Terms of Service & Privacy Policy

Trees for Streets, is the National Street Tree Sponsorship Scheme, a charitable not-for-profit project. It is run by the charity, Trees for Cities, and is funded by DEFRA through the Green Recovery Challenge Fund. We promote and raise funding for street tree sponsorship schemes on behalf of local authorities.

We help people get involved in donating money towards the planting of new trees within participating local authority areas. We also (sometimes) help people to take on the job of watering or maintaining these trees, thereby creating in-kind donations.

We do not run local tree sponsorship schemes ourselves, we simply help to promote and fundraise for these schemes, and create community engagement in them.

Trees for Streets project c/o Trees for Cities, Prince Consort Lodge, Kennington Park, Kennington Park Place, London SE11 4AS. Trees for Cities is a charitable company registered in England and Wales with registered company number 2874642 and registered charity number 1032154.

We help you to find tree sponsorship schemes in the locations you are interested in. We do this by trying to list details of every street tree sponsorship scheme in the UK. 

Where we are working with a local authority, we will publish information on their scheme, along with the application forms and payments mechanism to make a sponsorship donation. In conjunction with the local authority and any local delivery partners, we will help, where possible, to get your sponsorship confirmed, and to support your ongoing involvement with the sponsored tree.

Where we are not working with a local authority, and they are running a sponsorship scheme, we will endeavour to list a short description of the scheme, and provide a link to the third party website with further information about this scheme. We can take no responsibility for either accuracy of these listings or the use of any third-party websites you visit after leaving the Trees for Streets website.

Where we are not working with a local authority, and they are not running a sponsorship scheme, we offer the residents the chance to express an interest in sponsoring a tree in that local authority area, should that opportunity ever arise. We will pass your information to your chosen local authority to request them to contact you.

People can use our website to find both schemes of councils we are working with, and schemes from councils we are not working with.

With participating councils, we host the application forms to request a sponsorship on this website. 

Each participating local authority has published the details of their scheme on this website, within their own ‘Scheme Details’ document, which is available on each council’s landing page. Please read these details, as they outline what your donation is being put towards, and how they will manage these trees.

Please note that you are making a charitable donation, which in no way creates a contract between you, Trees for Streets, Trees for Cities, or the local authority to who is managing the scheme. Each new tree is fully owned by the local authority.

With non-participating council schemes, we provide a link to a third-party website (usually a local authority website, but sometimes a local charity website), where the scheme is hosted. We cannot be held responsible for any content on those third-party websites, as we are simply linking you to them.

With participating schemes, people can fill in a request to sponsor a tree on this website. We capture information needed by the relevant local authority to make a decision about whether a request to sponsor a tree can go ahead. We also use a third party payment processor to capture the payment details for the donation, so that the payment can be made if the sponsorship request is approved.

A request to sponsor a tree is sent to the relevant local authority, who will determine whether the sponsorship can proceed. This will be determined by whether the council is willing to plant a tree at the location specified in the request.

A request to sponsor a tree may be approved immediately on submitting the request if the tree being sponsored is located at a pre-approved location. In this instance, your sponsorship donation will be taken straight away.

The local authority will let us know whether the sponsorship can go ahead, and at this point we will ask our payment processor to take the sponsorship donation using the payment details provided.

The council will, in certain circumstances, need to contact the person making the sponsorship request, this may be if they want to discuss the exact siting of the tree or the need to consult neighbours.

The local authority will keep record of all successful sponsorship requests, so that they know who you are with regard to any future contact you may have with them regarding the tree you have sponsored.

If you have agreed to water the tree you are sponsoring, then we will send you watering reminders during the summer months during the establishment period (3 summers), on behalf of our participating councils.

Some councils work with local partners e.g. conservation groups, who may work in partnership with the council to promote this scheme, and to help with the establishment and maintenance of the tree you have sponsored. If the local partner is involved with your tree, then your council may put them in touch with you.

If you choose to make a donation to sponsor a Memorial, Celebration or Dedication Tree using the forms on this website, your request to sponsor that tree has already been pre-approved, and your donation payment is immediately processed. We will confirm by this by email. We will also confirm with you when the tree you have donated towards will be planted.

Your details will be shared with the local authority as it is their scheme, and they will manage the planting and maintenance of the tree and will need to deal with any enquiries you may have about the tree.

