Trees for Cities
Expanding urban forestry and green jobs in deprived coastal towns
Lots of coastal towns across the UK suffer not only from high levels of social and economic deprivation, but also environmental impacts such as limited green spaces, poor air quality, high flood risk and low resilience to the effects of climate change.
Trees for Cities’ Forgotten Places programme aimed to address this across seven targeted areas: Bexhill, Brighton, Great Yarmouth, Hull, Portsmouth, Ramsgate and Stockton. The objectives were to increase urban tree canopy cover through large-scale tree planting, engage local communities in nature, and support local employment by creating and retaining green jobs and traineeships.
The £1.8m project – funded with £1.2m from Defra and £600,000 raised by Trees for Cities – ran from November 2021 until March 2023. The charity collaborated with other charities, seven local authorities, community groups and contractors to deliver Forgotten Places, and exceeded most of its targets.
Just under 70,000 trees were planted across 79 locations, almost 15,000 more than the target; and more than 20,000 people planted trees, attended events, received training or were given a tree identification guide, against the target of 9,485. Surveys showed that 72% of volunteers intended to continue caring for their urban trees.
The green jobs and skills development strand helped to create 12 new jobs, retained 44, and supported 12 trainees.
The charity also helped to devise a tree-planting strategy for Bexhill and tree-planting guidance for coastal local authorities, both of which can be used as framework documents by other organisations.
Forgotten Places has been showcased by Defra as a case study for its Green Recovery Challenge Fund programme.
Awards judge and transformation consultant Julie Wilson-Dodd praised the partnership working with local authorities and the private and voluntary sectors, as well as the use of urban forestry to drive local economic recovery.
Judge Karin Woodley, chief executive of Cambridge House, commended the charity’s decision to bring the benefits of nature and climate change mitigation to areas facing multiple socioeconomic challenges. “It’s almost unheard of to have large-scale tree planting in these kinds of communities,” she said. “For that reason, it is very significantly not just another tree-planting event.”
CC Reg. no. 1032154