daltontrees

Replying on btggaz post. Exact details of service runs and finished levels are not necessarily needed for a planning application to be approved. But they could be incertain cases and ironically the most likely tome for them to be needed would eb if trees were threatened. On the other hand, the service runs and levels could be part of the information submitted withteh application even if it wasn't asked for. As such they could be covered by the approval. In the ordinary course of events I don't think it can be expected of a developer to check the status of trees outwith an application site. Conversely the planner registering the application should have and could have asked for the application boundary to be extended to cover TPOd trees or asked for a survey to take account of the off-site TPO. In a straight argument about who missed the TPO, the developer will no doubt say he did a title search and found no TPO recorded on his land. Not a full and perfect defence but at that point I can see a judge turning round to the Council and asking why they didn't flag it up. In the end, I can't see the statutory position resulting in clear-cut liability for anyone. And as another poster has alluded to (? Andy Webster) there is not much public interest to be served by a withc-hunt to establish malice or negligence where it was very possibly just oversight and shared blame for carelessness. All in all, it might become as you say a largely civil matter. More on this in a moment, I need to go back and look at the pictures.

How, specifically, do you think the legislation should address it? BY the way, I agree with you for all the reasons I have gone through in my previous posts, I am just cutious to know what you think the exact issue is. I have a fair idea myself.

I wasn't condoning the omission of off-site trees. The BS is pretty clear that these should be recorded ina survey. But we are all assuming the surveyor was instructed, on behalf of the developer, and following stipulations from Planning, to do a BS5837 survey. All I was suggesting was that if Plannign didn't stipulate it and therefore the developer didn't instruct it, the surveyor wouldn't and SHOULDN'T record off-site trees. I did a survey for a developer a few weeks ago. I gave a fixed price for the estimated number of trees on the site but when my instruction was confirmed it was to do a 5837 survey. So instead of recording 120 trees I recorded 156 trees because the specification implied off-site trees too. Thankfully the client was understanding enough to increase my fee pro rata. Otherwise I would have done half a day's survey work for nothing.

I hope I don't come a cross as tearing things to shreds. My mind takes a rigorous logical approach on most things (to the great exasparation of friends and family sometimes) and if I see a flaw in an argument that I think I can correct I do. The only satisfaction is in sharing greater understanding. And I don't think particularly fast, I just go straight to the point and ignore everything else. I am pretty organised with my reference material too. Sometimes I miss things, and anybody that wants to and can should point these out to me. All part of the sharing.

Does no-one have anything to add about this? I was hoping someone could point out a mistake in my reasoning or interpretation of the legislation.

Oh dear, this has suddenly got complicated. The Regulations say that nothing shall prevent the cutting down, topping, lopping or uprooting of a tree so far as such work is necessary to implement a detailed planning permission. It does not exempt the wilful damage or wilful destruction of a tree. Presumably because severing roots, which might otherwise be 'damage' (and which may be different from uprooting) could be controlled by planning conditions. There is no way in my mind that the legislation has anticipated this scenario where damage is done to a TPO'd tree that is mainly situated outwith the planning application boundary. Was the developer meant to check for TPOs outside his land. No. On balance if it went to court would the onus have been on the Council that makes TPOs to notice and control the damage by conditions. I think so. But does the exemption due to planning permission apply? I'm not so sure it does. It might rest on whether severing of roots counts as uprooting a (whole) tree. Patently it's different. And so the exemption cannot be relied upon. Which shifts the question onto the word 'wilful'. Did the two eejits with the bulldozer wilfully damage the tree? Was the intention to damage the tree or was the intention to remove the roots. I know they have the same consequence for the tree, but the legislation is there to examine the motive. There has to be damage and will.

Sadly I agree with this. Ignorance of protection is never a defence but when planning permission authorises tree (or root) work there is no crime in the first place. I am still unclear though whether the consent gives full immunity. I will go off and check just now...

It might, though. Remember the planners only stipulated that tree on the site were to be surveyed. Why survey trees that the planners in their 'wisdom' didn't want to know about.

What I meant was that if an application was made to Small Claims without firstly pursuing a quantified (ascertained) amount the Court wouldn't look at it. If a claim is made to the developer for a specific amount and the claim is disputed by the developer a claim could then be made to the Small Claims court. But, and it's a big but, the judge is very very likely to refer a matter of such complexity and possibly judicial precedent to another court. A well-heeled developer might run rings around a poorly prepared and poorly argued self-representation by the owner. And once lost the case can't be re-opened. So that all adds up to gettting a decent lawyer from day 1. And that will cost more than £80 unless it's a dodgy no-win-no-fee merchant. It might seem unfair, but that's the way of the world.

As I recall the FC's remit is only to control the standing timber stocks of the country. If so, calling them when you see a tree being felled isn't going to go a long way in protecting trees. If they get an application for tree felling they have no remit whatsoever in deciding whether the trees should be retained in the interest of the amenity of the area. That would be the COuncil's job. And just to complicate things, if trees are TPO'd already, and their removal requires a felling license because of the volume of timber involved, by a quirk of the law it is the FC that effectively decides the TPO issues instead of the Council.

I wish it were that simple. The Small Claims Court is for recovering money owed, not for proving that money is owed.

