Another TPO/CA hypothetical question

[daltontrees]

I too thought it was in the context of a planning application, not a CA notice.

 

Therein lies a dilemma for the LPA, it can put conditions in a Planning Consent to protect trees during and after development but can it actually genuinely and validly refuse an application for development because of the tree loss, for an otherwise acceptable proposal? Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as it were? I suppose it can. But the example you quote would have had me hopping mad, as you rightly say the trees could not be removed until a CA notice was served and that would be the right time for a TPO to be made.

 

Here's a real live situation I was loosely involved in a while ago. A disused church was bought by a developer for conversion to flats, requiring vehicular access and a lot of parking which had never been contemplated 150 years ago when a simple coach and horse driveway was provided to the church door behind a line of what became mature trees. The development was not physically possible and could not get the required amount of parking and satisfactory sight lines etc with the trees in place. There was no CA Appraisal to refer to. The LA wanted the building to be saved by allowing a beneficial use but would not allow the developer to remove the trees, forcing him instead into a ransom situation with a landowner at the rear for essential access rights. Pre-application plans were submitted which the Council was minded to refuse, and an application for the rear access option and the principle of conversion of the building to residential was submitted and approved, without any specific conditions being imposed in relation to the retention of the trees.

The developer then, feigning ignorance or crossed wires, chopped the trees down. In the subsequent debacle the developer claimed that it shouldn't be fined because the Council couldn't have refused the application for an acceptable use merely because the loss of trees was unacceptable, and that the Council should have made a TPO which the developer could have overturned.

Right or wrong? Who knows, the trees were by then gone.