Gary Prentice

If you're promising to spend billions of pounds to improve your popularity at the polls, wouldn't it be prudent to have the figures to hand. It's not like just a few hundred quid, it's a major financial commitment. I guess it isn't quite so important to folk when it's not your own money.

I not sure I understand profit and loss. If you run a business and at the end of the year your parents gift you a hundred pounds to put into it, are you in profit if you have ten pounds left or are you running at a loss of ninety quid?

'New, young, small cuts, planned long term managemen'. This comes across more as pollarding, not effectively cutting a sixty foot, semi-mature/mature tree in half.

The opposition weren't particularly clued up yesterday on Radio four when asked for the cost of the free pre-school places, promised in the manifesto. After scrabbling through it, phoning a friend and sending an email, the presenter finally had to tell enlighten him on the figure:lol:

You're an unsung hero, Mark, a legend in your own lunchtime:biggrin:

Really? Trees fall over because they grow too big:lol::lol:

I think almost certainly the homeowner would be the first port of call. But remember that the average homeowner only has a duty of care limited to that of a non-tree expert. So for example, someone moves into a house, with a tree that's been topped years before. The tree looks okay, it comes into leaf as it should and grows vigorously. No fungus brackets to raise the alarm. According to the NTSG the owner has fulfilled his duty of care. He doesn't know that the arb who topped the tree had issued warnings to the previous owner when he did the work, nor that the potential for failure had changed because of that work unless the tree was continually managed. I just think you're starting along a dangerous path when you err away from accepted best practice and should have a damn good justification for it if things go bad. "it's what the customer wanted" and "if i hadn't done it, someone else would" is going to be a pretty feeble response to a barrister asking why you deviated from the recommendations of BS3998 or industry best practice. As you can tell it's a subject I'm overly passionate about:biggrin:

I'm not sure Steve, I think it may have already happened in the States. I may be looking at it too simply, but if you do work that you know is against industry best practice/BS 5998 and can result in a failure, relying on the client to keep on re-topping it/ treating it as a pollarded tree (which you have no control of whatsoever) where would you stand in court? Klaus Mattheck had some interesting comments at the last seminar I went to, about monoliths in public places. He dislikes them intensely because of their potential to fail due to the decay that provides the habitat that they're kept for. I can see his point. It's okay when someone like Mr Humpheries is managing his tree stock as he does, with loads of testing and re-evaluation and awareness of the location/footfall etc but then consider a similar scenario when the tree manager is a member of the public who may not have the wherewithal, knowledge or means to manage a tree in the same way. I'm starting to ramble on, but I think that's reasonably foreseeable that a topped tree won't be managed into the future to keep it in a safe condition - where liabilities then lay is above my pay grade.

I posted a couple of years ago saying that topping will stop when an arb is found liable after an incident involving a lapsed topped tree. A couple of members mocked me for it as a drama queen, but there has been at least one death resulting from a failure of regrowth from a topped tree, that I know about. It will only take one ambulance chaser to pursue the avenue of negligence and bad practice for things to start to change. But I'm not holding my breath:001_smile:

Cant anyone point me in the right direction of somewhere to dispose of woodchip and/or timber close to Blackrod/Horwich. Starting a site tomorrow Many Thanks Gary

I worry about everything Jon. Thanks for your reply, one less thing to concern myself with. Gary

Are you proposing or suggesting a final solution to the problem?

Similar to keysofts LandcadLT, by the sound of it. Takes all the site measurements (if you're set up properly) and plots the RPA, canopy spreads, uses height for shadows etc. All you need to do is tell it where each tree is on the topo dwg. I messed around with an excel table on a tablet which worked okay, but wasn't that easy to use on site.

I agree with you, they should/we should. I'm honestly not sure if Sheffield could be amicably resolved even if it had been handled better from day one though. People are always going to have different opinions as what should be done, how it should be done and whether it even needs doing in the first place. I don't really believe that Amey, or any other major corporation, put altruism first but am pragmatic enough to accept that that is a fact of life. I don't even know how much say SCC have now that they're tied into the PFI contract. It's all above me. I do struggle with people who are right, no matter what science or knowledge says and action groups seem to attract people like that. Like I said, there's two sides to the story, three if you count the media, and somewhere in the middle is the truth. If I can find Bill Andersons article, I'll post it.

