🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <QJC$yGAu0qYyEwSG@foscot.demon.co.uk>,
*** <bex@foscot.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>I was sorry to hear that the NPA decided to fell these trees, but am
>irritated by all this personal abuse directed at people who are just
>doing their jobs. 
>A while back on this thread I remarked that this whole affair is to do
>with insurance company requirements and common law decisions. It is easy
>to criticise when it is not you who is having to take responsibility. 
>
<snip>
> Instead of general diatribes against (assumed)
>attitudes, better to look at 
>A) alternatives
>B) the specifics of the particular situation.
>-- 
>bex

Thanks for your contribution bex,
 (it would be helpful to have a name - somehow your contribution lacks
weight without it!)

The problem is really  *not*  to do with insurance or common law decisions
as we have an expert of national standing - Roger Cartwright  ( who
recommends that only a few of the Rusland Beeches need to be felled) and
who is in many ways better qualified than Derek Patch even though the
latter is director of the AAIS.

The problem is that the Lake District National Park Authority have
deliberately chosen to follow Derek Patch's recommendations even though his
view is extremely cautious. They have gone further than this. Their
officers have deliberately suggested that Roger Cartwright's credentials
are in question and that his report should not be taken seriously.

To quote from a letter writen on behalf of John Toothill OBE, National Park
Officer by Bob Cartwright of the LDNPA in reply to an enquiry by MP Michael
Jopling on behalf Mr and Mrs Bennett : -

"Whilst one must respect the views of other "experts" , you will understand
why the National Park Authority would be reluctant to disregard lightly the
views of Derek Patch."

We find this statement using the word "experts" in inverted commas very
objectionable. Roger Cartwright has forty years experience of working with
trees as against Derek Patch's twenty. He is one of perhaps ten in the
country that are both qualified Foresters *and* Landscape Architects which
enable him to comment on the amenity value of trees. By contrast Derek
Patch has a largely accademic background having published 26 papers mainly
Arboriculture Research Notes none of which are particularly relevant to the
survey of amenity trees (unless you count - Control of epicormic shoots on
amenity trees (1989)).

Cartwright has been consultant for the Cumbria County Council, Lancaster CC
and Norhumbria CC and has been instrumental in preventing many trees
throughout the North of England from being cut down by "experts" with a
Forestry background who want to get rid of trees at the slightest sign of
weekness. He has done this by courageously taking on the responsibility for
these decisions and being legally responsible for these decisions as bex
points out.

Now perhaps readers of this can see why the feeling is so strong that these
whole procedure must be stopped if at all possible.

Please ask me for copies of the relevent reports and I will send you them
and you can make your own mind up. I believe you will wee that Derek Patch
is very biased and his report full of hyperthetical conjecture about how
trees might be dangerous etc.etc.

Geoff Dellow