daltontrees

As you could probably guess, I disagree that this form of diplomacy is beneficial. If Councils continue to believe that they are within their rights to insist on forms being filled in, and their misguided insistence is acquiesced to by tree professionals, then the public are forced neesdlessly to get bogged down in bureaucracy, leading to resentment of Conservation Area status, leading to resentment of their own trees. But show how easy it is to notify and that the onus is on the Council to chase up notifications, and the public will comply, trees will be properly regarded, Councils will have to decide whether to fund tree protection properly and if not to justify to society why they haven't. The tail should never wag the dog. That way madness always lies. It's like Councils thinking they can condition CA agreements. It's a disservice to all to let them continue. The bottom of the bottom line is tha thet legislation about CA notification is a masterpiece of minimalism. A CA notice has only to do 4 things - Be clear that it is a notification relating to a CA What works are proposed "Sufficient particulars to identify the tree" The date of notification As long as it goes to the right Council' that's it. So a notification could say "I am hereby notifying you that I propose to fell the only tree in my front garden at XX Main Street, Treeborough in the Conservation Area. Yours sincerely Joe Bloggs. 14th September 2016." No map, no justification, no forms, no fuss. A 2 minute job.

A strangely interesting article, that. My own effort dealt with 'eccentricity' in the pure mathematical sense, the relationship between the long and short axes of an ellipse. But the article uses the word 'eccentric' to mean all ins and outs, which is a different problem. That form of eccentricity will always result in an overestimate of the cross sectional area of a stem. Must get a life...

I did a rather complicated exercise last year to quantify the effects of eccentricity on cross sectional area relative to the area rderived froma circumference that assumes a circular cross section. The result was surprising in that the eccentricity needs to be quite pronounced before the difference is significant.

Ah no, that just encourages them to perpetuate the myth that they can demand a form be flled in. It's kinder in the long term to let them know that you know that they can't insist on forms. Just need to ask for acknowledgement of the email and if you don't get acknowledgement, print the email off and post it, and keep a note of doing this.

Here's food for thought. I once had a small tree. Every spring, the terminal buds either got eaten as soon as they softened or got killed by late frosts. As a result, almost every union on it was codominant. It didn't live long enough for these to develop into included bark unions but that was inevitable.

As others have said, the Council cannot make you use its form. In the primary legislation it says that you just have to have evidence that you "served notice of [your] intention to do the act in question (with sufficient particulars to identify the tree) on the local planning authority". I would suggest that you tell the Council that you will not be submitting the form because you don't need to. Better that they know that the 6 weeks is officially rolling (which it is anyway) than leaving them waiting for a form to come in.

Spotted 2 days ago a long alternating curved line of sycamore and copper beech, a bold move at this scale and I think a very pleasing effect.

Problem is, the wee buggers can fly. We can expect them to arrive everywhere eventually. There hasn't been a good hard cold parasite killing winter for a few years too. Thanks for the picture, I hope I never come across them up here but I will remember that image.

I've doen a couple. Like any other species being thinned, if it's done right it can serve a useful purpose. You haven't said what the objective is. But regardless, the regorwth will initially result in re-thickening of the crown rather than spreading of it. Some hollies tend not to have prickly leaves higher up, so it might not be htat bad. Younger stems or the leader(s) have horizontal branches fairly regularly all teh way up, and thinning seems to work best if entire branches are taken out rather than trying to thin the foliage on the branches. Much like one might thin a spruce. If it's not a severe thinning the tree should respond well. Wounds might be slow in healing but will eventually. I have found it important to get right back to the collar, leaving no stub at all. And don't remove the leader(s). Officially, thinning shouldn't change the dimensions of the tree, just its density. Getting the arisings out of the tree will be the hard bit. Working from the inside, pulling them in is near impossible, and throwing them out is near impossible. I use secateurs from the inside, pull the branch to me, strip the bits I can reach, pull again, and continue ad nauseam. Then shove everything down to the bottom, tie back a couple of branches to make a passage and drag everything out. All time consuming but if priced appropriately not a bad way to spend a day.

