daltontrees

Thankyou. The 2009 Guidelines have a Model Refusal Notice which says among other things "COMPENSATION If you suffer any loss or damage as a result of this refusal of consent, you may be entitled to recover from the Council compensation. If you wish to make a claim you must do so within 12 months from the date of this decision (or, if you appeal to the Secretary of State, within 12 months from the date of his decision). Claims should be made in writing to [name and address of relevant officer of the Council]. "This paragraph should also be included (with appropriate amendment) where the LPA grant consent subject to conditions." There is absolutely no excuse for Councils not to use trhe Model Notices. I mean, the work has been done for them all tehy have to do is cut and paste. Why wouldn't they? Don't answer that!

OOOOh, disagreement! 'ignorance of the law is no defense' is used by prosecutors to avoid an easy get-out. I don't see it having any relevance here, unless it is against the Council. The Government drafts legislation, Parliament approves it, it becomes law, Government then issues guidance as to how it should be properly applied, including letting citizens at least be aware of their rights. What is good for making sure citizens know that they have a right of appeal against refusals is good for letting them know they have a right to claim compensation. So, if Local Government (created by Statute generated by Government and approved by Parliament) chooses not to follow the advice of Government, knowing that the result could be to deprive a citizen of his/her right to compensation, Local Government's ignorance of the law is definitely no defence; the only other option it has is to claim wilful defiance of the guidance or to explain why it hasn't advised citizens of their right to appeal. Put that in front of a judge, turn the Council up to 180 fahrenheit for 3 days and wait. I don't know exactly what the law is on all this as it comes under nebulous concepts of natural justice and the like, but if it looks like a turkey, gets stuffed like a turkey and bleeds like a turkey it probably is a turkey.

Prince arbert?

Interesting! Most reported compensation cases have dealt with claims for 'damage', but case law seems to suggest that claims for 'loss' (as provided for in the Act) could cover commercial loss. However, I expect the link between advers trade and the tree would have to be proven and the loss quantified objectively. I'd love to see how this one goes.

I am not clear whether the TPO stands regardless of the mistakes made by the Council in the notifications. And whether there has been an application for consent for thinning which has been refused. But if so, 24(3) of the new 2012 Regulations seem to deal specifically with forestry/woodlands and provide for compensation based on the depreciation in the value of the trees due to deterioration of the quality of the wood because it can't be thinned. Not quite the same as loss of earnings but... I have no idea whether the Guidance that refusals should be accompanied by advice about compensation rights applies to such specialist cases.

It's not even in the Guidelines up here. The interesting thing then is that if the English guidelines suggest it and if a LPA don't bring it to applicant's attention bu and then the applicant is time-barred from claiming compensation when he later finds out he could have claimed, would the LPA be guilty of maladmisistration and liable to pay out the equivalent of what the compensation would have been? I think they would have nowhere to hide in such a case.

Just out of interest i checked the equevalent Scottish situation. There is no requirement anywhere for the LPA to advise a person whose TPO application has been refused, that they have rights to claim compensation.

I've never had a refusal either. And my input might be a bit useless anyway as the law and best practice north of the border is slightly different.

I'd say those are Limes. We have the same leaf drop happening up here on 20m high mature limes. Water can only help.

I burned a few lengths of one in April, I seriously thought the stove was going to explode or split in two it was so hot. I don't likme the idea of what thy might do to the chimey lining, so I aint going to use them any more. Best ever firewood I have had has been Hawthorn, Norway Maple and Slver Leaf Maple. Better than coal and absolutely nothing left in the grate.

True, Beech give so much shelter in the rain and so much shade in the sun that animals seem to spend a lot of time under them, trampling and churning up soil.

You have won me over to Acer distylum, the Lime Leaved maple, yay!

I have just checked with my sample today of supposedly A. cordata var genuina and it has definitely alternate buds. Your specimen look like opposite pairs, like you would expect on an Acer species. Can't think of any that don't have at least slightly lobed leaves. Except maybe Acer davidii var. Ernest Wilson, but even that is not convincing.

It might be worth considering Alnus cordata var. genuina, I was out on survey today and found two adjacent A.c one was var. rotundifolia which is dark green and glossy leaved and the other one I thought was var. genuina, markedly different, lighter less glossy leaved, slightly serrated leaves, just showing the heart shape at the base but going to a fairly abrupt point. I am finding Carpinus betulus and any of the Acers not terribly persuasive so far.

