Elm Disease control work in East Brighton Park

Conservation work to protect elm trees across Brighton & Hove will be carried out this week in East Brighton Park.

Our teams have unfortunately identified an outbreak of elm disease, which means we will have to remove 15 juvenile and 5 more mature infected elms near the East Brighton Café.

Removing the trees is a last resort – but it will help to prevent the spread of the disease by the elm bark beetle.

We’ll also dig a trench to sever the roots; hopefully this will stop the disease from travelling through the root system to other trees nearby.

Councillor Alan Robins, Cabinet member responsible for trees, said: “It’s a real shame that we’re having to remove these trees, but we have no other choice in this instance.

“We face a constant battle to protect the city’s historic elm collection, which means that on occasion we have to fell trees, but we only do this as a last resort.

“The work we’re doing to inoculate hundreds of trees and to spot the disease early should mean felling fewer trees – and we’re asking everyone to help us by not bringing elm logs into the city.”

Work is due to begin this week and will take 3-5 days to complete. Access to the car park and café won’t be affected and we’ll do all we can to keep disruption to a minimum.

How we’re tackling elm disease

We’ve been working very hard to limit any spread of elm disease in the city.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve inoculated around 1,400 elm trees in our parks and open spaces, to protect them against the disease.

Our Arboriculture team carries out regular inspections, sometimes using drones, to look for signs of elm disease.

If confirmed, this can sometimes mean felling trees to prevent further spread. However, this is only ever done as a last resort.

We ask our residents to help us in the fight against elm disease by not buying or bringing in logs for winter fuel/firewood if the supplier cannot guarantee that the wood isn't elm.

Find out more about our work to tackle elm disease in Brighton & Hove and how you could help.