Transport Insights

The shambles that is National Highways’ replacement replacement tree planting alongside the A14 continues, with the government-owned company still not entirely sure what it is doing.

The BBC reports:

National Highways has admitted its “performance on tree planting has not been good enough”, as it looks to put in 50,000 more along the A14 where thousands have died.

The trees will be planted along the new part of the A-road, between Huntingdon and Cambridge, where many of the 860,000 that were originally put in never grew.

The government-owned company said after “identifying losses caused by several factors”, it had started “a 50,000 tree trial to test new measures and inform our future planting regime”.

Vhari Russell, the founder of Creating Nature’s Corridors, welcomed the trial but raised concerns about the trees being planted at the wrong time of year.

I researched and wrote this piece last year for Transport Action Network, which pointed out that to make way for the £1.5bn A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon scheme, 400,000 trees and shrubs were cleared, but National Highways said it would replant more trees than it had felled.

However, Sky News revealed in 2023 that three-quarters of the 850,000 saplings planted to replace veteran trees felled for the project had died. This would be around 600,000 dead trees. National Highways said it would replant the trees at a cost of £2.9m.

The BBC notes that while National Highways said in March 2023 that it would replant 160,000 trees and shrubs, a Cambridgeshire County Council meeting last June heard that sections of the £1.5bn road still looked “like a desert”, leading to local residents planting new trees themselves.

In its one-year-after Post Opening Project Evaluation for the scheme – published in September 2024, four and a half years after it opened – National Highways said:

Lessons have been learned regarding the initial difficulties faced in our tree planting programme, and we have completed a new replanting programme.

Clearly that didn’t do the trick and, even now, the company seems to be setting itself up to fail:

“After identifying losses caused by several factors, including rootstock selection, weather conditions, soil nutrient levels and aftercare, we have launched a 50,000 tree trial to test new measures and inform our future planting regime for all our schemes.”

A spokesperson said the planting of trees had finished, or would be imminently, and that it was “in line with the end of planting season”.

Russell, who lives in Brampton, Cambridgeshire, which the tree screening was looking to protect from noise, said she welcomed the news, but there was “disappointment that they are planting them out of what would be the natural planting season”.

“My fingers are tightly crossed but, having just planted a 35-acre wood at Grafham, we made sure we got everything in by early March so we gave every single sapling the best possible chance,” she said.