At the Full Council meeting of 7th September 2023, Green Party City Councillor Richard Longstaff proposed a motion to shake up the way Southend Council manages our City’s Trees.
Local residents have long dispaired at the City Council’s brutal “cut before complaint” approach to tree management, which has led to the unnecessary and premature removal of thousands of our City’s natural assets, worth £millions.
With cross-party support, Richard’s motion sets in motion radical changes to the way the Council manages and preserves our Trees, and sets ambitious targets to reinstate and grow our tree canopy cover, to help tackle many local issues, like air and noise pollution, urban heat stress, flooding, and to help combat climate change.
The motion passed by the council reads:
Southend’s Urban Trees:
They say an oak tree spends 300 years growing, 300 years living and 300 years dying. There are huge environmental and social implications to how a council values tree maintenance. This motion aims to improve our tree management, especially the management of declining trees, to maximise the benefits and lifespan of trees on council-owned or council-managed land.
Southend’s urban trees are assets of immense community value, providing tree canopy cover (TCC) which is proven to reduce ‘urban heat island effect’ that is the cause of an increasing number of fatalities across Europe due to climate heating.
Despite significant tree planting in recent years our TCC currently stands at 13% on average, and just 10% in Leigh-on-Sea. The value of mature trees cannot adequately be replaced by saplings so we must do more to retain our mature trees and to improve our current TCC to the Forestry Commission’s recommendation of 15% at the very least.
More trees will bring many benefits to our city such as an improvement in air quality, greater local sequestering of carbon to aid our Net Zero ambitions, and a positive effect on the mental health of local people.
To maintain and increase our TCC we must seek to prolong the lifespans of our mature trees alongside planting thousands of new ones through a variety of methods including tree planting-focused grant applications. This will require a progressive and pragmatic approach to tree management and a refinement of practices with a preservation-first approach.
Therefore, Southend-on-Sea City Council resolves to:
- Establish a biodiversity and tree retention working party with observers from external organisations with knowledge and expertise in arboriculture and biodiversity. The remit of the working party will be to consider tree management and preservation, including assessing trees marked for removal, unless there is a perceived immediate risk, and to informally advise the administration on matters of tree preservation, maintenance, and biodiversity.
- Invoke an immediate moratorium on tree felling where there is not an immediate risk to the public until there has been a review of existing practices around maintenance and retention of highways trees to develop an alternative methodology toolbox to align with best practice under the Tree Design Action Group, the Forestry Commission and the Tree Council of Great Britain.
- Embed quality assurances procedures within a tree retention policy as part of best practice so that common scenarios can be actioned quickly and without ambiguity.
- Continuously seek funding opportunities to bid for to plant new trees.
- Review potential planting locations across the city and keep an up-to-date map for the use of tree officers and highways surveyors.
- Where practicable, seek to plant replacement trees as far in advance as possible of a removal.
- Where practicable, plant larger, more mature trees in build-outs at the end of double yellow line demarcations to alleviate pressure on our drainage system from stormwater attenuation and to preserve the integrity and longevity of our highways trees and nearby footpaths.
This is the first motion put to Southend City Council by the Green Party, and we’re delighted to report it was passed with cross-party support.
The results of the vote were as follows:
FOR:
Cllr Richard Longstaff (Proposer)
Cllr Steve Aylen (Seconder)
Cllr Martin Berry Cllr Margaret Borton Cllr Laurie Burton
Cllr Paul Collins Cllr Daniel Cowan Cllr Tricia Cowdrey Cllr Matt Dent
Cllr Fay Evans Cllr Stephen George Cllr Ian Gilbert Cllr John Harland Cllr Lydia Hyde Cllr Anne Jones Cllr Gabriel Leroy Cllr Aston Line Cllr Robert McMullan Cllr Carole Mulroney Cllr Cheryl Nevin Cllr Mandy O’Connor Cllr Donna Richardson Cllr Kevin Robinson Cllr Maxine Sadza Cllr Mike Stafford Cllr Martin Terry Cllr Steven Wakefield Cllr Nick Ward
AGAINST: Cllr Ron Woodley
NO VOTE: Cllr Helen Boyd Cllr Kevin Buck Cllr Colin Campbell Cllr Owen Cartey Cllr James Courtenay Cllr Tony Cox Cllr Meg Davidson Cllr Alan Dear Cllr Nigel Folkard Cllr David Garston Cllr Stephen Habermel Cllr Darryl Jones Cllr James Moyies Cllr Daniel Nelson Cllr Jack Warren
ENDS