One for the Tree Officers

[Spideylj]

I work as a TO for a LPA and I'm looking to review our TPO's, some of which, date back to the 1950's.  We currently have in excess of 300 TPO records over a relatively small Borough.

 

One of the issues I am looking at is ensuring that our TPO's are constantly under review and relevant.  My thought is to carry out an exercise to reduce the number of TPO's down to 20 that would be geographically based on the ward boundaries of the Council.  The older TPO's would be resurveyed using the TEMPO method and where appropriate the trees brought in to the new TPO's.  The idea of this is to ensure that the TPO's remain current by using variations rather than a process of continual review, revoke, remake type system (there's only one of me).

 

Obviously, the T, G and W classifications would be used rather than the area one as this is only meant for short-term protection.

 

So my questions are:

 

1. Do you foresee any problems of managing TPO's in this way?
2. Are there any other LPA's that manage their TPO's in a similar way?
3. How do you keep your TPO's reviewed and relevant?

 

Thanks for all your help in advance,

 

Lee

 

[daltontrees]

It might be quite informative to open the first question to non-TOs and non-LPAs. I can see benefits and drawbacks in consolidating, while it is unquestionably right to revisit and review.

 

And personally I'd be interested in why you consider TEMPO to be apposite.

[Adam M]

Not really in answer to any of your specific questions but here's some thoughts, in no particular order:

 

The lions share of that task will be ensuring that all those who must be notified/consulted are served a copy of the new tpo's and notified when an old one is revoked. If you have an admin team available who will prepare lists of addresses and land reg for owners, then print off all the necessary papers, stuff the envelopes and serve them correctly then that's fine. Do not underestimate how many people you need to notify but don't let that be a reason to not review your tpo's. 

 

I'd start with your area tpo's, generally working from the oldest to the newest. The exception to this might be with relatively recent area tpo's on large, incomplete development sites but where you are able to accurately map trees so they don't end up plotted in the middle of roads (say, if you manually plot them and don't have very good reference points to map them from). The reason for this is that you can significantly reduce the number of owners/occupiers you need to serve to. Once that is done, the tpo will show up on land searches so the solicitors can do the legwork for their customers. Once the land is divided up into individually-owned plots, this task becomes more burdensome for you. 

 

Use your planning system to sift through old tpo's and applications. Back up using Google maps, bing maps and Google streetview. Look for trees which have been felled. Work out what was supposed to be replaced (by condition) . Make a note of unconditional fells, check they were felled, revoke the tpo's if all trees on them felled. 'The Silver Birch at Post-War Household Tree Preservation Order, 1953' is unlikely to still be there and I bet they didn't comply with the condition to replant in 1967 either. 

 

If you have one, train your admin team to sift through all of your original tpo's and check all of the essential components are there. Pages go missing over time. Look for incomplete tpo's (e.g. no evidence of confirmation, no site plans) and put those to one side. Check the details and see if the pages turn up in another folder. Consider resurveying and/or revoking.

 

Get digitised if you haven't done already. If you have online mapping through your council, you should be able to link scanned copies for download directly off the map.

 

There's loads of other important things to do but this is just a few thoughts from recent experiences. 

[Spideylj]

By all means.  If anyone other than a TO has an opinion, then please share.

[Spideylj]

Daltontrees:  Some of our TPO's were carried out before TEMPO or other method of determining a TPO (other than what was said in the legislation) was introduced.  I mentioned it here as even though some of the trees in the past had been TPO'd they might not meet the requirements of TPO if carried out using TEMPO methodology.

[Spideylj]

Hiya everyone,

 

Firstly, thank you for your contributions, so far and as stated above I am more than happy for anyone to jump in on the debate.

 

Reading back, I think I may not have been clear.

 

The idea is to create 20 TPO's based on the ward boundaries.

 

All the trees that are subject to current TPO's (that date back to the 1950's) would be re-assessed to ensure that:

1. They are still there and;
2. They still require protection.

I would also include any trees that have not been subject to TPO previously, that have amenity/ecological value.

 

So, instead of having over 300 TPO's we would have 20 geographical based ones that includes all the trees from the previous 300 or so.

 

Should, in the future, a tree that is not protected require it, it would be added to the geographical TPO by a variance rather than creating a new TPO.  Likewise, should a tree require removing.

 

In essence we will only ever have 20 TPO's that are live documents by variance, but the number of trees protected will go up and down accordingly on each of the 20 TPO's.

 

Rather than being static documents.  The TPO's become live documents.

 

Adam - I take your point on trees in Conservation Area.  I had the same conversation with my boss and he didn't agree.

 

Best wishes,

 

Lee

 

 

[Adam M]

It wasn't me who said about cons areas although I do agree, to an extent with what was said. What you lose is the ability to impose conditions e.g. replanting or standard of work. For the latter, you need to really nail down the proposal specs to compensate. But, you might find it difficult to argue expediency where the trees are protected by a similar mechanism. If you were using tempo, you wouldn't be scoring above 1pt for expediency so would have to be high scoring in all other parts of the assessment. You might want to consider what you actually want to tpo then work out how you go about justifying it. It might not suit you to use tempo as a standard.

[Spideylj]

Thanks gents

[Roz]

I embarked on this project some 5 years ago when I joined a new LPA - and I am still reviewing - its time more than anything and as already said its a massive administrative task just make sure you have the legal team on board if they make and serve the TPOs - I have over 40 sitting in legal going back to 2014 from reviewing part of the town !!

 

I have also digitised so everything is on the corporate system and linked to the TPO doc - I'm not being dismissive its a big task you will need to think logically as it can become a bit overwhelming if your doing it on your own.

 

The one think I would say is ask yourself what do you want the end result to be?  and how do you want to manage them in the future -  If you are/have/can digitise what information do you want to be available?  Make sure your data is clean data or you will get in a mess and disapeare in your own spreadsheet.

 

Re TEMPO its an accepted assessment and I use it for informing a decision to serve, also I would be cautious of producing large TPOs, smaller ones relating to a property in the long run make life more simple and remove ambiguity.

 

Don't forget the 2012 regs brought all TPOs of whatever age onto a level playing field - but reviewing them is important as land use changes.

[Gary Prentice]

Somewhere online is a lengthy report about the IOW updating all of their TPOs after the loss of their Elms to DED. 

 

The details of the time time and financial commitments is quite surprising.