Target reached!
We will use the extra money for legal aid to fight a national campaign to stop the f...
Save Lewisham's Mature Trees!
London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Aim
We need legal support to Lewisham residents who are fighting to save the Senlac road plane tree and for better management of mature trees.
We are a group of residents concerned about insurance companies forcing the felling of mature trees in Lewisham. In the last 5 years 110 trees have been taken down for insurance reasons related to subsidence claims. The current concern is an 80 year old Plane tree in SE12, known as the Senlac plane.
Lewisham Council are refusing to share documents relating to the claims - including the reports that apparently show that the trees are responsible for local subsidence issues. We do not have independent opinion about whether the trees are solely at fault or not but many other properties suffer from subsidence whether trees are near them or not, and many have been underpinned in the past and consequently have no further problems.
A new study of the value of individual trees has highlighted the ecosystem services that mature street trees and individual trees provide, suggesting that we make more efforts to conserve them: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/02/a-uk-tree-provides-hundreds-of-pounds-of-benefits-a-year-report-finds
The council struggle to provide insurance cover for implicated trees because insurance companies want to avoid having to pay out for claims by removing trees rather than properly protecting properties against subsidence, for instance by underpinning. Also, we know that properties may be at further risk of subsidence following tree removal - so not only do we lose the tree, we also don't properly protect the home. We know of at least 5 other cases is happening currently across the country - we are losing irreplaceable mature trees so that insurance companies can save money!
Please donate to help fund our barrister to build a legal case which could lead to a campaign to stop this ecocide - thank you so much!
This project successfully funded on 3rd October 2021