Ah but the usefulness of cases with legal precedent is not the outcome for the tree or the individual but for the way that the Judge(s) clarify, explain, interpret the generalities of the law. For example, as I recall the 1st Judge goes out of his way to make a very useful distinction between the application of the abatement exemption for neighbours and then for owners. As such I have found Perrin extremely illuminating for any situation involving owners and neigbours of trees contemplating abatement, nuisance and compensation. It literally doesn't matter what side of the fence you are on. Difficult to walk away from your neighbour and your tree! And of course if the enighbour cannot abate the nuisance or win compensation from the Council he would be entitled to claim any outstanding amount from the owner by Civil action. If I was the owner I would be very reluctant not to stay as proactively involved as I could.

That could have been a whole lot worse a foot higher!!!

Awww, I ws so interested in this subject but I fear the thread is going to fizzle out wthout conclusion. In the red corner, SBD is a recognised problem, with the potential to kill and a proven record of doing so. Theories focus on hot weather, still air, perhaops over-extended branches and a handful of species, mostly broadleaves. In the blue corner, no-one really knows what causes it, it doesn't happen very often or reliably and it might just be nature's way of getting rid of overlong limbs. It is probably the stuff of dedicated scientific analysis rather than Arbtalk.

I had to call off a survey of golf course trees and come back on a quiet dqy after morning tee-offs. A guy on the third tee sliced the ball so badly that it screamed off at right angles to the fairway and pinged off a tree just above my head. I was 150 metres away, and the shot was so physically impossible that I assumed the guy had seen me in the trees and turned around 90 degrees and hit it deliberately straight at me for a laugh. I was all up for a serious altercation. However, the guy that was with me surveying trees from behind the tee saw it all and said that the guy's drive was just genuinely appalling. Second incident a few weeks ago I was surveying another golf course 10 miles away, couple of muppets tee-ed off, quite recklessly pruning the willow over our heads. This time a dreadful slice. That unannounces 'thwhitt' abov eh the head, you look up and see a clutch of leaves floeating down from overhead. We had to time the rest of the survey to miss tee-offs. I think I would do a risk assessment for working near golf courses. Public courses, add 50% changce of gettting hit. On a Sunday morning, the faint hint of whisky hangover breath drifting downwind to the defenceless surveyor, add another 49%.

Not misleading but a matter of semantics, the rule seems to be there to deter trivial applications, just like car insurance. With the latter, though, you never get the £500 back. See 'no claims bonus' in conjunction with 'excess' to see how car insurance really shafts us all.

I haven't seen the application but you could be right in a general sense because compensation only seems to be payable having "regard to the application and the documents and particulars accompanying it". If the application said can we remove the tree because it is wrecking the neighbour's driveway, then it might be difficult to prove that the damage or more specifically the potential for current and ongong damage for the woner's side gad been brought to the Council's attention and that they had therefore had had anopportunity to weigh up the compensation liabilities of refusal with the amenity losses of approval. You have clearly spent a lot of well-intended time on all this, you have my ever-increasing sympathy, the law and guidance is quite hard to understand and I am having to spend a good half an hour a day just to keep up. I am putting it down as CPD! Hindsight is so clear. The thing is, you have arefusal and that's not going to change. If you appeal and get an approval, yahay! the tree and all its incipient problems can go. Anticipating the possibility that you don't then you have the possibility of reapplying. So if the appeal fails and you don't reapply and if the original application failed to alert the Council to damage to your client's property, there is no recourse to compensation. Nor is there exemption from prosecution if your client removes roots on his own property to stop further damage there. In the ideal scenario the neighbour would apply to have the roots removed to the extent that was necessary to remove the nuisance, because it couldn't be dealt with in any other way. In the same ideal world your client /owner would apply to remove roots to the extent that they are damaging his property. Both applications would then be considered on their own merits, divorced from the explicit implications of removal of the tree. The Regulations read to me that separate compensation claims would thereafter be validated by refusals. Don't beat yourself up about what you should and shouldn't have done, I think that without the benefit of this debate and the time I have spent thinking about and researching it, I would probably have gone down a similar route to yours.

I don't think the £500 'excess' works like in car insurance, it actually means that if the loss comes to £499 you can't claim at all. If it comes to £501, the compensation is £501. I don't understand the comment about the claim being nullified. Surely the tree is untouched, the Council is basically saying that the exemption under 'necessary for abatement of nuisance' doesn't apply. No exemption has been used. Even if it had a claim would not be nullified because the claim would only be for the extent of damage caused by the tree that could not have been dealt with under the exemption. Owner an neighbour can apply. I think that since there is no excess there is no reason for a joint application, that would just cause problems later.

