daltontrees

Doubt if this is 'wilful damage', as the Act says. But it's always a factor that TPO'd trees are protected in their entirety even roots under neighbour's land and gradual damage could be bad for a tree. But gradual compaction or pre-compaction would reslult in less roots in the parking area anyway.

Where I was brought up 'crowning' was a form of GBH administered to the cranium witha big stick, and topping meant and still means a 100% vitality reduction. These guys sould like hooligans. I'd probably want 14 days to rethink the services they are offering and had sold me on the doorstep. Or after breaking my back door down, saying Big Ern sent them to 'collect'. Hopefully it's somethign less sinsiter than that, such as the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.

I have an update on this once I get some pictures uploaded. The answer is that both Sorbus and Prunus produce buds exactly like this. So everyone's right, hurrah!

Just remembered Matheny & Clark's ssytem was examined in the Kew case.

Gary, here's an idea. Put in a TPO application to remove all the overhanging branches. State (as you must in a TPO app) the reason and that you foresee dmage to the camper van. Give the reason as preventing damage to neighbour's vehicle. Inevitably, after Council stops laughing and reads between the lines, you will get a refusal. Any sunbsequent damage that was foreseeable the Council compensates for. Any that isn't is a perfect defence against negligence. Any miniscule claim will be thrown out of court as de minimus if nothing else. And the costs of court will be borne by the neighbour. Mr Camper van can then direct his irrational rage at the Council and the courts. In effect the TPO is convenient to your client in this case because it takes the decision to butcher the tree out of his hands.

Ahh I think I have figured it out.

I use a system of finda nd replace when I get back to teh office, so my abbreviations have to be letter compinations that aren't found in any other words. So that one is "Well buttressed, dense basal epicormics to the west. Reasonable intact upright stem, compression fork cluster with included bark at 2m, reasonably balanced crown largely defect-free with isolated small diameter deadwood." Good value.

No-one gets as excited as you do about small rubbery protrusions on trees. It's nice to be able to tell one small rubbery protrusion from another, but these 3 candidates all say the same thing to me in a practical sense. That's what I meant. I'm not forgiven, am I?

I don't want to bring down QTRA, I'd like to improve it, and a certain proponent of it (not M.E.) makes it hard to like and I just ... can't .... stop ... MYSELF!

Hey, I know the feeling. I described a tree the other day as "wxb, dbe wz, ruis, cfc wib at 2m rbc ldf with isolated sdd."

Initially while steaming at the Conference dinner. By email, at the QTRA course, on the QTRA users forum. But I've assured him of confidentiality, so that's that. I can't comment on UKTC except to say that from what I know of you you might not get much extra from it. I find it quite TO-centric, but there are some brilliant minds on it who occasionally take the time to tell it the way it is.

Just remembered, David Lonsdale's stated preferred approach to tree risk assessemnt is QTRA. Gotta count for something. And Jeremy Barrell pilloried QTRA at the Exeter conference. Gotta count for something. Erm.....

All good, all good. Yes it is so important to be thorough and keep good records for each tree and VTA is a good solid basis for that. I'd say that to do risk assessments, whether by QTRA or TRAQ or THREATS or any defensible system you probably need to have knwoledge and experience of trees and tree inspection, plus a core qualification of some kind, plus a good working knowledge of VTA, plus the PTI ticket and, as far as systems go, a pass or registration in the system. My comments on all those cases was really that the courts aren't fussed about systems, and have noted that parties have to a greater or lesser extent had adequate systems in place, wherher it is Gomples kicking the tree now and again, the lady inthe Stage coanch noting the tree was in full leaf, and in Bowen there was acknowledgement of the tolerance of hazards in poorly frequented locatiions, and in Poll I think there was adoption of the zoning principle. The more I know sometimes it seems the less I understand....

Mike ellison, owner of QTRA. If 10 Bears could see the frank opinions I express to "M.E." I think he'd reassess whether I have slipped into the clutches of the dark side. The grief I get from the QTRA folk is that I try and adapt QTRA, partly as improvements and partly as customisation, and you'd think I was trying to drive on the wrong side of the road. Not M.E., mind, he's circumspect.

Pretty much all the same stuff, they canbe hard to pin down when dessicated.

I'm fairly ambivalent about QTRA, and I am currently doing a big big survey contract which I won only because I got QTRA registered to win it. If I hadn't got registered I would have been wasting time bidding. QTRA cients know what they want, and in my experience non-QRTA clients are not so clear on what they want. Horses for courses. But I think it is wrong to see VTA as a substitute for QTRA or TRAQ or any tree risk assessment system. Whether you agree with QTRA or not there is little room left for doubt that the law supports the view that a duty-holders obligation to obviate foreseeable risk is a combination of hazard assessment (VTA does this) and the likelihood of someone or something being there to be harmed or damaged, and the severity of harm or damage that could be caused. VTA on its own cannot possibly address duty of care. Burns v Goodside was an australian planning appeal decision and has no weight in law in the UK. It wasn't even a legal case. If you want to examine the use of a system that has been scrutinised in legal cases, there's the recent Kew case, there's Bowen, there's Mickelwright, there's Aitken, there's even Smith v Gompels and the recent Stagecoach. These to me are more telling of what the courts deem appropriate than any dissection of proprietary systems. What they seem to say again and again is that it's not about trees or even about the likelihood of failure, it's about foreseeable significant harm. I don't think that surveying trees is the answer, I think that that is about a third of the solution, and that assessing risks and taking proportionate precautions is the real agenda. I'd better go now in case the QTRA people think they have bought my soul. QTRA has shortcomings but they are nothing compared to the shorthcomings of mistaking hazard assessment for risk assessment. No offence Mr 10 Bears, my comments are directed at a general audience.

