection zones or Arboricultural Methods Statements were ever established for these trees, despite permission being given for the construction company to store materials on Redland Green.
It is practically impossible for local residents and other stakeholders to wade through all planning documents on line. Planning Officers must highlight important tree issues and have a duty of care to act positively in favour of trees
Important tree issues need to be highlighted and openly discussed during the planning process. Planning Officers already implement policy regarding flood risk, traffic management and other construction matters. The Bristol Tree Forum is asking that tree protection is included too as is done in other local authorities (Examples are Oxford and Islington, below). In addition, trees on or near active development sites must be properly protected.
We see applications with no information on the Bristol Tree Replacement Standard calculations, or obviously incorrect information being supplied. Documents such as these should be rejected by the planning officer.
Redland Green Trees. Permission was given for this TPO Ash tree on Redland Hill to be removed (in addition to several others on the site) to allow articulated lorries to enter the building site. In the event, the gateposts were never widened, articulated lorries didn’t enter the site as this would have been extremely difficult even with gate widening and the tree was retained until Aug 2019, when it was removed anyway.
The Indian Bean trees growing on the next-door site on Lower Ashley Road before they were felled. Together with the Maples nearby, they formed a welcome green oasis in an otherwise treeless urban setting.
All that remains of the Indian Bean trees which were chainsawed following rejection of an application that was refused because the trees were felt important and merited TPOs. The trees were removed anyway. We are trying to find out why the trees were not then protected with TPOs.
An emergency 24-hour number to address immediate tree felling issues.
Bristol is at risk of becoming known as a Mad Max world now that unqualified people are wielding chainsaws from ladders above passing pedestrians with no enforcement consequences, often on public holidays, sometimes in the evenings and even at night. A proper approach for addressing this problem needs to be developed in collaboration with the police. It is unfair to send a single tree officer on their own to deal with issues of public order. Multiple phone calls and sometimes hundreds of emails to numerous council departments very quickly overload already overstretched council officers. It is no good passing the buck to the Health and Safety Executive. Therefore we need one emergency Bristol City Council number.
Lower Ashley Road. Bristol City Council urgently needs to come up with a procedure to address dangerous activities by unqualified people using chainsaws over pavements and roads.
A Maple with the arrow sign captioned ‘here’ pointing at a partially sawn limb : Following complaints over an entire week, this dangerous almost severed branch was only addressed after an article appeared in the Bristol Post.
Trees growing at Cotham School were removed by Skanska (2008) in the afternoon before Good Friday when no enforcement action could be taken.
Bristol should implement policies to retain trees on development sites
Where possible we should build developments around existing trees. There should be a presumption to build around existing trees and particularly to retain trees at the edge of development sites.
The developer’s arboricultural report for Lower Ashley Road states that “In order to retain the trees within any new scheme, the front of any new building will need to be sited a minimum of ten metres from the existing site boundary”. We have heard this assertion stated by developer and planner as “the ten metre rule”.
There are many examples where mature trees are retained close to new buildings, in London, Oxford and elsewhere. This must become commonplace in Bristol too. A Trees and Design Action Group article describes the construction of the Angel Building (Islington, London) around existing mature trees. No cowboy chainsawing there. Instead extreme care was taken in a project that was led by landscape architects. For example:
Deliveries needed to be conducted on a daily basis. To enable this, the Tree Protection Plan (TPP) and Arboricultural Method Statement (AMS), developed by appointed tree specialist JCA, in coordination with the project landscape architect and the council tree officer, proposed the use of a porous load-spreading cellular confinement system (Geoweb) braced with timber frames.
All existing trees were irrigated during the two-year construction period following a sporadic pattern imitating rain. Because irrigation was fed with calcium-rich London tap water, the system was fitted with filters to avoid increasing the soil pH.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge visitor Centre (Alec French Architects) in North Somerset, not Bristol, is within 2 metres of an important tree. The roof line has been cut away to accommodate a branch.
Aurora Building, Counterslip, Bristol. Energy efficient, outstanding architecture and built extremely close to an existing plane tree.
It is a false choice to say that we can either have social housing or trees.
Although the 2015/16 planning approval that is being used to justify removal of the trees was for student accommodation, the current proposal, still under consideration, is for social housing that Bristol desperately needs. We are surprised that, despite this new undecided application, the developer is still able to undertake work under the old approved application which they no longer intend to pursue. Shouldn’t the slate be wiped clean so we have a chance to revisit the whole plan with the trees still in place rather than be forced to decide without them?
