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2023-03-31-accounts

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Annual Report
2022-23
Charity Number 1185165
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Contents

Introductory Pages

4-5 Forewords and Introduction 6 Mission Statement 7 Headline Figures 8-9 Tree Map

Projects

10-11 Residential Planting & Volunteers 12-13 Lewisham Blossoms 14-15 London Blossoms 16 & 17 Grow Back Together

Charity-Wide

18-19 Tree Audit & Tree Care 20-21 Personnel & Partners 22-23 Funding 24-25 Communications 26 Data Summary

Summary

27 Overall Outlook 28 Future Direction 29-31 Financial Statement 32 Trustees’ Declaration`

Report created by Street Trees for Living Charity registration No. 1185165 Chair of Trustees: Xanthe Mosley

www.streettreesforliving.org info@streettreesforliving.org 27 Admiral Street, London, SE8 4HZ

Foreword & Introductions

During the planting cycle in the last year (2022 – 2023), Street Trees for Living has achieved significant progress in prioritising tree survivability, emphasising the “right tree right place” principle, promoting biodiversity, and empowering residents through volunteering.

We recognize that the survivability of trees is a true metric of success. Our ongoing care, including regular watering, maintenance and monitoring, ensures that each tree has the best chance of thriving in the urban environment and benefiting our community.

The principle of “right tree right place” has guided our initiatives. Through comprehensive site assessments, we ensure proper tree placement, considering factors such as soil conditions, pavement width, sunlight exposure, and compatibility with existing vegetation.

Biodiversity has been at the forefront of our efforts. By carefully selecting tree species that enhance local ecosystems, we have contributed to a thriving and balanced environment for our community.

Volunteering has been instrumental in our achievements. The agency and empowerment of residents who generously contribute their time and expertise across various roles within our charity have made a significant impact. Their dedication and passion have been essential to our success.

The joy of volunteering has been a driving force. Our volunteers experience immense satisfaction by actively participating in tree planting projects and witnessing the growth and transformation of trees over time.

Residents’ involvement in our charity empowers them to shape their own environment. We provide a platform for them to contribute their ideas, skills, and time, turning them into active stakeholders in their neighbourhoods. Their support and tireless efforts are the backbone of our organisation. Without them, our charity simply could not exist.

As I reflect on the past four fascinating years as Chair, I feel a tinge of sadness in stepping down from the role. However, I am very pleased and confident as I hand over the reins to an excellent new Chair, Gavin Moore. With his leadership and the exceptional team we have built, I am thrilled to see the charity moving on in such great shape. Exciting times lie ahead, and I have no doubt that under Gavin’s guidance, our organisation will continue to thrive and make a lasting impact.

To conclude, our street tree planting charity has made significant progress in promoting biodiversity, prioritising proper tree placement, ensuring tree survivability, and empowering residents through volunteering. Together, we have created a greener, more sustainable streets. I am very grateful for the opportunity to have served as Chair and look forward to the exciting journey ahead under Gavin’s leadership.

Xanthe Mosley, Chair of Trustees

2022 to 2023 saw STfL develop in new and exciting ways. While retaining and building on its core residential work, planting a record number of trees, we have also employed two new members of staff: Oli Back, Communities Blossom Coordinator and Office Manager, and David Low, Project Manager for residential. The existing team has undergone promotions and increased hours. With this comes more productivity for the charity and the ability to refine and improve its working models. STfL was successful in its bid for the Trees Call to Action Fund with the London Urban Forestry Partnership, partnering with organisations such as the GLA to roll out The School Trees Project in new London Boroughs. We now have Southwark on board and Lambeth in the pipeline, a huge step for the charity and one that will be able to provide street tree benefits to whole new areas of London.

We have developed our partnership with The National Trust, with 100% increase in financial support, and successfully applied to the Urban Tree Challenge Fund Round 4 in partnership with Trees for Cities. We have embarked upon the pilot scheme ‘Grow Back Together’; seeing STfL and Lewisham Council uniting to secure funding, confirm locations and provide marketing materials. This initiated a working relationship with eco-tech start-up group Greentalk, and built on the working relationship with LBL’s Tree Services Officer Jack Delso, a significant appointment of a tree officer whose focus is on an ecosystems approach to street tree planting. 2022-23 has heralded amazing opportunities for STfL, allowing it to successfully build on its charitable objectives and learn on its feet, as it trials new ways of street tree planting with communities, while carefully tending to the residential planting that has facilitated this growth and remains at the heart of the charity.

I am excited to see what 2023-24 brings!

Marie-Claire Denyer, Managing Director

Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Mission Statement

Street Trees for Living’s mission statement remains defined by two charitable objectives:

Charitable Objectives

Street Trees for Living was incorporated as a charity by Articles of Association in 2019.

