Residents with ash trees on their property are being urged to inspect them for Ash dieback disease as part of a joint campaign by us and Devon County Council.

‘My tree, my responsibility is the new campaign, supported by the Devon Ash Dieback Resilience Forum, which aims to inform owners of trees to look out for signs of the fungal tree disease and to take any appropriate action to maintain public safety.

Councillor Mike Morey, Cabinet Member for Infrastructure, Environment and Culture “Torbay Council has estimated that over the next two years between 1000 to 2000 trees in the bay on council owned land will need to be removed from high risk areas, at estimated cost of more than £400,000 of tree work. Only those trees which are of danger to the public and property will be removed.

“As a land owner we would encourage you also to ensure your trees are inspected on a regular basis, more urgently areas of land that have Ash trees identified.”

The campaign is already up and running in Devon where more than 90% of Devon’s native ash trees are expected to be lost due to Ash dieback in the next five to 15 years.

Across the county there are around 448,000 ash trees within falling distance of the highway that are owned by third parties or on unregistered land. The overall cost of felling all of these ash trees could be more than £70 million.

Find out more visit the ash dieback page.