Paul73

Thanks very much, that is really useful information. I will contact my woodland officer -who turns out to be someone no one has ever mentioned to me before.

Thanks for your reply. I haven't felled anything yet. I would like to get the extraction track sorted first but I am thinking I may only do it if I can put a profitable second crop there to extract as otherwise it is quite possible that the track will cost more than the value of the timber in the partly failed compartment. I have found it very hard to actually get to speak to my woodland officer. Calling the FC seems to get put through to people who sound like they are abroad and they then they leave messages that are not replied to. To get a grant for my loading area that connects the track to the road, calls got me no advice and no site meeting but by submitting a planning application that I hoped looked sensible, followed by a grant application, months later, I got to meet on site with a nice young man from the FC. More than a year after that meeting I got my grant approved but it felt like a struggle and simple advice about typical dimensions and specifications for the area would not have gone amiss. A site meeting before submitting the planning application would have been awesome. The young chap I saw was I think still in training. I asked him about the variations mentioned here and how to get them approved and he said "Oh no always stick to the woodland management plan". I thought about it for a year or so and thought "Surely there must be some mechanism where I am allowed to have a better idea and improve the plan?" So after calling an Indian gentleman twice who may have misunderstood me because he hung up on me first, then felt I should email "woodland creation" and a nice antipodean lady who left a message for my woodland officer to call me that was not replied to I am wondering whether to apply straight for another felling license as a way to stimulate a response. I find that submitting an application is often the only way to get some arb consultancy issues addressed by councils and maybe it works with the FC? Generally my experiences with the FC have not been stellar. Nothing negative but it seems a struggle to get anything positive. Maybe they are just overrun with work and I am a small fry in their ocean? The big question is will I lose my existing license for the woodland as a whole or for that compartment if I apply for a second one for that compartment? if not there is nothing to lose. Thanks, Paul

That's the OP's figure from 6 farms. Assuming he goes out once almost every week, he will visit each farm 8 times a year. With that much land we could assume he is probably out all Saturday or Sunday morning when he goes This is enough to upset most wives, so as an unpaid hobby that is pretty good going. Does he average one deer an outing? Most stalkers don't manage an average of one from 2. Are the landowners going to be happy with that few deer coming off the land? The woodland owner needs to look at an offer and decide if that stalker can really make a difference to them or if its a bit of fun for the stalker who likes to collect places to have fun. I seem to recall reading somewhere that one breeding doe per 5 hectares was average for Roe. On good habitat it is certainly more. That means you have more than one new Roe per year coming off 5 hectares, never mind the Muntjac. They will pour in from land to the sides unless that is well shot too. Take out the big bucks and you just get a lot of youngsters who all like to have a good fray. A good stalker really can make a difference but it needs dedication to the ground. The owner needs to appreciate this.

25000 Acres and you want more land? I am saying no to people asking me to shoot their deer because I usually shoot a couple of dozen a year off about 50 acres (more than half of that off 10 of those). That's quite enough to be doing for me as an unpaid hobby. In fact I hardly get out on my own land because there is just too much else to do. Granted I am creating sink holes in an area of over population that just pull in fresh deer but can you really cover any more ground efficiently in a way that will benefit the landowner or will he have to run another stalker in parallel?

Yes this will work in principle. I have been cold called by people wanting to do it on my land, so there is demand. If its low key you may be able to get away without a felling license. It always used to surprise me how little timber actually needed to be felled to get people through training when I did some instructing. If they are only going in felling once a quarter, they are unlikely to fell more than 5 cubic metres of actual timber (the threshold for needing a license). They can then run several cross cutting courses on the cut material. Depending on the tree size, they may be able to run climbing and aerial chainsaw courses too, which can cut amazingly little. The problem comes with your controlling it. You have to make sure they are not misbehaving and cutting too much and you have to make sure they cut the tree you want and clear them up how you want before they are allowed to come again. It will need your boots on the ground a few times at first and then once in a while to check in with them later. You will need to explain "I want this and not that". Course providers differ from small one man bands to local colleges. Anyone sent to instruct is probably going to be only half keen on tidy up as its not his site and its only borrowed by his employer who has really paid him to instruct not to tidy. Meeting with the instructor pre course and spraying marks on what he can fell is a good idea. But yes it will work, if you can give them favourable enough terms. If you basically want free tree surgery to your spec and want to meet them lots on site when they are not getting paid to instruct, its unlikely to be productive for them. There will have to be some meeting in the middle, so try to put together an attractive offer for them with clear mutual benefit. You need to know what your plan is and how they can achieve it. They would generally like lots of easy work in one place. The instructor has a group of about 4. He neds to watch them all and can't spread them out too far, equally he can't have them felling at the same time too close. What tends to get hammered is young trees as they are small and easy to fell -8 to 12 inches diameter sort of thing. If you have lots of these that are scruffy its great. However, beware the hobby woodland owner's common error of taking out all you good young growth "to make more space" simply because these are the easy trees to fell. Would you kill off all the school age population in a community? Yes you will benefit from taking out the ones with bad form and you can thin a young thicket but its all too easy for an instructor to take everything small and a hobby owner to be delighted with the open space, while having killed off the next generation. Really you need to take out the some "bed blockers" to make space for the next generation while leaving the best potential veterans for the saproxylic bugs as well is hitting the ill formed and misplaced youth. Felling to thin needs some skill sometimes not to ruin what you want to leave and it may not be ideal as training. I think those are the main caveats. It will go ok if you learn your subject and keep your boots on the ground but if you hand over responsibility it may go awry.

