Young Miss Moses has bought a house with a humungous pine tree in the small back gardem. It’s got a TPO so the previous owner has failed to get work done on it.

There are two problems – the tree leans towards my daughter’s house so she feels unsafe , and it sheds pigeon poo and needles all over the garden. She would like it reduced in size or preferably cut down.
Can anyone advise how to proceed?
She lives just south of Nottingham if that’s helpful.

A local reputable tree surgeon will be able to advise what is possible to do with it.

A TPO doesn’t mean you can’t touch the tree. It means you have to obtain written consent from the local authority, before carrying out any major work (including cutting down).

It sounds like your daughter has a good argument for removing the tree. Has she discussed this yet with her neighbours?

More information here.

Maybe speak to the council…. it will have a TPO on for a reason and bad things may well happen if she just gets it chopped down.

Standard practice round our way is to do it over a bank holiday. Or ring-bark it, but you won’t be wanting to do that.

You say it’s a pine, so it can be reduced in size/pruned. Some conifers don’t take kindly to that. Council arboricultural officers are usually nice friendly people who like trees. Talk to them.

Used to be a TPO officer in the nineties, things may have changed but here goes…..lots of maybes and I dont know the circumstances…..

First point of contact is the local authority tree officer. They’ll tell you how they like to deal with things (there are small variations in the application of the legislation).
Usually they’ll visit, make a totally unscientific assessment of the tree and its condition, tell you what they’d accept either with or without an application for consent. They may allow removal of dead/dying/dangerous branches or limbs without an application. They may tell you that a light crown reduction, removal of limbs encroaching on the house is likely to be OK subject to an application (which takes six weeks or so and will cost money).
Removal or significant alteration of the tree is not likely to be allowed unless the condition of the tree has deteriorated since the TPO was made (or see below). It was probably made when a new housing development was considered for planning consent(?). The TPO would have come up in the searches when your daughter purchased the house, LA will likely say you’ve bought the house and tree as seen.

Quite often housing developments incorporate trees quite close to houses inappropriately, which seems like a good idea at the time; the developer then gets planning permission, sells the houses and the problem. SO…

You may be able to argue that the TPO was wholly inappropriate, but you’d possibly need to employ a tree surgeon/planning consultant to make your case.
Trees grow bigger, and they deteriorate – quite often when the root plate is damaged or the water table is altered during construction – does it show signs of damage/fungus? This could be argued as reason for removal on safety grounds.
Note there are penalties for removing / cutting /copper nailing tpo’d trees, also that local politicians may get involved, and the Tree Officers advice can be overridden at planning committee meetings!

Its a bloody minefield, hope you get some sort of resolution.
Edit – tidied that up a bit!

We had TPOs and are in a conservation area. We wanted to do some building and also tidy a few trees up so got a arborist on the case and he managed the process, we ended up taking a fair few trees out and planting some more in better places.

There are two problems – the tree leans towards my daughter’s house so she feels unsafe , and it sheds pigeon poo and needles all over the garden. She would like it reduced in size or preferably cut down.
Can anyone advise how to proceed?

Going through this with one which was due for felling and had a tpo put on it the day before.

First off good luck, my experience is as follows:

As far as my local council are concerned…

Over hanging my house is not a problem. Tough luck, don’t like it, move house.

Stress and sleep loss due to the (species prone to sudden major limb loss) tree which dwarfs my house is a fact of living with trees. Tough luck, don’t like it, move house.

It hitting my roof in high winds is a small inconvenience and, subject to planning aproval it will be cut back to two metres clear of my roof – this fits their abatement of nuisance criteria so they need good reason to refuse, 2m is max they will permit on that basis.

Outside of abatement of nuisance I’m likely (not guaranteed) to be allowed 50mm per year. Don’t like it, move.

My house is on clay sand, of an age and design known to be susceptible to subsidence. The tree is a high risk species, and is too close to house according to the council’s own planning dept, (they’d have told me to remove it as part of a planning application now and when the house was built (tree is younger than the house by about 20 years). Now I’ve got the tpo they’d refuse me planning.) As far as the council is concerned subsidence risk isn’t enough to remove the tree until i have actual damage. Don’t like it, move.

We’ve reason to believe it’s damaged our water main. Yorkshire water can remove the tree by law if it is damaging our supply but… council won’t sign off on the exploratory work because to do so will harm the tree. Yorkshire water won’t say more than it could be the tree that’s the problem without exploration work (old lead main which seems to have a constriction somewhere in or around the huge tree growing over the main.)

Leaf fall, light restriction, squirrels, birds and other vermin are specifically not a problem as far as the legislation is concerned iirc. I’ll try dig out the relevant doc but they were specifically mentioned somewhere as a fact of life of living with trees. Don’t like it, move.

The advice from my tree surgeon was to make continual and multiple applications, appeal all of them that they don’t grant and eventually the council will either get another tree officer who is less of a pain or they’ll get fed up of spending the money fighting the applications.

Standard practice round our way is to do it over a bank holiday. Or ring-bark it, but you won’t be wanting to do that.

10k fine per tree i think, significantly less than the imposition of the tpo has by our reckoning, taken off the value of our house… (Tree officer said “should have thought about it when you bought the house”, “we did, hence getting someone booked to chop it down within a few months of moving” says I, “wouldn’t have bought it if there had been a tpo in place” we both agreed)

@dangeourbrain – Yep, it can be like that. Getting the support of your local councillor may help, often its the elected officials and powerful local residents who exacerbate the issue, not the tree Officers. TPO’s were (are? -not sure) often used inappropriately, and the long term grief can be significant.

