Leamington sites will be among pilot areas for council's ambitious tree-planting project

Eight sites have already been identified by council officers with seven of them owned by the council and the other in the hands of Budbrooke Parish Council as councillors look to make a start on planting 160,000 trees by 2030.

Members at the council’s executive voted at their meeting this week [THU] to allocate up to £35,000 over the remainder of the current financial year to help kick-start the project with a further £82,500 earmarked for the following year.

David Barber, programme director for climate change, told members of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee earlier in the week [ TUE] that much of that money would be spent on planning where the trees would go.

He said: “There will be planting taking place this season at some or all of the eight sites. We need to do this carefully and we need to do this with thought. We don’t want to plant the wrong trees in the wrong place - places where other ecological assets will be harmed by what we do.

“The earlier years will be slow in terms of delivery and the later years will be where the catch-up is done and that is what we will show when the mapping is done.

“We don’t have enough land in the council’s ownership. We have a couple of significant opportunities at Newbold Comyn and Tach Brook Park so we are looking at tree planting in other locations - rural landowners and the farming community, and supporting community groups and parish councils on their land.”

Cllr Moira-Ann Grainger (Con, Warwick All Saints and Woodloes), the portfolio holder for neighbourhood services, explained that expert help would be available to help with the project.

She told the executive meeting: “We will also have a community forester for so many days a month to help allocate funding and help community groups.

“It is alright us saying we are going to put trees on all our new estates but if no-one is going to look after them long-term then it isn’t very good management - it’s not just putting up trees willy-nilly, they need to be looked after.”

And she added that trees lost by work on HS2 will be replaced by HS2 and would be in addition to the 160,000 target.

She said: “We will be going to them for some funding for more trees as well because they have that money and we should be getting as much of it as we can.”