Issue details

City of York Council is a long-standing member of the White Rose Forest, the community forest partnership for North and West Yorkshire. The Partnership works to support tree planting across to further the region’s collective nature recovery, climate change mitigation/adaptation and access to green space objectives.

In 2024 the council refreshed its commitment to the partnership through the WRF partnership agreement. Through its membership, the council has benefitted from significant grant funding and access to specialist expertise to support the tree planting in York including York Community Woodland and the ‘Green Streets’ urban tree planting programme.

WRF activities over the past five years have been guided by the WRF Strategic Plan 2020-2025. Over the past 12 months, WRF has worked with partners to refresh the Plan to guide future work covering the period 2025-2050. Whilst the refreshed Plan contains constituent local authority tree canopy aspirations there are no binding commitments or financial implications associated with the Plan.

Constituent local authorities that make up the partnership are being asked to endorse the draft Plan so that it can be formally launched on 1 August 2025, Yorkshire Day. The Executive Member will be asked to endorse the draft WRF Strategic Plan 2025-2050.

The Council aims to give the same 28 days’ clear notice of non-key decisions as it does for key decisions, but in exceptional circumstances this may not be possible. It has not been possible to give 28 clear days’ notice for this item due to changes in scheduling for the new municipal year and as such it is now being published to the Forward Plan with less than 28 days’ notice, with the agreement of the Leader in consultation with the Chief Operating Officer and the Monitoring Officer.