Planning application & Arboricultural Method Statement

[MaxD54]

Yes, according to them, they have no choice, this is what they need to provide as they have to comply with the British Standard "Trees in Relation to Design, Demolition and Construction to Construction - Recommendations" (BS 5837)...which seems a bit too convenient to me as this represents a significant upsell opportunity on top of the cost of their survey report.

 

Could the council act as an independent advisor re this? After all, I understand why this report was needed in the first place. They wanted to make sure I was not going to damage TPO trees and neighbouring trees. The fact the ARB company came back with all these pre-requisites, basically trying to force me to safeguard my own non TPO trees, might not be what the council had in mind, and therefore might let me ignore most of their (excessive) recs.

 

[john87]

15 minutes ago, MaxD54 said:

Yes, according to them, they have no choice, this is what they need to provide as they have to comply with the British Standard "Trees in Relation to Design, Demolition and Construction to Construction - Recommendations" (BS 5837)...which seems a bit too convenient to me as this represents a significant upsell opportunity on top of the cost of their survey report.

 

Could the council act as an independent advisor re this? After all, I understand why this report was needed in the first place. They wanted to make sure I was not going to damage TPO trees and neighbouring trees. The fact the ARB company came back with all these pre-requisites, basically trying to force me to safeguard my own non TPO trees, might not be what the council had in mind, and therefore might let me ignore most of their (excessive) recs.

 

Are you TRYING to make things difficult and expensive for yourself??? Just get the stupid report and chuck it in the bin It is the very LAST thing you want to give to the council.. [unless you like digging footings by hand]

 

Do yourself a HUGE favour and cut the trees down..

 

You should be grateful the council have given you planning and stop trying to find things [at your expense mind you] to give to the council to use against you.

 

You send that report to the council and they will seize on every word of it and you will next to bankrupt yourself..

 

Tell you what, you phone up a few building firms and tell them you want to have the footings dug by hand. Post back what their response is..

 

Best of it, you will be paying for some treehugger to stand and watch them.. You will run out of money before you have even got the footings in..

 

john..

[MaxD54]

Unfortunately, it is not as simple as removing trees ahead of time. As you can see in the report, I have got quite a lot of trees in my garden, a lot of them are mature trees providing great coverage which I want to keep. 
 

I think that even if I had one single tree left on the property, they will make me take all these measures… 

 

I find it surreal to be in this position tbh, I didn’t know there was an arboricultural mafia out there, proper extortion that is.

 

 

[john87]

5 minutes ago, MaxD54 said:

Unfortunately, it is not as simple as removing trees ahead of time. As you can see in the report, I have got quite a lot of trees in my garden, a lot of them are mature trees providing great coverage which I want to keep. 
 

I think that even if I had one single tree left on the property, they will make me take all these measures… 

 

I find it surreal to be in this position tbh, I didn’t know there was an arboricultural mafia out there, proper extortion that is.

 

 

I understand you want to keep the trees, BUT, you cannot have everything.. The council will hold you to every single word of that report which will bankrupt you, AND, i thought the council had imposed a condition that the trees they deemed to be unsafe be removed before you even brought stuff onto the site.??

 

Do NOT rock the council's boat, or they will torpedo yours out of sight..

 

Just remove the trees, bin the report, get your house built and plant more trees if that is what you want..

 

john..

[Doug Tait]

Just now, john87 said:

I understand you want to keep the trees, BUT, you cannot have everything.. The council will hold you to every single word of that report which will bankrupt you, AND, i thought the council had imposed a condition that the trees they deemed to be unsafe be removed before you even brought stuff onto the site.??

 

Do NOT rock the council's boat, or they will torpedo yours out of sight..

 

Just remove the trees, bin the report, get your house built and plant more trees if that is what you want..

 

john..

John read the OP again, I'm convinced you've completely misunderstood. 

[Mick Dempsey]

It’s not any easy one to get a grip on that’s for sure. 

[john87]

1 minute ago, Doug Tait said:

John read the OP again, I'm convinced you've completely misunderstood. 

Yes you are correct, it was the report people that condemned the trees. but it was the council that insisted on the daft report giving the reason as being to "protect trees blah blah" Simply answer then is to remove the trees, job done then, not report needed or at least just one that says; "neighbours trees miles away"

 

john..

[monkeybusiness]

54 minutes ago, john87 said:

Are you TRYING to make things difficult and expensive for yourself??? Just get the stupid report and chuck it in the bin It is the very LAST thing you want to give to the council.. [unless you like digging footings by hand]

 

Do yourself a HUGE favour and cut the trees down..

 

You should be grateful the council have given you planning and stop trying to find things [at your expense mind you] to give to the council to use against you.

 

You send that report to the council and they will seize on every word of it and you will next to bankrupt yourself..

 

Tell you what, you phone up a few building firms and tell them you want to have the footings dug by hand. Post back what their response is..

 

Best of it, you will be paying for some treehugger to stand and watch them.. You will run out of money before you have even got the footings in..

 

john..

If you cut those trees down now without a report to fall back upon you will potentially be in contravention of your planning permission - I’d not personally recommend that as a course of action. The planners will have given consideration to the existing site ‘as-is’ when determining the application, including any screening provided by existing trees (hence their insistence on tree protection during the build). You will need to submit a suitable tree report, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be the one you already have to hand. 
Talk to the arboriculturalist and ask them to make the stipulations less onerous. Install necessary tree protection fencing (heras panels with home-printed and laminated signage are more than adequate) and keep out of those protected areas with all machinery/materials etc. Any excavations within the protective fencing should be under arboricultural supervision, but that’s up to you. You should be able to do what you want (within reason) outside the protection areas.

Edited June 25, 2022 by monkeybusiness

[john87]

17 minutes ago, monkeybusiness said:

The planners will have given consideration to the existing site ‘as-is’ when determining the application, including any screening provided by existing trees

Yes, i see what you mean....

 

john..

[John Shutler]

a lot of un educated comments being made on this thread.

Everything they have suggested is pretty standard. 

The Default position of bs5837 is that no works should be undertaken within RPA’s, it is upto the consultant to work back from that, to a point where the methodology of the proposed works will not damage the trees. They are producing a document to satisfy the planning conditions, because without that you cannot undertake the works.  They have not proposed that all excavations must be done by hand, only that initial excavations must be done by hand. The wording is very important. Ground protection is best practice when working over RPA’s. if retained trees. 

They certainly havnt put anything in the report that i wouldn’t put in my self.

cost wise it’s possibly on the steep side but without looking at all the other documents that they have produced you can’t say for sure.