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You are here: Home > Business and planning > Planning > Planning permission > Tree preservation > Tree Protection consultation

Tree Protection consultation

This page contains details about consultation on the policy and procedure in Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs).

It is important to build greater public understanding of the issues involved in tree protection, and therefore, the Council’s Executive Committee has agreed a report for consultation on proposed changes to the way that the Council deals with the preservation of trees on private land. 

The background to this report is the dramatic increase in tree preservation order requests in recent years, fuelled by very strong development pressures, and the public’s expectation that development might be prevented by the imposition of TPOs. This means that the service has become almost entirely reactive with priorities for action being driven by public reaction rather than the environmental quality of the trees. The report was drawn up with the aim of addressing this, and trying to bring public expectation and accepted good professional practice closer together. 

The report proposes four main actions to addresses these issues:

1. A clear statement of the criteria for making TPOs, focussed on the merits of the tree(s).
2. Clarifying the Council’s priorities for responding to requests for new TPOs.
3. Drawing up a code of practice with developers and tree contractors.
4. Developing a methodology for determining where TPOs are most needed based upon environmental assessment and development pressure.

This consultation exercise is being undertaken to obtain your views on the proposed local criteria and priorities for making TPOs and the proposed local code of conduct.

Code of conduct

Below you may download a draft Code of Conduct for developers, and their agents, relating to trees on private land. The Code sets out good professional practice in relation to development sites, so it is hoped that you will find it beneficial and be able to commit to it when working on development proposals within the Borough. Also enclosed at Annex 1 to the Code are the Council’s proposed local criteria and priorities for making TPOs.

 Draft Code of Conduct (151.3kB)
 Committee Report (186.4kB)

Online questionnaire

A very brief online questionnaire is available from the link below. Please take a few moments to read the documents and then respond to the questions.

Go to online questionnaire

Comments need to be received by 12 October 2007, in order to report back to the Executive Committee in early November.