James Bailey

Start off by saying good morning everyone. And, but also for those of you who want from these parts offer you a warm welcome to Staffordshire, a large rural county steeped in heritage, but also the home of a number of cutting edge organizations, which again, I think sets a good tone for, for a session like this. So, you know, just give some examples there. We for the football fans with the home of ST George's Park, the English Football Association, just up the road a bit further up on the A 50. We have the Staffordshire, the World headquarters for JCB, but we've also got uh for the fund seekers. We've got Alton Towers if you're staying over for a couple of days and it's always worth a visit. I think it's open this time of year. And then of course, we've got, you know, such an iconic prestigious place like the NMA which in this sort of rural setting on a nice daylight today as well. I think it is a fantastic venue, for this type of event. So as Mark says, I'm James Bailey, I'm assistant director for Staffs County Council. I would start from, well, I wouldn't need to say from the start that, I'm really privileged to have been asked to speak today, but I'm also a little bit amused by it because, you know, I'm not a tech expert at all. I'm sitting there listening to Marks presentation thinking all that wonderful voodoo that goes on in the background and thinking, I don't know, it's just magic. I can't even work. I can't even comprehend that mobile phone works all the time. So that's, you know, just fascinating to see and think about the opportunities and possibilities. So, yeah, so tech technology is definitely not my thing. Children definitely vouch with that. And then the second part to that is I probably know even less about trees. So I'm in good company because there's lots of other people who do know what batteries. So that's again, I'm reassured by that. But what I suppose I do try and we try and bring today is over 30 years experience as a local highway authority engineer and I'll share with you just over the next couple of minutes. Not, I've got many minutes here, but just for a few minutes to share with you some of my personal reflections, some of my experiences and so on. They might be different to your own for the other highway engineers in here, but it's just my reflections and that's what I'll share now. And hopefully throughout the rest of the day. So I'll start off with again, my, my reflections really over those 30 years, how things have changed. Historically, I think tree management in my world, it's been something that the highway engineer not really given a lot of thought to, not really had to bother about it. Too much. Whatever we did around trees tended to be things that were just a consequence of things that we were already doing anyway for, for other reasons. So, you know, to give some examples to that, when we were carrying out inspections, we, we didn't carry out tree inspections traditionally a decade or so ago, even probably more recently than that, it was, our inspections were fundamentally just a bolt onto our highway safety inspections for highway inspectors would be focused upon, you know, the defects of the pavement, the safety fences, the street lighting, all those kind of critical pieces of infrastructure and the trees were just sort of in the, in the kind of background they might spot something. But if you focus on all those other things, I think it was quite easy for trees to get overlooked. The intention was that they identified by exception, something that probably needed a bit more thorough. Look at by a specialist hor aural specialists in terms of work that we carried out. Yeah, we might do some tree works if we were doing a major scheme or improvement project and we do some pruning exercise and so on and just manage those trees as necessary. Or we might do a bit of reactive work, particularly in the urban areas from time to time and that was fine. That was ok. It all seemed to work possibly for a number of reasons. It might, I don't know, but it might be because perhaps the tree stock was like less mature then. And of course, there's less problems but generally, it was probably because society seemed to have less expectation on us. They were more accepting that that's how we just manage trees, they tell us things and, you know, we, we've coped with it from as and when necessary, the law was a bit more on our side. It didn't seem to have the, the sort of case studies and the examples that uh you know, give us much more pressure today. And also we got the resources, we weren't so focused on being absolutely critical in terms of getting the value out of every pound we spent, we were a little bit more fluid, a bit more flexible and it just meant we could react to circumstances as and when they arose and that and that was fine. So there wasn't a lot of forward planning going on. It was just sort of make do and bend and as as we carried on and that was fine. Should I press it on? But not me. But today things are radically different. In the last. Well, again, you've probably all heard expressions like pornographic and that type of thing depending on who you speak to. People will say that public sector funding though it's in crisis, particularly local government. So pressures in children's social, children's services, adult, social care, they are phenomenal just in highway sector alone is well publicized that we've got a backlog of about 12 billion pounds in road maintenance talking about carriageway maintenance in the UK. So those sort of funding impressions give us a different backdrop within which to operate society wise. I think, you know, our residents and business is much more demanding these days. Legal system is much more critical. There's a lot more law and legislation and, and citizens themselves have become a bit more of society itself has become a lot more litigious. So they will, they will pursue elements like that. And I think as authorities as well, we're also become increasingly aware as we've just been hearing from King that the increasing sort of change benefits and so on, but available from trees and we're trying to weigh up and think to ourselves. Well, we didn't just managing trees for the sake of managing trees. Actually, we've got to try and balance that with all these benefits that people want and all the opportunities and say a little bit more about that in a minute. So it's just from a higher engineer's point of view, the whole world of tree management has changed from something that was really, really simple. We just kind of had a bit of a secondary thought of something that, but now it is actually front and center in a lot of thinking that we do not just from a high managing highway asset, but also from these wider sort of social economic benefits as well. And it's a far more complex challenge that we faced before. So you just want to bring that sort of take that forward a little bit more. I think I can boil it down in my own mind to sort of five or six key areas or some sort of summary areas of where, what, what those kind of uh elements can be sort of featured into the key, key sorts of themes if you like. The first one is around economics or I suppose financial management is a better description actually. So, you know, in, in Staffordshire, well, all local authorities are under an absolute duty to be able to managing public resources and it's an absolute duty to be able to demonstrate value for money for every pound that we spend. And that obviously means it doesn't need any science or data to tell you, but that's logically about not just doing things reactively and spending money and duplicating effort and so on. It's about clear plans, coordinating your efforts, doing things in a measured proportionate way to be able to get into that and you have to