Roadside trees in Lancashire will be replaced if they have to be chopped down, county council pledges

Lancashire County Council made the announcement after completing an audit of all trees lining the region’s highways - excluding those in the separate Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen Council areas - to assess their condition.

Shaun Turner, County Hall’s cabinet member for environment and climate change, told a meeting of the full council that trees were “a key part of our street scene” - and said that a new management plan for them was in the pipeline.

In the meantime, however, he made a pledge that “any tree identified for removal will now be replaced - either like-for-like or planted elsewhere as part of other planting schemes, [depending] on site suitability”.

The meeting also heard that, having planted 150,000 trees across the county over the past decade, the authority plans to deliver another 30,000, largely in urban areas, by 2025. That is also the point by which it hopes to create 170 hectares of rural woodland.

County Cllr Turner said that the work - and the new tree policy - was all part of a renewed focus on aiding nature recovery in Lancashire and protecting the county’s natural assets.

“We have really ramped up our work in this area, in no small part thanks to our new teams of ecologists and tree specialists.

“We are surveying our 1200+ biological heritage sites across the county, some [of which] have not been surveyed for over 20 years. These will now benefit from positive conservation management advice.

“New and important grassland fungi sites have already been identified with new management plans being put in place.

“Work is almost complete on our new ancient woodland inventory, which will identify all ancient woodland over 0.25 hectares. This will protect these important and diverse woodlands, which, when lost, cannot be recreated,” he warned.

County Hall is also currently working on 400 hectares of peatland restoration projects in the Forest of Bowland, to be delivered over the next two years. That amounts to more than half of the 755 hectares produced over the past decade.