Oak trees on Bromfield Road get protection – we need to save and plant trees

Shropshire Council has placed provisional tree preservation orders on 18 oak trees on the west side of Bromfield Road, along with a plane tree. Three limes on the cricket ground are also subjects to TPOs. The oak trees on the opposite side of Bromfield Road outside Ludlow Motors are already subject to TPOs.

The new TPOs are temporary and will be confirmed after six months unless there are material objections.

We have had more than our fair share on tree troubles in Ludlow. That makes these orders particularly welcome.

We have lost trees on the Foldgate Lane development, on Chandlers Close, at Spencer Manufacturing, Sidney Road Green, Linney House and Whitcliffe Common. Only one fifth of the 215 trees felled in the Ludlow’s conservation areas in the five years to September 2019 were due to be replaced. There have been many other loses.

It is harder to get new trees planted than it is to cut them down. A motion to scope out creating a Marches Forest and double tree cover in Shropshire was defeated at Shropshire Council. A less ambitious motion to ensure that a tree is planted for every person in Shropshire by 2050 was, however, passed.

Comments on the TPOs need to be sent to Planning Services – Tree Team, Shropshire Council, PO Box 4826, Shrewsbury, SY1 9LJ by 6 April.

Nationally, the destruction of well-established and veteran trees continues. The leader of Plymouth City Council has just resigned after the decimation of 100 trees in the dead of night to make way for a development, ahead of a court hearing to establish whether the move was legal. The interim judgment a few days ago, put a stay on felling of the few remaining trees. Residents were arrested for opposing the felling of trees in Sheffield. An inquiry found the city council “dishonest”.

HS2 is also one the biggest culprits, claiming to be a carbon friendly project while axing veterans trees to lay carbon intensive concrete. Tens of thousands of trees died because HS2 said replacing them would cost less than watering. National Highways is due to replant more than 600,000 trees on a new stretch of A14 after the trees died because of a failure to get the right trees for the location and to invest in a maintenance programme, including basic things like watering. Cambridge County Council is to bulldoze a veteran orchard for a new busway: a classic example of the conflicts in going green. Get a bus. Lose a tree. Great climate message.

Although thousands of new trees are being planted, it will take decades for these trees to mature, longer for them to mature, store serious amounts of carbon and become hosts for the wonderful biodiversity we associate with trees. The government pledged to plant 30,000 hectares of trees every year across the UK by the end of this parliament (before January 2025). It is nowhere near that target, with just 13,500 hectares planted in 2021. Rishi Sunak, when chancellor, announced a forest “the size of Birmingham” across England but there seems little hope of that being achieved any time soon.

We see poor tree provisions all the time on new developments. Too often tree planting does little more than make a new housing estate look like a suburban garden. Trees and shrubs are chosen because they are low maintenance not because they are the best for ecology and carbon capture.

We need to everything can to preserve the older trees we have and put to one side the current rhetoric that one mature tree can be replaced by a lot of quicks and saplings.