daltontrees

I reckon some praise is due to Edward C for taking the time to set out the situation clearly. It's as good a treatise as I have seen anywhere on the internet. As for axe-grinding, that's irrelevant and distracting. The law is the law. But there's a wee clarification due. It's true the validity of an Order can only be challenged in the High Court, namely challenges of the lawfulness of the processes followed on making the Order. But that's not the end of it. A TPO can be challended on judicial review, rare and expensive and risky as this may seem. The Council's actions are subject, like everythign else they do, to common law rules of natural justice, and if they have made an Order based on no evidence or the decision to make the Order is was unreasonable or if spurious and irrelevant factors have been taken into account and swayed the decision to make an Order which otherwise wouldn't have ben made, a challenge may succeed. There is theoretically no time limit for a judicial review. The odds are stacked in favour of the Council only insofar as raising a judicial review is a hideously expensive business. Up here in Scotland challenges on planning appeal decisions are not at all uncommon, but there's usually £millions of development value at stake. Awards of expenses usually follow success, but not always, and not always completely. It's a bit of an expensive gamble. Would-be litigants must provide their own salt.

I think the etymology of quintal is from the word 'cent-' meaning hundred, rahtehr than 'quint-' menaing five. If you remember those teeny wee Fiats called the 500, pronounced 'seeng-co-chen-tay', the chen-tay it is hundred, and the pronounciation of it is a lot more like quinte than the 'seeng-co' bit is. The first guy that paid for an imperial quintal and got a metric one must have been well pleased. It's basically twice as big.

Costa Teguise, Lanzarote.

That's the point. Is it wilfiul? As I see it, if the intention is to mount a camera rahter than to damage or destroy a tree, and you have taken reasonable precautions to minimise damage and to make the damage incidental to the purpose of the installation, I cna't see how it can damage the public amentiy that the tree provides. There shouldn't therefore be a case for prosecution.

This was done almost to death recently on the UKTC forum. Almost. There are ways of attaching things to trees that do minimal damage and ways that do a whole lot of damage. The question is, is the damage wilful? If you could do it in a way that would cause minimal damage, do it that way. If you know how to do ity that way but you choose to do it badly or a worse way, theres a weak legal argument that says you could be prosecuted. If you do it badly, knowing it is going to damage a tree, you're a bad person and a prosecution might stick because it's (a) wilful and (b) damage. Strap it on, and adjust it as the tree expands. If not, bolt it on with alloy or galvanised fixings that allow the fitting to move as the tree grows.

Dunno if this counts for this section of the site.

Poole, Dorset, the same place as R v Davey when a guy was fined £150k in 2013 for felling a TPO'd pine. Ahh, the power of court decisions to deter others from offending! Looks like Poole is the new capital of conifer mullering and tree-owner twattery.

Yeah, it's about £150. My local library has access to British Standards online, you can look at them and copy the odd page if the ibrarian allows it for study purposes. Surely you can't be expected to comment on an expensive copyright document unless it is available for study somewhere? The only bit I've ever needed has been this. Some of this info is in BS8545.

I realise where you're coming from now, having addressed the generalities on this question recently on UKTC. So my answer is, 'yes'. Indeed, lots and lots of examples. To recap, the 5837 context is that structures should be "located outside the RPAs of trees to be retained. However, where there is an overriding justification for construction within the RPA, technical solutions might be available that prevent damage to the tree(s)... If operations within the RPA are proposed, the project arboriculturist should a) demonstrate that the tree(s) can remain viable and that the area lost to encroachment can be compensated for elsewhere, contiguous with its RPA; b) propose a series of mitigation measures to improve the soil environment that is used by the tree for growth." And as I said before, It seems to me that it is for the designer to justify incursions and for the arb to say that the consequences for the tree are or could be OK. But this is not law, nor is it planning policy, unless the Council has said that it will apply BS5837 literally and inflexibly in all cases. Which it can never say, because 5837 is not a public instrument. So, the numerous examples I know of involve an overriding justification of "if those trees are being kept, the development can't be built unless it encroaches on the RPAs." It's a very simple justification by the client and designer. It's then for the planning authority, if there is an application, to decide whether that is acceptable in planning terms. The question is then, are the trees important for the amenity of the area (TPOable) or for the context of the development? And if the answer is yes, the Council could justifiably refuse the application unless the arboriculturist has demonstrated that the trees would be OK. I hope it's clearer now. The designer can easily justify encroachment on an RPA by saying that the project won't be possible otherwise. The Council has to apply a different set of tests that are largely about public amenity and are nothing to do with the designer's criteria. So do I know examples of applications that have gone in that involve encroachment into the RPA of trees that the client isn't proposing to remove? Lots and lots. Examples of where the Council has then approved the application anyway because it did not value the trees for public amenity? Almost as many. And a few where it has approved subject to conditions about root protection, without having asked for a tree report up-front. In your case, if the Council has already said that it values the trees and would refuse an application that damaged them to an unacceptable degree, then it's a straight conflict between designer justification for encroachment (it's that or else nothing) and Council justification for refusal (preservation of public amenity). Does one override the other? Don't look to 5837 to answer that, because it doesn't. It doesn't even try, nor should it, because it's about trees not about planning policy.

Also worth consiering Capsid bugs, as they have a wide host range. Weevil damage is usually along the leaf margin rather htan the centre of leaves.

Don't use spikes. Use a cambium saver or go SRT if you think there will be significant rope wear on any anchor points. Otherwise I don't see how you can damage a tree wilfully by climbing it.

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.