Sadiq Khan accused of falling short on trees pledge

Sadiq Khan was today criticised for falling short of promises to plant two million trees in his first term.

The Mayor of London has only planted 175,000 trees despite a pre-election pledge to pay for two million in his first term, according to an FOI.

A borough breakdown reveals that in 2016 and 2017 no trees were planted by the Greater London Authority (GLA) in the City of London.

Similarly no trees were planted by the GLA in Wandsworth, Hillingdon, Richmond and Tower Hamlets in 2017.

However the statistics show City Hall rapidly stepped up its tree programme four-fold last year by planting 107,000 trees compared to just 26,000 in 2017.

In Kensington and Chelsea - where just four trees were planted by the GLA from 2016 to 2017 – a total of 316 were planted last year.

Ealing has consistently planted more GLA funded trees than any other borough over the past three years - planting more than 16,500 last year.

During his 2015 election campaign Mr Khan pledged in a newspaper article that he would plant two million trees if elected as mayor.

He later tweeted the article saying: “I’ll plant 2m trees in London in my first term as Mayor - focusing around our schools.”

This means Mr Khan, who is three years into his first term and faces an election next year, has only planted nine per cent of the trees that he promised he would.

His deputy mayor for environment, Shirley Rodrigues, has previously said he would not be held to the promise because it “was not in his printed manifesto”.

In their latest releases, City Hall says the Mayor is committed to increasing the proportion of trees by 10 per cent by 2050.

Conservative Assembly member Tony Arbour accused the mayor of “panic planting” in the past year in a bid to meet his pledges and added: “While Khan has already backtracked on his pledge to plant two million trees by 2020, Londoners haven’t forgotten about the mayor’s promise to them.

“Unless Khan plants around 200 trees every hour in the final of his mayoralty, he will have broken yet another promise. It is becoming clearer by the day that there is a colossal difference between what this Mayor says and what he does.”

A spokesman for Mr Khan said: “The Tories must be having a laugh if they are accusing the mayor of not taking air pollution seriously, given his world-leading work to improve London’s toxic air.

“Sadiq has already funded the planting of a record 175,000 trees since May 2016, which is more than the previous mayor managed in eight years. In his manifesto Sadiq said he would ‘embark on a major tree-planting programme across London by 2020’.

“This is what he was elected on and, as he works towards London becoming a National Park City – that is exactly what he is delivering.”