CITY OF TREES TRUST

Registered charity 1202636 · accounts filings on the Charity Commission register

City of Trees is a community forest organisation for Greater Manchester, working with volunteers and an ever-growing network of individuals, communities, businesses and organisations to plant trees and look after trees across the GM region. Promoting a tree culture with activities to boost health & wellbeing, enhance learning and green skills and tackle the climate and biodiversity emergency.

Objects

3.1 THE OBJECTS OF THE CIO ARE:3.1.1TO PROMOTE FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PUBLIC, THE CONSERVATION PROTECTION AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE PHYSICAL AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT, THROUGH THE PLANTING AND NURTURING OF THE URBAN FOREST, IN BOTH URBAN AND PERI-URBAN AREAS ACROSS GREATER MANCHESTER AND BEYOND; AND/OR;3.1.2 TO ADVANCE THE EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC THROUGH ACTIVITIES AND ENGAGEMENT THAT AIM TO SUPPORT ALL ASPECTS OF CONSERVATION, PROTECTION AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT IN AN URBAN AND PERI-URBAN SETTING.

The charity’s charitable objects and area of benefit, quoted from its governing document as held on the Charity Commission register.

Causes: Environment/conservation/heritage · website · Get email alerts

Financial health, per its FY2025 accounts

The accounts state that the charity ended the year with a surplus of £419,977 and unrestricted reserves of £1,337,634. The trustees consider the charity to be a going concern, noting that free reserves stand at just under 3.6 months of running costs against a policy target of six months. The auditor confirmed that the use of the going concern basis of accounting is appropriate with no material uncertainties identified.

Automated summary of the FY2025 accounts; the evidenced findings below carry the verbatim passages.

What the accounts disclose

Accounts audited by McKellens Ltd. Discloses 4 of 6 completeness components.

Policies the charity declares

In its annual return the charity told the Commission that it has the policies listed below. This is self-declared: it is not verified by the Commission or by this site, and it is not evidence of how a policy works in practice.

• Bullying and harassment policy and procedures
• Complaints handling
• Complaints policy and procedures
• Conflicting interests
• Financial reserves policy and procedures
• Internal charity financial controls policy and procedures
• Internal risk management policy and procedures
• Investment
• Paying staff
• Risk management
• Safeguarding policy and procedures
• Safeguarding vulnerable beneficiaries
• Serious incident reporting policy and procedures
• Social media policy and procedures
• Trustee conflicts of interest policy and procedures
• Trustee expenses policy and procedures
• Volunteer management

Leadership, per the charity’s website

• Dr Jess Thompson — CEO (source)
• Deputy Lieutenant Carl Austin-Behan, OBE — Chair (source)

Listed on the charity’s own website when we last crawled it; roles may have changed. Pay-band disclosures above are anonymous statutory disclosures and are not attributed to any named individual.

Public profiles (found on the charity’s own website): facebook · instagram

Structured financials (annual return, FY ending 30/06/2025)

Reported reserves equal ~3.6 months of spending — below the median for charities its size (median 4.8 months; benchmarks).

Per its annual return, largest income source: Charitable activities (91% of income) — components as reported reconcile to the return’s total income; not from the accounts narrative.

Per its annual return, cost of raising funds: 1.7% of total income — below the median for charities its size (5.2%) (benchmarks).

Trustees · trustee networks

• Dr Carl Austin-Behan OBE DLchair
• Anais Biaux
• Cllr. Alan Quinn
• Dawn Lowry-Hair
• Eleanor Ward
• Hannah O'Riordan
• Kevin Coughlan
• Tam Watson · trustee of 1 other charity

Trustee list from the Charity Commission register (current, not historical).

Operates in: Bolton · Bury · Manchester City · Oldham · Rochdale · Salford City · Stockport · Tameside · Trafford · Wigan

Income and spending

Common questions

Government & lottery funding

Grants to this charity published as open data by government and lottery funders (360Giving).

Funders of similar charities

Funders whose accounts show grants to charities similar to this one (and no recorded grant to this charity) — a starting list for fundraisers.

Charities like this

Semantically similar by activities and financial character, from our analysed corpus. Compare with COMMUNITY FOREST TRUST.

• COMMUNITY FOREST TRUST income £8.9m
• TREES FOR CITIES income £5.4m
• BIRMINGHAM TREE PEOPLE income £229k
• HIGH TREES COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT TRUST income £1.9m
• GREATER MANCHESTER ENVIRONMENT TRUST income £1.1m
• THE TREE COUNCIL income £2.8m

Side by side with its peers

Each row is that charity’s latest analysed filing; every value is quote-backed on its own page.