take Staffordshire as an example. We know from some data work that we've done that we've got around 500,000. I'll just check. Actually, that's about 500,000 highway trees in Staffordshire and it's 500,000 trees over a massive geographic area, all different types of species, different clusters on different types of locations, some high risk locations, some others. So actually, that is a really, really complicated environment. And we haven't really got, I mean, even 12 months ago, 18 months ago, we haven't really got a grip of all that might look like we were talking about. Is it a million trees? We didn't really know, but we've done some more work on that now. So we've got that environment. And it's the same for all local authorities across the country. Really, really complicated arrangements. They, they literally, I've sort of dropped it in there, but they literally can't see the wood for the trees in terms of planning context and trying to get value for money for their operations. So, so that is a, is a, is a real challenge for us. And I think it's really about trying to be able to use the data to use information. As I say, we've started that journey now, whit Matt started that journey now to start to quantify what it is. In terms of an asset, we can start putting those plans and programs and delivering that value for money with some confidence and assurance going forward. The other element that I think really flows with that is legalities. So if we don't really know what's going on and we can't manage that tree inventory, how can we have any confidence that actually, we're satisfying our legal requirements. We've got National Codes of Practice to talk about risk based approaches, but actually, we don't even know where our skills were. Historically, wouldn't know where our risk was. We couldn't quantify it. We couldn't target our resources. And the legislation's moving on all the time, but they all felt quite relaxed a few years ago, I think, but then there's been a few cases across the country. We've had it in the rural, I think Staffordshire. Certainly. I think Aberdeen, there's been different cases all across the country where you'd have a tree incident, particularly if someone seriously injured or God forbid, killed as a consequence and all that kind of relatively relaxed policies and strategies and approach which all seem perfectly reasonable and been through cabinet and signed off all of a sudden when the HSE are knocking the cabinet very interested and you know, everyone's putting a microscope over or magnified glass, sorry over all those arrangements. It starts to really focus the mind and you start to realize then just how vulnerable you feel in terms of the lack of data, the lack of information you've got and the lack of plans and records and so on that can sort of stand up to that legal challenge and public scrutiny. And then as Kent has just been saying, I can't give justice to this at all. But when I'm listening to, to Kemp's sort of presentation of other things that sort of all of that social, economic, environmental benefit that's out there, not just in terms of managing our own existing tree stock and what does that offer? What does that create for us? But also in terms of planting programs, the opportunities that exist there. It's just phenomenal. It's just that sense of the public realm. We know it makes places feel better attracted with investment. We just have so much of a great turn for our outcomes as local authorities about actually what it is we're here to do. We're not here to manage trees, we're not here to manage roads. We're here to achieve outcomes as a consequence of doing those things in the right way. But those outcomes of being around people, being able to live happy, healthy, and independent lives. No, I'll just carry that on. So forget the environmental elements. It's an extension of what I was just saying around the social side. But again, it explores then into other areas. So we've got all those other pressures around. How do we use data and how do we use our tree management to be able to inform our things like zero targets just name drops K about six times now, but he talked about tree canopies and how that's slows down the flow of water and quality, sustainable urban drainage systems and so on. So again, how do we quantify that? It's great to say the words. But without the data, without the evidence, we can't build all the business cases and without business cases, it struggle to generate the funding and local authorities are in this cycle where you're competing with adult social care and Children services. And really, we can make such a compelling case if we've got the data and the information to be able to, to make that business case. And that's not just about managing our existing stock, but it's about those future plant planting programs. How do we translate all this, the environmental social and economic benefits into a way that actually is part of the solution. It's not another demand on those finite public funding, but actually, it might be a part of a preventative measure that helps keep people out of care because it creates better places and in investment and security and healthy, safe environments and all that complexity. But it is just just words. But how do we quantify that and put that into something tactical? And I suppose the, you know, one of the ultimate ones for local authorities is the politics. As you all know, you all know about the idea. But there's such a wide range of views about trees and the value that they offer all the nuisance that they cause to so many people, everything from people not wanting to, you know, mess on the cars and shade in, in their, in their homes, right the way through to all the benefits that uh you know, great places and the sort of public realm. But again, with local authorities, there's so much opportunity in that, not just about quantifying those benefits, but just to work smarter within a local authority like Staffordshire, we're actually two tier. So we work with a lot of uh we've got eight district councils as well. Planning authorities looking inside the council, we've got schools, we've got country parks rights of work teams, we operate in complete silos. So there must be huge opportunity and benefit to work smarter across those functions. And then externally with those district councils, they're managing parks and spaces. Again, if we've got some sort of shared systems, things that are available to everyone so much more, I'm sure we could achieve in that space. And then, you know, the bottom line I think is just reflecting as well. There's private businesses, there's residential properties, et cetera, there's so much opportunity and a lot of risk that sits with that as well, we can't ignore it. So how do, how do we nurture that? How do, how do we sort of bring that into the, into the fold? So this last slide is really just a quick summary. To say. So we know we've got data, we've got lots of data, not really sure what data we need, whether it's a data meeting there, we've got data, lots of it. We've got lots of software systems and the capability to develop those software systems. And automation is uh you know, increasingly in our space we can, we got a lot of automated surveys now and I think it's becoming more of a skills requirement, we dealing with skills gaps, more of a capability and more acceptable as well. And really the question is, how do we nurture all that? How do we pull together to achieve better, smarter ways of working, achieve better value, better outcomes? So as I say, thank you for inviting me to take part today. I hope that's the ramblings of a highway engineers of some interest and I will be today for the rest of the day to try and chuck those contributions in as we progress. Thank you. Thank you very much