Jon Heuch

It's an accreditation scheme. If I visit the Check A Trade, Trusted Trader, My Builder, Local Surveyor and other websites I am given contact details of people who may or may not match what I am looking for. Some websites are easy for contractors to join, others are more difficult. It's not a cartel in that the people on those websites do not collude or agree prices and may know next to nothing about their competitors. If I need a tree removed in town Y I will look at the AA website, put in a postcode and find details of contractors near by. That is not a cartel! I will make contact with those showing on the AA website. I could do the same with Yell.com (if I was desperate). Is Yell.com a cartel in your book too?

Thanks for the comments. I may be out of touch, although the issues you raise have always been around. A third party helping potential contractors to leap over the hurdles without real substance behind them does cause problems. As does a larger scheme in that what was being run by one person regularly in HQ now inevitably requires sub contractors. The problem as to what happens after passing any test is a problem with all accreditation, examination, professional qualification. It's good on the day. That's it. A balance has to be had, do you go running after a new company every month, every six months, occasional spot checks? Maybe the AA needs a hot-line, a whistleblower mechanism so where someone does have concerns they can register it. It's a challenge because all sorts of gripes could just overload the system & seeing real issues from the crap would be timeconsuming and could lead to resentment (more resentment!). The AA Registered Consultants is having a similar issue with regards to re-testing (but that is another matter). Old boys' school. Well yes, a lot of boys. Few women. But if you're suggesting it's an exclusive club that a newcomer can't get in, I hope you are wrong. I would be disappointed if that is the case. Your message has been heard. I will attempt to follow up but can't promise a reply here.

The "approved contractor" bit is largely irrelevant when compariing prices. The point is as an approved contractor you are made aware of the work and asked to put in a price. Other, good and bad, contractors don't even hear about the work. Having got two quotes I will then look at the quality of documentation, the reassurance of various bells and whistles of insurance, method statement, risk assessment and an understanding that they know what they are doing and that the appropriate resources are being put in place. If the two are the same or similar the cheaper will get it, but if the cheaper looks rushed and incomplete the higher may get it.....or we will look for a third or more quotes. I don't look at jobs where councils are paying - I appreciate the money value is much more important to them in any tender process. The approved contractor scheme is reassurance - we don't need to look at every member of staff, training, qualifications etc. It's not a guarantee but I hope it separates the reasonably competent from white-van man who has just recently bought a chain saw but doesn't know what the word arboriculture means.

I'm a consultant. I point numerous clients to the AA website "Find a Professional" to find a tree surgeon. Price of service is only a small part of the equation but clearly if one quote comes in at £5k to remove a tree and another at £3k we do need an explanation....but we may choose a £5k quote over a £3k quote. Is that the type of business you could cope with? Maybe you prefer to play the cheap end of the market, continually competing on price? If you prefer to differentiate what you do, the Approved Contractor scheme is one way to do it. Virtually every council in this country has a link to the AA website for the same.......so the promotional value should be significant. But if you have a council that maintains its own list and promotes that it won't be of so much use. As for small/large firms it used to be much more exclusive but the number of firms now as Approved Contractors is far larger than it used to be as a result of changes to the scheme around 10+ years ago. The AA is a membership organisation and should listen to its members if you think something is wrong. OK I am the ex Chair of the AA (2009-2010) so pretty much out of touch with what is going on today.

Yes, looks like they have made the most recent ones available - the archive was available for free anyway. Arborist News too. Great stuff! However, with no index, no decent search facility (individual editions only), no means of linking to citations or the original references used in each article some tasks are impossible and some just extremely laborious. It's both interesting and also a disappointment considering what is the norm for many journals. For example, if you find a paper from a few years ago & you want to see if anyone has produced more uptodate research you would just look at the list of citations. Not available. If there were many citations you would be aware that a paper had had some impact; if none, possibly ignored. Want to see if the Journal has anything on a particular subject? I can't see how that is done

I was wrong. Although signed up I was not a recipient of emails, just looked at the archive from time to time. You can sign up uktc - UK Tree Care - subscribe LISTS.TREE-CARE.INFO but as others have said the archive has evaporated & I assume you are either receiving emails or your are out....

I'm pretty sure it has died; the owner gave plenty of notice that he was pulling the plug because the software he was using was very old - 20 years of archive I think - and his server costs were increasing by a factor of something. I think it died on 31 December 2022. RIP. People attempted to step in, suggest alternatives such as ArbTalk but none are quite like uktc. Shame as there were one or two amusing explosions between parties worth recording for posterity if not for the future when someone wants to make an arse of themselves. There was also an awful lot of good stuff about the workings of local government. I'll miss it but also glad it has gone as it was interesting to monitor.