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Headline Figures

534 trees planted across the year 🌳 96% of trees planted are alive 🩺 🌱

534 trees planted across the year

📝 🏫 👥

296 residents registered interest

18 schools and community groups engaged

500+ volunteers

💝

£128,100 in donations

£224,594 total income 📈

£219,154 in reserves at year end *accounting for bills owed from 2022-23 🗄

Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Tree Map

All trees planted in season 2022-23 Total trees planted: 534

Residential: 360 Lewisham Blossoms: 174

Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Residential Planting

360 trees planted across the year 🌳 296 residents registered interest 📝

£128,100 in donations 💝

Having completed the 12th year of this programme, our residential planting goes from strength to strength with a massive 360 trees planted this season.

Our team of 16 volunteer area representatives worked hard to achieve this number. They canvassed households with leaflets, liaised with interested residents as well as taking on the task of scanning and surveying for suitable planting locations. They raised £128,100 to plant 360 trees. The remaining 84 trees were planted near schools and health centres and were grant funded. The council’s contractor Street Tree Ltd carried out the planting over the winter period.

In spite of a street tree shortage we managed to plant a good variety of street trees including English Walnut, Chinaberries, Chestnut leaved Hollies and Desert Willow trees.

Registered interest enquiries grew to 296, up from 191 for the previous year.

Volunteers

The vital work of our volunteers is what makes our residential programme run. Our Area Reps and Street Reps do vast amounts of work to help residents get trees on their streets. Residents themselves also agree to volunteer to water their trees for the first three years of establishment.

A huge thanks to the thousands of hours done by hundreds of volunteers!

Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Lewisham Blossoms

174 trees planted across the year 🌳 18 schools and community groups engaged 🏫

The planting of avenues of trees close to local schools helps to create green corridors. This reduces speeding traffic and encourages walking to school, reducing the amount of cars on the roads. This in turn decreases the amount of particulates, carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide entering the atmosphere, high levels of which are known to affect respiratory function and stunt lung growth in children, possibly irreversibly. There is also the added bonus of a tree’s ability to prevent dangerous illegal pavement parking directly outside schools, and to help with the dispersion of air pollution.

In 2022-23 Lewisham Blossoms planted with the following community groups:

2 x Children’s Nurseries 2 x Youth Centres 1 x University (Goldsmiths) 1 x Mental Health Care Establishment 1 x Playground 10 x Primary Schools 1 x Secondary School

We worked with youth centres for the first time this year, and consequently have planted over 10 fruit trees in soft verges that the children will water, and also harvest the fruit to cook with and eat when the time comes.

Two of the primary schools we worked with were Grinling Gibbons and Deptford Park Primary School.

Grinling Gibbons planted five trees outside of their school in 2021-22. In 2022-23 they added three extra fruit trees within the school grounds, in a new green and grassy area including benches where children can sit and eat their lunch in the shade and close to the trees.

Deptford Park Primary School, situated on one of the most polluted roads in London, now has 25 new trees in the playground including evergreens, providing screening around the perimeter of the school. They have also planted trees within a new seated area in the playground to provide shade and bring the children closer to nature.

“The trees have been a wonderful addition to our playgrounds. I was delighted when our trees were planted. They thrive in our playground and greatly enrich our urban environment. The trees are an attractive focal point as well as providing our children with an opportunity to nurture them and water them. They also gain first-hand experience of learning how to show respect for living things.

Our trees are much appreciated by the school community - we all need nature”

Ken Johnson, Headteacher, Deptford Park Primary School & STfL Tree Champion

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Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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London Blossoms

This year Street Trees for Living has begun the process of expanding Lewisham Blossoms to new boroughs across London. Following the successful bid to the Trees Call to Action Fund as part of the London Urban Forest Plan (led by the GLA), we have been able to employ a new project coordinator. Their role is to partner with new boroughs and deliver the School Trees Project in those boroughs.

Work has begun on prioritsising which boroughs we should work with, looking at tree cover, rates of deprivation, air quality and distance from our home of Lewisham.

Priorities:

Low Canopy Cover: areas with not many trees 🔲 🔲 Social Need: areas of higher deprivation 🔲 Distance from Lewisham: ease of access 🔲

Low Canopy Cover: areas with not many trees

Poor Air Quality: areas that would benefit from improved air quality

Social Need: areas of higher deprivation

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Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Grow Back Together

On December 22nd 2023 funding was confirmed from the Grow Back Greener fund to launch a pilot of the project ‘Grow Back Together’.

