Herefordshire contractors have removed more than four times as many trees as they have planted in recent years – a record which has been branded as “pathetic”.
In a response to a freedom of information request, Herefordshire Council said that over the past five years its public realm contractors have planted just 186 trees, an average of 37 a year.
The most recent figure, for 2023/24, was less than half that, at just 16 new trees planted.
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Over the same period, contractors felled 778 trees across the county, or nearly 156 a year.
“We only remove trees when necessary – for example due to being dead, diseased dangerous or in extreme cases when damaging private property,” the council explained in its response.
The figures relate only to those felled by Balfour Beatty Living Places as a result of tree surveys, not to any others removed by the council, it added.
Herefordshire Tree Forum chair Jerry Ross said that for the council to have planted just 16 trees in one year was “a pathetic record that hardly lives up to the green aspirations so frequently expressed, especially when compared with 84 being removed”.
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But he added: “It doesn’t surprise me that there is an ongoing net loss. Local authorities have had their funds cut viciously since 2010 and trees are well down the list of priorities.”
Yet this is a false economy as trees in public spaces provide “not only ecological but also economic, health and social benefits”, he said.
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Meanwhile “there is good work being done by volunteers such as those in the Herefordshire Tree Warden Network, who plant trees where they can, including on council-owned land”.
On the other hand, while planning approvals for new developments may require trees to be planted alongside them, “it’s all to common that these conditions are not fully met – and they are rarely followed up, even when drawn to the council's attention”, Mr Ross added.
Herefordshire Council was asked to explain the wide ongoing disparity in the two figures.
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