Each participating local authority has published the details of their scheme on this website, within their own ‘Scheme details’ document. Please read these details, as they outline what your donation is being put towards, and how they will manage these trees.

It is worth highlighting here, that you are making a charitable donation, which in no way creates a contract between you and us, or the local authority who is managing the scheme. Each new tree is fully owned by the local authority.

Crowdfunding is a mechanism whereby a group of people, businesses, and organisations can contribute money to collectively fund a project. In the case of campaigns appearing on this website, monies donated will be used to support tree planting projects that have been approved, managed and owned by participating councils. Effectively you will be donating money to your council to use to plant trees in your local area.

If you choose to make a donation to a Crowdfund Campaign via the Trees for Streets service, your donation will be processed immediately. We will confirm this by email. Trees for Streets will pass your donation to the council within whose area the campaign is running, so that the council can deliver the funded tree planting. Any monies left over after the planting outlined in any crowdfunding campaign, will be used by that council for tree planting in other parts of the local area.

The details of each campaign will be published on the campaign pages on this website, and it is these details you should use to make your decision whether to make your donation.

It is worth highlighting here, that you are making a charitable donation, which in no way creates a contract between you and us, or the local authority who is managing the scheme. Each new tree is fully owned by the local authority.

The charity makes a charge of £50 to the council for each tree sponsored through crowdfunding. This is used by the charity to cover the costs of running the Trees for Streets service.

The Trees for Streets scheme, run by the charity, Trees for Cities, has agreement with participating local authorities to raise funds for tree planting. All tree planting, both individual and larger schemes are fully owned and managed by these councils. All crowdfunding schemes will have been approved by these participating councils, prior to making them live to the public.

It will sometimes be the case that we will work with an individual or organisation who has taken on the job of posting and promoting one of these approved schemes on to our funding platform, on behalf of their local council.  

If you are this person or represent this organisation, you will be known as the ‘Campaign Manager’ and must abide by and the accept the following terms.

• You will be provided with a username and password to access the administration parts of the campaign they are involved with. You must keep these details secure and only share them with authorised individuals within their organisation.
• To provide accurate information about themselves within the administration part of the website.
• Trees for Streets can refuse you access to the logged in parts of the website, if it has cause to think that the you are breaking any rules listed here or is acting in a way that it deems may bring Trees for Streets, the council, and the campaign into disrepute or creates risk reputational damage.
• You will be provided with a username and password for the purposes of accessing the Campaign to set up and then to administer the campaign.
• You will set up the campaign using accurate information, and with content that you are fully confident you have permission to use in this setting.
• You accepts that Trees for Streets, has the right to edit the details of the campaign and to give permission to put the campaign live.
• You will work to promote the campaign within your community. You will be responsible for the accurate representation of the campaign in any communications you produce.
• To inform Trees for Streets immediately if you are aware that an unauthorised person or organisation has gained access to your ‘Account’.
• There is no charge made to you, however, in order to cover the costs of running Trees for Streets, a £50 charge is made to the participating council per funded tree. (This has already been agreed with your council).
• You acknowledge that the content on the Trees for Streets website (images, video, words) are subject to copyright, and therefore recognise that permission must be sort to use any content within the promotion of the campaign you are involved in or for any other purpose. You will not gain any intellectual property rights through involvement with Trees for Streets.
• You must ONLY link to the homepage of your campaign on any promotion.
• You must ONLY use the account area to manage Campaign(s), and must not introduce any code or virus or other. including, without limitation, by the introduction of computer viruses, logic bombs, Trojan horses, worms, harmful components, corrupted data or other malicious software or harmful data) or otherwise misuse the Site (including, without limitation, by hacking).
• You must not violate any Applicable Law through your use of the Site;
• You must not collect or store personal data about other users of the Site other than in accordance with the Privacy Policy;
• You must not post any material that is illegal, false, misleading, untruthful or inaccurate, use language which is threatening, defamatory, offensive, pornographic, obscene, indecent, seditious, abusive, liable to incite racial hatred, discriminatory, menacing, scandalous, inflammatory, blasphemous, in breach of confidence, in breach of privacy, or which may cause unreasonable annoyance or inconvenience or that would be reasonable deemed inappropriate within the setting of crowdfund campaign raising money for the local council to plant trees.
• You must only promote the crowdfund campaign, not to promote any commercial organisations.
• If you decide to cancel your account and or no longer want to be involved in a live crowdfund campaign,  or Trees for Streets, has for the reasons mentioned earlier decided to refuse access to the account, then Trees for Streets will decide whether it will continue to run the campaign, or whether to close the campaign and whether to pass monies to the council to plant trees with the monies raised. If it does not pass monies to the council in this instance it will attempt to refund the supporters of the campaign their original donation.
• All content, images, video submitted to the site by you, automatically confers a non-exclusive unlimited licence to Trees for Streets to use that content to promote the campaign and the fundraising services it offers.
• The local council is deemed to be the Project Owner for the purposes of approving any schemes which are being funded, and for delivering of that scheme, which thereafter falls into its management and ownership.
• You and anyone connected with you will always acknowledge Trees for Streets in all communications about the campaign and the project.
• You are expected to answer questions from funders and prospective funders in a timely and polite fashion. If it is felt that the communications are not polite or may have a negative impact on the project, the council, Trees for Streets – then Trees for Streets reserves the right to remove this functionality and/or refuse access to the account.
• Trees for Streets accepts no liability whatsoever for any direct, incidental, consequential or indirect loss or damage, loss or corruption of data, loss of profits, goodwill, bargain or opportunity or loss of anticipated savings or any other loss resulting from your access to, reliance on, or use of, or inability to use the Site and the Content, however caused and whether arising in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise, and whether or not Trees for Streets was aware of the possibility of such loss or damage.

