West Lothian Council has agreed to develop new policies to protect the county’s trees which could mean tougher penalties for unlicensed felling.
The council agreed to call for a report on tightening the rules around planning permission and the protection of trees after a series of disputes late last year brought the ongoing destruction of West Lothian’s landscape into question.
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Stark images of woodland destruction at sites across the county - including the felling of Victorian planting for a housing development at the vast Bangour hospital site - appeared at the same time as the council agreed plans for a new woodland plantation in Armadale to mark the Queen’s Diamond jubilee, and voted to bid for protection for ancient woodland status near East Calder.
Councillors have also complained about the felling of ancient beech trees in Pumpherston to make way for a feeder road for new housing.
There were similar complaints from around the massive Calderwood housing development adjacent to East Calder.
At a meeting last October to discuss the bid for ancient woodland status at woodlands near East Calder, local SNP councillor Carl John described the scenes of destruction around his home as being "like something out the First World War".
“I think our council speaks with forked tongue when we are ripping out 150-year-old trees and hedges only 300 yards up the road," he said.
“It’s really upsetting. I condemn our planners for allowing this. On three sides of my home, it looks like something out of the First World War. There’s not even grass. It’s just mud. We are decimating the countryside.”
Now East Calder’s recently elected second SNP councillor, Tom Ullathorne, has won support for his trees in the community motion at a meeting of the full council when Labour agreed to a composite motion.
The motion said: “There are strong feelings engendered with the removal of healthy historic trees. When the ‘feeder road’ was built around Pumpherston in 2015, three large beech trees each over 150 years old (and noted on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of the area) were removed, where additional planning and care could have avoided this.”
It added: “It is not just charismatic single trees that need to be protected. Along Drumshoreland Road there is a stretch of nationally important ancient wet woodland which was dismissed as scrub in recent developers reports. It is important that we recognise and protect such important habitats.
“We need to value the historic natural, planted and built environments which have contributed enormously to the character and to the development of our unique communities in West Lothian.”
Councillors agreed to call for a report to the March meeting of the Environment Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel (PDSP) looking to provide a review of West Lothian’s biodiversity plans and calling for an inventory of all natural and woodlands assets which would record all historic and significant trees and hedging.
The report has also been asked to collate information on land ownership, and post COP26, the growth and encouragement of conservation groups, tree adoption and community orchards.
Importantly from a planning and development point of view, the report will look at existing legal powers and the potential to strengthen them to curtail breaches of policy and also ways of integrating woodlands into sustainable growth and education programmes.
Councillor Ullathorne, who had tabled his original motion by highlighting the threats of Ash and Elm disease to the county’s tree-scape even without the axe, thanked Labour group leader Councillor Lawrence Fitzpatrick for his offer to work towards the composite motion.
