To receive questions in accordance with the provisions of Council Procedure Rules 12.1 and 12.3 which require members of the public to give at least 3 days’ notice in writing of questions to a Member of Cabinet or Committee Chairman.
Minutes:
The Mayor advised that three questions for Councillor Janice Hanson had been received from members of the public, in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 11, and copies of all the questions were on Members’ tables. He invited Ms Lucy Reynolds to put her question to the Council.
Ms Reynolds asked:
Aside from the space created for one or two more potential market stalls if the trees were removed, what evidence do you have that the felling will have a positive impact on Lancaster’s economy and visitor experience? If a cheaper and more environmentally sustainable solution that benefited the economy and visitor experience was proposed would you consider it?
Councillor Hanson indicated that she would make her response when all three questions had been asked.
The Mayor reported that the second questioner, Dr Rebecca Hibbin, was unable to attend and he had agreed to put her question (in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 11.7).
The Mayor read Dr Hibbin’s question:
The academic literature on crime and environmental design is suggestive of a strong negative correlation between tree cover and indexes of crime, whereby vegetation abundance has been found to be significantly associated with lower rates of violent assault, robbery, and burglary. In addition, the magnitude of this association has been found to be stronger on public lands relative to private. In the light of such academic research to what extent does the council feel that it is sensible to be cutting down the lime trees in Market Square, particularly at a time when cuts to services may result in such outcomes as reduced monitoring of CCTV due to staffing constraints?
The Mayor then invited Ms Katherine Garrigan to ask her question. Ms Garrigan’s question was:
Evidence shows that having trees in our town and city centres has a positive impact on residents’ health and wellbeing. Specifically, the inclusion of trees impacts on cardio vascular and respiratory diseases, mental and physical health and social inclusion, all of which have been identified as local priorities for the Lancaster district by Public Health England. It has been shown that, the larger the trees, the greater their proportional value.
Given that since the Health and Social Care Act of 2012, local authorities and urban planners are required to take account of and support local strategies to improve public health, using health promotion, prevention and protection measures, can we really afford to ignore this wealth of evidence and fell the mature trees in Market Square?
Councillor Hanson thanked those who had submitted questions and gave the following response:
The City Council has stewardship of a significant amount of public land in this District. By way of context the Council is responsible for the management and maintenance of about 7000 trees in the District, (some are ours some belong to the County Council). With regard to your questions I would very much agree that the location of properly managed and maintained trees on public land can provide an enormous range of benefits and as you state in your questions there have been many studies on this subject.
Therefore I very much agree that a wholesale policy of removing Council trees would have a detrimental impact on the District in many ways.
However that is not at all what is being proposed in the report on the trees in Market Square. The report sets out clearly the context and reasons that the appropriate Elected Members in their role as stewards of this District are rightly being asked to consider this issue.
In the period this report has been in the public arena, it has become very clear to me that the trees in Market Square have much significance to the public.
This is something that I have listened to.
Therefore, I would like to retain the trees and also ensure we have in place a realistic and affordable management and maintenance regime in the Square. As such I have asked officers to do some further trials of different cleansing methods and products, further research into best practice and so forth. Once completed Officers will report back to Cabinet in Autumn 2017 with costed recommendations for Cabinet to consider.