daltontrees

There are several exemption types. I onle mentione dthe plannign situation. The FC guidance (downloadable) should keep you right.

Yes. The planning exemption is only when there is detailed planning permission AND the trees have to be removed to implement the permission (not necessarily all tree on the site) AND removal is immediately required (you can't just clear the trees unless you're about to start development).

unless you give a location, no-one can start to answer the question.

There you have it, the Analomometer.

I don't think it's about the nanny state, the question might be - if you sent an employee or a subby up in strong winds and they got hurt, would the HSE do you? Would your insurers drop you in it? I've climbed in winds where I could barely hold on. Whole different game if you're on spikes. Some branch walks just wouldn't be possible in even moderate winds, with swaying stems above you jerking your ropes and the branch bouncing beneath you and the wind knocking you off balance and the extra weight of you on the branch increasing the chance of it giving way und er you. I think it all comes down to doing a site specific, day-specific risk assessment that weighs up the type of operation with the weather conditions. There can't possibly be one maximum wind speed and one 'working at height'. I've never seen a speed published, and I'd be surprised if one has been that covers all.

I paid £315 last month for one night in Islay, there was literally nothing else. And that was a last minute deal discounted down from £390! I mean, it was good but there was a fire alarm at 3am, all of us out on the street, couldn't get back to sleep afterwards. I felt burst at breakfast time. Travelodge doesn't use Booking.com. Premier used to but haven't recently. Unfortunately the great prices if you book way ahead aren't available to me when I as usual have to turn a job around in 2 weeks. The options in rural Scotland can be slim, the next nearest available place at a decent price can be 20 miles away. Not too bad but I like a super early start. Especially in winter when there's short daylight hours.

I do a lot of survey all over the place, I probably stay over about twice a month. Hotels and the like have got really really expensive compared to a few years ago. I thought about camper van, but to be honest when I finish work and I am wet and dirty and tired I need a shower and a good night's sleep in a decent bed, and ideally the option of a hearty breakfast. Can't cope with the thought of snorers, nowhere to hang up wet gear and trying to make dinner or breakfast on a daft wee gas hob. Not frequently anyway. I usually gamble on getting a last last minute hotel, with the fallback option of kipping in the estate car.

Fair play to you. But I don't see what my self-contradiction is. TPOs are an imposition on private property rights that should only be used for overriding public benefits. I don't see why the public shouldn't pay for the adminsitration of the controls wher eonwers are jsut wantign to do ordinary things with their trees. This is child's play compared to the moral repugnance and (in my opinion) illegality of extorting huge CAVAT payments from people who want to remove their own trees. In a previous career I did a lot of Compulsory Purchase and conmpensation work. This also makes TPOs look trivial. It was a fair system of compensation, but few owners coud get their heads around having their property taken from them. Literally kicking and screaming in some cases. Remaining objective is essential while trying to bring others along towards improvements by sound reasonable and rational argument. Nothing wrong with that.

This is a small part of what I do for work, and an even smaller part of what I do in life. Beyond using opportunities that arise to change or influence things for the better, I do not let it trouble me. Who's to say I'm right anyway. We live in an imperfect democracy. Nearly none of us get to pick and choose the bits of our lives or work that we want to leave because we don't believe in them 100%. Presumably you're just trying to wind me up. But in summary, this is life. There's no harmless jobs.

I'm not sure that speculative applications are a significant issue, afer all it could take a couple of months before a decision is made (and much longer if it's a refusal based on excessive works), which doesn't allow the underlying problem to get resolved. It's not happened to me so far but in theory I could get 3 applications at once, each for a different % reduction. I'd rather refuse one and approve the other two than have to go back to the applicant and recommend that another application be put in for a lesser % than a single application for the highest %. The position at law as I see it is that a LPA cannot approve something that it hasn't had an application for. E.g application comes in for 40% reduction, LPA cannot approve 20% so it has to refuse and invite new application. Within reason the case officer can allow the applicant to vary the % while keeping the application alive, but it can get messy. A significant audience can build up in curtain-twitching-land, so the rules can't be bent too far even with the best intentions.

It's the only system we have, and it's not sh*t. And I'm paid to do it. Getting people out of bed since the invention of money.

