Category: street trees

Bristol Trees in Crisis II

Bristol’s street trees saved?

We heard last night at the Mayor’s Cabinet Committee that the Council has agreed to consult about its decision the stop maintaining Bristol’s street trees. This will take place after the General Election has been held. Hopefully this means that the decision will then be reversed, though this is not certain.
As for tree planting, this can continue but it must now be ‘fully funded’. This means that the sponsorship cost will rise from £295 to £765. We are told that this is so that the tree can also be cared for over the next 15 years. If a tree is being planted at a new site (i.e. is not replacing another tree lost), then, if a specially constructed tree pit is required, the cost of this will also need to be funded. This could easily add another £2,000 to £3,000 to the planting cost.
This is good news, but it is likely that many residents are going to find the new cost prohibitive. It also raises the prospect that some street trees are being cared for while all the others are not, which seems rather ridiculous when you think about it!
If you agree, or want to be consulted, please make your thoughts known by contacting your local Councillor and emailing the Mayor.
You can also Contact us here at Bristol Tree Forum to register your support and offer to help defend Bristol’s public tree spaces.
Please spread the word and forward this blog to others interested in saving Bristol’s trees.

Bristol’s trees in crisis!

With Bristol City Council’s budget cuts, two decisions have been made regarding the management of Bristol’s treescape that make no economic sense, and threaten the reputation of the City as a Green and pleasant place to live and locate a business.

With Bristol City Council’s budget cuts, two decisions have been made regarding the management of Bristol’s treescape that make no economic sense, and threaten the reputation of the City as a Green and pleasant place to live and locate a business.

Decision 1: Slashing of street tree management budget

  • The budget for managing street trees has been cut by nearly 78% from £240,000 to £53,000.
  • As a result there will be no pollarding of street trees or removal of epicormic growth around the tree.
  • Emergency cover outside normal working hours is no longer being provided through the tree management contract, despite having no cost benefit.
  • Tree management will be limited to felling to address safety risks, despite greater initial costs and the long term consequent loss of tree sites – felling costs the same as 16 years of maintenance.  As a result, Bristol’s street tree population will rapidly fall into decline as they are steadily removed, never to be replaced.

Decision 2: No planting of street trees, either replacement or new, even when cost neutral

  • Bristol City Council has operated a number of innovative schemes allowing residents or community groups to sponsor replacement or new street trees. Despite fully funding the planting, and maintenance for two years, such planting will no longer be permitted.
  • At the moment, when a tree is replaced in an existing tree pit it costs £295. This covers regular watering until the tree is established and two years maintenance. If the trees dies whilst establishing itself, it is replaced at no extra cost.
  • If the Council can be persuaded to change its mind about not planting new trees, then this cost could to increase to the £765 that developers are required to pay – the overall costs of planting a tree and maintaining it during its lifetime. Planting a tree at a brand new site could add around £2,000-£2,500 if a special tree pit needs to be installed.
  • Currently there is huge support from the community for replacing lost trees. Around £200,000 of developers’ money is set aside for this purpose, Metrobus is committed to planting 200-300 trees as part of their planning condition, and Bristol University has donated funds to plant 60-100 public street trees.
  • It makes little sense, in times of budget constraints, to renounce external funding sources that fully cover planting and maintenance costs.

These decisions are a false economy for Bristol City Council

  • With no pollarding of street trees, increased tree growth will lead to more subsidence claims against the Council, and create more highway damage, pavement trip hazards, and infrastructure damage.
  • New tree growth from previous pollarding points will become unstable, increasing the probability of personal injury and property damage claims against the Council.
  • Just a couple of additional subsidence or injury claims could negate the Council’s entire “cost saving”.
  • This short-term decision makes no sense – if a tree can be maintained for some 16 years – the one-off cost of felling it, then surely it makes better economic sense to spread this inevitable cost and maintain the tree rather than fell it as a short-term ‘solution’ – a ‘solution’ which loads all the costs up front and will lead to greatly increased and unavoidable expenditure in not very many years time?

These decisions will threaten Bristol’s reputation as a Green City

These decisions were taken with no consultation with stakeholders

There has been no consultation regarding these decisions with other Departments within Bristol City Council, who will have to deal with the foreseeable consequences, with insurers, who will face additional damage claims, Avon and Somerset Police, who will have to address public order consequences of mass felling, or Bristol Tree Forum, with its wide-reaching understanding of tree issues.

What you can do

  • Contact your Councillor and email the Mayor and demand that these decisions be overturned.
  • Contact us here at Bristol Tree Forum to register your support and offer to help defend Bristol’s public tree spaces.
  • Spread the word and forward this blog to others interested in saving trees.

Death by a thousand cuts

Without any public consultation, officers from Bristol City Council Highways department have decided to reduce the Council’s street tree maintenance budget from around £240,000 to just £53,000 – a cut of some 78%.

This is part of a overall package of measures that the council has adopted to enable it to cut its overall budget by £104 million by 2020, as required by the government.

As the consequence, the Council will no longer guarantee having staff available to respond to out-of-hours and non-emergency tree-related incidents, if at all.

The regime of pollarding street trees every two to three years has also been abandoned. The Council accepts that, as a consequence there is likely to be ‘an increase in successful subsidence claims brought against the authority’ as it will not have ‘implemented a reasonable cyclical pruning programme in accordance with prevailing practice…(Robbins vs London Borough of Bexley 2012). Have the Council’s lawyers been told?

The effect of this is likely to be that, if there are any safety concerns in future about a particular tree, then the default solution will be to fell it rather than proactively manage the tree by pruning or pollarding it.

The Council’s flagship tree replacement sponsorship scheme has also been abandoned so Bristolians will no longer have any way of replacing their lost street trees.

Bristol has more that 66,000 public trees, many of which are street trees. The inevitable consequence of the Council’s short-sighted decision can only mean that its population of street trees will, sooner or later, decline.

When challenged by Councillor Clive Stevens why these cuts were being implemented, the Council replied:

The council is facing significant budget pressures and has to cut back a number of services as a result of this…Tree roots can cause a trip hazard in the same way that a broken or loose paving slab can….The changes proposed largely bring Tree Maintenance in line with other highway maintenance routines, reacting to defects as we are notified of them. As with any asset there is a balance between short-term needs and expenditure and longer-term costs. With the highways maintenance budget as a whole we have tried to strike a balance for the needs of all asset types and likely costs of defects have been included in these considerations.

So there you have it, trees are just ‘asset types’ like paving slabs – subject to becoming defective, of no greater value and as easily replaced.

Really? Let’s hope our Bristol street trees have got the message and will behave themselves in future like their inert paving slab cousins!

Here are the details of the Council’s recent Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Commission  held last Monday, 24th April 2017 together with the Council’s answers to the questions raised. Here is the the Tree Forum’s Statement with Questions raised with the Commission.