Must you insult? I have done phased reductions and they worked, saving a hedge from otherwise certain death. The OP can make his own mind up from the conflicting advice, my advice being based on research, experience, checking 3 authoritative texts and yers of experimentation and a presumption that the OP doesn't want to take excessive risk of the hedge dying. Your one-liner would rely on the OP assuming you know everything about everything. Which you clearly do, so I must be wrong. Sorry.

April is optimum, leylandii is best cut in spring just after its spring growth spurt. Cutting it earlier than that will leave it susceptible to drying winds that could turn it brown. The removal of a lot of height would weaken its chances of drawing up water to combat drying. Although frosts at 4 or 5 feet are not as severe as ground frosts, they can do damage to woulds particularly if you want to cut stems and branches in the optimum 'natural target' position to encourage healing over, a hard air frost I think would kill cambium back a centimetre or so on larger cuts and could be enough to cause healing to fail completely. That's what I've observed anyway. A tight leyland hedge is not great for bird nesting, but if you're worried about birds in teh late spring, just watch the hedge for 20 minutes for any comung and going of birds, and be prepared to stop if you find an active nest while cutting, you cna apways come bact to it in early autumn (the next best time for cutting, after the autumn spurt). Have a look here Care - Trimming and Maintenance | Leylandii it suggests spring. Also maybe consider a phased job, 1 1/2 feet this year and the same again next year. Or better still, cut one side this year and the other next year. Or take out every second stem to the final height this year and the rest next year., it cnan be a nightmare extracting parts becuase they all knit together but it's possible and it's only 50' long so not that bad. 8 down to 4 1/2 is a lot, I am involved in a lot of high hedge cases and I see hedges dying from one-off reductions of this scale.

I have to clarify. The forestry range of Latschbacher tags come in at least 3 different patterns of lugs, and the curved ones are only suitable for end-grain, it would be almost criminal to use them on bark of living trees and I agree about Acers, the damage can be phenomenal and I have seen it being so bad on a Norway that it has split the bark from the ground to about 3 metres and will probably kill the tree 10 or 20 years on. But the straight lug tags are ideal for living trees, the slightly barbed lug penetrates only the bark and if you adjust your hitting action you can be almost sure never to break the cambium. The tag gets carried on the bark as the tree grows. Latschbacher also does Arbotags or something like that which are designed purely for living trees, and although a special hammer is needed it looks like an effective system. One of the key benefits of Latschbacher generally is the ability to tag trees at a height of 2.2m with no difficulty at all, perfect for situations where kids are going to try and nick them. And it's a fast fast system, on a cold day with numb fingers you can tag trees in no more than the time it takes to walk (or run) between them, I can tag a tree as I pass it without breaking stride. I did a big survey last year, client specified Latschbacher, and I was also reinspecting trees tagged as far back as 2008. I have just started a big survey and I have taken delivery of 3000 Latschbacher tags which I recommended to the client. They are laser-etched with the client's name, and of a colour chosen not to coincide with the opposing local team colours and the cost of customising them was very little extra. These trees were tagged with aluminium discs in 2008. The evidence is that the survival rate of Latschbacher tags falls about 5% a year whereas the aluminium discs are about 10 a year. And where the discs have lasted and the tree has had to wrap around the tag the wounds are messy and some were getting infected. So, check out the full range of Signumat/Latschbacher tags before condemning them all, there's more to them than the end-grain pattern. They are the best anti-pilfering soulution and by far the fastest system I have ever used. They're only slightly dearer than the aluminium discs, and of course no nails are needed (although one or two can be added if required). And yes you need the hammer, which is dear, but it's very ergonomic and should last forever. I don't use the cassettes myself. I got mine from Landmark Trading, they were significantly more expensive than Richmonds but it was worth it because they called me back, listened and understood what I wanted and kept me informed all the way and couriered them to me when they said they would. 4 weeks on I'm still waiting for Richmonds to call me back.

Yeah, it's free and it's an unchallenging read. Caution though for the beginner, it is just a little too biased towards trees, the inspector should be thoroughly and obsessively objective. And NTSG is mainly directed at landowners and society, not at inspectors. I doubt if it will ever live up to its stated aim of providing a benchmark that the courts can consider as identifiable in negligence cases.

If your difficulty is with recommendations, you really have to get your hands on BS3998 as Kveldssanger suggests. And you've got to understand risk. I am going to send you a private message, have a look out for it

Yeah me too, my first thought was fir. But I may be imagining seeing blisters on the bark.

That fungus is just Stereum, a deadwood feeder that turns up on anything that is wood.

Or the scottish framework... what chance do we have?

I knoiw very little about this, and in Scotland the quaifications framework is different form England, but it occurs to me that you should look into an international qualification through the ISA that will be recognised by a number of countries. Not that I much rate the ISA but they are immersed in the concept of the Arborist and seem to pay little attention to distinctions between tree work and consulting. Unfortunately, being american the ISA uses I for International the way it uses World in World Series Baseball. But there may be some recognition of teh certification in Oz, try the Oz AA Chapter.