daltontrees

Ben your best bet is initially to use the microguide that accompanied BS 8596. It is aimed at arbs in your situation. It will guide you as to whether someone like you can reasonably rule out roosts. If you can't, then you probably need to refere it to a specialist. Then wait for 3 months while they do dawn and dusk emergence surveys. In my expereince a lot of bat people overdo it, really disproportionate survey effort. Including such madness as emergence surveys at trees that have no potential roost features. A client once got charged £12,500 for this, I signed the tree removals off with a short but pertinent report for £75.00. There's a fundamental difficulty in makign decisions about roosts. In brief, if it has ever been used just once for a day by a solitary bat that got caught out far from home as it got light one morning, it is officially a roost. The legislation creates 2 offence types, disturbing (or worse) bats or destroying bat roosts. Obviously it's possible to do both, and if a bat is present then it is a de-facto roost. I think this is why roost features are more important initially than bat presence, becuase they can be seen during the day. And of course, no roost, no bats. A realistic approach is needed. Think in terms of the test being whether the assessment gives a robust defence against prosecution. Much like tree risk assessments, there are several components. Quality of roost x size of roost x evidence of use. Big upward pointing dry features with staining or actual live bat signs are highest, but a shitty wee downward pointing knothole a foot off the ground might theoretically be used by a bat (the equivalent of sleeping in a bus shelter when you miss the last bus home) but even if it is then removal is of low low impact on bat populations and ecology. Try the guide I mentioned. If you can't find it, let me know.

Jon I fear you have missed my point. The Hedge Height and Light Loss calculation was based by BRE on light loss at the vertical plane of the hedge face. The calculation cannot be used competently for overhangs, regardless of whether overhangs can or cannot be addressed by Notices. To force the calculator to deal with overhangs one would need to manually calculate the height i.e. not use the calculator. The reason it doesn't work is that the functions in excel spreadsheet make an assumption that the hedge top is up to 1 metre back from the boundary anyway. It is possible to imagine the top opf a hedge curling over the complainant's garden like a breaking wave, but if you artificially force the formula you will get the wrong answer. That's not a legal argument or a moral one, that's an arithmetic fact. Just one of several ways that the HHLL approach is such an oversimplification that it produces bewildering wrong answers in anywhere other than terraced suburbia in the Netherlands. Doesn't stop people blindly following it as if it has been somehow sprinkled in fairy dust.

Howdy, I have passed your name to someone in your area he may get in touch.

Darwin himself couldn't have put it better.

Agree. When I did PTI I don't think the training provider was too fussed what quals the candidates had except money.

Anyway the OP seems to have wandered off without reply, so I'm not going to contribute except to say that I consider the PIT qualification to be a borderline liability if would-be surveyors think it is all that is needed to do risk survey. I say this having just taken on 2 folk that did PTI and by their own admissions found that it left them woefully ill-equipped for competent tree risk assessments.

To that I'd add that the law wouldn't expect any more than a ground based inspection but it would expect a follow-up climbing inspection if a defect was suspected but couldn't be assessed from the ground.

Well yes and no, it depends if you are proposing to use the resultant dimensions in the Hedge Height and Light Loss calculation. If so, the calculation cannot be used for any part of the hedge that crosses the boundary, even if the Notice says it is to be cut back to the boundary. But more importantly the light blockage is defined by the top edge of the hedge (as cut) and so using the bottom width of a hedge that tapers back with height would result in unnecessary height reduction.

Overhangs are already covered at common law, with rights of self-abatement or seeking a court order to have branches cut back to the boundary. Personally I don't think the Act is intended to deal only with overhangs but it is known for Notices to deal with overhangs as an add-on to the main business of reducing height. There is a potential issue for Notices that require overhangs to be removed since this would require access to the complainant's land. Although the complainant wold presumably not mind, it is a legal can of worms to oblige the hedge owner to secure rights of access, and gives them a way to wriggle out of the Notice obligations. It follows that the measurement of a hedge for light calculations should always be at the boundary line, since no Notice can require cutting back beyond that point. Forget where the stems are, they are not the light blockage. The only exception is where the hedge is set back from the boundary. This affects the calculation using the HHLL method, but the complexitioes of that are too much to try and explain. So regardless of the shape of the hedge, imagine it shaved back vertically to the boundary line and take the calcualatiosn and measurements from there.

There are 2 aspects to this. Firstly the effect an overhang is having on light. This is hard to calculate but it can be done. Second is whether HH notices should deal with overhangs at all. That's a difficult topic, I have had good and bad experience of this. When you say you are 'aware that it needs to be considered', what do you mean? And you might as well call it the Act rather than the Bill. It hasn't been a Bill for 18 years!

I pleasd clemency, I am in Sctland and the Roads Act is almost the same as the Highways Act but there are differences in terminology and powers, plus in Scotland we don't have easments we have servitudes, and a different set of rules on prescriptions and personal bar (estsoppel to you guys), but all that said prescription does not trump statute unless statute says it does. In Scotland there is no such thing as the doctrine of lost grant, since our law came from roman law and yours came from french and medieval law. It hurts my head keeping up with both. Ours is better, of course, and simpler, so I think in those terms. 'Tolerated' was the word I deliberately choose to cover that whole business of 'not quite permitted but too late to do anything about it'.

You have only a partial understanding of the law here. Firstly public adopted porads and footways vest in the Council regardless of who owns the land under them. If the trees are part of the highway, they too vest in the Council. It is stated in statute. They don't need documentary proof. Also you can't create a prescriptive right over a public road. Nor can you gain the right to drive over a footway, no matter how long you do it for. So there is an important distinction between having a permitted or tolerated access over a footway to a property and trying to claim a right to one by virtue of underlying titles or prescriptive rights. Generally, the highways legislation trumps common and civil law.