Well, 'stress' does have a genuine recognised meaning in the tree sense, being where a tree is pushed almost to its functional limits but will recover when the factor pushing it is removed. The extreme is 'strain' which is irrecoverable stress. On the other hand, in mechanics (which I suppose includes biomechanics) stress is a measure of force per area, say XkN/m2. It has the same dimensions as pressure. Strain is extension divided by original length say Xm/Ym and so is dimensionless. I though you were literally referring to the stress (mechanical) in wood changing with its moisture state, which was dumb of me since it can't - neither the load nor the cross sectional area can change and so the stress can't. However, if the tensile strength of wood can change with moisture content, that would be interesting and could in itself be enough to explain summer branch drop. Finding figures for tensile strength of green wood is pretty much impossible but to put it in perspective it could be of the order of 25 MegaNewtons per square m. Which is enormous. That would be 2,500 tonnes per m2. Which is like saying if you could make a rope of just over 1.12m diameter using a column of uniform Beech wood it would be able to lift the Blackpool Tower. So, general question, if tree components as we are told have a safety factor of 3 or 4 built in, and even this can be exceeded presumably by over-extension, how can these limbs survive occasional gales and then succumb to rainfall or just fall off on a still evening?

Just a couple of thoughts on the compensation issue. Firstly it seems according to the latest version of the Planning Act that "Tree preservation regulations may make provision for the payment of compensation ... where any consent required under tree preservation regulations is refused". Until there has been an application that has been refused there is no compensation payable. Secondly a claim has to be put in within 12 months of the refusal or appeal determination. Thirdly no compensation is payable "for loss or damage which, having regard to the application and the documents and particulars accompanying it, was not reasonably foreseeable when consent was refused ....". It seems to me that this is there to allow a Council to make a fully informed decision whether to refuse and take on the compensation liability, and to cover the Council if they couldn't have foreseen the damage. Note, foreseeability seems to relate to the Council. Fourthly no compensation is payable "for loss or damage reasonably foreseeable by [the applicant] and attributable to [the applicant's] failure to take reasonable steps to avert the loss or damage or to mitigate its extent". Foreseeably this time relates to the claimant. If a driveway is being disrupted and is ongoing and only going to get worse, it looks to me like there is no way to avert the damage and no way to mitigate its extent. If it is plain to see at the time of an application and has been pointed out in the application, the Council could not claim that further damage was not reasonably foreseeable. Compensation should be payable as long as a claim is made in good time. But I can't see where in the legislation compensation is payable for past damage, only for future. This seems to be backed up in case law. It also seems that claims might struggle unless at least the start of damage is plainly atttributable to the tree. Not so much an issue with a driveway but important for subsidence cases. So there seems to be a narrow window for claiming - you spot damage, prove a tree did it, apply for consent, get refused, claim withn a year for cost of unavoidable future damage and take it from there? Sorry btggaz, you are probably scunnered by all this stuff, no need to reply. But if anyone else has any views on how the compensation rules operate in cases like this please pitch in. I was just following up on that Tree Radar thing, which according to my reading of the Regulations isn't the sort of cost the Council would compensate.

I am gripped! What is moisture stress, and how does it weaken wood? And why in some species more than others?

Interesting point about conifer v broadleaf. And eucalyptus I believe counts as the latter. In the Harris article susceptible trees listed included Pinus and Sequaoiadendron gignateum. But mostly broadleaf. An essential difference between conifer and broadleaf is that the bformer supports cantileverd branches by compression wood on the underside and the latter by tension wood on the upper side. That, and substantially different proprtions of lignin and cellulose. All the pictures suggest rapid (instantaneous) tensile failure on the upper side (obviously). Conifers don't have xylem vessels, they have tracheids which are closely packed and box-sectioned. If some conclusion could be reached about the link between tensile strength of broadleaf tension wood and its relationship to quantities of water in it, particularly if the strength relationship was related to cellulose and/or to the density of xylem vessels, there may be the beginnings of a partial explanation. And if limbs prone to SLD are on a hair-trigger in drought conditions, firstly one limb landing on another would be enough to explain the domino effect of multilpe limb failure and secondly is it just the sudden weight on leaves of heavy rain that triggers failure? I mean, in dry conditions it would be quite a while before rain could infiltrate soil under a dense canopy (that would intercept and store much of it initially) and reach roots and rootlets then be passed into the translocation flow, either swelling xylem or making leaves suddenly heavy. I think the weight of rain explanation is the more likely. But I am just speculating.