We’re facing a climate emergency but Reading Borough Council won’t commit.

Reading Borough Council has NOT committed to increasing biodiversity in the town and last night we found out that we won’t join Oxford, Bristol, Bath and others and commit to doubling tree cover.

Trees help to protect the climate, improve air quality, support more wildlife, reduce flood risk and improve people’s well-being. This briefing, compiled by Friends of the Earth’s Trees campaigning team, details how councils can access land and money to double local tree cover.

In order to tackle the climate emergency and reach net zero emissions as early as possible, the UK needs to double woodland cover, according to research by Friends of the Earth and the Centre for Alternative Technology.

By publicly supporting a target to double local tree cover, councils can send a strong signal to the government to unlock more funding for trees, and encourage local landowners to grow more trees.

Many local authorities – including rural and urban councils controlled by the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party – have already publicly announced a goal of doubling local tree cover and are devising plans to access money and land to deliver it. Here are a few examples:

• Bath & North East Somerset has announced plans to double woodland cover across the district.
• Bristol City Council committed to double tree canopy cover by 2045 as part its One City Plan .
• Hackney Council has plans to double on-street canopy cover and plant 30,000 trees in parks and green spaces.
• Leeds City Council approved a report calling on tree canopy cover to be almost doubled across the local authority area.
• Oxford City Council has publicly supported doubling tree cover across Oxfordshire.
• South Gloucestershire has pledged to double tree cover by 2030 by working with landowners across the local authority area.
• Wirral Council has pledged to “at least double Wirral’s tree coverage by 2030”.

Call on your councillors to double tree cover

Councils often control large expanses of land with plenty of space for more trees. So will you ask your councillors to commit to doubling tree cover in your area?

Please click the link below & fill the form, it’ll only take a minute. You can personalise it if you want to have even more impact.

Call on your councillors to double tree cover

Let’s double tree cover and create a better future for people and wildlife.

Many local authorities see drivers as a “wallet on wheels”, and has accused some councils of using parking fees to plug budget gaps according The AA.
The new figures from Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government data may seems to verify that statement.

Reading council raked in more than £4 million in parking profits last year.

Off-street parking, such as council-run car parks, made the most profit last year, at £2.7 million.

The rest came from on-street parking.

Total income from both on- and off-street parking activity was £8.2 million in 2018-19.

Total expenditure was £3.6m. Additionally, councils may incur interest payments or depreciation on their capital assets such as car parks, though this is not accounted for in these official figures.

The difference between the two – £4.6m – is the surplus or profit.

This is 6% more than the £4.0m made in the previous financial year (2017-18). It is also 11% higher than the £782m surplus that the councils themselves had budgeted for.

Parking charges in Reading went up this year, as the council took back control of eight car parks from operator NCP.

Reading Borough Council is also ending free parking in various streets around the town, which has been met with chagrin by drivers.

And it issued a total of 48,240 penalty charges in 2018/19.

Make sure to bring proof of residency when visiting re3 Recycling Centres
As of 1st February 2020, residents visiting re3 Recycling Centres will be required to present a document that identifies them as residents of the re3 area: Bracknell Forest, Reading or Wokingham Boroughs. Residents are urged to note that the windscreen stickers will no longer be accepted as proof of residency.

The re3 windscreen stickers were introduced in 2016 to enable Meet and Greet staff to positively identify resident of Bracknell Forest, Reading and Wokingham Boroughs. They were issued to over 180,000 households but any residents who moved to the area at a later stage or lost their permit have been asked to bring an alternative proof of residency instead.

The windscreen permits are already being used by fewer visitors and, to save the cost of reprinting and distributing new permits, the councils are asking residents to use commonly held documents to demonstrate they are from the re3 area.

Full list of acceptable forms of ID as of 1st February 2020:
Driving licence
Current council tax bill
Utility bill, bank or credit card statement (issued no more than four months prior to the date of visit)
Bracknell Forest resident e+ card
Photocard bus pass issued by a re3 council
Valid blue badge or residents’ parking permit issued by a re3 council