Grow Back Together aims to plant 100 new street trees in Lewisham’s vacant pits, targeting areas of low tree canopy cover, high deprivation, high flood risk and low air quality. A vacant pit is an old pit where a mature tree once stood but which is now empty.

Starting in March 2023, using graffiti, over 100 vacant pits were stencilled with QR codes and tiny urls by LBL’s Tree Officer, bringing the project to the attention of those living, working or travelling through the area, in order to encourage local communities to get involved in ‘adopting’ the pit and eventually becoming the new tree’s ‘guardian’.

Once the pits had been stencilled, residents were then able to express an interest in becoming a ‘Tree Guardian’ and securing a free street tree. They did this by locating a vacant tree pit close to where they live or work, and signing up to adopt the pit through an interactive website created by STfL, Greentalk and LBL: growbacktogether.org

This website allows Lewisham residents to find all of the current GBT vacant tree pits and to either ‘adopt’ or ‘like’ them. Once they have set up an account and created an avatar, they can then adopt a tree and join the waiting list of residents keen to become a Tree Guardian to a tree near them.

Once 100 guardians have been found, a consultation period will take place to gauge public interest in the trees. Once this consultation period is over and the 100 locations have been finalised, the GBT website will inform all of the guardians of these outcomes, sending them watering reminders for the following three years.

Tree Guardians are key to this whole project. Trees are most vulnerable during their first three years due to lack of water, and need support so that they can establish and thrive.

The aim is to find Tree Guardians for all 100 trees in these targeted areas, this helps to reduce contractor costs and ensures the trees are looked after well, supporting STfL’s current tree survival rate of over 96%. The trees will be planted from October - December 2023.

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Tree Audit

The tree audit involves a form being sent out to sponsors, schools and community groups to assess the health and survival of our trees. This is done for the first two years of the trees but this will be extended to three years after planting (due to added pressures of climate change and variability of the urban environment).

The above outlines the results of the audit which are then shared with sponsors, residents and volunteers. Current data shows our survival rate remains above 95%.

Biodiversity

Street Trees for Living aims to follow the 10-20-30 guidance (Santamour, F, 2002) a method of ensuring your tree population remains sufficiently diverse:

Tree Care

The Tree Care Team is led by Bea Mills and is a vital part of keeping on top of the health of the trees we have planted.

The aim of the team is to provide care for STfL trees, particularly during the first three or four years after planting. They remove litter, weed, prune, look for disease and damage and remove stakes and cages when they are no longer needed. The Tree Care Team is a small team of volunteers, with a core of around 5 people although other volunteers often join as well.

The team mainly use information taken from the audit to prioritise our sessions but we also receive requests from sponsors, area reps and the public. This spring, we targeted roads with a lot of fruit trees which should only be pruned in spring and early summer.

A care session might be based on a concern for a particular tree but the team work on whole roads at a time to make a tangible difference to the appearance and welfare of the trees. Some volunteers also do this work on their own time but the majority enjoy doing tree care as a group activity.

After assessing our planting numbers for this season, we planted 32% Rosaceae tree. This is in line with the above but previous years have seen over 40% Rosaceae planting meaning we should be aiming for a larger reduction. Our ultimate goal is to combine our planting figures with borough wide data so we can ensure we get the full picture.

Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Personnel & Partners

Trustees:

Major Partners

Our close partnership with Lewisham continues to go from strength to strength. All of our projects are worked upon in partnership with Lewisham Tree Officers.

HQ:

A new partnership with eco-tech company Greentalk is currently looking strong. Hopeful that we can scale some of our work with them in the future.

Joined in 2022-23:

Volunteer Teams:

The National Trust has been an invaluable supporter of our work. It has generously offered us funding for multiple projects as well as inviting us to some of the regional meetings.

The Greater London Authority brought us into the London Urban Forest Partnership and manage the Trees Call to Action bid for which we are a sub-project.

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Other Partners, Funders & Suppliers

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Funding

To date, Street Trees for Living has always had income above expenditure. This is due to the uncertainty around funds and the hard work of the team to ensure all costs are covered. This year has resulted in a large surplus due to this fact.

With more and more in our accounts we are going to enhance our accounting systems and engage a new accountant to work with our new Office Manager.

Across is our funding breakdown and on page Page 29 are our end of year accounts.

Income Breakdown

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Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Communications

Introduction

Digital communications over the year were managed by a mix of staff and volunteers. During the pandemic a social media team was formed who managed the majority of content and interactions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Madeleine Tuinitra manages the team on behalf of HQ as well as creating monthly newsletters. Marie-Claire Denyer leads on website re-designs with support from some volunteers.

Website

The Street Trees for Living website developed a lot over the year with multiple revisions and improvements. Sign-off for a website re-design was pursued in the trustees meeting which will hopefully drive more traffic in the following year.

