Following the referendum in May 2022 the Ilkley Neighbourhood Plan was  adopted by Bradford Council on 8th June 2022.   It forms part of the adopted Development Plan for City of Bradford Metropolitan District, and is given full weight in determining planning applications within the neighbourhood area.

Within this plan there are indicators for a trees strategy:-

Page 32 Policy INDP5 – Encouraging High Quality and Zero carbon Design

Paragraph j

j) Street trees help reduce traffic speed, provide shade and shelter and absorb pollution and will be protected and promoted. Consideration must be given to retaining street trees within development proposals including those with Tree Protection Orders (TPOs). Where the removal of street trees is unavoidable (for example due to disease) they should be replaced with a tree of appropriate variety. Street trees will be promoted in new developments

Planning Applications may include a proposal to fell one or more trees or impact trees in other ways by damaging their roots for example.
The Trees Officer in the Planning department is Simon Keenan and he often speaks out on the side of the trees.
You can view his comments and much more by going to the  planning applications on Bradford Council’s Planning and Control website which you can access via:-

https://planning.bradford.gov.uk/online-applications/

You can search for particular planning applications by address, postcode, reference number , etc.

You can access the documents associated with an application including the Tree Officer’s comments if he has made them.  For large developments like the 35 houses proposed on the Skipton road there may be a professional tree survey.  You can find this application by using the reference 5075

Under the Documents tab for this application there is a daunting list of 68 documents.  To find Simon Keenan’s view look for  Consultee Comment  and under the description heading CONSULTEE: TREES TEAM.  You can also view Ilkley Town Council’s comment on the scheme which in this case is Object.

Click on the Comments tab and you can make a comment yourself or read other comments.

Advanced Search for Trees
If you go to Advanced Search you can select Ilkley for the Ward and Trees for the Development Type and a date range.  This will return all the applications that involve trees

Policy EN5
This is sometimes quoted by the Trees Officer.  It specifically refers to how trees should be considered in making decisions on planning applications.
It was adopted in 2017 as part of Bradford Council’s Core Strategy Development Plan.  The full policy can be viewed around page 237 of this plan see:-
https://www.bradford.gov.uk/Documents/planningStrategy/10/Adopted%20core%20strategy/1%20Core%20Strategy%20full%20document.pdf

You can view just the EN5 section here:- Policy EN5 Short

Bradford’s Planning department also administers Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) and the protection trees in conservation areas receive.

You can access the live version of the TPO map here

Some things to note:-

1. The link opens with a map of the whole of Bradford.  To get to Ilkley type an address into the box at the top left.
2. The map is very slow to load
3. The pink shows the conservation areas
4. If you click on a tree you can drill down into the detailed TPO documentation which includes the type of tree.
5. The dotted black lines represent groups of trees which have TPOs applied to them.  If you click within the lines you will get the details of the TPO.

In the TPO documentation the location of the trees is referenced using the national grid system.   You can use https://gridreferencefinder.com to show where this is.  It also provides you with a conversion to decimal latitude and longitude which you can use to find the location on  google.com/earth