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Local authorities

£85m

We have brought in over £85m of external funding, regularly multiplying partner contributions by a factor of six.

10:1

The return on investment in the last ten years has been 10:1. For every £1 invested by local authorities, communities gain £10 worth of benefits from natural and social capital increases.

2/3

Two-thirds of people now use their local woods to walk, relax and play.

Contact us if you work for one of our local authority partners and want to explore how we can collaborate more.  

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Local authority partners

We are passionate about realising our vision: More with trees – Acting together to grow tree cover to 30% across Cheshire and Merseyside; intertwining cherished trees with enriched people, flourishing nature, climate resilience, and rekindled hope.

Our local authority partners are central to our work. Together, we are helping to improve neighbourhoods, address health inequalities, grow our local economy, help nature flourish, and tackle climate change.

Our core local authority partners are Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens, and Wirral. Our Steering Group includes an officer and councillor representative from each of these local authorities, who act as a key links to The Mersey Forest. We also work with a wider range of partners.

Policy support

Our work has a real impact, enriching people’s lives and livelihoods, helping nature flourish, and strengthening climate resilience. This cuts across and delivers on a wide range of local authority and national priorities.

The Mersey Forest Plan is our long-term and strategic guide to the work of our team and partners. It is well embedded into local authority policy, and we are keen to further strengthen and build on this policy support across council services. This will better enable its delivery and help us to collectively realise its vision. We will update this section shortly to include our latest local policy review.

Colliers Moss aerial view

Long-term tree cover ambitions

Our work is guided by mapped long-term tree cover ambitions and “right tree, right place” principles for each local authority area. Together, these contribute to our ambition of 30% tree cover across our area. They reflect that some landscapes and land uses have fewer constraints to increasing tree and woodland cover than others. However, this is a multi-generational endeavour. Current tree cover stands at 13.6%, and in the shorter term, we aim to reach 14.6% to 15.2% tree cover by 2050 across Cheshire and Merseyside.

These can be explored in the Tree Atlas, along with other mapping layers.