The developer, planners and others have presented a false choice stating either we retain the trees, keep the site derelict and leave 28 families homeless, or we remove the trees.
These trees are right on the edge of the development site. With clever designs, led by a landscape architect (not even apparent that one has been engaged for this project), and carefully constructed foundations (e.g. screw piling), the developer could build close to the existing trees. The result? Better social housing which benefits from existing green infrastructure and provides a more pleasant environment with some protection from the noise and pollution of this busy road.
Lord Woolf MR in R v North and East Devon Health Authority, ex parte Coughlan [2001] QB 213, [2000] 3 All ER 850, [108] as follows: whether or not consultation is a legal requirement, if it is embarked upon it must be carried out properly; to be proper, consultation must be undertaken at a time when proposals are still at a formative stage; it must include sufficient reasons for particular proposals to allow those consulted to give intelligent consideration and an intelligent response; adequate time must be given for this purpose; and the product of consultation must be conscientiously taken into account when the ultimate decision is taken.
We have now received an explanation, via a local Councillor, for why the trees on Redland Hill were felled – see our recent blog – Redland Hill street trees felled by the Council. Why?As we are anxious to update the record as soon as possible, we have decided to make it public. Here it is, received just yesterday:
“Contractors removed some of those trees along this strip in error. The contractor is planting replacements free of charge (hence the blue markers) [small posts painted blue, which we noticed had recently been inserted in a line along the wall – just visible in the image below].
The history I’m told goes as follows:
The tree officer selected and marked the specific trees to be removed with a green paint spot. The thinning out was necessary due to the lack of space on the narrow strip of verge. It is good arboricultural practice. It has been suggested this row used to be part of an old beech hedge, this isn’t the case because the trees removed were a mix of species, ash, sycamore and elder.
Unfortunately other trees, without the green spots and which were scheduled to remain, had previously been marked up with orange paint spots. It was made clear to the contractor’s manager when they met the Council’s tree officer on site which trees were to be removed and which should stay.
The contractor’s team leader who subsequently carried out the felling work had not been given the full information from the manager and felled all the trees except the large Beech on the corner. The felling was also done much quicker than expected which is why the Councillors weren’t notified in advance thus compounding the error.
[The Trees and Allotments Manager] has discussed this communication error with the contractors and they have agreed to replace the trees that were incorrectly felled (i.e. the orange spot ones). The new replacement trees will be much better suited to the location than the original species. The new trees are birch with a very narrow and upright form. This will be much more suited to the narrow planting location and should have potentially less conflict in the future with pedestrians with pushchairs and will be easier to maintain next to the highway. They will all be planted by the end of tomorrow.”
Here they are…just planted…and we are very pleased to see them.
The view after planting – 13 birch planted in six groups
We have asked the Council to comment. We await their response, though we see that they have already commented to BristolLive.
Councillor Clive Stevens (and ex-Chair of Bristol Tree Forum) commented: “Although conspiracy theories are more fun to read about, sometimes it is due to a good old fashioned cock-up. Lessons to be learned on communication with the public which I think was the main theme of the Tree Forum’s original blog is the need for more and better consultation. That applies to many things the Council does. If the Government decided to increase the duty to consult on tree works lets hope they provide some extra money to pay for someone to do it. And secondly, often the Council takes a while to respond and in this case probably because they wanted to finalise the solution first; its the same department dealing with Stoke Lodge and ex Wyevale Garden Centre situations and probably a hundred or so other active planning applications all with tight deadlines which take priority.”
As a precaution, we have asked the Council to take urgent steps to protect the last remaining beech tree on the boundary wall with a Tree Preservation Order. This is partly because of what has happened, but also because we have had to advise the Planning Department that someone on the site has dumped a large amount of builders rubble and other materials on the tree’s roots on the other side of the wall from the tree. Clearly this important tree (the last vestige of a historic hedge which probably predates both the wall and the buildings nearby) is still under threat and needs protection.
We are sad to have lost what was once a significant aspect of one of the approaches to the Downs, but are pleased to see the whole sorry saga resolved. We hope that lessons have been learned and look forward to watching the replacement birches grow and flourish.
