Delivering the London Urban Forest Plan
Aims
The London Urban Forest Partnership (LUFP) are delivering nine projects over a three year period to March 2025 with funding from the Defra Trees Call to Action Fund. The funding has increased the capacity of eight LUFP members to accelerate delivery of priority actions in the London Urban Forest Plan. You can find out more about the nine projects below.
Sub-projects
The ‘Delivering the London Urban Forest Plan’ project consists of the following projects:
The GLA will host a three-year LUFP coordinator post. The post will help deliver, monitor and promote the LUFP. They will provide more capacity to help project delivery partners deliver actions. The coordinator will also manage the TCAF programme.
The LUFP coordinator has created a resource hub of information about London’s Urban Forest. This will help groups and individuals learn about and connect to the city’s trees and woodlands.
A collated evidence based will support advocacy work for woodland creation in London. This will particularly focus on the Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land. The advocacy plan will help link landowners and managers with training and support.
It will also develop a pan-London opportunity map and targeted communications map. This will support the creation of realistic targets and delivery of woodland cover across London by 2050.
A tree and woodland skills survey will identify London-specific skills gaps. These will be mapped against reported national trends. Outputs will include good practice case studies.
This will provide a more accurate assessment of the needs of employers. It will also inform work with training providers and employers to lever support for arboriculture skills. Together they will inform the Mayor’s new Green Skills hubs to address London’s current shortages.
This project will develop London Woodland Condition assessment and Indicator template. This will ensure a bespoke and consistent approach to determining woodland quality. This will help guide management and future investment. The long-term aim is to uplift the quality of London's woodland assets, and for this to be easily monitored.
The project will provide training to help woodland managers to be able to assess the quality of their woodlands to a city-wide standard.
Smaller sites less than 2ha have been absent from the Ancient Woodland Inventory. These sites are particularly relevant to London. This project will support more ground surveys to provide a more robust and defensible evidence base. This will increase stakeholders confidence in managing and conserving ancient woodlands in London.
This is the first step in creating condition assessments for London's ancient woodland.
This project will help devise a city-wide response to deer management. Accurate data and best practice will inform the Strategy. The Strategy will set out how to tackle the complex, controversial and sensitive issues of deer management in London. Training will be delivered on assessing woodlands with deer presence and deer management.
Volunteers can help record sightings of wild deer by taking part in the London Deer Survey. A 'citizen science' deer records portal will aim to gain broader public interest and involvement.
The longer-term aim is for London's woodlands to be more resilient from the presence of deer.
Two London Street Tree Planting Coordinator positions will work closely with local communities. They will target planting in areas of multiple deprivation and low canopy cover. A pilot School Trees Project will take place within Lewisham and in other Boroughs.
The project will support volunteers to become tree-guardians. Tree-guardians will take on the care and auditing of street trees.
This project will connect London’s diverse communities with the benefits of trees and woodlands. This will be done through training, workshops, and activities such as tree planting, tree walks, woodland maintenance.
Generation Tree will focus on young people (16-24). The aim is to increase their knowledge and skills around trees, woodlands and arboriculture. Projects will be delivered in places with high deprivation and low/medium tree canopy in London. They will address areas of neglect which prevent access to green space.
This project will support community groups to take action on woodland management and tree planting. This will be through training, resources, mentoring and co-leading occasional practical work. The project will include residents’ groups, minority-led community groups and neighbourhood forums in areas of deprivation.
TCV and LWT will work together to introduce LWT’s London Woodland Condition Assessment Survey (see project above) to community groups.
Trees Call to Action Fund
This project is funded by the Trees Call to Action Fund. The fund was developed by Defra in partnership with the Forestry Commission and is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The Trees Call to Action Fund supports projects which protect trees and woodlands, boost forestry skills and jobs, develop woodland creation partnerships, and engage communities with nature. Grants of between £250,000 and £500,000 will support 12 projects across England in total.
Supported partnership
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