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I will add another point. If the trees are growing within the town council area but the land is owned by the District/Borough or County, I would tread very carefully as someone is going to be seriously upset. I suggest you ask your boss to take this issue to your Director (he is a Diplomat after all) and get him to talk to the District/Borough Coucil and town council equivillent to agree a suitable route forward. Don't put yourself in the decision making role as you may end up with the one with egg on their face.

District Councils and Borough Councils are the same thing. District/Borough Councils have planning powers over town councils. The town council may be a consultee on tree issues but do not have the power of veto in planning matters. However, if the trees are growing on town council land, the town council have the right to prevent anyone from coming onto their land and damaging their trees, whether the District/Borough Council have approved/agreed to the works or not. In fact if someone did enter their land without permission and carried out work which the town council had not agreed to, it may well be a criminal offence. (except for certain hazard/legal dispute situations).

There is no longer any requirement for a Tree Constraints plan. This is because in planning terms, they are pointless. They are essential for designing the development layout but are classed as an internal document and not required as part of a planning submission. The Tree Retention and Removal plan sets out the necessary information for the planner with the Tree Protection plan forming part of the methodology. The main planning document is the Impact Assessment. This is where consideration is given to trees growing on and adjacent to the site. The document sets out how trees have been considered, their constraints and the impact a developemnt will have on the trees. Planners should scrutinise the Impact Assessment and challenge its findings if found lacking. Methodology (heads of terms) sets out the general areas of consideration to allow the development to occur. The planner will need to make a judgement as to the level of information required to decide if the development can be implemented without harm to retained trees. If the Heads of Terms provide too little information, the planner should ask for more until he is satisfied. The original comment with the proposed planning condition, is long winded. Ok it says what it needs to say but goes on a bit of a journey to get there. The tree report and Impact Assessment should accompany the application with draft methodology and tree protection. If this information is not supplied, the application should not be registered. Conditions can require the additional information such as detailed methodology, tree protection etc Monitoring is an issue. In my opinion, I would be supprised if a condition requiring monitoring by the arb consultant is lawful and would have serious doubt that any monitoring condition which requires the developer to monitor the site would stand up in court. The LPA is responsible for policing their own condition and cannot pass this obligation on to the developer. I am sure a court case will come along at some point to sort this one out. Any monitoring condition needs to be very carefully worded and my view is for LPA's to talk to one another, agree a joint condition and then pass the wording of the condition across their legal team before using it. One last point is that many LPA's have a two pronged approach with arb conditions. One for the initial paperwork (methodology, tree protection etc) and the second will only be discharged at the completion of the development when the developer supplies sufficient information that that the methodology (including tree protection) has been carried out in accordance with approved documents. This last point is a killer for developers because they soon realise that they cannot gain retrospective discharge of the condition and hopefully no self respecting arb consultant will sign off a development unless he has actually visited site in accordance with the approved documentation and has agreed that site works have been carried out in accordance with the approved documatation.

If its a TPO application and you don't want to speak to the LPA for what ever reason, you can look up the consent form on line. Its a planning approval document and as such is a public document and will be posted on the council's planning portal.

You should have a suitable level of professional indemnity insurance. If the level of survey is within your skill range and experience you should be ok but after studying for the foudation degree, you should already know that. The fact that you are asking the question puts a level of doubt in my mind that you are not too sure if you have the skills. If that is the case . . . don't survey and pass the job on.

There's me thinking that most trees are better off being pruned in summer.

One of the problems with stating what the weather is, is that it is not quantifiable. Its based on an opinion by someone who isn't an expert in weather conditions. The comments within a report are usually no more than a sentence and all in all is meaningless. If a part of the tree survey cannot be carried out because of some weather condition, I don't think that would go down too well in court, especially if the report is for a hazard assessment. The report would need to be clear that the tree couldn't be fully surveyed and give the reason why and ideally that the tree should be re-visited to complete the survey.

The thing is, nobody fills forms in for free. You may tell the client its free but you will absorb the price into the job, unless of course you don't get the job, in which case it was a speculative attempt at getting a job. For those of you who put your name as agent, the client only needs to log onto the LPA portal and download the consent form themselves and they then have the piece of paper. This will only be true for TPO not CA. As a consultant, I always charge for TPO aps. I charge for the visit, for the filling in of the form and for receiving the info back and for admin. If you don't want to get stung by a Client, I think you should sepperate out the TPO ap and the job and charge sepperately. If you are then given the job, you can always say you will take the TPO ap fee off but only after you have raised the price of the job to cover the work you have put in.

Thanks. Yes the tree is in Nazeing, Essex.

