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Mafegi

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  1. Personally, I’m not massively worried, but my family wants to be satisfied that we’ve done everything reasonable and that if another tree does fall causing damage we can’t be held liable. The tree which fell last year was a large, roughly 200-yo beech. When I say it flattened a neighbour’s shed I really do mean flattened. It appeared to be a perfectly healthy tree – it just blew over. That’s not really unusual and I wouldn’t normally worry about it, but it does seem to have spooked the neighbours. Depending on what the surveyor says, I expect some crown thinning every few years probably will be the way to go. Hopefully that will help extend the lives of the trees too. I particularly agree with your last point. These trees have been on our land for generations, and it wasn’t us that build a row of houses next to them!
  2. Thanks both for your advice. I’ll check who we’ve been getting advice from (it’s been handled by a relative) and if necessary, we will look into getting a suitably qualified surveyor with PI insurance. I certainly feel we’ve already gone beyond “reasonable measures” and it’s time we stopped chopping down perfectly good trees to appease the neighbours. Out of interest, what should we have done with the tree that blew over and flattened a neighbour’s shed last year? Assuming we could prove the tree had been inspected and found to be fine, should we just have said “not our problem” and left it up to the homeowner’s insurance? (I think we paid for it out of our insurance, but I’m not certain.)
  3. Hi All, We have some land which borders a housing development (built about 60 years ago). Along the boundary (on our side) is a line of mature trees which have been there for 180+ years. We get the trees regularly inspected by tree surgeons, and occasionally have some taken out. Last year one of the large beeches fell over and flattened a neighbour’s garden shed. Legally I don’t think we were liable because the beech had shown no signs of disease. However, as a gesture of good will, we did pay to have the tree removed. The trees are at the bottom of a slope, and the houses are further down, so the only way we could remove the fallen tree was by hiring a crane to lift it over the houses. This was obviously an expensive exercise, costing us over £10k. After this incident we got in tree surgeons to remove roughly half of the 30-odd trees – basically any that showed the slightest sign of vulnerability. (Again, this was at vast expense!) As a tree lover, I find this pretty devastating. The once magnificent swathe of trees is now reduced to a sorry shadow of its former self. Even after all we have done, we still have a neighbour complaining to us of anxiety because they are afraid the tree next to their plot presents a risk to their lives and property. I can understand that, but haven’t we done enough? Is it really our problem? The trees were there long before the houses! As I understand it, the law says we are only liable if a tree falls which was known to be unsafe, e.g. “damaged or diseased”. What if the trees are perfectly healthy but on a slope – if one does fall there’s only one way it’ll go: downhill towards the houses. Regards, Mafegi p.s. We are in Northern Ireland.

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