I would like to vary my woodland management plan for a single compartment. I have a felling license to clear fell this compartment and allow natural regen. On reflection would prefer to clear fell and re-stock with Cricket bat Willow. Can anyone advise the simplest way to get this change approved? The compartment is low lying land, designated as broadleaved but not ancient on the magic map. The land frequently floods which has meant that the plantation of Thuja and Norway spruce in this compartment has at least 50% failed. Is this just a case of sending in an application for a new felling license for this compartment and with re-stocking at 100 stems per hectare (which is what the .gov site suggests for cricket bat willow)? or do I need to get the management plan varied too? Another side issue is that I would rather like to move a track to an existing central ride through another compartment that is to be clear felled. I have no metalled track but I got it approved in my management plan to surface the existing unmade track and I got the council to approve it for planning permission as it joined to a classified road. I have now got more than 25 metres from the classified road with surfaced track as per the planning permission. I can see that the old track is not as ideally placed as it could be for efficiency and cuts through the RPAs of the nicest trees in the whole wood (which are to be retained). Its a bit of a no brainer to move the track but how many hoops would it involve I wonder to get it rubber stamped? I am tempted to just do it as I am past 25 metes and I need a surfaced track for good management. It sounds like permitted development to me but I would be glad of people's views. Thanks, Paul

Thanks guys. It looks like they would be very well advised to get a clear position on this. One wishes things were black and white. Found this on the HSE site. It looks like there might be a place for experience giving competence but one would have to clearly justify it and sending the man to get a ticket is likely to be the simplest safest option. While the ACOPs are not law, they were made under section 16 of the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSW Act) and so have a special status, as outlined in the introduction to the PUWER ACOP: 'Following the guidance is not compulsory and you are free to take other action. But if you do follow the guidance you will normally be doing enough to comply with the law. Health and safety inspectors seek to secure compliance with the law and may refer to this guidance as illustrating good practice.'

I have just been asked by someone for whom I have worked many times as an Arb consultant whether his golf club is at risk of falling foul of the law for letting the greenkeepers fell trees without chainsaw qualifications. I told him I that I didn't actually know if there was a hard and fast legal position but that his club could be on very shaky ground with their insurance company if anything went wrong as "do you have qualifications?" seems to be a regular question when buying arb insurance. I can see that this could well fall foul of heath and safety at work, risk assessment and PUWER but is there actually a black and white rule in law that any use of a chainsaw in employment needs qualifications or qualified supervision? Or is the idea that people must be qualified derived from other regulations that say "Reasonable steps must have been taken to make the workplace safe, control obvious risks and make sure machinery is operated by people who know how to use it" Thanks, Paul

I have been engaged to get involved in a no doubt heated debate over a development site on which there are a large number of self sown Ash trees. I feel like I would do well to know what has been said by any government funded bodies about Ash dieback, its projected speed, and how that might impact on the concept of a tree needing 10 years of useful remaining contribution to be worthy of retention on a development site. The trees in question are on derelict pasture, mostly 25 years old or younger. Some road-side trees were recently felled under section 211 notification because of Ash dieback. Every tree on site shows some signs of Ash dieback but most are in stage 1 with only one very large old one being in stage 3. Can anyone suggest a reading list to me? Any planning policy documents I should be looking at? Any sources for the thinking behind the 10 years in BS5837 what reasons did they give for saying it? I always assumed it was not to saddle new home owners with problem trees. Cheers, Paul

£340 each, though the packaging was a bit sub standard.

