Hello, I am sending you press release below. This is the story of how the Council stopped Lockleaze residents from going ahead with planting trees that they had petitioned, consulted and fundraised for over a period of 2 years. It is a story of a community's determination and resourcefulness in the face of bullying, corruption and incompetence.
PRESS RELEASE
No Trees for Lockleaze – Council Forbids Tree Planting
Residents in Lockleaze have been campaigning for more trees in their area for a number of years. The Council initially told them they could not have more trees planted because ‘trees are dangerous’. Undeterred, the residents began a petition for ‘trees for Lockleaze’, as well as a consultation, involving hundreds of people.
The residents then found out that there was a private company (Grounds for Change) who had been funded by the Council’s Neighbourhood Renewal Department to carry out environmental work in the area. They approached this company to see if they would improve the communal areas in Lockleaze by planting some trees. Grounds for Change (G4C) replied that they would like to do this but did not have enough money to buy trees. The residents were told that if they could raise £1,000, they could buy 200 trees, which G4C would plant and look after. By this time, the residents had formed a group, Lockleaze Environment Group (LEG).
LEG successfully applied for funding and got the £1,000. However, when they contacted G4C again, they were told they could only have 5 trees for this money. The residents then called a meeting with Council Officers and G4C to resolve the matter. At the meeting, G4C denied that they had ever said they would look after 200 trees. The residents explained that they would not have done all that work for 5 trees and that they seemed very expensive trees at £200 each when you can buy them for 50p. Eventually, it was agreed that 50 – 80 trees would be planted.
For several months the residents tried to find out how much money G4C had been given to do environmental work in Lockleaze and how this money was being spent. Eventually, after numerous requests for this information, they found out G4C had been given around £100,000 to do this work. Yet no improvements to communal areas had been carried out when they first approached them. (Since then, some bulbs have been planted and a community clean up carried out). The residents could not understand why they had been told to find £1,000 for trees themselves when so much money had already been available.
Although the residents received the £1,000 grant in late November, by February no trees had been planted. Trees can only be planted during the winter, so the residents were concerned that the trees could not be planted this year and they would lose the grant. Another meeting was called and this time the residents were told that the Council would plant 26 trees on Gainsborough Square and look after them and that G4C would use LEG’s £1,000 grant to organise an event to ‘educate people in Lockleaze about trees’. The residents said no. They said they would like the 26 trees from the Council (some of these would replace trees that were dying anyway, which the Council was obliged to do). However, they would still like the £1,000 they had raised to be spent on 50-80 trees to be maintained by G4C, as had been agreed earlier. They would like these to be in variety of locations as the consultation they had done showed that this is what residents wanted.
The Council said this was not acceptable and the choice was the 26 trees with an event or the 26 trees without an event, or.... nothing. They also said that they would try to plant another 38 trees if the residents agreed to their proposal. Eventually the residents felt compelled to accept the 26 trees on Gainsborough Square. It was agreed that the trees would be planted on 25th March. Publicity was carried out to let people know about the success of the campaign.
Then, on 13th March, the Council asked LEG not to go ahead with the tree planting on the 25th. LEG said they unanimously wanted to go ahead with the planting, so would not agree to this request. They were finally told, on 20th March, just five days before the planting was to happen, that they were not permitted to plant any trees. This decision was made by the Council Heads of Parks (Richard Mond) and Planning (Kate Hoare), alongside the Lib Dem Councillors for the area, Emma Bagley and Sean Emmet.
The reason given was that Lockleaze was to be developed as part of the ‘balanced and sustainable communities initiative’ in several years time (possibly ten years). There was no point in wasting money on planting trees now which might need to be knocked down later. The residents pointed out that the so-called ‘balanced and sustainable communities initiative’ had not carried out any consultation with residents so far, so they could hardly start to impose their plan on the community now and tell people they could not have trees. In addition, most people in Lockleaze seemed to view this initiative as a land sell-off where they would lose their beautiful open spaces, so that the Council could make money from selling the land to private developers. Residents believe the Council will not improve the green spaces because they want to classify it as ‘low grade open space’ which makes it easier to get permission to build on later. The area can not have any positive development over the next few years until the Council push through the land sell off. Lockleaze will be left to decline still further.
One LEG member said ‘The so-called ‘balanced and sustainable communities initiative’ does not seem to listen to residents now so how can we believe that they will take any notice of what we say when they carry out what they have called a consultation in the summer. Apart from our loss of the chance to have trees and all the associated benefits in terms of environmental, social and economic factors: if we don't go through with the tree planting we will be letting people down again. This is the last thing people in this area need. It is extremely damaging to our community. Over the last six months, we have gone from 200 trees to 80 to 26 to nothing. They have used delaying tactics to bring us to this point and have wasted everyone’s time. Grounds for Change have had £100,000 of public money to do environmental work in our area and have now got away with doing virtually nothing. They will not be allowed to do any improvements to the communal areas while the land-sell off plan is on the table. It is a scandal’.
END OF PRESS RELEASE