Hi All. We have recently lost a TPO appeal for replanting a replacement tree. The appeal was argued on the grounds that there was not enough room to replant a tree but the Inspector has decided that we would be able to get hold of a little stump grinder which could remove sufficient stump to allow a little sapling replacement tree to be planted in the footprint of the removed tree. In general, the existing tree is a mature lime, growing immediately adjacent to a brick wall (200mm away), to another side is a neighbouring garden area about 200mm away (access denied) and to the third side is a driveway about 200mm away. Stump is about 600mm diameter and generally hollow. Is there a little stump grinder, including safe working area, available out there to remove sufficient stump to allow re-planting. Thanks.

I don't think many arb folk would have the skills or equipment to carry out a proper soil analysis. Normally on development sites, where soils are assessed, the structural engineer will make recommendations as to construction issues. I can't believe that a developer will take the word of an untrained arby when deciding what type of foundations to use. How many arby's can take soil cores down to 4m or more and then correctly analyse the soils within the core. Even something which sounds simple like a pH soil test is full of potential problems. Many different pH kits give different readings for the same lump of soil. pH should be obtained from a sample base taken from a particular depth and in a particular pattern across the site. My view is to tell the developer to get his own soil analysis carried out and then send you the results to include within your report.

And they are also overlooked by the TPO legislation because they have the appearance of a dying and diseased tree. This is such a shame because they have almost made it to ancient status and chop. I think the 'system' whatever that is, should be able to identify important veteran trees and give them protective status just because they are veteran.

The term ancient is not a relative age thing in itself but is based on a real time scale ie based on a human time scale and as such an ancient tree will be a tree which has grown since . . . well a long time ago. The oaks in Windsor Park are ancient because many are 800-1000 years old and some were planted when the castle was first built.

I come from the planning side BS 5837 and all that whereby trees are aged as young, middle age, mature etc. and veteran is at the end of the line as a tree which is more than 100% of its life expectancy.

Ok here goes and the thing about arb is that there are several elements which do not all sing from the same hyme book such as the ecological side, the planning and development side and so on and the problem is that semantics get in the way. What one elements calls this another may call it that.

OK you are on:001_tt2: As a newbie I don't want to come on spouting off but must say what needs saying.

As I seem to be the butt of your (Hamadryad's) far superior knowledge and after reading your posts, I now know that I know nothing but hey ho. All I will say is that an ancient tree is also a veteran tree whereas a veteran tree may not be ancient. >.. See if you can work that one out.

I think you are turning things on its head here. Veteran trees or trees which are really old usually go through a range of physiological changes which often result in those characteristics being present. Just because a tree has those characteristics does not make the tree a veteran. The guide is explaining that veteran trees usually have these characteristics and therefore they act as signposts to let those who are interested to consider the tree as a possible veteran.

Thanks for your help and thanks for lifting the 'quote' from 'Veteran Trees - a Guide to Good Management' And where does my comments differ than the quote. which expreses age as the guiding principle when determining what is a veteran tree.

mmm interesting response. My understanding is that an ancient tree is a tree of antiquity and that means it is a tree which is very old. There is no such thing as an ancient birch unless, for some remarkable reason, it has hung on there for several hundred years. Surely a young ancient is an oxymoron. Your comment about veteranising a tree is in fact a method of giving a tree the characteristics of a veteran tree. The tree is still as old as it is. Just because you manage the tree to take on a range of characteristics does not mean that the tree is a veteran tree. What it means is that you have artificially given the tree the characteristics of a veteran tree. If you want to call a 1000 year old yew a vet, thats fine with me but it would also be an ancient tree and as such, I would just call it an ancient tree.

Thanks for the advice. Which bit don't you agree with.

Normally the term veteran is specific to the age of a tree i.e. older than the normal life span of that tree. So for example, a verteran birch would be over 100 years old whilst a veteran oak might be over 400 years old and a verteran yew may be over 600 years old. Trees of this age will usually have some or all of the characteristics previously mentioned, eg cavities, decay, fungi, dead wood etc. These cavities do not make the tree a veteran rather it is that the veteran tree being so old has these characteristics. I do not think you can make a veteran tree by veteranising it, in other words artificially giving the tree the characteristics of a veteran tree. Thats like saying you can make me old by sticking a big nose on my face, pulling out a few teeth and telling me to wet my pants.

My understanding is that a tree which is older than its expected life is a veteran tree whilst an ancient tree is just that . . ancient. A birch tree over 100 years old would be classed as a veteran birch but for a tree to be classed as ancient it would need to be several hundred years old (probably more than 500 and more likely to be over 700 years old) in which case a birch tree could never reach ancient status.

Hi all. Just like to say hello to everyone. Been involved with trees for over 20 years and thought it was about time I joined the forum.