Presenting arboricultural evidence at a planning committee

Members at a planning committee are not reading your BS 5837 survey. They are deciding whether the scheme takes away trees the public can see, whether anything replaces them, and whether the council's own tree officer is content. Three minutes at the microphone and one page in the update sheet is usually all the space you get, so the arboricultural case has to be reduced to answers rather than presented as evidence.

The reduction is the skill. A consultant who arrives with a stem diameter schedule and a root protection area plan has brought the right work to the wrong room.

What members actually respond to

In roughly this order: how many trees are going, how big they are, whether they are protected, what is being planted instead, and whether the neighbours lose an outlook they have had for thirty years.

Notice what is absent from that list. Category gradings, protection area radii, method statements and no-dig construction details are all the substance of the technical case and none of them decide a committee vote. They matter because the officer's report relies on them, which is why the report should carry the technical case and the presentation should carry the conclusions.

So write two documents. The tree survey and impact assessment for the officer, with everything in it. And a one page summary for members, with the numbers they will ask about and nothing else.

Reducing the survey to three drawings

Three drawings do the work of forty pages.

The first is a retention and removal plan, colour coded by BS 5837 retention category, with removals marked in a single obvious colour and the total count in the corner. Members read this in five seconds and it answers the first two questions.

The second is a canopy comparison: existing canopy cover as a hatched area against proposed canopy cover at maturity, on the same plan at the same scale. This is the drawing that changes minds, because it shows the scheme's long term position rather than its day one position.

The third is a planting plan with the replacement trees drawn at their canopy spread after about fifteen years, not as dots. A plan showing 24 dots reads as tokenism. The same plan showing 24 canopies overlapping the new streets reads as a landscape.

Where the scheme is large enough to have one, the Landscape Strategy should be the source of that third drawing, so that what members see matches what the conditions will secure.

Keep all three to one sheet each, with north the same way up on each, and no legend entries for things not shown.

The replacement planting question

This question always comes. Answer it with four figures and one honest sentence.

The four figures: how many trees are removed, how many are planted, the stock size being planted, and the canopy cover position now against the position at maturity. Where the authority uses a replacement ratio or a canopy cover target, give the scheme's position against it explicitly.

The honest sentence is that a newly planted tree is not equivalent to a mature one, and that the gap is a real loss for a period of years. Members know this. A consultant who claims otherwise loses credibility on everything else said in the three minutes, and a consultant who concedes it and then explains what mitigates it usually carries the room.

What mitigates it is specific: heavier stock where the setting warrants it, a longer establishment and replacement period than the standard five years, species chosen for eventual size rather than for ease of maintenance, and soil volumes that let the trees reach that size. The relationship between species, stock size and establishment is worth having at your fingertips, and is covered in tree planting conditions: species, stock size and establishment.

Offer the enhanced commitments in the presentation, not in answer to a question. Volunteered mitigation reads as confidence.

When the tree officer recommends refusal

A contrary recommendation from the council's own tree officer is the hardest situation at committee, and the instinct to argue the officer is wrong is almost always the wrong instinct.

Do three things instead. Identify precisely what is disputed, which is usually narrow: the retention category of one or two trees, the extent of an incursion into a protection area, or whether a particular engineering solution works. Say what you accept, which is normally most of the officer's analysis. And offer something concrete on the disputed point: a design change, a condition requiring the detail to be approved, or arboricultural supervision of the works.

Where the dispute is about a category, remember that BS 5837 categories are a professional judgement about quality and remaining contribution, not a measurement. Two competent arboriculturists can reach different views on a mature ash with early dieback, and framing it as a difference of professional opinion rather than as an error is both fairer and more persuasive.

Never suggest that the tree officer has not read the report. Members like their officers.

Protected trees and what permission does to them

Members frequently believe that a Tree Preservation Order prevents removal outright, and the answer needs to be given carefully because the true position sounds evasive if it is rushed.

Works to a tree covered by an Order need the authority's consent, applied for separately. But where full planning permission has been granted and the works to the tree are necessary to implement that permission, the tree preservation regulations exempt those works from the requirement for separate consent. In other words, granting the permission is the decision about the tree.

That is exactly why members should be told it plainly. A committee that grants permission believing the Order will save a tree has been misled, and a resolution reached on that basis is a poor foundation for anything.

For trees in a conservation area that are not subject to an Order, the position is different again: a section 211 notice gives the authority six weeks in which to make an Order, and after that the works may proceed.

Speaking rights, deadlines and written updates

Every authority runs this differently and the rules are published. Check them the week the application is reported, not the day before.

The points that catch people out:

1. Registration to speak usually closes a day or more before the meeting, sometimes at noon.
2. The time allowance is commonly three minutes and is enforced.
3. Some authorities allow only one speaker in support, so the applicant, the architect and the arboriculturist have to choose.
4. Written material for the update sheet has a separate and earlier deadline, and material arriving after it may not reach members at all.
5. Slides and handouts are often not permitted, so the three drawings may need to be in the update note rather than on a screen.

Send written material through the case officer rather than to members directly. Members are bound by codes of conduct on lobbying and predetermination, and an unsolicited email from an applicant puts a supportive member in an awkward position rather than helping.

The one page note should carry the application reference, a heading naming the issue, and no more than four short paragraphs. If it needs a second page it will not be read.

Conditions to offer rather than resist

Arriving with proposed condition wording is the single most useful thing a consultant can do at committee, because it gives members a way to say yes with a safeguard attached.

The wording worth offering on a tree case: approval of an arboricultural method statement and tree protection plan before works start, protective fencing erected and inspected before any materials arrive, named arboricultural supervision at defined stages, a replacement planting schedule with stock sizes, and an establishment and replacement period longer than the authority's standard where the trees are prominent.

Each of those is deliverable, each answers a member concern directly, and each is easier to discharge if it was drafted by the people who will have to comply with it, as with discharging a tree protection condition without delay.

One caveat to hold in mind. A condition cannot make an unacceptable tree loss acceptable, and offering conditions on a scheme whose real problem is the loss of a category A oak in the middle of the site is a way of avoiding the conversation. Where that is the position, the better course is a design change before the application is reported, not a condition offered at the microphone.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Committee procedure rules, speaking arrangements and local tree policies vary between authorities, so confirm the position with the council and a qualified arboriculturist before relying on it.

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