The Haringey Tree Protectors need your help!
Please click on this link to donate:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-stop-insurers-killing-healthy-street-trees/donate
“We are a group of north London tree campaigners that includes local residents, neighbours, environmental campaigners, arborists and tree lovers. Since April ’22 we have occupied a 120-year-old London Plane tree in Oakfield Road after Haringey council announced they were going to fell it due to an insurance claim from two insurers, Allianz and Aviva.
Since then it has been revealed that there are a total of 33 mature street trees also at risk in just 2 streets in the leafy Stroud Green area. There are 200 more threatened across the borough and many more thousands across the country.
Now we have to defend our case in court and need help with the legal fees.”
Why is this happening?
Simply put, since the 1970s, billionaire insurance companies, raking in huge profits, have gradually established enough cases in law (civil or so-called ‘tort’ law) so they can avoid paying to underpin houses in subsidence claims. Insurers, using their own often unchallenged arboricultural reports, have engineered a situation where they can pass costs for underpinning onto councils rather than paying for the work themselves – councils who usually can’t or won’t pay. (An important note here: insurers only have to show the tree is implicated in damage, not wholly responsible for it.) This results in thousands of mature healthy trees being felled.
How can I help?
We are fighting this one tree case with lawyers to try and save it. But this is not about just one tree, this is a test case. With your very appreciated help, our target is much wider. We want to challenge the way insurers are holding residents and councils in a stranglehold despite what they say on their Climate Target pages. Well, this greenwash won’t wash any longer. As well as lobbying our council locally, we want to broaden our reach nationally, to try to establish new policy in statute to tighten protections for existing trees.
Why we need funds?
Sadly, our campaigning work costs money – for legal costs, printing flyers, consulting professionals and occupying trees currently at risk. (We are a small group working voluntarily outside of life, work and family obligations.) We’re also lobbying the council to spend their tree budget on preventative measures to improve conditions for trees – bigger soil pits and irrigation systems, community watering programs, a revival of a tree warden scheme for different wards and many other suggestions.
Please click on this link to donate:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-stop-insurers-killing-healthy-street-trees/donate
