Chris at eden

I agree.

Its from the planning policy guidance but there are 6 tests as mentioned by Ed below. See link: Use of Planning Conditions | Planning Practice Guidance

Hi Kev 2 years is not a condition. Its a standard time limit within the new regs. It can be varied though. If the LPA are conditioning 2 years they don't know what they are doing. 3998 ensures the works are done to a good standard. If its not to 3998 and the works are considered to be wilful damage or destruction then prosecution may happen. Council legal depts. though don't like to take risks. If its not a slam dunk they wont take it on. Or at least the ones I have worked for won't. The April to August thing is bonkers. Legislation already exists for that purpose. if you thinned a tree to a good spec within that period and there was no damage or destruction then how would that be a contravention. How would you prove wilful damage or destruction? You would pursue them under the wildlife life legislation surely.

Check what their pass rate is over the last few years. I'm not sure about MW but I know of other academic centres who struggle to get students though these ABC qualifications as they don't deliver them properly. I did my L6 dip with Treelife and they are worth the extra cost in my opinion. There is no point in taking the cheap option if you don't get the qualification at the end.

Yes. The standard says ground out not grubbed out. I.e. with a digger.

They all see to be set up differently. I know an LPA where all applications go to committee, nothing is delegated to the TO.

Not as bad as I was expecting but a few issues: 1. Orders could give immediate protection prior to 2012 they just needed to be served under section 201. The new regs just automatically do this. 2. You can't confirm a TPO once the six months has passed. 3. Fines are unlimited on summary offence these days, not just via the crown court. 4. There is no exemption for dying trees anymore. 5. Cant see a TPO going to public inquiry myself.

No you are correct. There are two tests that the council must satisfy in order to proceed with a prosecution. 1) The evidential test - basically that they did it and you have the evidence to prove it beyond reasonable doubt. 2) The public interest test - kind of what it says, that its in the interest o of the public to do so. i.e. that they have suffered from the actions. They look at aggravating factors and mitigating factors for this I believe. So an aggravating factor may be that a developer can now install an additional unit making more money at the expense of the public who have lost the accrued benefits of having a mature tree in the street. Mitigating may be that the person that did the works has some kind of disability that prevents them from fully understanding the consequences of what they are doing.

Very professional approach. I know AA contactors that don't and when you go out they say there is no requirement for dead wooding. Fair enough, that is true but its a waste of everyone's time when the TO has to ride out to site when it could be avoided by a 30 second email.

The TO will generally work in the planning office though and anyone with the delegated powers can do the PACE interviews and cautions. Where I do TPOs I have the delegated powers as TO and so effectively act as the enforcement officer. I do the PACE, cautions, witness statement, and entire case preparation. I'll be honest, its not my favourite part of the job. The planning enforcement officer doesn't get involved with TPO or CA (tree) contraventions. The real big players when it come to PACE though are the environmental health officers.

In my experience you turn up on site as the TO when the neighbour has tipped you off and they are still on site. You have no idea how many calls the TO will get in certain areas as soon as someone hears chainsaws. Most of the time they will be saying I know they have consent, but others its a quick drive out to site and caught in the act.

If she was elderly and not fully in control of her own mind then that would be a mitigating factor which the courts would consider.

The below is from the online guidance, its pretty much what the blue book said also. What are the offences and who can be guilty of committing them? Section 210(1) and Section 202C(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 provide that anyone who, in contravention of a Tree Preservation Order •cuts down, uproots or wilfully destroys a tree; or •tops, lops or wilfully damages a tree in a way that is likely to destroy it; or •causes or permits such activities is guilty of an offence. Section 210(4) of the Act sets out that it is also an offence for anyone to contravene the provisions of an Order other than those mentioned above. For example, anyone who lops a tree in contravention of an Order, but in a way that the tree is not likely to be destroyed, would be guilty of this offence. For the purposes of the Act, a person does not have to obliterate a tree in order to ‘destroy’ it. It is sufficient for the tree to be rendered useless as an amenity or as something worth preserving. That is what is was saying in terms of not providing the same level of amenity. If you removed two twigs it wouldn't destroy the amenity so doubt it would be in the public interest to prosecute, but if you removed the whole canopy it would. If you removed a large section of the RPA the tree at some point decline or die and so there is your impact on visual amenity. If the RPA removal was not damaging then again I doubt it would be in the public interest.

No, not necessarily. The contractor should be investigated also, otherwise the council could be done for abuse of process. Who would be prosecuted ultimately is recommended by the legal department at the council and then signed off by the head of planning or whoever oversees TPOs.

