See answers to previous information requests

1. How many trees have been planted by the council since 1 January 2022?
This is quite a difficult question to provide a definitive answer to as we have many tree planting schemes across the Borough including those that are planted as part of our Climate Emergency Action Plan, those that are part of developments and those that are part of replanting schemes. Given the scale of number of applications that are processed, we do not hold data on the full number of trees planted however, the Council currently has a major tree planting project in place as part of the Climate Emergency Action Plan and since the project commenced in September 2021, over 43,632 trees have been planted across the Borough on Public Open Spaces, Country Parks, School Sites, Town and Parish Owned Sites and Private land. It is important to remember that this figure is solely in relation to new tree planting and does not relate to any trees planted as part of planning applications. The trees planted as part of this project are being monitored and supported during their establishment through funding that the Council has in place from the Woodland Trust.

2. How many trees have been cut down by the council since 1 January 2022?
Again, this is not something we hold data on. The Councils Tree Management team have recently implemented a new Tree Asset Management System which will help to record this data going forward. Currently tree work in the Borough is managed by a variety of services including Estate Teams, Housing, Countryside Services, Public Rights of Way, Tree Management (who manage the Highway and Public Open Space trees). Having an asset management system will allow to Council to consolidate tree records going forward however currently this is not a question we can answer with data.

You may be interested to read the Councils Tree Strategy which was adopted in July 2023 and can be found on Wokingham Engage: https://engage.wokingham.gov.uk/en-GB/projects/creating-a-tree-strategy