I can't vouch for every "forestry" degree but mensuration is a key element of any half decent forestry course & is not "piss easy". It may only appear so if you have never studied it. Lots of complex stats depending upon what you are trying to do. The UK Yield Class system does mean that foresters can do all sorts of stuff without understanding anything or at least very little behind it. The real trouble is that there are very few half decent forestry courses & thus a real shortage of forestry graduates, so around 50% of professional applicants to the ICF have neither forestry nor arb degree.......coupled with NRW being an amalgam of at least 3 different technical discplines with the ex FC Wales being only one of them. So yes, good salaries & gold-plated pensions but don't assume a forestry degree! If you want to check any individual just ask them to confirm what Huber's formula is.....

Undoubtedly, if you were to ignore a council's response like this you would be getting into an uncertain area where the council has stated its case & could prosecute. Regardless of the notice any works to a conservation area tree is an offence. The T&CP Act 1990 doesn't state that notified tree works are an exemption. It states that you would have a defence if the council attempted to prosecute you so it's unlikely that the council would prosecute you if you had such a defence. You would have that defence if you told them which tree you intend to work on unambiguously AND what work you intended to do. If the council stated that the work as stated was not stated to BS3998 or might harm the tree (e.g. you intended to cut off a large branch) your defence does not automatically disappear. You need to state the "act" you intend to do and restrict yourself to that. If it's unclear which branch you intend to remove or what size stub you intend to leave then you are just asking for trouble. Clearly, it is easier to go along with council requests but that does not mean that all are necessary/lawful.

Matt The law is written a little unusually with regards to this aspect (see below) but since it is in the primary legislation you don't need to look at regulations, planning rules or anything any particular council might want you to do. The clock starts ticking once you have served notice on the council. If you serve the notice on a Friday afternoon or over the weekend (or other holiday) you might reasonably expect the council to open your notice on the first working day after you served it (so if you served it on a Wednesday, then Thursday). It's when YOU served the notice, not when the council opened it, first read it, validated it, entered it into their computer system etc. The notice has to give "sufficient particulars to identify the tree" - note it does not say you have to be crystal clear with the work you intend to do or that you have to comply with any British Standard merely that you can defend yourself if you merely do "the act" that you informed the council of. So 6 weeks is 6 calendar weeks as you would normally use the term. If 10 days of that is the Christmas break, that makes no difference. You don't need to have anything in writing from the council to acknowledge receipt (or to give you "permission") but you would be wise to use the Planning Portal so that you have an electronic acknowledgement which comes in two parts - one to say that it has been received by the PP and the other to say it has been passed to the LA. As above, if the council say they have not received your notification from the PP that's their problem. You would be in a more difficult situation if you had merely put it in the post (especially at the moment!). And remember, the council can only stop the works going ahead if they serve a TPO and they must serve the TPO on both the tree owner and yourselves as notifier so there should be no doubt if there is a TPO or not when you start your chainsaws. see s 211 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990: (3) It shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) to prove— (a) that he served notice of his intention to do the act in question (with sufficient particulars to identify the tree) on the local planning authority in whose area the tree is or was situated; and (b) that he did the act in question— (i) with the consent of the local planning authority in whose area the tree is or was situated, or (ii) after the expiry of the period of six weeks from the date of the notice but before the expiry of the period of two years from that date.

You are! It's a difficult question to answer without a full knowledge of the situation. Whoever has actioned the work and whoever undertakes the work has a duty of care to whoever may be affected by the unstable tree. If that's a member of the public, so be it. If the people undertaking the work know (for sure or even on the balance of probabilities) that the work they are undertaking will lead to a dangerous situation (i.e. the instability of the tree) they will remain liable or could remain liable. If the tree owner is told of the situation and fails to act then they could become liable. However, if an accident occurs it would be for the affected party to prove their case and that would depend upon what evidence was available. The fact that the tree owner may be "liable" does not negate the liability of the contractor who has undertaken the work or the person who has initiated the work but it will all depend upon the facts of the case. Simple message: if you know you are creating a liability, don't do it! Or at the very least point out in writing your reluctance to undertake the work and point out what remedial work is required, even if you are unable to do this work.

Not sure what your point is; every TPO when served/confirmed should define the time window for challenging the TPO; once past that is the end of it. The Wilkson challenge was within that time window (para 23).

The abillity to challenge it is time limited. Read the longer parts of the T&C Planning Act and it describes the detail.