Its STW, so someone has to say it:

It does sound a lot like buyers remorse. Surely she considered both problems before she spent tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds?

local councillor may help, often its the elected officials

I suspect they’re the very reason we got lumped with it…

Thanks for all the comments, Galloway & Brain especially.
More are welcome.
The pigeon & needle problem wasn’t obvious when buying, as they were cleaned up for the viewings etc. First-time buyers make mistakes…

dangeourbrain – Member

Going through this with one which was due for felling and had a tpo put on it the day before.

Ooof, bad luck mate. How did that happen?

At our office we had some trees cut back and one of the neighbours must have complained as a tree preservation dude from the council came round during the process and slapped TPOs on the trees.
Only, wires got crossed at some point and it was actually put it on 4 leylandiis which are now very broad and tall, and completely block out all light to the neighbouring properties in the evening. 😀

Ooof, bad luck mate. How did that happen?

The line of thinking is arborist’s vehicles were seen when doing the survey and someone phoned it in.

On the upside it saved me 3k of work… 👿

Poison it. Massive dose of weedkiller/acid/something else horribly toxic around the roots. <<Someone I know>> (no, not me) did this in the past, and then went to the authorities with the argument “It needs to be cut down before it falls down”. Sorted.

Yes the obvious, but illegal, route is to kill the tree in situ. Or just cut it down and face the consequences.

Protected Trees
Tree Preservation orders or TPOs were introduced to enable Local Planning authorities to protect important trees.

TPOs can be placed on any tree that has amenity value. Trees that are exempt from TPOs are those that are dead, dying, diseased or dangerous and fruit trees grown for the commercial production of fruit.

TPOs prohibit the cutting down, uprooting, topping, lopping, wilful damage or wilful destruction of trees without our consent.

The maximum penalty for carrying out works to TPO trees without consent is £20,000.

For a guide to the law and best practice on Tree Preservation Orders please see Tree Preservation Orders: a guide to the law and good practice.

Seems the max fine is £20k!

I’m half tempted to climb mine and stick a lightning rod to the top of it…

Had to remove four trees when building our extension, all under a TPO. Did need some form filling etc but it got approved but had to plant 3 replacement trees nearby.

The question that pops up in my head is this….

TPOs can be placed on any tree that has amenity value.

Surely you can raise an argument against your tree having amenity value ?

Sorry OP but I just don’t understand how someone buys a house with a massive tree, then decides to cut it down. You can’t just put a tree back after, it’s been there for however many previous tenants and owners and is more part of the street than anyone who lives there…

But anyway- I guess one important thing is, is it actually unsafe, or does it just have a bit of a lean? Feeling unsafe and being unsafe aren’t the same thing and maybe that’d put her at ease having it checked out? (I’d assume that if she tries “it feels unsafe” as a reason to overrule the TPO, that’s the first thing the council would respond with too)

PS, I will be more sympathetic to anyone that lives in my house in 150 years after my redwood starts to hit maturity…

I used to be a tree in the seventies, but not a pine unfortunately sorry.

Friends have an ongoing TPO problem with a huge oak that fills the garden of their bungalow – order put on when the estate was built 40 years ago.

OP – the tree should have been picked up by a survey, and the TPO by the solicitors prior to purchase. If not, I’d be banging on their doors to offset the cost of trying to get the order removed.

If it was picked up and it wasn’t noticed, then it may be an annoying lesson learned.

Surely you can raise an argument against your tree having amenity value

You’d be surprised at the definition…

Oh silly point but you very specifically don’t try to get it removed.

Just apply for planning, once it’s in place getting a tpo removed is near impossible but they may grant planning to remove a tree with a tpo.

Buy a house and fail to notice a colossal tree in the garden?..

Hmm… Tree was there first. Tell your daughter to move.

Is this like those people who move in next door to a city centre niteclub that’s been there for twenty years and then attempt to get the place closed down because it’s keeping them up at night…

What gets me is nice old trees that IMO should be under a TPO get totally chopped down by the council all the time because they’re next to a road and there’s a risk of something falling off in a storm. Rather than just trimming the potentially dangerous bits.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or0b43Cy0Rs[/video]

Oops, forgot to add a 😉 to that post up there. Reading it back I sound like a right cock. I am a right cock. But I didn’t mean to sound like one…

jambourgie – Member
Buy a house and fail to notice a colossal tree in the garden?..

Hmm… Tree was there first. Tell your daughter to move.
Did you bother to read the thread? Things would have worked out, except for some busybody phoning the council who then slapped a TPO onto a tree that had been there for years without one.

CountZero – Member

Did you bother to read the thread?

Did you?

Beyond the politics of TPO’s and buying a house with one and doing the research afterwards…

A lean doesn’t necessarily make it unstable, trees are pretty good at balancing themselves. A good Arb Association member should be able to advise on structural integrity and options, particularly if they have worked with, or know, the local tree officer.
Pigeons are pests, so control may be an option.

Can’t believe TPO can be arbitrarily applied to a privately owned tree without some recourse to appeal and an impact assessment of some kind. I’d be complaining about this through the councils own process, then through the local government ombudsman.

When a TPO is made interested parties have 28 days in which to object, likewise if you apply to fell or prune a protected tree and are refused you can appeal to the planning inspectorate.

Op, check the council’s planning website, it will show past applications and what was refused/allowed.

Unfortunately in this case there is degree of buyer beware.

Ah I see, it had the TPO when she moved in. Oh dear.