Hi Kevin, yes James England. His surname came to mind last night. I've used OS maps for basic surveys (with tree tags), but was wondering about their use in place of topographicals. Considering the inaccuracies in OS mapping I see daily on council websites you're almost certainly right:biggrin: Which data logger are you using? I'm sick of manually inputting site data into CAD, then again into the report. I do need to be better informed though before such a major purchase.

You're probably not the only one:biggrin: Originally I opposed it, based on the publicity and information available. But having read Bill Andersons articles and comments I revised my thinking. Bill was, IIRC, a TO at Sheffield under budget restraints for many years. Lots of work was put off and neglected because there was no funds. He explained it somewhere in an article, that it was sound practice to replace a percentage of the urban/LA tree stock each year, now there doing many yrs at once. I don't agree with SCCs (and Ameys) handling of it, the monitoring committees decisions/reports/recommendations seem to be being over-ridden, the PR is atrocious etc, but I've jumped off of the bandwagon of public condemnation and am sitting on the fence a bit more. I'm not informed enough to decide either way nor have the time, energy or inclination to be so. But I know that there is more than one side to the story and as sure has hell wouldn't wish to be a contractor working there. People absolutely love and adore trees, we all know that, particularly when they belong to someone else. They'll kick up a fuss about you felling a street tree (that doesn't shade their house, drop honeydew on their car etc) but then want the one annoying them chopped. I imagine (more imagining Stubby:biggrin:) that STAG is full of people like that, so can't automatically sympathise or empathise with them because it seems like the right thing to do. I've talked to Bill once or twice, what I've come away with is that things aren't quite as simple as the anti's would like you to believe. The whole mess could probably have been handled better, but I believe however it could have been there would still have been opposition. My two pence worth:thumbup1:

Typical media headline. The job description is worth a read, to gather evidence primarily when incidences occur and to report. Speaking to a lad at college last month who is working in Sheffield. Normal nonsense of protesters who want their own way and are vocal about it. We've all been there at one time or another and I know there's no reasoning with them. Good on Amey trying to allow the staff to get on with their jobs.

Rather than start a new thread. What's the proper approach when titling drawings. I've got the topographic from the surveyer, frozen everything I don't want, plotted the trees, canopy spreads, RPAs and fencing. I want to change the existing Title blocks/legends etc for information on the drawing (my additions) what do people do? Leave all the surveyors details on -name & contact information, and add your own. Or delete their theirs entirely? What's the normal procedure or protocol, because I assume their are some copyright issues involved.

Not natural, believe it or not Saddleworth had 3-4 weeks without any rain over April and May. The client had strict instructions on the watering requirements and it's so important, to him, that these survive that if I told him to sing to them every morning, I believe he would.

That would be a whole different ballgame entirely. I think whoever drew the site location plan, showing the site boundaries had this in mind - just to justify the position of fencing to protect the woodland. I can't check now and have to get it delivered on tuesday morning. Thank you both.

It seemed logical when I was on site, then I started reading the standard and started to concern myself:biggrin: :thumbup1:

I'm in the process of writing a 5837. The site location plan I have been provided with doesn't include a small woodland to one side of the site (so it's part of the property but distant from the construction area. When I did the assessment, I identified the significant trees - those whose canopies and RPAs extended significantly over the site boundary/line on the plan. The trees that I've measured, being largely the biggest will provide the calculations for the TPP (so the smaller trees RPAs and canopies will be well inside the fencing) I've explained my reasoning for not recording every off-site tree and I think it's reasonable to do it this way. Recording everything would have quadrupled the length of the report and cost, only to provide unnecessary information. Now I'm wondering if I'm correct or not? Comments, good or bad, welcome

Joe, you'll never learn.

The joys of running a business. Either take up one of the companies that promise (and cost) the earth to design it for you, where you have to provide so much input yourself to get it how you want it that you may as well do it yourself, or DIY and learn as much as you can about it. One thing that I did find out, domain names can be really expensive from certain companies but a few quid from others! I think that they advertise available domains without actually owning them, so shop around.

Don't know about regular visits but it mustn't die. It's planting and survival is a condition of a consent to remove a TPOd tree in 2019. Long story.