It's entirely possible, if not likely, that your chestnuts have Pseudomonas syringeae pv. aesculi, Guignardia leaf blotch and Cameraria ohridella (leaf miner). Chestnut is pretty defenceless against all of these, and in combination the leaf blotch and leaf miner could reduce the overall photosynthesising capacity of a crown for a large part of the growing season. Combined with cankers that block return of photosynthates to the root system, a downward spiral can result. Extensive cankers can effectively girdle the stem and death is inevitable. I've seen all 3 on chestnuts in Scotland, but not on youngish trees like yours. Sorry! Welcome to Arbtalk, the forum that rarely softens the blow...

Wanting and getting are two different things. But I can't be bothered with your antagonism, so that's the end of the debate for me.

I would add for my travel time, and if the customer wanted me at that price, i'd get the job. If someone else was nearer and didn't add for travel, they'd probably get the job. Simple supply and demand stuff. I already live in the real world, thanks.

I'd go with all of that. Maybe C. crus-galli for the first and I. x altaclarensis for the last.

Magnolia for sure. Maybe M. officinalis?

A quick epilogue to this, I've just seen the whole thread for the first time. I sub for Jimmyjnr sometimes, maybe a day or two a week. Recently I was working with Ross for him quite a bit. Jimmyjnr is firm but fair, he gets a great deal of satisfaction out of providing a lot of work for the guys. Sometimes he estimates wrong, you can be home by 2 or working late. Swings and roundabouts. As I think he sees it he doesn't dock wages for short days and doesn't want to have to pay overtime for occasional unexpected long days. He is very loyal to his guys, and I think he appreciates a bit of loyalty back, a bit of come-and-go. All this arithmetic about hourly rates is all very well, but many days Ross and I were on site at 8.30 and off site at 3. When I was contracting, that was a half day. And wouldn't I like to be able to get paid for commuting? Meanwhile in the real world... As for Ross, he's a good guy, enthusiastic and energetic, hard working and keen to learn more about trees and the industry. I'd gladly give him work. Recently he climbed for me when I had 3 cracked ribs, and I really appreciated it, I was in a lot of pain. He gets on with it. But he has young family and has to provide, and I didn't know he was commuting as far as he was. It's natural to explore the market a bit. Maybe not quite so publicly though... The wisest words on here have been from whoever said there are always 2 sides to a story. I respect Jimmyjnr and Ross both, for different reasons, having been a contractor and a subbie, I see both sides. I'm sure they'll both go far and I hope they do.

Well put, Paul. It's not a rule, it's a starting point. Justification for accepting or rejecting it is always required, even if it's the acquiescence of teh LPA. And detractors of the arbitrary 12x may wish to consider how any alternative formula (10x, 15x, 20x...) would be justified. Sorry Gary, it being easy to calculate at 10x is not a good justification. Nice try, though.

I know my last post was lengthy but somewhere in it I suggest that it would be too late to grass up the developer using priveleged information, even if the surveyor turns down the survey.

