Dear Castle Point Borough Council,

Trees that are near buildings are often threatened by requests for removal. These requests normally come from homeowners or property owners or their insurance companies after trees are alleged to be causing damage. In many cases these trees pre-date the buildings that are being affected.

I would like to understand more about how this issue affects your local authority and the trees you are responsible for (i.e, you are responsible for maintaining, or are on your land, owned by you, etc).

In particular, I would like to know, over the past 10 years:

- The locations of trees removed by your authority due to property or infrastructure damage, ideally accompanied by their species and the date of removal where possible (locations via GIS data, What3Words, OS coordinates, or addresses as you find easiest)
- How many of/which of these trees were removed due to claims or requests from insurance companies
- How much the council paid to remove each tree (if this can be attributed per removal, or how much the council spent on tree removal each financial year if not)
- How much the council paid out in insurance claims for tree damage to properties (individual claim values preferred, but an aggregate value may be acceptable if the council considers the individual values to be exempt from disclosure)
- The number of trees where removal has been requested, but was either refused, an alternative solution found, or the situation is still ongoing; any breakdown that can be provided (similar to above, e.g, species and location) would be appreciated

Please follow the following principles when considering this request:
- Data at an individual tree level is preferred, but where you consider this can't be disclosed due to commercial or legal agreements (e.g, insurance claims, contractor works) then aggregate data either annually or (worst case) over the whole period may be acceptable
- Some data is better than no data; for example, if data is only available for the last 5 years then that is better than refusing the request

Given this is a request about trees, this request falls under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR) rather than FOI. This carries stricter time limits for responses and fewer exemptions to disclosure. Please treat this as an EIR request.

Yours faithfully,

Lawrence Weetman