1. Please detail the number of trees that have been cut down by your council in the last 3 years. Break down the figures by year and tree species.
2. Please detail the number of trees that have been planted by your council in the last 3 years. Break down the figure by year and tree species.

We have liaised with the various services within the Council who deal with Trees as they are not handled within one team (e.g. Countryside, Localities, Tree Preservation, Public Rights of Way, Highways). We have been advised that this would be a massive task to undertake as we are not able to report on this. We would need to manually go through records to extract any relevant information which would be manifestly unreasonable to do for the years requested. Even a single year, may exceed the appropriate limit and the Services weren’t able to advise what they could be able to provide within the appropriate time limit as they were unsure themselves about how best to go about the request and collate data.

To give some context, Countryside Services were able to provide some more details to help us understand the size of this request. Countryside Service would have contracted in a tree surgeon contractor for 50-100 trees per year to carry out health and safety works. They would also need to go through complaints on the country parks and Public rights of way and pick out all the tree related ones including location and how the issue was resolved to make sure these were included in the figures as well. There is also the variable on size and age of trees as to purposes why they had work done and what is considered a tree. In some instances there may be one set of roots but two trunks Eg Silver Birch which may make figures more complex to calculate.

We then have our management plans for 28 sites across the borough where we carry out woodland management and Health and Safety works so thousands of trees are cleared, coppiced, pollarded as well as other sites where we plant up to 2000 trees per year. There are also developments that are carried out by external companies which include tree planting, that the road/development may at a later date get signed over to the Council to maintain.

Any tree work is carried out for either woodland management / conservation reasons or Health and Safety; but even then, the figures could be distorted – Countryside Services may clear fell 1000 trees because they are growing on a heathland site where the heathland habitat is of higher value than a woodland one regards conservation.