Jumping the gun

I had a tricky and thought provoking pre-development survey site visit today. The brief was, simply, to visit a site and assess tree cover in light of a potential planned development; the client wants an idea of whether or not the amount of trees he wants to fell will cause an issue with the council, and hold up or throw his development out of the window.

This client made the error - sadly, an all too common error - of coming to us with a proposed plan already. Now, in theory, you decide to develop a plot of land, and you get all the relevant surveys done - including our arboricultural one - and identify constraints. So, arb-wise, we might say "you have trees x, y and z that can be felled to make space". Then, you design a proposed plan, and have an impact assessment done - "well, the impacts are that you might compromise tree a, but trees b and c will be unaffected". You then re-design or tweak your plans until it satisfies all involved, and then submit it. In short, you build around what's there.

This client gave us an exact plan of his housing development, helpfully doing our job for us by telling us exactly what trees he'll keep and what he'll get rid of. Then, can we go see if it'll pass planning? Based on what we say, he'll maybe ask for a tree survey to identify what constraints there are, and then - oh, wait. Got confused here. You don't really care what the constraints are, because you've already decided what you're building and where.

Sadly, this happens more often than not. I am finding more and more that, with development surveys, we have to write to the tree officer more than the client - finding a way of saying, subtly, "this client wants to remove these trees. I think they are worth retaining. Please can you make sure they retain them as part of planning permission." However, since we are hired by the client, we have to sneak this request to make their life harder for them past their noses. But try we must, because many clients already know what and how they want to build, and merely use us to satisfy planning application requirements. And so we tell the tree officer that their plan impacts trees that shouldn't be impacted, because the clients don't want to listen.

On this plan today, very few trees on the site were retained. And yet, on site, there was significant tree cover, including a fair number of impressive beech and oak that, in my opinion, were undoubtedly retention category 'A'. Now, if our client had bothered to do things properly, we would have told him this and he could have thought careful about his design, retaining impressive trees that would enhance his housing development. It's not enough to vaguely indicate planting and landscaping - yes, the next generation of trees is important, but using them to justify felling mature trees is equivalent to thinking it's perfectly acceptable to kill someone's dog as long as you buy them a puppy.

Deciding that you're going to go ahead with a set development without identifying existing constraints - be they arboricultural, ecological, cultural or anything valuable - makes a mockery of the sensitive and sustainable development that should be the norm, not the exception. I already know that my advice is going to be: let us - the arboriculturalists - decide what trees should be kept. Then, design around them. Simple, really.