Protesters will be attending from 9am this morning to hopefully save our trees and to ensure that the trees with bat’s aren’t felled. We lost 12 old lime trees on The Walks on Thursday, making it 14 felled in total. The contractors were due to fell 38 this week, so we have saved 24, so all are not lost yet, keep up the fight, join us if you can?
Here is a response from the Woodland Trust received after the trees were cut down yesterday:
Thank you for contacting us. We were so sorry to see the social media reports on the felling of the lime trees on Wellingborough Walks.
Sadly, in this case, as the Woodland Trust is a non-statutory consultee we are unable to intervene with direct action but we would suggest that local residents contact their councillors to exert pressure on the administration and its officers – the latter of which may be more responsive to those with a democratic mandate. Residents can also raise their concerns with the developer, and hopefully, this will help to secure a binding commitment to replace all trees lost. It would also be good to seek assurances that the promised tree planting referenced in the statement does happen – and that those trees are monitored and cared for to ensure they survive and thrive into the future.
We would also encourage residents to pressure the Local Planning Authority to appoint a person with the appropriate Tree expertise, such as a tree officer, and consider putting together a Trees and Woodland Strategy for their authority – details: A Trees and Woodland Strategy Toolkit for Local Authorities (treecouncil.org.uk).
In the meantime, the Woodland Trust is working hard behind the scenes to try to influence developers on a more strategic level and to seek assurances that future planning applications will be denied where significant tree loss, such as that at Stanton Cross, would be necessary.
Also, this week in the House of Lords the Woodland Trust chair Baroness Young is putting forward a series of amendments to the government’s Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill to strengthen and improve how Tree Preservation Orders work . The objectives of the amendments are to:
Embed existing good practice – eg in adopting a wider definition of ‘amenity’ and a proactive approach to protecting important trees.
Enable TPOs to be used to protect the deadwood habitat of ancient and veteran trees, as this is super valuable for nature.
To ensure TPO protection cannot be removed without good reason (uplift guidance into legislation)
Support enforcement – by creating a single offence and hopefully removing the burden to prove harm will be fully destructive to access larger fines commensurate with potential profits
Thank you again for getting in touch.
With kind regards.
On behalf of the Campaigns Team