We use a third-party payment processor, called Stripe, to capture your sponsorship donation payment. We use Stripe because:

a)     they have a solid track record of providing a very secure payment process

b)     it means that we never have to store your payment details ourselves.

Stripe specialises in securely storing payment information and does so for millions of transactions.

If you want to learn more about Stripe, please visit their website https://stripe.com/gb/about

If you are requesting to sponsor a street tree, and the local authority needs to approve the sponsorship, then we will only trigger the payment once the local authority have confirmed to us that the sponsorship can go ahead. This may take 3 – 16 weeks. In the meantime, your payment details will be held securely by Stripe. 

If you are requesting to sponsor a tree and it is already pre-approved, then payment will be taken immediately, as will happen if you make a donation to a crowdfund campaign. It is likely that Memorial, Celebration or Dedication Tree sponsorships will be pre-approved. Most street tree sponsorships need approving by the local authority, unless they have already provided a pre-vetted location.

We try to list all street tree sponsorship schemes, whether we have a working relationship with the council or not. When a council has no scheme, we create the opportunity for a user of our website to fill in a form with their contact information, and to give us permission to pass that information to the local authority. This will include a message to say that the user would be interested in sponsoring a street tree if ever the opportunity should arise, and that the user would like to see that council taking part in the Trees for Streets scheme.

There are a number of places on our website where we may ask for information from you.

• When you apply to sponsor a tree
• When you donate to a crowdfund campaign
• When you make an Expression of Interest
• When you sign up for any Trees for Streets communications
• When you sign up for any Trees for Cities communications (Trees for Cities privacy policy)

Street tree sponsorship 

When you request to sponsor a tree, you fill in information relating to the location you’d like the tree, tree preferences, your contact information, and your payment information.

Only Stripe, the third-party payment processor, has access to your payment details. These are held securely. 

Trees for Streets, the relevant council, and any relevant local council tree partners, will have access to your contact information, along with the tree and location information. This information is used only for the purpose of managing your street tree sponsorship. You may be contacted by Trees for Streets, your council or their local tree partner only in relation to the sponsorship scheme.

The council or their partner might contact you about the tree, the location, or the watering of the tree (if you’ve agreed to do that), and whether you’d like to get more involved with the scheme locally. The council may also contact your neighbours to see if there are any objections or concerns to you sponsoring a tree at a particular location, and so might contact you about that.

Trees for Streets will be in contact with you in regard to setting up your sponsorship, planting dates, troubleshooting, watering reminders, and how to get more involved locally.

We will only hold your data in relation to your sponsorship for up to 3 summers after your tree was planted, unless you’ve made a Gift Aid commitment, in which case we are required to hold your information for 7 years.

Memorial or celebration or dedication tree sponsorship

When you request to sponsor a Memorial, Celebration or Dedication Tree, you fill in information relating to the location you’d like the tree, tree preferences (when offered), your contact information, whether you’d like a plaque along with wordings (if offered), and your payment information.

Only Stripe, the third-party payment processor, has access to your payment details. These are held securely. 