The National Roads Development Guide says "A horizontal clearance of 0.5 metres should always be provided between the edge of the carriageway and any vertical objects such as signs. Where the crossfall on the carriageway exceeds 4% this clearance should be increased to 0.6 metres."

2005 said it may be acceptable to offset by up to 20% for open grown trees only. What everyone took from that was "blah blah acceptable blah blah 20% blah blah". As I have already said, the offsetting of a circular RPA by 20% in distance only makes a difference of 5% of the RPA. Mathematical formula available if anyone wants it. Mathematical prioof available if anyone really really wants it. Just as big a problem as I see it is the failure to offset RPAs when all the evidence is there that the tree has done this naturally due to physical constraints. This can leave the true important rooting area in the path of development where no precautions are specifed to avoid loss and damage. If and when 5837 is reviewed the focus should shift from allowing justified offsets to requiring them.

I would just dd to that that the Council owns the trees and the land they stand on, so that it has a common law right to protect them against damage and deny works on its land that wpuld do so.

600mm I believe.

The pleas in mitigation are hilarious! Busted!

That looks like Kretzschmaria, but I wouldn't condemn a tree based on a fuzzy picture or an isolated fruiting. I've seen K up at about 4 metres on Norway Maple but rarely high up on Beech. The second one looks superficially like Meripilus, but M doesn't have gills, it has pores.

Yes I think this started in London where it was shown that surfaced front gardens were causing rainwater discharge straignt into drains, causing storm surges and contributing to the depletion of water in aquifers which ultimately are a part of the drinking water supply. A natural front garden will absorb a lot of rain, which percolates slowly to aquifers or is stored until evapotranspirated or at the very worst reaches water courses and drains after a delay of days, spreading the discharge patterns after rain events. I don't know if policies are aimed at the aesthetics of the area. In my view they should be because it nearly always looks shit. Plus if you put spaces in the front of a garden that didn't have a driveway before, you are basically claiming the road forntage as your own whereas previously it would have been available first-come-first-served for parking.

I can certainly see why you are put out, and it also sounds like I am saying 89 wrongs don't make a right. The Council seems to have decided to prevent damage to street trees with its new policy. Who knows, they may have witnessed over the years the deterioration or loss of trees in your area because of root damage. My comments were more just a general observation of Arbtalkers typically assuming everything every council everywhere does is irrational, corrupt, inept, inconsistent etc. I represent a mix of public and private sector clients and often I point out that trees don't know the difference. The prvate sector screws up almost as often as the public sector, but we never get to hear of that. You can go on a crusade or self-righteous indignation and force a Council to provide information and you can appeal against its decisions, but a private sector body will just tell you to go away and mind you own business. Anyway, all other things being equal your crossover prospects seem to be dependent on one thing, the existence or not of important roots and rooting volume in the wedge of stuff that would inevitably have to be removed. Everything else can be overcome by engineering solutions. Proof could be tricky, expensive and inconclusive, only you can decide if it's worth trying.

Oh boy, this has been a classic Arbtalk 'the Council are all bastards/idiots' rant so far, but it's slightly missing an obvious point. The Council owns the road, the footway and the trees and doesn't want them wrecked by chancers and amateurs. So it uses industry best practice (BS5837 and NJUG) to prevent damage unless the applicant is willing to pay to prove that there aren't roots to be damaged. Seems fair enough. No different from a planning application being refused because of tree damage. Same standards, same principles. And Councils will accept that trees won't be damaged if an exploratory excavation establishes that there aren't roots present. If they are present, go over them if levels allow. Unfortunately drop kerbs only ever require reduction of levels. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Water will go sideways to some extent. Not ideal but bearable if small. I am just back in form a job, two mature hawthorns almost identical in size almost beside each other. One has a plastic shed about 6' x 6' right beside it and has about 50% crown dieback. The other has nothing over its roots and has 0% crown dieback. The only difference is the shed.

I've been in and out of public sector. I couldn't stand to go back to a Council, but I have about 10 council clients and it's nice to do a really good job for them then walk away with a fee, politics-free. But in the private sector there's no safety net, and for a new business no sick pay, no paid holidays, all the flexi time you want if you don't need money and you have to be everything from admin to finance to dogsbody to IT support to boss. You overprice a job, you lose it, you underprice a job, you get it and lose money. It can be ruthless until you build up a client base of people who want you for your quality. Do a business plan. Target client base, target coverage, competitors, quals needed, insurance needed, equipment and premises needed, going rates for fees, overheads, honest take-home for a few years as you fumble around learning from mistakes. Versus all the good and bad bits of LA post. It's all one big field, grass is the same shade everywhere, it comes down to personal choice, and ability if that is a consideration.

I'm probably that pedant. But if you think I'm bad, some of the TOs around here will fight you to appeal on a comma. The best interpretation of the Standard is what the Standard actually says, so for me no 'rule' is needed, just justification. Although fair enough at the talkings-sake stage I might tell a client 20% could be justifiable with care. Last week I justified 90% because the tree was beside a 150 year old railway bridge pillar with 12 foot deep foundations. Last month in the same area the TO would not accept 5%. He's used to people getting given leeway and then taking the piss.

Yes, but I wouldn't agree on your reasons, Yes if tolerance to damage allows, and/or yes if existing features indicate that it has happened naturally.