Trees, woodland and other key ‘green infrastructure’, such as hedgerows, chalk grassland, meadows, heathland and wetlands, provide huge benefits for people, nature and the climate.
Trees and woodland help us commune with nature and provide enormous benefits for health and wellbeing, biodiversity, air purification and carbon capture. Trees also provide a significant environmental, aesthetic, cultural and economic benefit for our residents.
Our Tree Management Plan sets out how we will manage the current tree population across our borough, where appropriate increasing existing tree canopy and numbers of trees on land we own. We aim to care for our trees, restore neglected treescapes and maintain healthy, resilient, trees and woodlands for the future.
Our Tree Management Plan links with current and emerging policies and requirements around environmental net gain and local nature recovery strategies, as set out in the Environment Act 2021.
Green & vibrant: a long term vision for Epsom & Ewell
A ‘Green & Vibrant’ borough is one of the 5 themes set under the Future40 long-term vision for Epsom & Ewell.
The Tree Management Plan supports this theme and the delivery of the wider vision and priorities set under our Four-Year Plan, including the goal to ‘enhance the borough’s natural assets, preserving and increasing biodiversity’ and to ‘work with partners to reduce our impact on the environment and move closer to becoming carbon neutral’.
It will also deliver elements of the Council’s Climate Change Action Plan and Biodiversity Action Plan as well as linking in with the emerging Local Plan.