Trees for Streets, the relevant council and any relevant local council tree partners, will have access to your contact information, along with the tree and location information. This information is used only for the purpose of managing your sponsorship. You may be contacted by Trees for Streets, your council or their local tree partner only in relation to the sponsorship scheme.

The council or their partner might contact you about the tree, the location, any plaque information and the planting. 

Trees for Streets will be in contact with you in regard to setting up your sponsorship, and the planting of the tree.

Expression of interest

When you register an interest in sponsoring a tree with a local authority that does not offer street tree sponsorship, we will pass your details to that local authority, in the hope that they may contact you if they can offer you the opportunity to sponsor a tree, and to try to encourage them to setting up a tree sponsorship scheme with Trees for Streets.

Crowdfunding

When you make a donation via our crowdfund service, you will fill in your contact information, and your payment information.

Only Stripe, the third-party payment processor, has access to your payment details. These are held securely. No one else has access to this information.

Trees for Streets, the relevant council, and any relevant local council tree partners, will have access to your contact information. This information is used only for the purpose of managing the crowdfund campaign. You may be contacted by Trees for Streets, your council or their local tree partner only in relation to the specific crowdfund campaign.

The council or their partner might contact you about the watering of the tree (if you’ve agreed to do that), and whether you’d like to get more involved with the scheme locally. 

Trees for Streets will be in contact with you in regards your donation, the campaign, planting dates, trouble-shooting, watering reminders, and how to get more involved locally.

We will only hold your data in relation to your sponsorship for up to 3 summers after the tree(s) have been planted, unless you’ve made a Gift Aid commitment, in which case we are required to hold your information for 7 years.

Trees for Streets will only capture data that is necessary to perform the service or the task that the data was asked for in the first place. 

The data we would usually capture via our online forms will include name, address, telephone, emails, tree and tree location data, and what services you’ve opted into.

Any payment data you provide will be captured ONLY by Stripe, the third-party payment provider. Neither Trees for Streets, nor your council are provided with this information. 

As part of the registration process, we will ask you if you’d like to ‘opt-in’ for newsletters and updates from Trees for Streets and/or Trees for Cities. 

If you agree, they will contact you with marketing type communications. This may include information on projects and fundraising activities and other ways to support the charity. We will never sell your contact details to a third party.

We place great importance on the security of your personal information and take appropriate measures to ensure that the information disclosed to us is kept secure.

We undertake regular reviews of who has access to information we hold to ensure that personal data is only accessible by appropriately trained staff and contractors.

Despite all of our precautions however, no data transmission over the internet (including email) can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.  So, whilst we strive to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of any information which you disclose to us online, and you must understand that you do so at your own risk. 

International transfers of personal information   

For financial and technical reasons on occasion we use the services of a supplier outside the UK.  

In such cases we take steps to put in place suitable safeguards to protect your personal information when processed by the supplier, such as the application of UK/EU approved standard contractual clauses. If you would like to receive further information about our safeguards and a list of organisations with which we work that are based outside the UK please contact:

• Write to: (Trees for Streets) Data Protection Lead Trees for Cities, Prince Consort Lodge, Kennington Park, London SE11 4AS 
• Email: dataprotection@treesforcities.org

If at any time you wish to change how we communicate with you, or update the information we hold, you can update your preferences by clicking on the button at the end of all email communications or by getting in touch with our Marketing and Communications Team:

• Email: info@treesforcities.org
• Write to: (Trees for Streets) Marketing & Communications Team, at Trees for Cities, Prince Consort Lodge, Kennington Park, Kennington Park Road, London SE11 4AS

All such requests will be actioned within 28 days. 

If you have any questions or concerns about how your data is being managed, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

• Email: dataprotection@treesforcities.org 
• Write to:  Trees for Cities’ Data Protection Lead (Trees for Streets), at Trees for Cities, Prince Consort Lodge, Kennington Park, London SE11 4AS.

You retain the control of how we use your personal information and have the right to ask us to stop processing this data.  If it is not necessary for the purpose you provided it for (e.g., managing your sponsorship), we will do so.   

Outside your sponsorship, we will only communicate with you if you have opted-in to such communication. If you have agreed to sponsor a tree, as part of the service, you can be contacted by us, the relevant council or their local tree partner about that sponsorship. This may include (but is not limited to):

• The choice of tree, its location, and any local consultation requirements
• Processing your sponsorship donation and any related Gift Aid
• Planting, watering and maintenance of the tree
• Explaining and apologising if we have made a mistake.

