daltontrees

Is there a reason why you are not just asking your arboriculturist to resolve these issues? He/she seems already to have specified non-invasive foundations for much of the garage, and a lot of protection for other trees, and will doubtless have a view on whether the remaining RPA incursions are acceptable. It is for trhe designer to provide overriding justification and for the arb to say how and whether the trees(s) can stand it.

It's unlikely, but I write from experience.

It is far and away more important to have a good practical understanding of duty of care law than to have a crisp statement of it in a report. As such, there are dangers in copying text from someone else's reports. Firstly it may be wrong, and from personal experience of looking at reports from some of the best known tree consultants in the UK I'd say there's a good chance of errors. (I was tempted when I started out to use a very well known consultant's report as a template for my own, but by the time I had adjusted it there was almost nothing left of the original). Secondly, it is important to make your reports your own in style and content, and to integrate general statements about duty of care into the context of the whole report. You can see sometimes in reports that sections have been beamed down from Planet Solicitor or nicked from somewhere else and the report looks like it's been written by a committee, which is a distraction that undermines confidence in the important bits of the report, namely the tree advice. Third, copying instead of writing will discourage rather than encourage your own understanding of the issues. So I applaud you attempting to have a go at your own prose. But then the danger arises that if you try to make your report an authoritative statement of the law, readers will rely on it unduly, with potentially dangerous consequences. Personally I'd say even before knowing the context of how you plan to use your prose that it is too detailed, and in being too detailed it is then not detailed enough to be definitive. Better I'd say to back off in the other direction. Stick to the generalities. I'd suggest you start and finish with s.2(2) of the Occipiers Liability Act 1957 and s.1(4) of the Occupiers Liability Act 1984. Look them up. 2 sentences. That is the law. Case law has tinkered on the fringes of it, and for sure a good understanding of the development is important practical understanding, but I don't believe there is any need for that level of detail in a report unless a specific trree raises a specific issue. I honestly don't think making a distinction between criminal and civil law is useful. THe HS part can be covered by adding something simple like "Health and Safety legislation also places a duty on employers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that employees and members of the public are not put at risk." I don't think you need to add that criminal prosecutions could ensue, as that's kind of scaremongery and obvious. Stepping back from all this mumbojumbo, don't forge the essence of the report. You, client, are a tree owner, You have a duty of care. You have asked me to check the trees for you to make sure that you are taking proportionate and reasonable actions to avoid foreseeable harm or damage. With that in mind, I have looked at the trees, and recommend you do X and Y within Z months and have ther trees reinspected in XX months. I have seen many an expensive bullshit tree report that isn't anywhere as useful to the client as that. You can fill a report with all sorts of caveats, but these are at their best when you also explain that the survey is limited because the law does not ordinarily expect a duty holder to climb, bore, excavate, DNA test etc. So, Alan, I'd say yes write your own report or copy only if you really really understand what you're saying or not saying, and keep it in context, helpful and reassuring, explaining limitations and why those limitations are appropriate. You can get me offlineif there are any specifics. PS all the aforegoing would not be reliably correct for Scotland or Ireland.

There are many many more fixes I can do on a saw in a tree than most groundies could do on the ground. And quicker too. Do you really think I don't check tension before I take a saw up? Never mind. Point is, if there is a point, that the clove hitch is probably the best way to get a combi sent up, if one is needed. And since it is useful for many things and can be demonstrated successfully and quickly to the most knot-phobic individuals, I teach it early on. It's certainly quicker and easier than teaching a groundie how to fix a saw. Quickly.

Looks superficially like Pholiota. You'll have to remind us of the situation. Host species?

Sheet bend very useful, a big heavy wet bull rope doesn't make a good reef knot with a 13mm climbing line, sheet bend much easier to tie and untie and more suited to 2 different diameters.

"Send me up a combi!". 5 minutes later as hypothermia sets in you see the combi spanner fall yet again to the ground. That's why I teach the clove hitch first chance I get.