Web Traffic:

Overall increases across the year with 17K visits (+16% on previous year) and 12k unique visits (+22% on previous year)

Newsletter

MailChimp has been introduced to keep all of our stakeholders up to date with newsletters being sent out each month. The newsletter is responsive to the weather, time of year and important activities, giving communities an opportunity to engage with our work. Within the newsletters Dom Eliot writes about Street Tree Enthusiast of the Month (STEM): a series of interviews with staff, volunteers and people of interest. We often receive positive feedback to our newsletters with 1000s of subscribers, growing each month.

Subscriber growth: 1,225 to 1,396

Best Performing Posts on Social Media Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin

We’re honoured to be helping a family plant 100 blossom trees along a five-mile circular walk in Lewisham borough to create a living memorial to a young man - Freddy - who died suddenly in his sleep last year. 🌳🌸

Twenty four trees were planted in 2021, another 50 will be planted this autumn/winter with the final trees in autumn/winter 2023/24. Magnolias, Crab Apples and cherries will bloom each April along the streets Freddy used to walk, and in his birthday month.

His father, Archie Forbes, took on an incredible challenge recently to raise funds:

“The last year has been unremittingly dark and planning and planting the tree walk with my wife and daughter has given us focus and kept our heads just above water. Running, cycling and walking have also helped to keep me sane.

Therefore, what better way to raise the rest of the funds for Fred’s walk than running, riding and rambling my way across the length of the UK.”

Click link in bio for a map and to read more about the walk and Archie’s challenge.

(Photos: a dark blue label with details of Freddy’s Blossom Walk and a photo of Archie Forbes during his challenge)

memorial #trees #streetrees #blossom #nature #Lewisham #remember

November 3, 2022 | 66 likes | 3 comments

Twitter

📽️ Our chair Xanthe Mosley on why planting and looking after #streettrees, with the help of our partners and hundreds of volunteers, is not only a legacy for the future but can give joy and #eco benefits quickly. 🌳🌎 😍

You can read more about Xanthe here: https://tinyurl.com/2xxcfmaa

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Street Trees for Living | Annual Report | 2022-23

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Data Summary

STfL uses Smartsheet as its main database, this is managed by Stuart Reed a volunteer in project management, in conjunction with the Chair of Trustees, Xanthe Mosley. Like many aspects of our work, we are hugely grateful and reliant on our volunteers for their work.

The system has improved efficiency and allows easy reporting of our work as seen below. It is particularly important to the Residential Planting Programme. The system is robust and helps keep accurate data, with the team always working to improve efficiency and reduce admin for staff and volunteers.

The Overall Outlook

Overall, the charity is in a good position moving forwards.

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Future Direction

Move Slowly: like a tree we should move slowly as we develop. What we do now is having a fantastic impact on communities, our tree survival rates are almost as good as they can be (96%), we shouldn’t risk this by growing too quickly and over-stretching ourselves.

Grow Slowly: all of our projects benefit from having local knowledge and local connections. As we expand into neighbouring boroughs we should ensure we take time to make new connections with the communities of those boroughs - this takes time and rushing will mean superficial interactions and less meaningful, sustainable relations.

Specialise: there are multiple opportunities in the environmental sector and urban green infrastructure. We are urban foresters specialising in street tree planting and engagement, we should always keep this as a core and not spread ourselves too thin. Become experts in street trees and engagement with communities.

Analyse: to date, we have done a great job at galvanising passion and getting things done. As we enter a new phase of work, looking to become a larger charity, we should build more robust analytic tools to demonstrate our value, help access new funding, guide strategic thinking, and operate more efficiently.

Collaborate: the only thing better than a tree is lots of trees. The natural world functions as a network of systems, everything works together and so should we. Where there are opportunities to work outside of our scope (e.g natural flood management or sustainable drainage systems) we should do this with partners who specialise in those fields. Where there are projects with lots of stakeholders we should talk to all of them. Our success relies upon good collaboration.

Consolidate: this year has seen a huge increase in our output. New staff, new projects and a record number of trees planted. We should consolidate our work and make sure we keep delivering our core projects to the highest standard

Final Accounts

STfL has a policy to hold unrestricted reserves to the value of at least 5 trees. Currently this would be £2,500. The annual running costs include insurance, bank charges, IT services and other miscellaneous expenses. The reserve amount will be recalculated annually to take account of any changes to the following year’s predicted expenses to hold reserves for 6 months running costs.

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The board of trustees have compiled this annual report in line with their duties in Section 4 of 2006 Act to have due regard to guidance on public benefit published by the Commission.

Contact Details: streettreesforliving.org info@streettreesforliving.org

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