Planning: Trees

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Thursday 14th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am not sure I can undertake to give extra powers to national parks today, but I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Lord said. It is precisely why TPOs were instigated in the first place. I used to get very angry as leader of a council when a tree mysteriously died in the middle of the night in order for a development to go ahead.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, there is a statutory register for nationally significant features such as scheduled ancient monuments, protected species and listed buildings. Given what my noble friend Lord Scriven said about how easy it is for trees to be neglected, damaged or lost, do the Government accept that there is a case for similar recognition and protection for trees of national special interest?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, councils expend an awful lot of time and effort in maintaining their highway trees, which I think is what the noble Lord was referring to, and it is important that they continue to do so, particularly where some of those trees that were planted perhaps 70 or 80 years ago have grown far too big for the environment in which they sit.