A14 tree planting in Cambridgeshire not good enough, says body

National Highways has admitted its "performance on tree planting has not been good enough", as it looks to put in 50,000 more along the A14 where thousands have died. The trees will be planted along the new part of the A-road, between Huntingdon and Cambridge, where many of the 860,000 that were originally put in never grew. The government-owned company said after "identifying losses caused by several factors", it had started "a 50,000 tree trial to test new measures and inform our future planting regime". Vhari Russell, the founder of Creating Nature's Corridors, welcomed the trial but raised concerns about the trees being planted at the wrong time of year. In March 2023, National Highways said it would replant 160,000 trees and shrubs after many of the first batch that were put in before the stretch of road opened in 2020 failed to grow. Last June, a Cambridgeshire County Council meeting heard that sections of the £1.5bn upgraded road still looked "like a desert", leading to local residents planting new trees themselves. A National Highways spokesperson said the A14 upgrade had "delivered major economic, safety and environmental benefits, but we recognise that our performance on