Case study :Mead Stree Development

As Bristol Tree champions Kerry Chester, Anne Silber and myself applied for our first two Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) in November 2022 to protect fourteen trees in Mead Street BS3. We also sought support from the local councillors.

Mead Street BS3 is part of the Temple Quarter and St Philip's Marsh Regeneration Area. In August 2022, the Bristol City Council gave planning permission to Donard Homes to build 221 homes on the former site of Barts Spices between York Road and Mead Street. None of the trees nor the hedgerow on the site were protected by the council. There is a legal obligation for planning authorities to include appropriate provision for preservation or planting of trees whenever they give planning permission. The Bristol One City Plan commits the council to increase the tree canopy of the city by 25% by 2035.

After granting planning permission, all the trees and the beech hedge on the Barts site were torn out and the ground levelled. At residents’ request, we visited Mead Street to inspect the remaining trees and identified a line of nine mature lime trees and a group of five maples. The photo below shows the limes and two maples.

With the help of the Tree Forum’s Chris Wallace, we mapped the trees including estimating the height of each tree, the extent of its canopy and its diameter at breast height (DBH) and checked for birds’ nests and wildlife. These records were used not only to plot the trees on the Tree Forum map but also for the TPO applications.

You can request a TPO for a single tree or for a group of trees or woodland. In the end we opted to make two separate applications treating the limes as one group as they formed an avenue down one side of Mead Street and the maples as another.

We had looked at the criteria the council had to consider, and we put together some key points for each group of trees to explain why we considered that the case for amenity and expediency had been made. For example, under the heading of amenity we included the fact that a local resident’s group said that cyclists and pedestrians valued seeing these trees. They provided shade in the summer and green interest.

As for it being expedient to make the order, we referenced the destruction of all the trees on the Barts site as it seemed possible that developers might destroy these mature limes and maples unless they were protected.

Update December 2023 TPO-1480 and TPO-1478 have Provisional Status, having been created on 2023-10-17 and 2023-09-12 respectively. Any parties have 28 days to present representations, so that period has expired for both. A TPO stays in force for 6 months and lapses if the LPA does not confirm the TPO in that time.