I think it is importat to remember that a TPO covers a tree, including its roots. Roots know nothing of legal boundaries and fences. If the TPO'd tree (including its roots) has been damaged without lawful excuse it is a criminal offence. Next thing is that the planning application and consent clearly did not include the OP's land. Therefore it doesn't matter what the consent says or doesn't say about trees, the normal rule that planning permission overrides TPOs does not apply here. Or does it? On the one hand the tree is protected and had it been in the application the LA would perhaps have noted the potential for damage to it and conditioned the consent accordingly. The condition they did add about trees on the site is therefore irrelevant. On the other hand part of the tree (the roots) was in the application site and the develooper could try and claim immunity from prosecution, arguing that the LA should have protected it by conditions if it deserved it. Playing the whistle, as it were. I think the condition of the tree is irrelevant to the debate about right or wrong. No matter which way you look at it there is no record of the view that the developer took on its worthiness for retention and even if the developer did consider it, it would be unconscionable to decide to remove roots on the grounds that the tree was knackered anyway. The LA might lazily have been waiting for the tree survey of the site before properly considering the trees. But even so this would not have identified the TPOd tree, it's condition or the presence of its roots in the development site. Let's say that is the case for now. The developer has dug a trench. The tree is damaged. The roots were encroaching on his land, unless there is statutory impediment to damaging the roots, the developer was perfectly within his rights to remove the encroaching roots. The focus then would be back on the questions of the competence of the LA in failing to note the threat to the off-site tree from the development and of whether the developer has immunity from prosecution because of the consent. On what has been said so far, both the developer and the LA are implicated. If the developer has immunity, that is the end of it for him. And there is nothing that the owner can do to get redress from the developer. I am struggling to see how there could be any redress from the LA either. If he doesn't have immunity, he can be prosecuted and fined. The fine could reflect that the tree is diseased and might have limited time left to provide public amenity, and the fine might be reduced accordingly. And in the latter case, the tree's life may have been irrreversibly shortened. But the roots were still an encroachment, so apart from criminal prosecution, what right would the owner have to compensation for premature loss of the tree? There may be flaws in my logic, but I do feel it is down to whether damaging a TPOd tree (the root part) overrules immunity by planning consent or vice versa. Anyone know?

Just looking in on this thread for the first time. What a mess! Advice and speculation coming thick and fast. If I get a chance I will throw mine into the hat. I wouldn't bother at his stage sine there are too many posts to follow up, but I feel there are a number of clarifications that might help.

I would agree, if you don't want to tkae any chances the figure of 8 is the one, but it does have the slight drawback that if you peel off it's maybe going to be aswine to untie. On th other hand, rock climbing ropes are designed, unlike arb ropes, to stretch and permanently lengthen as a means of absorbing the energy of a fall. Arb ropes shouldn't need to take more than a 500mm fall. A cute alternative is a bowline on the bight. In an emergency I have even used one to make a sit harness.

Excellent! Did you make the slides yourself? The first two seem to illustratet the difference between ring porous and diffuse porous quite well. I was planning to put a couple of examples up to illustrate this, might still do so in a format that allows me to annotate them.

The one in my pictures is x20 to x400 maginification and has I think around 2 megapixels. They can be bought on the net (just search for USB microscope) for as little as £14 but I would be inclined to make sure I got at least 2MP and at least 300x maginification even if it cost me £40. The price includes the inegral USB cable and a CD that puts the software on your desktop. As with most things the temptation is to start with a cheap one to see if you like it and plan to upgrade but starting cheap can put you right off so it's better to start with good kit that you will want to use again and again. I use mine at least once a week. About 100 sessions so far since it was given to me. It was a present so I dont know the price, but I am guessing it has cost about 20p a session or 10p per picture so far. It should last years too, I reckon it'll be sub- 2p per picture by the time it's done in. And that's ignoring it's use as a mini CCTV just for looking at things.

Here's the simplest set-up you can get for taking pictures under a microscope. It's a USB microscope, such as RobArb mentioned. I should explain and state an obvious point about microscopes generally. The way you look at a picture depends on how you use the light. In this case it uses reflected light. Light hits the object from the room or the sun or the lights in the room and bounces off it. Some of it hits the microscope lens and gets focused into a picture. Just as the eye does. More complicated set-ups use transmitted light, the light passes through the object and into the microscope. The object has to be therefore fairly thin and almost transparent. To take a picture you just need to put a camera where your eye would be. The USB microscope in the picture does it all. It has it's own LED light source right where it's needed above the object. It can be swivelled about and focused at most angles. Then it converts the picture in real time to a picture on the computer screen, like a mini CCTV. No need to look into the microscope, it's there 17"" across on the laptop. And to take a picture you just hit the 'capture' button on the computer. The picture I took was a Poinsetta leaf, the quality is limited but you can see it gets in nice and close to see the vein structures on the underside of the leaf. If anyone fancies getting into a bit of simple reflected light microscopy/photography, this is the way to go and not too late to email Santa knowing it won't break the Bank of Lapland.

It's pretty much the same as soft tissues, still taking thin slices. I am hoping Tony Croft will come along in due course and enlighten me as to how to do wood. Most of my slides have been bought prepared since my own efforts at thin sections have been a bit haphazard. Hopefully I can post pictures of preparation of a slide step-by-step.

Well, if I know you, and seeing as some conifers can only be reliably differentiated by counting vascular bundles in needles, you'll be wanting to get into transmitted light microscopy.

Eventually I will get round to explaining a bit about microscopes and how in theory anyone on Arbtalk can get into this at very little expense.

Ahh, petrology, my other obsession. I have around 500 slides, hence I have polarising microscopes. I have suggested elsewhere to Tony Croft that he gets one because it shows up celllose degradation in the s2 layer of cell walls under crossed nicols.

I can't remember which microscope I used, I have two. Probably a GX Optical JPL1350HBG for the pictures with the crosshairs. The others might be a Swift Model P. The quality is probably a product of the camera used. The poor ones are probably a Nikon Coolpix and the good ones a Nikon D3100

Off you go then and have a look. Tree care - trees under the microscope. Any words of encouragement will ensure an almost never-ending stream of additional posts.

Larch cross section showing why trees look like they have rings. Densely packed cells of winter wood between larger cells of rapidly growing spring wood.