I just meant it is being advertised as a fall-arrest harness, that is all the seller is claiming. As you say it looks like an Avao, although some of the details are different. It has an illegible CE ticket on it. If you use this for work positioning and it fails (or just turns out to be unusable), if you could even track down the seller in Shanghai he might say he only ever sold it as fall arrest. I imagine the seller's brief to the sweatshop where it was made was 'make it look like an Avao, cause that's the only way it'll ever sell to gullible bargain-hunters. Oh, and stick a CE ticket on it'. Then the seller didn't even have the wit to market it as a work position harness, which Petzl describe the simulacrum Avao as a " work positioning seat harness". I wouldn't take it for nothing.

Good on you. These Brimstones are a mazing, good camoflague...

I have a much much much bigger guerilla forest now, which because of its position and planning status is very nearly immune from idiocy. It'll leave a fine legacy, and because of the nature of it I can never get the credit for it, but that's perfectly OK, it's just nice to something good for the sake of it

That saddens me, outof all proportion to it being just one tree. But now I am thinking, it was such a nice sapling that maybe someone stole it and it is growing quite happily in a garden somewhere. Not as far fetched as all that, since I had a decent-sized japanese maple stolen from my front lawn a couple of years ago. About 25 years ago, I decided to guerrila-forest a bit of waste ground across from my flat. I was doing a lot of hillwalking all over Scotland in those days, and over the course of a few months I collected about 15 seedlings, each from a different glen, so they were all individually named. A lot of scots pine, birch and rowan, but I promise I only took the wild seedlings from the edge of plantations, the ones that wouldn't have survived in roadside/trackside spots. Point is, with a spade and a carrier bag it wasn't that hard to get them out and home. The whole lot were starting to get quite established, then I came home form work one day and the Council had devegetated the bit of ground, for no apparent reason. There was a thesaurus-full of F words. Let's hope yours has survived, even if stolen.

I can't believe you're even thinking about it. It's a fall-arrest harness, not a work position harness. It's not suitable for sitting in all day. How much do you value your life? £55? Automatic LOLER failure for tree work, as it's not suitable. I'm guessing you haven't had the training, or you'd know the difference.

Thanks for clarification ghd. Still don't know why they are using timber stock protection legislation to protect habitat, though.

We're not talking about this extreme example. The scenario is this... The tree owner or his agent tels the school, I have the right to cut back branches to my boundary. I'm going to do it in 3 months. I suspect it will leave the tree unstable and this could result in it falling over and harming someone. I would advise you to anticipate this and make the tree safe as soon as possible after the pruning is done. If in doubt, you might want to take advice on this.

It's not immediately obvious. 1. Do you believe that anyone has the ability to maintain branches of his tree over another person's land? 2. Do you believe that leaving a tree dangerous because someone has exerised his right to get his space back by cutting back a neighbour's branches should be unlawful? If the answer to 1. is no and 2. is yes, how do you reconcile these answers, because one can't have both those answers? If the answer to 1. is yes, that goes against clear case law, and the answer to 2. doesn't matter. If the answer to 1. is no and 2. is no, and 2. is no, this is an impossible scenario unless the encroached party can be freed form negigence by warning the tree owner or getting the courts to order the tree owner to get rid of the problem, even if it makes the trees dangerous. Rights and duties sometimes conflict, but a duty can't trrump a right if there is a reasonable course of action that can reconcile the two.

" NRW said the felled trees were very mature and provided a valuable habitat for wildlife, so it would never have granted a licence for their removal. " Confusing. Is NRW the same as the Forestry Commission? The Commission felling license rules are statutory, and were designed originally to conserve national stocks of timber, not to preserve habitat. I know the Commission's role has evelved since then, but this doesn't seem an appropriate reason to refuse a felling license. If they want to preserve valuable habitat, is there a more appropriate legal basis than felling licenses? That said, it seems a good ruling.

Just quote the TCPA as you did in your OP. Availabe means available, you shouldn't have to make an appointment. You shouldn't even be expected to say what TPO you want to see, the Council has no right to requre you to disclose that.

