Chris at eden

Yeah, you won’t like it though. Dig it out. And you will have to get all of it. Not sure how realistic it is in that situation. I had one in a garden years ago when I was a kid. Spent the whole day digging it over and getting bits of root out. Got it in the end. Nightmare.

If it’s a private road and so not adopted they could possibly use Rootbridge to create your speed bump and that may be a permanent fix for that area. Expensive though so you wouldn’t want to be doing it in multiple locations. The road planer sounds like a bad idea. As in, a criminal offence with an unlimited fine potentially if the tree dies as a result.

If they want to retain it you would need to do a root collar excavation with an airspade to check the condition of the underside of the roots. I did one at the beginning of last year for a TPO protected sycamore with merip. The plan was to expose the buttress roots and resistograph them to check extent of decay. The TPO officer was on site during the works. Didn’t need to resi as you could push a trowel into the bottom two thirds of the roots with very little pressure. There were no canopy symptoms at all presumably as the top of the roots were ok. It was felled under a five day notice.

Have you looked into educational charities? That is how I funded college. Its kind of like sponsorship. I was full time so not sure if they will cover just chainsaw tickets but worth asking and as I said I would recommend a full time course anyway. It is a lot of preparation writing to different charities and going to interviews. I wrote to about 20 and got money from about 5. Approx. £4.5k a year. Enough for fees and rent. I then did part time jobs for extra money. You have to be young and from a poor background. Lawrence Atwells Charity will be a good place to start. Max age is 26 and they offer grants of up to £1,500. It was £2k back in the 90s. Not sure why it has gone down. there used to be a book called the directory of educational trusts and charities (or something like that) which is where I got all the details from. Not sure if it still exists. May be worth checking. The Merlin Trust was another one. I think they fund work based travel. Work placements and getting to them. Cheers and good luck. chris

You are not too old to go to college. I was 23 when I went and was one of the youngest. You will make connections and if you do a full time course it will give you a grounding to do advisory work when you are too old to climb if that is what you want.

Are you sure she is a Lab, mine will eat anything that is even remotely edible.

I agree. Minor point to the OP. It’s not a bracket. Those type of structures are referred to as fronds. Just for future ref. cheers Chris

So do I. Top training provider.

I’ve raised it dozens of times while working for the LPA. It’s not the LPA that is the main problem. It’s the applicants and agents telling lies on the forms. They then moan when they get caught out and their app runs well over the 8 weeks while waiting on info. You can probably argue that the validation officer should pick it up but equally they shouldn’t have to. Slightly different situation. I returned a TPO app today as invalid is it came in dated beginning of July by the tree consultant. He would be moaning in a couple of weeks that it is overdue. You seem to have it in for LPA TOs Kev and I agree some are pretty useless. But a large percentage of consultants are no better. Good and bad on both sides as far as I can see.

Mate, I've worked as a TO. Highways can be a nightmare. About 15 years ago in a previous job I arranged a load of training for them via tree life to show them different options on repairing surfaces around trees. None of the management turned up and the workers that did just took the p*** out of the trainer. They then had the nerve to keep asking what to do about roots and got huffy when i said it was covered by the training that you didn't turn up to! It was a compete joke. They don't want trees in highways. That wont have anything to do with the Planning TO.

Yeah I agree, that definitely isn't a pollard.

In that case and assuming it is a mature large tree, it isn't pollarding. It's topping which is bad practice. Unless the tree is hazardous, causing damage, or has a serious impact on living conditions that outweighs the amenity then the TO is probably right and can probably defend it on appeal. Pics would be good. The fact that highways have topped the other trees isn't relevant, the PINS wont consider that. You could argue that they shouldn't have done it as its bad practice but you cant really use it as a justification for further works that are also bad practice.

You can’t pollard mature maiden trees. If they are large and have never been pollarded then taking the tops off would be topping. Not appropriate works. If they are lapsed pollards and need doing then go to appeal. You will probably win. Re. the other works. TPOs are administered by planning and more precisely the TO, he will like trees. The street trees are managed by highways. They won’t like trees. There are situations where councils have TPOd there own street trees to stop highways from felling them. Along with past management that could also be a factor. Cheers Chris.

And again, my original comment related to how its done, not why its done! mm is how its done, that is the only point I made. I don't really care why its done that way as it doesn't have an impact on me. If i could change anything from the standard it would be to switch the multi-stem calc back to basal diameter as working those out is time consuming.

I'll say it again. What i actually said was that tree experts in an Arb context use mm's the majority of the time for surveys when measuring stem dia's. As a result and just out of habit, after a while they start to discuss tree diameters in mm's. Not saying this is right or wrong although the imperial system is bonkers in my opinion. But, your comment was, oh no they don't. Sorry John but they do. They don't measure or discuss in inches which was the main point and that i would be concerned by someone claiming to be an Arb expert and saying this Cherry has a stem dia of 40in and it will double in the next 30 years. I know your background is forestry and knew this was where you were coming from with the comment. When I first moved off the tools in 2004 I was working out tree heights in feet and then converting them to metres in my head. I never made a conscious decision to just start doing them in metres but it just happened naturally over time. But at the end of the day we were not talking about forestry. Arb also has some well respected scientists do they not? But, they don't seem to raise the use of mm's to measure stem dia's as an issue. I can't see how using mm costs me anymore when doing Arb surveys, storing large amounts of forestry data maybe. Sorry to labour the point, but again not making a case for using mm. I have no issue with using cm's, inches would be a different matter. But it is what Arbs mainly do. Exactly. That is the reason I use them. What is bizarre to me is that the standard says to measure the stem dias to the nearest 10mm and then annex D works them out in 25mm increments. Cant argue with that. Or that. Or that.