Agenda item

Woodlands

Minutes:

The Committee considered the Joint Report of the Corporate Director of Regeneration and the Corporate Director of Transformation and Partnerships that provided Members with an overview of woodlands in County Durham (for copy of report, see file of minutes).

 

Ms S Mullinger, the Landscape Delivery Officer was in attendance to present the report and circulated a copy of the Durham Woodland Revival leaflet.

 

Members were advised that delivery of the Durham Woodland Revival Programme had commenced. Funding had been received from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and they had started to put woodland estates into management. The programme would run for 4 years to restore and reconnect woodlands.

 

Around 60 ha of new woodland would be created at Frankland, West Cornforth and Thornley that would be planted up and manged by the Woodland Trust and would be fully accessible.

 

Members were provided with details of the ‘Urban Tree Fund’ that was an outcome following Sheffield City Council’s tree removal scheme. A minimum project of £1 million was required with match funding of 75%, 50% of which could be labour costs, so they had submitted an application. The Landscape Delivery Officer provided members with information of possible locations. They had been advised that the grant application was successful, however the offers had later been withdrawn temporarily while spot checks were carried out. Applicant’s would be advised later this week if their application had been successful, they were confident that there bid would remain but there were time constraints and the work had to be complete by April 2020. Procurement was awarded subject to funding to help advance the project and it was hoped that tree planting would be complete January/February 2020.

 

In relation to management of Durham County Council’s Woodlands teams Members learned that all officers were now in Environment Service within the Regeneration and Local Services service grouping. An audit of the woodlands created by the Authority was carried out that indicated since 2000 there had been 500 hectares planted. In relation to hedgerows, there had been enough to stretch from Durham to Nottingham. The Landscape Delivery Officer confirmed that woodlands in County Durham were in a good position in that they all had management plans and woodlands groups were capable to manage sites.

 

Woodland planting would contribute towards achieving carbon neutral targets.

 

The Chair thanked the Officer for a lot of interesting information and a lot of positives were to come from the work. The Chair asked if the Officer could give members an idea of the size represented by 60 hectares (ha) and what was the area of the largest area of the newly created woodlands.

 

The Landscape Delivery Officer responded that 60 ha was equivalent to approximately 40 football pitches. The largest woodland was Thornley at 34 ha, then two slightly smaller areas of woodland but significant woodlands.

 

Councillor Batey referred to the areas identified as part of the Urban Tree Challenge for woodland and asked if local members would be consulted on the proposals.

 

The Landscape Delivery Officer responded that they had a short period of time to pull together the application and confirmed that local members would be consulted once the grant was awarded.

 

Councillor Avery congratulated the Landscape Delivery Officer on a magnificent scheme and advised that the Woodland Trust had taken control of woodlands in his Division, but they had problems with people riding off road bikes through the woodland and had installed security gates to combat this issue. Councillor Avery then asked if the area of new woodland at West Cornforth was on reclamation land.

 

The Landscape Delivery Officer advised that the service used whatever land it could to create new woodlands, but some areas do not have enough top soil to create new woodlands.

 

Councillor Dunn indicated that 60 ha was not a large area and they needed to be planting larger forests. They needed to look at access or acquire more land so that a lot more trees could be planted. He then referred to the County Durham plan where developers claim trees cannot be planted on newly created estates and in these cases tree planting should take place in the local area. Planning Officers needed to ensure that the number of trees planted was equal to those removed.

 

In response to a statement from Councillor Dunn about a planning scheme in Bowburn running out of money the Landscape Delivery Officer advised that there was money available for them to continue with the planting scheme.

 

Councillor Dunn referred to Integra 61 that was being built in his division and appealed to the ecology team to suggest that landowners around the site consider planting trees to form a screen from the warehouses intended for the site. Councillor Dunn confirmed that currently the land was open farmland neighbouring the site.

 

He then referred to the woodland in the Coxhoe area that had lost its volunteers who had looked after the woodlands and they were now struggling with maintenance of the site.

 

The Landscape Delivery Officer advised Councillor Dunn that Kings Wood was on the schedule for maintenance.

 

The Chair enquired how many trees would need to be planted to remove 100Ktonnes of carbon.

 

The Landscape Delivery Officer advised that the 25000 trees planted would only remove a quarter of that and a lot more trees would need to be planted.

 

Councillor Dunn suggested that we should quadruple the number of trees planted as this would mitigate what Durham County Council had to do to address the Climate Emergency by 2050.

 

The Chair referred to the woodland being for the benefit of people in the community, the carbon sequestration benefits of woodlands, increased biodiversity and recreational opportunities and asked the Landscape Delivery Officer if she would present a further report at a future meeting of the Committee.

 

Resolved: (i) That the report be noted.

 

(ii) That the Landscape Delivery Officer provide a further update report.

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