You also have the right to request a copy of the personal information (Trees for Streets) Trees for Cities holds about you. For this we require you to prove your identity with a copy of one of the below:    

• Passport
• Driving licence
• Birth certificate
• Utility Bill (from last 3 months)
• Current vehicle registration document
• Bank statement (from last 3 months)
• Rent book (from last 3 months) 

If you want to access your personal information please contact:  

• Email: dataprotection@treesforcities.org
• Write to: Data Protection Lead, at (Trees for Streets) Trees for Cities, Prince Consort Lodge, Kennington Park, London SE11 4AS.  

Under the General Data Protection Regulation you are also granted a number of additional rights. These include:

• The right to rectification
• The right to erasure
• The right to data portability
• The right to object
• Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

For more information on these rights please read the relevant guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/.

Complaints: if you would like to make a complaint about how we process your personal data, please contact: 

• Email: dataprotection@treesforcities.org
• Write to: Data Protection Lead, (Trees for Streets) Trees for Cities, Prince Consort Lodge, Kennington Park, London SE11 4AS. 

If you are not happy with the way your complaint is dealt with, you should contact the Information Commissioner’s Office: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/. You are entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office without first referring your complaint to us.

These Terms of Service and Privacy Policy may change from time to time.  If we make any significant changes we will publicise them clearly on our website or contact you directly with more information.

The date of the most recent revision will appear on this page. 

Date of Last Revision: April 2022

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If you opt in to receive email newsletters and updates then you are giving your consent to receive emails from us, which may include news about the project and related topics, updates, information about fundraising, as well as volunteering  and job opportunities. You can unsubscribe from these emails by clicking the unsubscribe link in any of our emails at any time.

By using our website, our social media pages (such as Facebook), subscribing to our service, donating and/or shopping online you agree that we can place the types of cookies set out below on your device, and use your data in accordance with this policy.

Changing your cookie preferences

If you want to remove or not use cookies on our site, the ‘Help’ menu in the toolbar of most browsers will tell you how to change your browser’s cookie settings, including how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, and how to disable cookies altogether.

However, disabling cookies completely is likely to substantially limit the functionality of our website and that of most others, as cookies are a standard part of modern websites.   

Our suggestion: rather than switching off all cookies in your browser you may find that anti-spyware software achieves the same objective by automatically deleting cookies considered to be invasive.

Helpful information on the use of cookies, their regulation and how it might it affect you, and how you can control your cookies is available on the Information Commissioner’s Office website. 

The ICO website also advises how to report any concerns you might have.

Our website, like many others, uses cookies to enable us to provide you with the best experience we can.  

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that is downloaded on to your computer when you visit a website. Cookies can do a few things, such as allowing information about your visit to be recorded, remembering your preferences, and counting the number of people visiting a website. 

The cookies we use do not store personally identifiable information. 

None of the data we get from cookies will contain information that will enable anyone to contact you via telephone, email, or any other means. Tracking is limited to this site and is not shared with third party advertisers.

The rules on cookies are covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. These Regulations were revised in 2011, and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – with whom we are registered – is responsible for enforcing these rules.

Our cookies can help us to:

• Make our website work as you need and expect, and provide a more personalised service; 
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Types of cookie

1. Necessary cookies

These cookies are essential to enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas.  Without these cookies, services you have asked for cannot be provided.

2. Performance cookies

These cookies allow us to analyse how visitors use our website and to monitor website and campaign performance so that we can provide a high-quality experience and determine how effective our communications and campaigns are.  We may also use cookies at times to evaluate our ordering process and make it as customer friendly as possible.  All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous.  They are only used to improve how a website works.

3. Functionality cookies

These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your username, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect can be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.

4. Targeting cookies

These cookies are used to deliver adverts relevant to supporters’ interests.

Our website uses Google Analytics to enable us to compile anonymous visitor statistics in order to evaluate what is working well, what needs improving, and monitor how website behaviour relates to the full supporter experience.

Information about your use of the website is stored securely by Google on servers in the United States, and is used to compile automated reports on website activity. Google may also transfer this information to third parties if required to do so by law. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.

By using the Trees for Streets website you consent to the processing of data about you by Google for the purposes set out above.   

For information on how Google Analytics safeguards your data and privacy, please read their ‘Safeguarding Your Data’ statement.