In September, Lewes Town Council unanimously passed a motion promoting the rights of trees, hedgerows and woodlands within the town.
The motion, put forward by Councillor Dinah Morgan and drawing on work by the Rights of Our Trees group (ROOTs), sets out ten proposed rights for trees:
- The Right to Life
- The Right to Flourish
- The Right to Respirate
- The Right to Healthy Soil
- The Right to Water
- The Right to be Restored
- The Right to Representation
- The Right to Informed Decisions
- The Right to a Precautionary and Preventative Approach
- The Right to Complete Natural Life Cycles
At first glance, the language is striking. It might even suggest that trees in Lewes have acquired a new legal status.
They have not.
The legal position is considerably more nuanced, but the motion is nevertheless interesting because of what it may tell us about the changing way in which local authorities approach trees, the environment and decision-making.
What does the motion actually do?
The most important distinction is between a legal right and a policy commitment.
The Lewes motion does not create new substantive legal rights that can be directly enforced in the courts. A tree cannot, for example, rely upon its newly declared “right to life” in the same way that a person might rely upon a statutory or human right.
Instead, the Council has committed itself to using the ten rights as a framework when making future decisions.
The motion describes the approach as a way of reconsidering the relationship between people and the natural environment. In practical terms, the Council intends to incorporate these principles into relevant Town Council policies and decision-making and, where legally permissible, to take them into account as material considerations.
That is an important qualification.
A town council cannot simply create new planning law or override existing statutory frameworks by passing a motion. Decisions must still be taken within the powers given to the Council by legislation and in accordance with established principles of public law.
What the motion can do, however, is influence the Council’s own priorities and the weight it chooses to give to environmental considerations where it has discretion to do so.
The ten rights may therefore become a reference point for future discussions about development, management of public land, tree removal, replacement planting and wider environmental policy.
Where have the ten rights come from?
The motion draws heavily on a toolkit developed by the University of Sussex Environmental Justice Law Clinic.
That toolkit is significant because it provides considerably more detail about the philosophy behind the ten rights and how they might operate in practice.
At its heart is the idea that trees, woodlands and forests should be recognised as having inherent value rather than being viewed solely as assets or resources for human use.
The toolkit goes further than the present Lewes motion. Its broader ambition is for the ten rights eventually to be recognised within law and policy and for ecological resilience to be prioritised when decisions affecting trees and woodland are made.
Seen in that context, Lewes Town Council’s motion is less an attempt to rewrite the law overnight and more an attempt to embed those principles within local decision-making.
What has Lewes Town Council committed to?
The motion contains a number of practical commitments designed to give effect to the Charter.
These include integrating the principles into relevant Council policies, promoting consideration of tree rights in decision-making and supporting efforts to protect important trees within the town.
There is also a strong emphasis on community involvement.
The Council has indicated that it intends to engage with organisations including ROOTs and the University of Sussex Environmental Justice Law Clinic and to support well-evidenced community proposals relating to veteran, ancient and culturally significant trees.
It has also committed to greater transparency, including reporting on progress and making information publicly available.
That may ultimately prove to be one of the more interesting aspects of the motion. Its significance may lie less in the language of “rights” itself and more in whether it changes the process by which decisions concerning trees are made.
Could these rights affect planning decisions?
Potentially, but within limits. The motion refers to the rights being treated as material considerations where this is permitted by law.
Whether something is capable of being a material planning consideration is ultimately a matter of planning law. A local policy or political commitment cannot automatically transform a consideration into one which must lawfully influence a planning decision.
Similarly, the weight to be given to any material consideration is generally a matter for the decision-maker, subject to the usual public law principles.
So the Charter cannot provide trees with an automatic veto over development, nor can it displace existing planning legislation, Tree Preservation Orders, conservation area controls or other statutory regimes.
What it may do is encourage environmental impacts on trees to be identified earlier, investigated more fully and given greater prominence within decisions made by the Council.
That distinction will be important if the principles begin to appear in planning debates.
Is this part of a wider movement?
The idea of granting legal rights to nature is not new.
Different jurisdictions around the world have experimented with recognising legal personality or enforceable rights for rivers, ecosystems and other parts of the natural environment.
The Lewes approach is different because the Council has not purported to confer legal personality on trees. Instead, it has adopted a voluntary framework based upon the concept of rights.
Nevertheless, the motion sits within a broader debate about whether existing environmental law adequately reflects the value of the natural world and whether concepts traditionally associated with human rights could play a role in environmental protection.
For lawyers, planners, arboriculturists and local authorities, that makes Lewes an interesting case study.
What happens next?
The real significance of the motion will only become apparent when the Council begins applying it to actual decisions.
Questions will include:
- How prominently will the Charter feature in Council reports?
- Will it materially affect decisions concerning tree removal or development?
- How will the Council reconcile a tree’s stated “right to life” with competing considerations such as public safety, development, property rights or infrastructure?
- And will other local authorities follow Lewes’s example?
Those are questions that cannot yet be answered. For now, the important point is that trees in Lewes have not been granted new legally enforceable rights.
Instead, Lewes Town Council has adopted a framework intended to influence its own policies and decision-making and to give greater prominence to the protection of trees, hedgerows and woodlands. That may sound like a subtle distinction, but legally it is a very important one.
Whether this remains primarily a statement of environmental principle or becomes part of a wider movement towards legally recognised rights for nature will depend upon what happens next. Lewes may therefore be less the end of the story than an interesting place to start.
If you are a local authority, developer, landowner or professional dealing with a dispute or decision involving protected trees, planning controls or tree-related risk, Tree Law can help. We advise on the legal framework around trees and help clients navigate the point where environmental protection, property rights and development meet.
Get in touch with Tree Law to discuss how we can help.
