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HeadlineThe campaigners fighting to keep their street trees safe from the chop

Short HeadlineCampaigners create coalition to protect street trees

StandfirstThe groups have faced conflict with councils and home insurers and are now hoping to “pool resources” to lobby for a change in the law.

A grassroot groups coalition has formed to bring in legal protection for trees, following conflicts with local councils and home insurers.

“They’re really neglected. A lot of people don’t know that they’re being incrementally severely pollarded, felled, they’re not looked after. It’s a massive issue” Gio Iozzi, founder of Canopy the coalition group says.

Ms Iozzi created the group after spearheading a number of interventions in an attempt to stop tree fellings in the borough of Haringey, most recently the Oakfield Plane tree.  

Speaking on the case she says, “We were trying to expose this was a system rigged against trees, rigged against homeowners, rigged against councils”.

Home insurers Aviva and Allianz, for 61 and 63 Oakfield Road, respectively, requested the council fell the tree in front of both houses as they believed it was causing structural damage to the properties known as subsidence.

Subsidence occurs when the ground under the property begins to sink, making the foundations unbalanced and leading to cracks and destabilization of the house.  Roots from trees and shrubs can be the cause of this, but it can also be due to the soil type, or poor drainage.

But it  can be dealt with in a few ways: in this case the homeowners asked their insurers to underpin their home, a technique that strengthens the foundations.

But this is costly and time-consuming, increasing the longer the property goes untreated (which in this case, the properties experienced subsidence-related problems for decades).

The other option, which the insurers chose, is to fell the tree. An action the homeowners publicly disagreed with.

As the street is a public highway, the tree is by default the council’s property and they are liable for the damage. If the council chose not to comply, they initially would have had to pay £400,000 to the insurers to compensate for the damage (now estimated to be £1million due to the length of time passed). The council agreed.

As it stands, the tree hasn’t been chopped down. Several court battles, surveys and reports have been processed since the tree was first implicated in the subsidence issue.

But most notably, in two separate Financial Ombudsman reports in April, filed by number 61 and number 63 – those who protected the tree from this action received a level of validation that their instincts to do so were justified.

In both reports the financial ombudsman recommended that the underpinning be carried out at both properties and that the tree should remain in place if possible.

They went even further to recommend that the homeowners should be “compensated” for undue stress caused by the ongoing issue.

However, these recommendations do not have to be implemented. Further updates on the progression of the case or the future of the tree remains unclear with no updates given by the homeowners.

The homeowners didn’t provide me with a statement but neighbour Holly Aylett, also a member of the Haringey Tree Protectors, was keen to talk about the experience.

“As a neighbour, it’s been very distressing” and “you have to make a decision, are you for it or against it. I decided no, I wasn’t for it”.

Speaking on Haringey councils’ engagement “There is more that Haringey could be doing. I don’t feel happy with the way they have responded to the residents mobilation, particularly when they built that fortress”

“They increased the level of violence. But it was symptomatic of a level of distrust.”

We put this statement to Haringey Councils’ spokesperson for the Environment and Transport Scott Emery, to which he replied that he thought the construction of the scaffolding was ‘ridiculous’ and “totally unnecessary”.

In Haringey Councils most recent Manifesto, they aim to increase the boroughs tree canopy coverage to 30% by 2050 (7% more than the London Mayor’s target) but they’re ambitious target “isn’t going well” alleges Mr Emery.

“I think the big problem with that is that they cut the budget. The officers were cut. The number of officers were reduced”.

“I think there are priorities that could be altered”

But many of the campaigners are dissatisfied with this response, so, I spoke with London Botanist Dr Mark Spenser, to get to the root of the cause.

“In most cases, local authorities need several tree officers, and there is no way they can get close to that. We are locked into creating problems for ourselves”. 

These problems he says, are created by poor maintenance, poorly thought-out planting that leave young trees to die, and “inappropriately skilled people”.

I asked him who these people were, “Bloody landscape architects often or not, probably my least favourite profession in the urban environment at the moment. But it’s a system-wide failure”

“We other urban landscapes”

But he goes on to say if we follow the ‘right tree, right place’ principle (a principle also adopted by the Greater London Authority in their Tree and Woodland Framework), “the need for continuous maintenance, replanting, pruning, becomes less of a need”.

However, the seemingly simple principle is not as straight forward as it seems.

“Ensuring the tree goes into the right landscape. So that itself doesn’t cause damage to infrastructure, pavements, etc. But also, does it work for people, does it add value, it’s not in someone’s front window for example”

“And because of climate change we have to consider prevention of heat stress, sequestion and providing pollinator services”.

When asked what he thinks to the Oakfield Road case, he says “Clearly we’ve seen a few major campaigns in a range of cities to protect trees, because of their cultural amenity and ecological value”

“And you have to view each one, case by case basis, because each the issues are slightly different”

“But there is a commonality, most legislation is nature hostile. Without a positive legislative framework, it is very difficult to ensure that key pieces of our urban landscape are retained”.

Canopy – A change in landscape

The Oakfield plane tree, is but one example of conflicts across the country.

In response to similar actions across the UK, the Duty to Consult was introduced at the end of 2023, giving the community more autonomy and say in the trees. scheduled to be felled.

Gio Iozzi hopes this will lead to more transparency and increase trust between them.

In a statement to CityInvestigates, Ms Iozzi says “we need to protect what we have already, value. And respect what we have. Like ancient and heritage buildings.”

But a bill for a change in the law is already making its way through Parliament. The bill is called the Heritage Tree Bills, backed by the Woodland trust, is currently on it’s second reading, promising to give trees protection similar to that of heritage buildings.

And on the ground, she has started Canopy, a coalition of groups across the UK, from Southend to Wellingborough and Plymouth, with more steadily joining, pooling together their skills they hope will make make them more powerful in the bid protect their street trees.

We contacted Haringey Council for comment, but they did not get back to us.