Clarity On Hedges That are both Deciduous & Evergreen

[GordonM]

17 minutes ago, daltontrees said:

The legislation is different in different parts of the UK.

 

The deciduous content can have only one of a few effects on the outcome.

 

Firstly if they are the majority of the hedge, it doesn't qualify for  a High Hedge notice, no matter how bad the shade.

 

Secondly if it is a high hedge the deciduous content will give the neighbour some relief from shade in the winter. This can be significant but will not be percevied as such, especially for sunlight.

 

Thirdly if there is a high hedge notice it most certainly can be part of the actions to have it reduced. It is the effect on enjoyment that matters, not that it is deciduous.

 

Which way it goes is  matter of degree. Mostly to do with height. It's not a binary decision.

 

Mixed hedges are impossible to predict. The HHLL calculation is not appropriate for most situations and makes no sense for partly deciduous hedges.

 

It is possible to split the assessment, for example assess only the laurels and ignores trees amongst them.

 

Rather poorly written legisaltion, badly written guidance and generally poor understanding of the technical issues by Councils and Reporters. Bit of a lottery really.

 

thankyou for that really insightful reply. It is our fear of it being a lottery. Exactly as you said, the guidance just isn't clear at all. But it's good to know that the assessment can be split. 

This is totally eyeballing it, but if one were to use the horizontal portion of that hedge in the image I attached. I'd say its around 65/35 deciduous:evergreen. The height of the laurels is only above 2M where property 2's garden boundary is, but that laurel does run through all the hedge, just mostly at much lower heights. The deciduous trees are mostly 6M or so i'd say.  If one were to include the other section of the hedge down the right hand side of Property4, i'd say it's then more like 85/15 deciduous:evergreen.

My personal opinion is... if all the deciduous trees were reduced in height should the complaint be upheld, that would be the worst outcome... but my point is that once the council is involved...my fear is that it would be then out of any of the properties control regarding what they do and don't deem to be part of the hedge and acionable.

By HHLL do you mean the spreadsheed calculator to determine actionable height? We've used that and indeed the evergreen portions of that hedge for property2 would be actionable based on that. Hopefully not the immediately close deciduous ones though!

Edited 13 hours ago by GordonM

[Excels1or]

Not meaning to sound like a dick, but when you've got arguing neighbours we just tell them to sort it out themselves then give us a call. The amount of time,energy and money these things take is never worth getting involved.

[GordonM]

5 hours ago, Excels1or said:

Not meaning to sound like a dick, but when you've got arguing neighbours we just tell them to sort it out themselves then give us a call. The amount of time,energy and money these things take is never worth getting involved.

Not at all. It has become a bit of a difficult one because the properties don't agree. But for what it's worth I don't think it's fair to ask Property 4 to pay for all of it. My preference would've been for all of us to split it. Though some of the properties dont want to do that. 

[monkeybusiness]

Each affected property should ask property 4 if they would allow the affected property (solely at the affected property’s expense) to cut property 4’s hedge down to their desired specification. There is nothing beneficial in this situation for property 4 - why should they also be encumbered with expense? 

[daltontrees]

18 minutes ago, monkeybusiness said:

Each affected property should ask property 4 if they would allow the affected property (solely at the affected property’s expense) to cut property 4’s hedge down to their desired specification. There is nothing beneficial in this situation for property 4 - why should they also be encumbered with expense? 

That's never going to work. All bits of the 'hedge' are going to affect all 3 properties, not just the bits on their boundary.. There will be a single speciefication that gives all at least the minimum daylighting. Some will exceed it. Property 4 may not wish to lose any more than absolutely necessary.  It's inevitable that property 4 has to invite opinions then offer a compromise single solution with or without requirements for contributions. If all agree, good. If just one refuses, do nothing.

[GordonM]

15 minutes ago, daltontrees said:

That's never going to work. All bits of the 'hedge' are going to affect all 3 properties, not just the bits on their boundary.. There will be a single speciefication that gives all at least the minimum daylighting. Some will exceed it. Property 4 may not wish to lose any more than absolutely necessary.  It's inevitable that property 4 has to invite opinions then offer a compromise single solution with or without requirements for contributions. If all agree, good. If just one refuses, do nothing.

All the trees do belong to Property 4. They have offered 50% contribution to having that entire horizontal row reduced in height by alot. But some of Properties 123 refuse to contribute and are adamant it's property 4 sole responsibility to have them paid for. I personally dont agree with that, but that's only one opinion of 4.

re: all the bits of the hedge affect all 3 properties... i probably did say above that the only evergreen portions of this that are >2M are the Laurels and Coniffers. Obviously the preferred outcome for most of the properties here would be that if council were formally brought into this, they'd only order a reduction in height for the evergreens over 2M. The truth is if all the deciduous came down in height too, all 4 gardens would lose alot of privacy, not to mention the shame for wildlife and environmental benefits etc. I do think that'd be the worst outcome personally.

I wonder if Property 4 paid just to have the evergreen ones reduced to 2M we could avoid this whole fiasco. All things considered what do you think?