Have your say on Plymouth’s plan for trees

Plymouth residents are being asked to tell Plymouth City Council what they think about the city’s trees.

The Council is developing a Plan for Trees with a range of local partners, which aims to set out the city’s long term strategy for managing trees, and to ask local people to give feedback about future tree coverage and management.

Councillor Sue Dann, Cabinet Member for Environment and Street Services for Plymouth City Council, said: “As part of our Plan for Trees, we are committing to giving our trees the regular care they need. We are asking residents to tell us what they want us to do with existing trees, and where they would like to see more trees.

“Trees make the city look more attractive, help to reduce flooding and water run-off, improve air quality and can enhance our health and wellbeing by making us feel better about where we live.

“As a city we have 17 per cent tree cover but there is huge variation between different areas, for example while Budshead has around 25 per cent tree coverage, Devonport only has 5.8 per cent.

“We all have a stake in Plymouth’s future so I would encourage everyone who lives here to get involved and have their say – we’d love to hear from you.”

There are four themes to the Plan for Trees, which are:

Promote – To promote the benefits and value of the our trees through education and encouraging best practice
Protect – To protect Plymouth’s special trees and woodlands for future generations
Care – To care for our trees by practicing and promoting good tree and woodland management
Enhance – To enhance urban areas by increasing tree canopy cover.

The engagement exercise will be via an online survey but there will also be paper copies and the Council will be speaking to the public out and about in the city.

The engagement exercise finishes on Sunday 16 September.