Well John: a) I don't know the branch, but perhaps the beauty of the tree might be discouraging your patients to harm themselves? b) you will need to consult the judgment of WILKSON PROPERTIES LIMITED v ROYAL BOROUGH OF KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA to see what a judge had to say about TPOs and trees that might only be visible from private properties. Private does not always mean that there is no public amenity and if the TPO has been served & confirmed it's an irrelvant point. Part Xii and particularly s.284 of the Town and County Planning Act applies: "the validiity... shall not be questioned in any legal proceedings whatsoever". So hard luck! c) as for TPOs hindering development by the health board, something tells me they are only small impediments which can be easily ignored if the powers that be want housing.

Good question to ask; not so easy to answer in full. Depends to some degree on what certainty you are seeking, how much risk you are willing to take & how much you are willing to pay. Furthermore, are you really interested in "soil" or what might be under the foundations of a building (i.e. possibly 50 cm, 1 metre or more under the surface i.e. geology)? As Julian has pointed out BGS is going through a bit of a change both with online and app based information; whatever they provide is a crude assessment of mostly parent material. They also provide a site- based risk assessment report for which you need to pay - see below. The soil database/mapping referred to is not designed to assess the presence of "shrinkable" soils. And its scale (as with BGS) will only give you the crudest means of assessing any particular site. If you have money I would simply ask BGS to provide you with a site based report on which you depend. It's not perfect but with suitable caveats it is what it is. Short of sampling the soils on site, probably not to an adequate depth, you won't do much better. £56.40 includes VAT BGS Shop · Natural subsidence GeoReport SHOP.BGS.AC.UK

Easy to ask and of course important to know but the answer is.....it depends. A bit of land law is useful, understanding that rights of use and ownership are two different things. So two preliminaries: Do you have a district/borough/city council separate from your county, or do you have a unitary authority? Either way it is the Highways authority (not agency) that you need to identify. Let's assume it is a county. Secondly, it depends on the size of the road; sounds like a country lane type rather than a major highway. Ancient rather than newly built? With a country lane, the adjacent landowner is assumed to own the land to the centre of the adjacent road. The Highway is a right of way over the landowners land. The Highways authority is responsible for maintaining the highway but the adjacent landowners still own the trees and are responsible for keeping them out of the way of the highway, whilst the authority keeps the highway itself clear. However, the authority will do a variety of things on the land adjacent to the highway. In Kent, they hire a farmer to strim the verges about once a year for visibility purposes. They effectively cut herbs a few feet back of my land. They write me letters to prune my hedge and trees from time to time if I don't do it. However, the authority will also take control of some land beside the road. Totally unpredictable so you need to check with them as to what they claim as highways land. They will have a definitive map, and sometimes this is online so you don't need to depend upon a vague phone call where you try to describe an odd bit of land which has no features to describe. Worth checking in the first instance. All you really need to find out is whether the tree grew on highways land; if not, it's the landowners, regardless of what they thought. Sometimes, the parish council owns odd bits of land; simply go onto the Land Registry website. Mapsearch on that gives you a definitive picture provided the land is registered. You may need to register for a free account to get to it. £3 to get hold of the title register itself which will show you the named owner. In terms of clearance costs, if someone had phoned the highways authority they would typically have cleared it at their expense as its their responsibility to keep the highway clear., regardless of ownership. I have no idea if you might get something for your efforts but no harm in trying?

No. Examine maps where geologists explain where glaciers extended to. They didn't get as far as London. Overconsolidation (the technical term) refers to materials that may or may not be still present over the top of the clay in question. i.e. geological material above the clay in question has been eroded away. Alternatively, human activity has removed the overburden and the clay is now able to expand if given half the chance.

You may want to pay a visit to SE England where clay soils are very common. Oak trees grow best on clay soils. Dry clay soil cracks and fissures. Easily penetrated by water, until it swells at which point it is not so dry. Subsidence takes months......well yes....but a good hot dry summer can do the trick forcing trees to use roots under houses or forcing them to extend their roots under houses. Subsidence does not require a persistent soil moisture deficit. Heave (of any significance) does. The occurrence of (tree related) subsidence is weather related; the occurrence of heave is not.

Made me laugh. Clearly, with subsidence you take the tree out after the subsidence has occurred. With heave, the reverse. The only way anyone would contact you is if they wished to sue you. They would need to prove quite a lot to show you had been negligent.....so it is most unlikely that they would. Unless you were stupid enough to put pen to paper and without any reference to professional or technical documents state that there was no potential problem and you would stake your bank balance, business, house and your reputation on the issue. Does heave occur. Yes. Is it frequent. No. Two types of cases: a) removal of large tree immediatley prior to foundation laying. Ground given no time to "rest" following tree removal. These cases become NHBC claims. The trees have gone. Only a need for specialists to advise. b) removal of large old trees (big oaks in particular) that easily predate the property. It requires a geotechnical engineer to assess the risk, following a site investigation to 4 metres depth preferably. Otherwise keep your mouth closed. Heave won't occur until at least one winter after tree removal. Has the tree surgeon put pen to paper (as above). If not, they won't come chasing you on the grounds of what you told someone in their back garden. Records of heave cases are buried in insurers and their agents. Only in a few cases will heave be diagnosed directly. It will probably take a year of monitoring before the absence of a tree and continuing upwards movement confirms heave. Even less likely that someone will come looking for the tree surgeon who removed the tree.

