Bristol’s Thriving Urban Landscape
Best known as an amalgamation of history, the arts, culture and engineering, the city of Bristol in South West England demonstrates how past and present can work in unison. Although Bristol is classed eleventh in the list of UK cities with the highest populations through housing more than 465,000 people, it features countless rural elements and natural spaces and even was the first city in Britain to be named as a European green capital by the European Commission (EC) in 2013.
More specifically, from the total land mass of 11,000 hectares throughout the city, Bristol has 33 conservation areas and more than 400 green spaces, parks and playgrounds. Included are the four major parks managed by Bristol City Council of Ashton Court, Blaise Castle, the Downs and Stoke Park. Even though Bristol is an undoubtedly developed part of England, the parks across the city attract an estimated 30 million visitors every year, and according to Original by Bristol, the plan is to give every resident a high-quality park or green space within a ten-minute walk by the year 2047.
Trees Featuring All Over the City
In total, there are around 600,000 new and existing trees present throughout Bristol. Due to the advantages they bring to the environment, the cost to replace the trees and the value of the carbon stored within them, the trees are valued at an accumulative £280 million. Bristol trees store an estimated 360,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, removing 14,000 tonnes of it from the local atmosphere that would otherwise match the emissions of 9,000 cars.
The tree canopy cover in Bristol stands at 12%, falling short of the national average by 6%. Various local council and community initiatives aim to increase the figure by growing the number of trees in the city, such as via the ‘One Tree Per Child‘ or ‘Trees for Streets‘ schemes. It falls to the local authorities to manage trees and ensure that no valuable trees are harmed without adequate reasoning and prior consent. Planning projects are under particular scrutiny, and any trees in relation to a development will need to be inspected or planning applications are likely to hang in the balance.
Working on a development site that involves trees under tree preservation orders (TPOs) and within conservation areas can be tricky, as the parameters designed to protect trees aren’t always entirely clear. To successfully work around the potential for a conservation area, tree preservation order or any other reasonable steps taken to defend trees, a tree survey will act as an all-encompassing solution to any and all problems in the planning process caused by trees. It will also give your local planning authority all of the information they need to make a sound decision when it comes to your planning application.
Reports to Help with Planning Conditions
Between development sites with limited numbers of individual trees, large sets of multiple trees or even wooded areas, a BS5837 tree survey would suffice to support planning applications. The British standard assessment consists of a visit to the development site by a tree consultant to look over all trees and decide on the best course of action for each of them. Structural condition, disease identification and other applicable factors will be used to measure the health and value of all trees, and from there, the tree surveyor will possess the required information to make important decisions.
Retaining as many valuable trees as possible will always rank as the top priority in a tree survey such as this one, but unfortunately, that isn’t always possible. If any trees are worth keeping but simply cannot be saved, arboricultural consultants will usually suggest safely relocating them elsewhere. It is also a possibility that trees will be dead, dying or dangerous, making them not worth saving. Whenever this is the case, they will need to be destroyed and compensated for with the planting of new trees. That way, the standard of biodiversity will not suffer as a result of any destroyed trees.
Following the tree survey, a report will be created by the arboricultural surveyor to detail the assessment at length. All mitigation measures, images, graphs, tree care considerations and suggested recommendations will be included in the tree report. When all of the listed tree surveys and reports have been undertaken and provided, the tree survey report can be submitted to the corresponding local planning authorities as supporting documentation in the application for planning permission.
Contact Our Team for Support
From commercial customers to private developers, and from tree owners to would-be homeowners during a mortgage application, our tree survey services have helped a wide range of different clients to satisfy a variety of purposes. We can help to establish trees that are in poor condition, situated in a conservation area or under an existing tree preservation order before giving you the assistance you need with moving forward and claiming planning consent on your development site.
With arboricultural consultants in Bristol and other sections of the North East, we can step in to work on your development. For a free quote, just fill out a quote form on our contact page or call us on the phone via the number at the top of the page. If you are happy to move forward, let us know, and we will arrange for one of our arboricultural consultants to attend your site for a tree survey. Your tree report will be with you a few short days after the assessment, and with it, you can satisfy your local planning authority.