To the original poster. General principle is that the owner of the adjacent land can cut back the branches himself without your permission. If the branches are interfering seriously with his use of the land, he could ge the courts to force you to do it or to pay for him to do it. So, he can do it himself at his expense or make you pay for it. Yopu need only agree to do it at your expense if you anticipat ethat you woud lose such a court case. It's a matter of how serious the encroachment of the branches is. If the footpath has been legally transferred to the Council, they could pursue the same remedies, cut them themselves or get the courts to make you do it or make you pay for it. If the trees are not a nuisance to the use of the footpath, it's hard to see how they woud successfully sue. If the footpath is just adopted by the Council, the land under it and the air above it may still belong to the 'developer, but since he can't do anything with land that has a public footpath on it he probably couldn't demonstrate loss of enjoyment of the land, and so probably couldn't sue. That leaves the question of what happens if the trees are left unstable. As you can see there is disagreement on Arbtalk about this, but my view is that if the developer cuts the branches back without warning you and the trees almost immediately fall over, he would be responsible for compensating for any harm or damage caused. It is also my view that if he warns you of the consequences and gives you a chance to prepare to get rid of the risk after the pruning has been done, the law is on his side. There's still a grey area. He may have to get the courts to tell you to remove a very serious encroachment and declare that the risk is then yours. Or he may be able to prune after warning you, without getting the courts to declare tha the risk is then yours. Either way, the law's on his side as long as the encroachment is serious. That said, to reiterate it's hard to see how he would have a case for removing the branches over a public footpath, even if he still owns the land tha the adopted path is on. I hope that helps.

A hypotheses was put forward and awaits challenge. I'll feel like such a twat if I'm wrong, but will accept the correction with humility.

Sorry Edward, I continue to disagree with you on this. Common law does not say that you can't crete a hazard, full stop. The acting reasonably and foreseeing harm, in my view, can be exercised by giving fair warning to the tree owner that the right to self--abatement may leave the tree unstable and allowing then time to take independent advice, anticipate the risk and deal with it in a timely fashion. It is a thoroughly established principle of law that branches and roots can't establish a right to be in someone else's soil or airspace just because that person tolerated it for a while. The roots and branches have never got the right to be there. The tree owner doesn't need to avoid it happening but he does have to accept the consequences of them being removed by the neighbour. Any other answer to this question is (i) a legal absurdity that conflicts with long-established case law (ii) a practical impossibility that society couldn't countenance. Gary's balcony analogy illustrates it well, up to a point. The difference with trees is that we all live in a world where trees do what they do, and encroach. This differs from the deliberate building of a balcony and supports on someone else's land. If it were a bulding that encroached, the remedy would not be self-abatement, it would be to get a court to declare that the balcony shouldn't be there and that the 'builder' should remove it on pain of contempt of court and the harsh punishments that follow from that. Otherwise it's a good analogy. The principle are the same, the remedy is just a bit different. I have in teh recent past admitted that the tree situation might require a court order for the tree owner to abate rather than the 'warn and then self abate' scenario. I adnmit that because unlike the rest of the logic in this there is no clear precedent, whichj would only be clarified by a case for negligence due to damage or harm caused by a 'warn and then self abate' situation. But the principle remains unassailable (it is not my principle, it is one of stare decisis). The encroacher can never acquire a right to encroach and must either suffer self-abatement or abate, even if the consequences are subsequent failure of the tree. Like the balcony, the only question is the nature of the remedy. And in turn, that might depend (as I may find time shortly to explain) on whether the encroachment is actionable or not. I implore anyone to explain why the aforegoing is incorrect. Not disagree with me full stop, but explain the logic and the legal standing of that logic. I am willing to be proved wrong and will admit it if I am wrong. But I continue to believe that we all could benefit from clarity and I present the argument for that objective alone.

This is largely a legal question, and if the original poster wants to confirm he is still interested in an answer I will have a shot at it.

Yes and no, it mught be the pointier leaved variety 'Otto Luyken'.

It looks a pretty close match to Alnus incana (Grey Alder). Defo not Elm.

See pic, I reckon the bark has been exposed about 12 or 13 years ago, when the section between the two red arrows was the putside of the tree. At the blue arrow I think I see the next few growth rings curved in where the tree was beginning to occlude the wound. It had just finished healing over, a miracl;e of nature, then someone has gone and chopped it down. The only thing that can really cause damage on a stem like that high up is another tree crashing against it. If that's what happened, it would have been a big impact and would probably have taken some branches with it, which could have caused cavitation and/or infection. I'd go with the tyloses idea, wiht phenolic substances created by the tree to make the dysfunctional vessels impenetrable to fungi. A lot of supposition, but as good as I can think of.

Impossible to ID for sure without a close-up