The neighbour's insurer should (it depends upon the insurance contract) pay for all the features of one event: i.e. if a tree has fallen and caused the insured damage (i.e. the shed, the car, the fence, the wall damage) they should pay for the removal of the part of the tree causing the damage and for the repair. If however the tree has merely damaged a fence and/or a wall which, by themselves, are not insured the insurer may refuse to pay for the tree removal. So what happens with the insurers will depend upon the specifics of the neighbour's insurance contract which you won't know unless they show you the details. If the neighbour has no relevant insurance, you could call upon your CONTENTS insurance. This should contain a liability clause which may cover the tree owner for the costs arising from the neighbour. Things become less clear then as it depends upon events and what is told to insurers.

The law in action is far too slow for this sort of thing! If something falls in to a neighbour's property you, as tree owner, have no rights of access to your neighbour's land - you cannot demand to gain access if that access is purely to remove your tree from their land. You could clearly do the decent thing and ask for access and offer to pay for the clearance but that is not what you are asking. Can your neighbour insist on you taking action. They can clearly pay for a lawyer to send you a firm letter but they may only succeed in court (some time, possibly years later, unless they are seeking an injunction) if they can prove you have been negligent. If a storm has blown over the tree and a tree surgeon acting in your garden removes all the evidence, they would have a hard time, unless of course evidence had been collected before and correspondence had ensued.

Funny that. How many tree work applications (i.e. please wait 8 weeks whilst we have a think about it) have you made to remove a horizontal tree that was covered by any sort of TPO (woodland, area, or listed either as part of a group or as an individual). Do I hear you say 0? How many tree work appeals have there been where a council has refused to allow the removal of a horizontal tree? I am not aware of any. How many TPOs include a horizontal live tree when served (i.e. listed as an individual tree or as part of a group)? Would a tree officer step forward please and say, for example, that a horizontal live tree in an Area of a TPO was protected to the extent that they would prosecute someone undertaking unauthorised works that may damage the tree? So yes, it is possible (unlikely, but possible) that a tree falls over and remains alive; a shadow of its former self. Typically taking up a lot more land than it did before. Is it still providing the amenity that it did when the TPO was justified? Probably not. Might it be of interest as a horizontal "tree". Possibly, However, how many trees fall safely i.e. the final resting position (yes, it's only resting) is sufficiently robust and firm to allow the public around it and kids to play underneath it. In a woodland perhaps (where branches are small). So works are required to make it safe. Exempt works. For both the legal exceptions and the practical reality of a fallen tree I doubt whether a council has any practical control of what happens after a protected tree falls. I am happy to stand corrected if someone finds an example of a council proceeding otherwise.

Johnelle I have one on my computer at work - I can try to dig it out, but the official correspondence won't record what happened); the inspector had visited but had yet to submit their decision. The tree fell. The Planning Inspectorate decided there was no need to issue a decision any longer..... Your tree has fallen; it's highly likely that it is dead if the root plate has detached from the soil. Work to a dead tree is an exception so you can remove it at your convenience with no reference to the council although you may be obliged to tell them in writing (I need to check the Regs again!). You can't be prosecuted (successfuly) for the removal of a dead tree but there is a most obscure route for prosecuting for not telling them in writing (it really is a tongue twister of legislation that 99% of lawyers would fail; I've never seen it done). If the council want to argue that the tree is still alive and for some perverse reason think that you are obliged to keep the tree lying across your garden unless they give you permission (after the appropriate 8 weeks of deliberations) I would have something to say to your District Councillor first (an appeal to common sense) and then the tree officer (a request for their interpretation of the law!). It might start politely, but might deteriorate quite quickly.

Precisely: writing that a tree is dangerous without presenting a convincing reasoning is of little use. The reasoning is based on the observed facts which sometimes require appropriate analysis i.e. finding a big conk on a tree may require examination to find out what impact it has had on the tree i.e. the extent of decay, an examination of the target etc....But just presenting the facts may not be enough. Facts > Reasoning > Opinion. Get that flow right, the reader should agree with your opinion or have to find as convincing an argument to disagree. I see quite often a tree surgeon applying to remove a "dangerous" protected tree only for the council to say No! The tree surgeon may be right, they just haven't presented their case well enough to convince a reader. Thus my comment.