Baroness Grender (LD)

My Lords, Amendment 199 is about heritage trees, and I thank everyone who has stayed for this debate. A special thank you goes to the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, who has worked on this for far longer than me. The existing mechanisms for tree preservation prove consistently inadequate when confronted by development pressure. To halt the continual attrition of irreplaceable ecological and historic assets, we must introduce specific mandatory, statutory safeguards. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for also signing Amendment 199, which achieves this by empowering local planning authorities to make heritage tree preservation orders: HTPOs. A heritage tree is precisely defined as one listed by Natural England based on its exceptional historic, landscape, cultural or ecological importance. They are exceptional—not just any old tree in somebody’s back garden. Natural England is explicitly tasked with creating, publishing and maintaining this register of heritage trees in England. The measure would guarantee that these assets were afforded all the protections of a standard TPO but mandate significantly more rigorous enforcement and proactive care. Under it, the Secretary of State must make regulations specifying that breaches of an HTPO incur additional or higher penalties. Crucially, the system would move beyond reactive enforcement; the regulations must specifically enable the responsible authority, the planning authority, Natural England or the Secretary of State to order the owner or occupier to take specified, reasonable steps to maintain and protect the tree. If the owner failed to comply within a reasonable timeframe, the authority could execute the work itself and recover the reasonable cost. This proposal would ensure that these vital historic assets were kept for future generations. It would be financially enforceable and remove uncertainty. Furthermore, transparency would be mandatory: owners must publicly advertise the tree’s status and penalties for harming it in the vicinity. The provision also encourages collaboration through heritage tree partnership agreements between the responsible body and the owner concerning care and costs. The mechanisms within this amendment would deliver the focused legal protection required for irreplaceable features, moving accountability from discretionary planning guidance to a mandatory framework of enforcement and proactive conservation of our vital heritage trees. I beg to move.