THE ENVIRONMENT BILL AND STREET TREES
The Environment Bill contains an interesting proposal in relation to street trees and which will be of great importance to highway authorities. Unfortunately, it is let down by problematic draftsmanship. My original feeling was that this would be a short introduction to a conceptually straight-forward set of draft provisions. Unfortunately, one comes across problems of draftsmanship from the outset and so the piece is much longer than I ever intended. So be it ! Introduction Trees are, at the same time, both important and problematic. On the one hand, they make an important contribution to the reduction of carbon dioxide, add to the character and appearance of both urban and rural areas, aid the mitigation of unpleasant particulates, aid sustainable drainage and can be of cultural importance to those who see them as providing to a ‘sense of place’. On the other hand, they can disrupt footways, shed leaves (which can make footways slippery), obstruct highwa