daltontrees

Climber + groundie + chipper, 1 day. You haven't seen it. I've done bigger jobs in half a day. The fee for the survey and spec and photois showing pruning points, pro rata on the whole job, is £5. The reduction is specified to minimise the acceleration of decline. All trees need removing as some point. The client should have the info at hand to decide when to do it, rahter than be bullshitted into it now by a contractor who wants to be the one that lands the job and is willing to mislead the client as to the level of risk. The tree is TPO'd. The thieving lying bastard could have cause the client to remove a tree unlawfully based on use of an exemption that could not be justified. I know the TO, he would refuse an application to remove. And quite rightly, it's not necessary. I can't speak for other consultants, there's cheats in every game. If your cheats were milking it for more work, they must be shit if they are not already too busy for that sort of nonsense. I don't advertise and I am run off my feet with purely referrals and repeat business.

I know this particular contractor's in-house consultant to be rather prone to recommending unnecessary work, she is famous for it and has been caught out before, including by me. The client was so incredulous of the recommendation to fell that he sought a second opinion, from me. The client may decide to take more drastic action than reduction, but at least he will know that the reduction will leave the tree at an acceptable level of risk for a few years and if he makes a longer term strategic decision to remove completely it is an informed decision rather than a self-serving unjustified recommendation to hav ethe same contractor remove it. I make no apology for the accusation of thieving lying bastards, but this is specific to this one company.

A 'clear' outcome from drilling or Picus would allow retention of the tree, but that's never going to be the outcome. This is where the problems start, investigations will at best be a sample of likely decay extent and would need very skilful interpretation to be able to derive remaining strength on which to predict likelihood of failure and base a decision as to whether to retain or intervene in some way. I'd bet the K.d pre-dates the work 5 years ago. It is fairly slow moving, Lonsdale or someone like that recokoned 30 years from infection to failure. I generally see it as reaching the outside from the inside, so when you see fruiting it's a bad sign unless it's deep between otherwise healthy and sound butresses or ribs. K'd start as a soft rot, progressing to white rot. This accelerates on aeration. Notably acoustic velocities can remain unchanged right up to the bitter end so a Picus may be of limited help. White rot is not normally associated with brittle failure, but that's what I see on Beech. All or nothing. There's no right answer. Expensive and possibly inconclusive investigations, probably followed up with crown reduction at best or removal at worst, or a best-guess non invasive sounding leading again to some sort of works. Both scenarios are stalling the inevitable tree death. This needs to be weighed up against duty of care liability and how much the tree is valued by the owner and/or would be valued in a reduced stature. Fungicidal treatment? What a load of bollocks. The industry is set up differently in US than here, but if it were here I'd say do not ask a contractor. Ask a a consultant (who will not benefit from any paid tree work) to advise on all the aspects so that the client can make an informed decision that should be to some extent backed by the consultant's duty of care and insurance if litigation should arise. I am going out ina few minutes to look at a Beech that is a good bit bigger than yours, on the edge of a national tourist venue. Lots of decay a tthe base. The contractor's in-house consultant advised removal (£3K) but my preliminary look at it last week suggested a few metres off the top (£500) and it'll be OK for another 15 years. Thieving, lying bastards. Yours, like my client's, might be a situation that merits paying for impartial advice.

Pseudo-science? To pass the PTI you don't have to believe in it, you just need to be able to regurgitate it. But iunderstanding it will stand anyone in good stead for the future. The thing is, when I'm doing risk assessments of trees paid for by clients, they set me a pass rate of 100%. Aim high!

Missing an important point here, cable operators have powers to take entry to footways under the PUSWA or New Street Works Acts, the Council can't stop them in most situations. I used to work for a Council when the town I worked in first got cable. They started off by wanting to use Council owned verges because the dig was cheaper but I insisted on individual wayleaves and I checked on NJUG adherence and quality of reinstatement, so much so that they changed instead to digging up pavements because they didn't need wayleaves and I had no power to supervise. In most locations they were in and out before you knew it, leaving only a slowly sinking reinstatement to show for it for years to come.

Jumping to conclusions, the cable co. could be lying. In my expereince they don't get all (or any of) the permissions they need or if they do it's conditional on following NJUG guidelines, which they couldn't spell never mind follow.

Holy shomoley! Blocking cracks and cavities to avoid occupation by bats is more or less admission that they are roost features. And blocking them is against the law. Dodgy practice!

Exactly! Ask a bat person to get involved and expect indefinite delays and expense.

I wouln't bother with the Standard, not at full price anyway. There's only a couple of pages that are actually of practical use to arbs and these are pretty much covered by the micro guide and an article that Jim Mulholland of the AA did about soft felling a couple of years ago.

Yeah but there's no problem with being in the firing line if they're only throwing water balloons at you from 100 yards away. Perspective and proportion is all.

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.