Damn I just typed a long reply then lost it. Pre app advice is money well spent, it helps developers make money off developments by smoothing the way. It's mostly a list of relevant national and local policies and how they affect the site. Specific observations only arise from draft layouts. 'Minded to recommend approval' is sometimes the flip side of 'would lose on appeal if I didn't approve it'. Contrast with Mrs Miggins just wanting to know how much she is allowed to take off her own oak tree. TPO applications are rarely so profit driven that there can be a realistic expectation of an applicant paying for advice. It is implicit in there being a TPO that the tree was at least once considered important for the amenity of the area. The application decision is in the nebulous realms of whether the TPO is still relevant, whether the owner must be forced to live in the misery of the tree's shade, whether an oak will withstand a 20% reduction etc. So, it's the same but totally different. A developer can buy a site and choose to pursue development. A tree owner just wakes up one day to find her tree has been commandeered by the public, without payment of compensation. Making her pay to understand that is (to my mind) immoral.

I haven't really thought it through, but doesn't it create a conflict of interest for a LPA to create a client/consultnat relationship (by charging for advice), then determine applications based on statutory obligations and then potentially have applicants appeal against refusals? It all seems a bit murky and compromised. And mean. To be a bit clearer, applicant would pay TO to write an acceptable application that the TO would recommend for approval. Doesn't that sound fundamentally wrong? Is it just me?

Personally I think it's immoral to charge. TPO is a huge imposition on a tree owner, and quite rightly TPO applications are free. Pre-application advice from a Council can save it lots of admin dealing with half-baked applications. The LPA I work for doesn't charge. I usually end up spending a fair bit of time getting the applicant to modify the application to make it competent, and then acceptable. Does applicant benefit from this? Not really, and it's fundamentally wrong to expect them to pay for advice that mainly suits the public. Cheapskate Britain generally fixes the resources available and then provides only as much of a service as it can afford, knowing that in most cases it won't be able to do things properly. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a society where our laws, policies and values are used as a basis for setting adequate resources?

You have some well established white or soft rot there. Possibly Armillaria. The orange stuff is not significant. Original cause of damage can't be known, but I would guess at rabbits gnawing the bark, maybe worsened by strimming. If so that has opened up wood to infection. Bad news is that it wouild take a miracle fo the tree to fight it off, especially if recently pruned. Good news is that apple trees can be pretty tough and, despite cavities or decay, it might soldier on for a decade or so before there is risk of collapse. Good that you gor rid of the grass, but you should mulch, mulch, mulch, the single greatest kindness you can do a tree.

Try Chris Simpson at Informed Tree Services. Hamilton.

In Scotland there are a few at 2.4m diameter.

Each to their own. The pictures suggest that it is doing a good job of blocking intervisibility from houses across the way.

Yes had this before, many times about sawdust but only once about resin. The guy was obviously deeply in love with his car, and the mess was barely visible. I offered to clean it but he wouldn't let me touch it, ther was a vague threat about sending me the bill for a professional clean. But we had asked him to move it in the morning and he wouldn't so he was warned there might be an unavoidable mess. Never heard from him again.

Looks likk compression fork failure, very common. I'd give it a chance to put on reaction wood around teh breakage, and if I was woorried about breakage in teh meantime I'd brace the remaining section to a good adjacent stem, leave it loose to allow flexing but tight enough to catch it if it breaks.

The light blue area to the right, it's within the stem girth but what does blue mean? Not a void but is it purely a record of velocity, and does it show that wood is present within which the sound waves travel more slowly or do they travel slowly because it's mush? Im trying to figure out how the dysfunction got to that depth (nearly 10cm) but the dieback only showed itself recently. It's pretty hard to kill wood outright quickly and leave the rest unaffected. Intense heat would do it but I can't imagine contamination damage being quite so contained. What height did you do the tomography? If it was low down, my money's on severance or rapid killing of a whole section of roots.

Looks like old damage, and as has been said niticeable absence of flare. I have no experience of interpreting Picus. It looks like decay following damage rahter than teh other way around. Old impact, fire, major root severance by services close-in?

Griselinia littoralis I think. New Zealand Privet.

Mysterious. Hopefully someone has some insights. I'm just back form the west coasy of Ireland. A lot of trees (mainly willows) were looking pretty much brown all over, and I couild only think it was due to recent (3 weeks ago) heatwave.

Summary of advice. Come clean and (formally) request a revisal of the TPO.