Thanks gents. I still haven't taken the plunge with battery, so I ordered two Makita petrol cutters from FR Jones, where they are on for less than half price presumably because they are being discontinued. Got two because then I will have a spare. They do look good and the balance and weight is a lot better than the big Stihl.

I may just be weak but I have always liked a hedge cutter that is light and balanced. With that I can reach as far as with a heavy one and if I want to reach further I use a long reach anyway. I have usually had small Tanaka ones with 26 inch blades they seem to balance perfectly, which is just what I like. My latest Tanaka broke down yesterday and when I went on line to re-order, it appears discontinued. Today I got a big 30 inch stihl HS82 out of the garage and me and after a few hours of cutting smart yew hedges and some horrible topiary my assistant soon agreed it needed to go back in the garage again as soon as possible because the balance is very poor and its heavy. Any recommendations please for what I should buy to have a light balanced hedge cutter, ideally no shorter than 26 inches? Thanks Paul

Thanks guys. I will buy some wipes and take a wire brush a chisel too.

I am thinking of learning how to make some shingles, posts and rails because I have a few acres of overstood sweet chestnut coppice. I have had a bash and it seems not too hard to make rails and shingles quite fast but I will do a lot better if I start with some basic guidelines. I would like to learn the ideal range of diameters to start with for these products, so I can work out what to thin and what to grow on. Can anyone give me some ideas of ideal diameters and fairly standard lengths please? Also can anyone point me to a good text book on making these products? Thanks, Paul

So I finally got through all the hoops with the FC and the LPA and got permission for a new loading area and track. I went out and crashed about in the undergrowth with some tape measures, some pegs and a tin of marker spray. It turns out I was a bit hasty with the marker spray. Now we have cleared most of the trees and undergrowth, I can see that there is a slightly better line for a small bend that is needed in the track. I have marked the wrong trees here. Its no big deal but if I ever decide to have paying clients in for something like say Forest School, it looks a bit messy. I did it in bright pink because it was too horrible a colour to miss. Any tips for getting the spray off? Clearly not thinners but olive oil/ fairy liquid? and a stiff brush? Thanks Paul

Hi Guys, I am looking to buy a new truck and get a good arb conversion. Quality and lonegvity is important. Who would you recommend? I am in North Wiltsire, so its quite central southwest and the midlands are easier to reach than the far west. Thanks

Thanks Timberonabike. I don't know any timber lorry drivers. Where is a good place to look for one please? Are there any on here?

If I am right Jon, that table is based on mid diameter, so I would need to fell an average looking one to measure mid diamter or climb up it. If I am right they don't count branch wood in the timber calculations, so you need to get to the top of the clear stem height when calculating height. Probably I need more data! the forest mensutation book has a chart that needs stand basal per hectare area for Poplar (unless I have looked at it wrong).

Hi Guys, I am looking to put in a loading area at a woodland gate before taking down some trees. I am thinking to make it part of the woodland management plan. The woodland is small -9 acres. I have got an agreement to make a management plan with Rural Payments. I want to take down about 4 acres of Christmas trees and Thuja -all a bit overstood. I am in North Wiltshire. (Any adivce on who to sell it to would be greatly welcomed too!) I am wondering what you would consider to be minimum dimensions for a workable loading area that people are going to want to come and collect from -presumably with an artic? The road is a B road, so I will need planning permission, so I need to make a sensible application. The road is 5.5 metres wide. I am a little bit constrained by a telegraph post on one side of the gate (set back 2 metres from the road, so 7.5 metres from the other side) and the local lady of the manor's land starting close to the other side of the gate (11 metres from the telegraph pole). The gate is currently 5 metres set back form the road but I can move it and widen it. Can I make it fit? How wide would you make the final gate? How long and wide would you reccomend I make the loading area? If I cannot get an artic in, what is the biggest vehicle I can get in and is it practical? I know that is quite a lot of questions. Thanks for your advice.