The tree doesn't have to be killed or obliterated, it simply has to be destroyed to such a point that it no longer provides the same visual amenity. I doubt you would get too far suggesting it could regenerate as it is still destroyed at that point in time or at least its visual amenity is.

I did the PME training for chartered arb a few weeks ago ad found them very approachable and friendly.

I never said that subsidence blights only 0.23% of properties, I said that was the annual risk. That is how the HSE calculates risk at the end of the day. If you apply risk to include anything that has happened in recorded history then NTSG would make much grimmer reading. My figures are based on your stats. I think your third point is a good one though and for this reason I wouldn't consider buying a house which had suffered subsidence unless I had a considerable price reduction.

Yes and I actually said that in the second paragraph of the post.

Sounds like you have a decent understanding. They cant TPO a hedge. The direct reference you are looking for is in the online guidance. See below link: Tree Preservation Orders – general | Planning Practice Guidance You will note that although they cant TPO a hedge, they can TPO an overgrown hedge which has become a line of trees. Send me some pics by email if you wish and I will give you my opinion. Website link below and email address on there. Hope this helps.

If they don't build properly then how would they get a building control certificate? If they don't get the building control certificate then how would they sell the houses? I agree with your point about non-permanent structures and rubbish foundations though. A chap said to me a while ago that he really wanted an orangery but wouldn't get one as they don't comply with building regs in terms of foundations. My advice was, have it built by a competent builder and ask him to install the foundations to a building regs spec. Other than the cost I cant see the problem.

Oh right. If the insurance industry say it, it must be right. The 1% figure I quoted was from a paper I read a while ago but I forget the title. I will have a look to see if I can find it. So to look at it another way, 17m policies and 40k claims per year. 40,000 / 17,000,000 x 100 = 0.23%. So ultimately, if you have an insurance policy (which may cover several houses as you say) the risk of you putting a claim in for tree related subsidence is 0.23% annually. Sounds pretty low to me. Also, how many of those 4.7m houses have trees within the ZOI and insufficient foundations? The older ones most likely. You are looking at buildings damaged over a 40 year period. Realistically that is 25k per year which is 0.53% of the 4.7m per year, and this is dependent on you being on a shrinkable clay. If you look at it across all policies then its 0.14%. Again that sounds pretty low to me but as you say its significantly increased if you are in the shrinkable soils.

The nit picking a tree hugging seems tome to be the main issues you come across with some TO's. As you say some are good, some bad. I did a 5837 a year or so ago and classified an old oak as B3. It had some wildlife interest but not a vet. The TO insisted it was and said it should be A3 due to its vet status. My problem with that was that I couldn't realistically assess its retention potential at 40+ tears so cant be A. For the record I had considered another 2 on the same site as veterans. Both as Cat A3. He was having none of it and conditioned a management plan for all three vets! I recommended the client use a leading company (mentioning no names) for the management plan due to the issues experienced which they did. They didn't get a lot of change out of £2k. The report came back saying that only two were vets and the other was mature. We were not even recommending felling any of them!!!

The standard does state that trees to be retained and removed are to be plotted onto a plan and annotated where required. I see no reason why the TPP shouldn't superimposed over this. There is no additional cost. Kev, I don't think access to a TO job is as easy as consultant no. I saw an AIA from a chap the other week who is not an arb, landscape architect, or anything related. I haven't worked out what he is yet but I think he may be a land surveyor. He had said the tree had 2 stems when in fact it has three. Coincidence that you can only see two on street scene? I don't think so. The RPA was about a quarter what it should be, the issues are too many to list on here. I know another one who advertises as an arb consultant and uses the post nominals BSc, what he doesn't say is his BSc is totally unrelated and he has no arb qualifications. With a TO job you would get a person spec probably saying minimum L5 qualification, maybe L2 or 3 for junior TO. You would get the same if you applied for a consultants job with a large company. If they set up on their own though, probably nothing. When was the last time a client asked to see qualifications or insurance? I work on both sides so see quite a lot. Yes there are some pretty bonkers TOs out there but some of the consultants you come across, they have no experience, no training, and no idea. One actually stood with me on site a couple of years ago asking what category the trees should be!! I answered the first couple and then advised him to hire an arb. I have never come across a TO that is that clueless.

I always show the RPAs on the TPP, just for clarity. I've seen some consultants plot shading as well but not sure what the value of that would be on a TPP!!! I sometimes provide 2 TCPs though with and without shading as that can be messy. TCPs though were always a design layout tool so more important for the architect than the LPA in my view. Like 10 bears is saying I also plot tree works, phasing, fence spec, etc to the plan so its all in one place. Cheers

It also depends on the resources available to the duty holder, or at least the type/level of inspection at that frequency does anyway.