It's all fair comment, and I am not put out at all. The discourse on moral obligation is well put together, but of the 3 sources of moral obligation put forward, none include the type of moral obligation that would drive a conbsultant to seek a TPO on trees that would prevent a client carrying out otherwise lawful development. The moral obligation implied is to society by the consultant. No such obligation is owed in any way that arises from the relationship between consultant and client. I agree totally this type of debate if it was hypothetical would be useful for everyone. Instead I feel really uncomfortable for the involved parties that the debate is public and about a real case. Once a consultant is appointed, I am adamant that te professionalism debate is as binary as you suggest it might be. For me my reputation is important and I exercise this sort of professional discretion by declining appointments that I find morally unacceptable. Someone else then gets them, there's always a hired gun to be found. We do live in a world that doesn't care that much. Things happen that I don't like, but I'm not in charge and if they are lawful I can't do anything about it. Developers ultimately care about one thing only. They might have a personal fondness for trees but let them be felled anyway for their own site. In an open market, a site will eventually pass through the hands of someone that doesn't care about trees. Statistically speaking, that will be the overall effect felt by society. A consultant who gets to (i) see trees that in the absence of his appointment he would not get to see and (ii) becomes aware of a threat to trees that he otherwise would not know about, is in a priveleged and confidential position. To try to turn that into giving the Council grounds to deem it expedient to protect the trees, well I can't pin it down to any specific wrongfulness. But it seems intuitively wrong. And someone putting himself forward (I think this was much of Jon Heuch's thrust) that he is a professional who will selflessly provide services in return for payment, would in my mind be professionally bankrupt if he grassed up a client. And what would the repercussions be? Let's assume the value of the site would be greatly increased by a planning consent. Let's say also that such a consent or the form of develpment that would give rise to the additional value would not be possible with the trees in place and protected. Let's also say that with no TPO in place the developer could lawfully remove the trees before applying for consent. And finally let's assume the Council would have no way of knowing that this might be about to happen except by being tipped off with the consultant with insider knowledge. OK, put that into a civil court with the developer looking to recover the loss of development value from the consultant. The loss was foreseeable, was directly attributable to the 'tipping off', was avoidable, the connection between the parties was direct, a duty of care existed by the consultant to the developer. It is taken as read that the duty included doing what the consultant was commissined to do. But does it preclude not doing what he was not commissioned to do? I think a higher court would run a mile before setting a precedent that meant that parties in a business relationship could stab each other in the front, on a whim, just because they had not expressly stated that they wouldn't. And if the consultant did somehow against overwhelming odds make it out of court without a decree aganst him, he might as well buy a chainsaw and get directly involved in the killing of trees for a livelihood, because he's never going to work as a consultant again as long as he lives.

Phew, good luck if you're going to cantilever the whole extension, that's like hanging a new building off the side of an existing one. But a cantilever of only part of the extension is possible. The engineering of cantilevered buildings is always complex. For an extension of 2.7m it could be a disproportionate expense. Depends on the construction, if it's timber the loads are light but for masonry the dead loads add up rapidly.

I don't agre with you, I think oslac's reasoning was correct. This is a website for people most of whom make their livelihood from cutting down trees. I don't see that oslac or anyone else should be singled out for seeming to acquiesce to the loss of trees. Arbtalkers do this day and daily. The question is not about whther trees are good, or money is important. It's whether a professional should act always in his client's best interests regardless of his own personal views. That to me is just about the definition of professionalism. The only way to avoid the conflict between professional and personal views is not to take the instruction. Or for most Arbtalkers, find another job that doesn't involve killing trees. It's absolutely bonkers to be discussing this case on a public forum anyway. Hope, for the sake of the livelihoods and professional reputations of everyone who suggested an unprofessional course of action here, you manage to stay anonymous. And if a change to make the felling of all trees illegal is the agenda, a career change into politics and then parliamentary lobbying is the inevitaably futile option. Sorry, but we live in a world that doesn't care that much. Acting professionally is not the same as selling your soul to the devil. If I got that instruction, I might take it then informally try to le tthe client understand that trees are good for wellbeing, built environments and propery values if development is done the right way. Some change to design that could save trees may come about. Now, that would feel good.

As I recall, case law has moved to wards clarifying that a tree owner is responsible for subsidence damage caused by roots even if the party suffering damage has not notified the owner. Harsh as this seems, my feeling is that this is the only fair way the law can stand. A tree owner can foresee harm or damage for parts above the ground, and is well able to guard against them by inspection and observation. But below ground the owner can't, and the onus is on the owner to seek professional advice proactively rather than reactively. There's an important distinction between that scenario involving 2 owners and no TPO/CA and the scenario(s) where damage is caused or increased by a Council knowingly or negligently refusing to allow preventative tree work on a protected tree. There is case law for both examples of this, where the protected tree is damaging its owner's building AND where it is damaging a neighbour's building.

Looks a lot like Acer davidii

I'll second that, and pay extra for the hardback, it'll last 10 times as long.

What a miserable miserable pessimistic attitude...