Thanks for the idea about prunig to avoid the need for a licence Dumper. This might be tricky in this particular setting -for one thing a lot of tree top would have to clear a lot of closely packed lower branches right next to a big road but it is an interesting idea. Having given notice to fell, does that allow one to prune or is notice to fell only going to give no objection to felling not no objection to pruning? Does anyone know a clear answer to this|? I am not too clear how to calculate amentity tree volumes -they do grow differently from forestry plantation trees don't they -generally more branch and less high trunk. There are 24 poplars generally over 30 metres tall with average diameters of about 550 mill, there are 20 Leylands probably a shade under 20 metres tall on average with diameters that average around 500 mill. There must be 1.5 cubic metres per poplar and a Leyland trunk must have at least 1 cubic metre per trunk? anyone who is good at calculating volumes is welcome to improve on my estimates but there must be more than 40 cubic metres and I would hope less than 80. Thanks for your advice gents. At least I will be able to come back to the clients with some ideas.

Thank you Jon for your input. It certainly sounds like a mess and I can see why the two entities want to keep each other happy without having to change their rules. I am still not sure what to do. My biggest concern is foisting a lot of replanting conditions on my clients or changing the land classification. I am imagining it could affect the value of the land. Urban greenfield sites are valuable as assets even if you do not plan to develop them, urban woods are just holes in the pocket. I don't really know enough about forestry to know if I will have any chance of gettong a license to "deforest" the "hedge" if I apply for it and I can tell that the FC are not much intereted in me when I call them. Arb is not forestry and when we do woodlands, it is usually liability issues with roads, or improving woodland held for amenity or sporting purposes. Timber crops are about the last thing on our list. They are just not interested in us. LPAs usually view us as poachers to their gamekeepers and it can be hard to get them to work with us collaboratively to solve long term problems when they are mostly worried about having to deal with an angry entitled electorate ringing them up and complaining when we actually do something that makes a change.

Yeah, its not a maintained hedge. So it will not be treatable a s a hedge, its really a double screen. It is a very windy spot for some reason -the way the hills work I think. We have had problems at the other (lower) end of the field with 90+ foot leylands collapsing over a footpath. When we took some broken and damaged ones down, others soon followed when they lacked group shelter. I was genuinely surprised and I have been in a business a while and thought I was careful about aerodynamics. Wind is an issue here. Someone planted these trees as a double row to stop wind, not as a wood. They have then grown out over a main A road just where it narrows between walls. (The Leylands are all one sided, leaning over the road, the Poplars are all grown somewhat lions tailed to avoid the Leylands). They are rather co-dependent. They are just starting to look scary. I would say they are not imminent (one small branch failure last year), so I don't think we can do the imminent danger exemption but with a group this size over that road, you need to plan ahead I think not fire fight. It might be possible to safely remove the trees together -each Leyland with its accompanying Poplar, one or two of each at quarter. I do feel for the owners.

Thanks Dan. Thanks Julian. I agree, its a bit iffy. I am a bit wary to go diving in and upsetting the LPA but I am also keen to not get walked over by officials overestretching their legal powers, especially if it gets the owners tangled up in being officially woodland owners when they thought they had a scrubby field with a huge hedge. Hearing the opinions and experiences of others on here some who are more experienced than me, seems a good first step. I am very grateful for the paragraphs to cite. Thanks gents. I have in the past found it a bit frustrtating to find the FC and the LPA being two such diffrent entities who are sometimes wary of stepping on each others' toes. It means that sometimes one will not jump till the other has and you get passed back and forth. Trees in fields (not copses and small strips of wood) really should not be the FC's business I feel.

So it gets stranger. What Dan found says no need for section 211 if you have a felling license. What Paul found says the FC notify the LPA and then you have to do it again yourself afterwards! Dan where did you paste that quote in from please? It looks like maybe there are contradictions in government publications?

Thanks guys. I think 40 cubic metres will go a long way on this job, maybe more than half way even but it won't cover it. At the end of it they will not be able to make a TPO stick on half an unmaintained double hedge if they couldn't make it stick on a whole one, so I would think another section 211 would finish the job. It would be a nice tidy little quarterly exercise to take down a few trees. My experience of the FC from being a woodland owner is that they really, really love forms and they take a very long time to reply at the moment because a lot of them are on furlough. I also notice how land changes its designation on the government magic map when you get them involved and this may have knock on effects. I would sooner keep it simple for eveyone's sake. I just can't seem to get a straight answer from the tree officer though as to whether or not my section 211 "went through". Can a council unilaterally back out of a section 211 that is registered as valid? I didn't think it was possible. Good point Dan about the felling license trumping the conservation area. So it looks like the council's letter is wrong there to start, the fellig license cannot be a pre-requisite to the section 211 as once you have a felling license you don't need a section 211. I am in England Julian. I had better try to find out how to update my profile. Arb talk is a great resource. I don't come here as often as I probably should.