fines for doing work on tpo trees

[pward]

hey all

was haveing a converstaion with someone about the fines imposed for doing work on a tree with a tpo, as i understand there are fines and a criminal record but how much can the fines be as this person was addimant that it was a soft touch fine

 

input please

[RobArb]

Can be upto £20,000 per tree but it depends on circumstances

 

Sent from Rob's GalaxySII

[Arborist]

From memory if you damage the tree and it can be rectified with pruning £2500 in a magistraits court, if the tree is destroyed up to £20000 and if it goes to crown court unlimited fine or the total value of the land when development is compleat, in the case of developers removing trees to get houses in ect.

 

If im wrong please correct.

Edited February 18, 2012 by Arborist
added an extra 0

[pward]

see this is what i was thinking that it was £20000 ther person i was talking to said it was £500 and thought that was a bit low

[nick channer]

wouldnt say soft.... i was fined £4000 3 or 4 yrs ago for doing work in a conservation area... my own fault for not checking but i was sub contractor 5 times down the line... the site was owned by HSBC bank.. who gave the work to a large lanscaping co who subbed it to another lanscape firm who gave the tree work to one of their subbys who gave job to my climber as it was too big for him and my climber gave it to me... i assumed somewhere down the line someone woulda checked.. i was the one caught red handed cutting trees down etc and under interview i explained how i'd come to get the work... their reply was unfortunatly for me they cant afford to take everyone to court so they go for easy option ie me as they had photo's.. reg no's of trucks etc..

[Shane]

The last I heard it is £20,000 max per tree (but rarely anything like that).

There was an article in one of the arb mags a couple of years ago.

IIRC a building firm in the midlands deliberately removed 17 TPO trees to fit in more houses. They were fined a TOTAL of £17,000

Seems like you were unfairly shredded, Nick.

[skyhuck]

If it was only punning works and done to BS, you could just make retrospective application.

 

Then no offence will have been committed.

[nick channer]

The last I heard it is £20,000 max per tree (but rarely anything like that).

There was an article in one of the arb mags a couple of years ago.

IIRC a building firm in the midlands deliberately removed 17 TPO trees to fit in more houses. They were fined a TOTAL of £17,000

Seems like you were unfairly shredded, Nick.

 

tell me about it... i did get £2500 back off the first lanscape co... not without bloodshed from the boss's nose after accidently falling on my fist after blanking me for months... they made him spend 1000's planting new mature trees etc.. they couldnt prove i'd cut those ones down... they fined me for re pollarding several limes that they had actually given permission to do every 5 yrs for past 15 yrs and it was 4 yrs 6 months since they were done previously.. they said they had no problem with trees i'd done but i shoulda sought permisson... think they just wanted to make aqn example of us..

[Johny Walker]

down south a builder got fined £250k , the profit he made on 1, house , as he removed a large (think it was a sycamore) it was in the arb mags @ the time could have been mid 90tys ,

[Pedroski]

If it was only punning works and done to BS, you could just make retrospective application.

 

Then no offence will have been committed.

 

Are you sure? It's not like building a house without planning permission. If you do that, even to building control standards, put in a retrospective app, and it gets turned down then you get fined and have the expense of demolishing it. You can't just go and unprune a tree, surely, even if it was pruned to BS.