daltontrees

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.

Yes with justification. But see my previous post, a 20% shift is only 5% of the RPA area. Why 20%?

I suppose this merits a more detialed explanation. The 2005 version said that the RPA is to be calculated (of radius 12 x DBH as it is in the 2012 version too) then plotted. It could be offset if the tree could tolerate the damage. This was elective. It said "For individual open grown trees only, it may be acceptable to offset the distance by up to 20 % in one direction." We might call this 'bearable offset'. It was a deliberate removal of rooting volume if it was decided that the tree could stand it and that other compensatory soil was available on the other side. What that means is that the circle or other shape could only be shifted to one side by up to 20%, not that the area could be shifted by 20%. In fact, a 20 % shift in distance away from a linear feature will only affect the outmost 5% of the area. That said it is common to find situations where there is no possibility whatsoever of roots or even soil to one side of a tree. In such situations it is inevitable that the RPA should be non circular and greatly offset, sometimes by over 80% of its calculated radius. But the onus then is to provide a greater protected volume in other directions. This was acknowledged in a separate subsection of the BS. We might call this 'natural offset'. What the BS was and is trying to do I think is to avoid abuse. It could be abused by offsetting RPAs to make way for development. So it is restricted to 20% by distance. If an existing building foundation is restricting it by 80 or 90%, that's a different matter, there's no good in not offsetting it. But if it's a kid-on that there are underground barriers, offsetting away from them could be disastrous for the tree. Much later in the BS it said that "New impermeable surfacing should not cover more than 20 % of the root protection area." and a maximum of 3m distance. This would have allowed surfacing within the RPA, but not excavation or structures or the removal of rooting volume. This to me seems OK since roots will be able to get water and breathe sideways by diffusion over short distances. So I withdraw my previous comment and replace it with "It can't be offset by 20%. Up to 20% by distance (subject to the likely tolerance of the tree to root disturbance or damage) was in the previous version of the British Standard. The 2012 version doesn't make a distinction between (elective) bearable and natural offset, it just applies the tolerability test and the natural asymmetry requirement. There's no mention of 20%. It does say though that "New permanent hard surfacing should not exceed 20% of any existing unsurfaced ground within the RPA." This is to be laid on top of soil, so it doesn't change the RPA.

I got planning conditions on a site this year that required compliance with the 1989 version of BS5837. Chespale fencing 2m beyond the dripline, or something like that. Last month a Council cast up a 1957 TPO in a new town that pre-dated the existence of the whole town. The TPO is reliant on the 1947 Planning Act which was repealed in 1972. Sigh....

The chinese, superior engineering right up there with their human rights record. The caring employer.

It can't be offset by 20%. That was in the previous version of the British Standard.

Yes get some experience of tree work. In my expereince the best consultants are the ones who understand tree form a practical perspective. This only really comes from looking properly at lots of them, and seeing them taken apart will give you great insight. even dragging branches to the chipper will add to that, and you will sleep better than you ever have in your life. Some consultants specify tree work in the most unrealistic terms. You can almost tell which ones have learnt from books and which ones have learnt from trees.

You can do a rough estimate for the stem. Measure or estimate height from base to the point where the leader goes below about 75mm. Measure diameter in metres. Square the diameter, multiply by the height and divide all that by 3. That's the volume in cubes. Wet wood is generally 1 Tonne per cube, so there's the weight too. But the foliage and branches on conifers are really heavy. I don't have a formula for that.

Jointly owned means one owner, means one allowance.

That's got to be a record.

That's a bit heavy, is it not. With a typo at the all-important bit. Writing to tell you that you were in the right but big brother is watching you, you got away with it this time but tread carefully...

Officially yes permission would be needed. When making the new legislation the numbskulls at Parliament removed the right to remove a nuisance. I took it up wuith the MInister, he fobbed me off with some jobsworth in SF who the situation didn't occur very often so it wasn't a problem to require applications. I would have thought, it doesn't occur very often so why remove the exemption.

Well, the guy is a leading light in static load testing so I didn't want to be too hard on him.😉

You have got to appreciate, we now have separate legislation in Scotland and no Forestry Commission. Whatever rules apply or applied to England have no effect here. I have been told the 5 cube is per owner. A close look at the legislation backs this up. The exemption is to the owner, not to the land. The English legislation is worded differently and does seem to support the interpretation there of the exemption being per piece of land.

I recall the article, but I would observe that there is more to tree risk assessment than tree hazard assessment, one has to take into account target presence and severity of harm or damage in the event of failure. But yes, it's a subject where some like to hide behind the impossibility of seeing inside every tree while others, the ones you'd like to have in your corner in a fight, can take quantificatoin usefully quite a long way. Recently a (remaining nameless) static load testing guru told me that if the tree passed a static load test the risk from it was zero and if it didn't the risk was unacceptable because it will fail. I think that was taking it a bit TOO far.

Firstly... there never was a windthrow exemption, but the Commission was lax about it as a matter of informal policy. Then the legislation changed. Now the rules are mostly the same but the new Scottish Forestry seems to want to control windthrow removal as a means of ensuring control over restocking. That's the impression I get for its motives. You can remove dead trees without using up the 5 cube. Then if you move on to windthrow you start to use up your 5 cube a quarter allowance. basically treat them like standing timber unless they have died as a result of windthrow. Be careful about using the 'danger' exemption, it is for prevention of immediate danger only. Since in most situations danger can be avoided by staying away from an area while a Permission application is pondered at leisure by SF, the danger situation is only useful where there are unavoidable targets like roads, overhead lines and buildings. But if the danger exemption is used, it is in addition to the dead and the 5 cube exemptions and any of the other exemptions. Think of the exemptions as an AND list, not an OR list. And finally, the 5 cube exemption does not apply where it's a small native woodland or Caledonian PIne wood. So it's an AND BUT NOT IF list. The exemptions are per ownership. So it's 5 cube a quarter whether you have 10 trees or a million trees.

You mean no point in that report for you? I don't agree with the generalities. Whereas we will never know everything about every tree (and 100% is a very high target to set), it is not an excuse for not trying or not reducing the uncertainties as much as possible. In fact, the law requires risk assessors to do just that. The article contains interesting general information about tree assessment and failure criteria which apply to most situations, and whereas I will not use them for palms I can see that they provide a better insight into biomechanics. I'd rather have the info and where to find it but not use it than to guess or not care or to be at the mercy of snake-oil merchants whose prescriptions turn out to have no objective basis.

Shame you're not in Scotland or I'd have you a few days a week.

Rigorous article, but heavy going. I have nearly no experience of palm trees, I don't know how they behave compared to woody trees. I totally agree about dubious grey literature and floppy editing, unfortunately the trend is towards unreviewed articles promoted by commercial or other vested interests. Those intersts must be delighted when they become 'truth'. Advertisers have doen it since the dawn of civilisation.

We have a Ulefone 7 and a Ulefone Pro 7, both great so far, a few maddening eccentricities, but so did my previous Galaaxy. You MUST get a temepered glass screen for them though. They come with a polycarbonate one but it gets scratched and loses sharpness quite soon. Extraordinary cameras, Built in clinometer. Decent torch. Assignable side button. Waterproof. Lanyard attachment point. Battery goes on and on if you switch it to dark mode and stay off the 'location' and 'moble data' functions and spend a couple of minutes finding the several things you need to do to disable Google Play, which still manages to send notifications telling you that you have disabled notifications. Grrr! £110 on Amazon.