Dangerous tree on council land

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Just looking for advice on how to ask / force the council to take down an extremely large tree, just outside our back garden boundary. The tree is a very large (more than twice as high as our two storey house) pine tree. It is within about 10 metres of my house and that of my neighbour.

This afternoon a significant side branch portion of the tree has cracked and broken off, and landed in my elderly, frail neighbours garden. This part of the tree is easily as big as a large freestanding tree, I wouldn't be able to get my arms around the circumference of the main branch it's so big. If either of them had been outside, as they often are in the afternoons, it would undoubtedly have killed them. We have young children and it could have been equally as bad had it landed in our garden.

If the remaining tree was to fall, it would easily take out a whole house. My neighbours have said that the tree has a preservation order on it. We are in Scotland.

I'm really concerned about the health of the tree, and the risk of it falling. How do I go about asking for it to be removed?

Ask the council!?!?!?

Neighbour says he has been corresponding with council for 3 years. I was kind of hoping someone who knew the legislation / responsibilities of the council could help me understand how to navigate a process. Thanks for your EXCELLENT advice though

No problem, anytime!

Ring the council. Sometimes people complain about big trees because they want more light or they don't want leaves falling on their lawn, but you can now show that this is a serious safety issue.

In the unlikely event that that doesn't work, get in touch with whichever of your local councillors looks most active. Making a fuss about something like this until it gets dealt with is an easy win for them. But it shouldn't come to that - no one at the council wants to be responsible for a member of the public being hurt by something on council property that could have been dealt with.

If it’s a cypress conifer/ Leylandii tree it won’t have a TPO, which may be useful as a start.

I guess I’d go down the formal complaint route if I couldn’t find a specific area on the council website. Notify them of potential insurance claims following you concern being raised and them being notified

Process varies. Where I am in England, you complain to the council on their website with a photo, they send out a tree specialist. (Cant be bothered to work out the spelling sorry!) and they then do a report as to if its dangerous or not. If it is dangerous the council would likely remove it and then sort out retrospective permission after.

If you have been taking to the council for three years with no action, I'd be taking photos of the fallen branch and showing them to my local MP along with evidence of the correspondence. A letter from an MP to a council can make the seemingly impossible happen very quickly...!

The TPO is made under s160 Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 by your planning authority … so contact them to see if it can be revised.

Go on your local authority website and search for the tree officer or trees and Woodlands dept. Ring them and send an email with photos of the tree and the damage it's done.

If it's dead dangerous or dying it doesn't matter if it has a TPO they can do work on it as a matter of urgency covered under a 5 day written notice. They will either undertake work themselves or sub it out to a third party contractor.

There should be someone in charge of trees - we had a lot of dealings with both the parish council and the district council about a tree and they both had people appointed to deal specifically with them.

I would also take photos and see if your neighbour will share any correspondence they have. I would start local and then escalate up to county council and MP if needed

Most council's have a tree officer, an arboriculturist. Try speaking to them and send them photos of the fallen branch.

Thanks so much for these posts, they are really helpful. When my husband got home from work he actually got out our ladders and took some photos of the damage the fallen branch has done - it's actually made a bit of damage to the roof of their house, and is lying, taking up all of their garden, up against the windows at the back of their house. The neighbours on the other side apparently called the 'emergency tree number' and someone is coming out to look at it in the morning, so hopefully we will know more about a potential plan then.

I will look at the info and have said to our neighbours that I will also call in the morning. I'm actually really worried about letting the kids go in the garden to play, the tree has been creaking tonight (it probably does every night without me noticing). I actually contacted the council myself about 3 years ago to express my concern about the tree, but was told it's perfectly healthy and safe, I'm assuming something must have changed for such a huge bit of it to just fall off, especially as it was such a still day today, not a bit of wind...

Anyway, thanks again for the experienced posts, it gives me a good starting point to take things forward. Our neighbours are so elderly and lovely I feel it's our duty to try and make sure we get this sorted so it's safe for them to go in their garden again!

Any update OP? We have a huge tree behind our house, I've never thought about it before but this has worried me.

I tried to call the council 'tree line' all day on Friday and it just rang out. They had removed the bit that had fallen by lunchtime and taken it away - it has completely destroyed their garden fence and all the garden furniture they had!

My plan is to try again on Monday to lodge a complaint and if I still can't get through I'm going to contact the councillor in the first instance to ask for help on Tuesday.

The tree looks really quite unbalanced now and I can't believe it's safe, so hope that something will be done. If it falls it will destroy whatever is in the way, be it a house or people...

Can you not log it online? Most council's have an online contact system these days.

I was in your situation but the tree was not only going to fall into our roof in a storm, it was close to taking out the electricity cable that supplied the village solely because of its sheer height alone.

Having tried the County Council, the Parish Council and the Town Council we then wrote to the MP who was just as useless.

In the end we got the electricity board to come and do a site survey and write to all organisations and we ourselves also then wrote again telling them they had a legal obligation to reduce or remove the offending tree or we would sue for damage caused.

Funnily enough, it was gone within a month.

If I was you, I’d say you will sue for any damages caused as a direct result of this tree.

I emailed my local council about a similarly dangerous tree and they cut all the branches off it the following day.

I did spell out that if someone was injured they would be responsible and couldn’t deny knowledge, etc. I think if you don’t get somewhere then getting your MP involved is a good idea.

Cleari whilst being a conifer will reduce the likelihood of it having a TPO. It’s not always the case. Some TPO’s are down to street scene, historical screening. Rather than nature or preserving less common trees.

A large conifer down the road from me has a TPO on it, along with every tree along that stretch of road. The conifer being the most un noteworthy.

We reported a tree, they sent a tree surveyor, it was then properly trimmed by a lumberjack. It's taller than my house but they are protected.

There is an email address which I've used in the past - in fact a much smaller tree fell during some winds about 9 months ago, and is lying at the rear of my house, resting on my fence. I've emailed multiple times to ask them to come and remove it, as eventually it's going to cause my fence to fall. Not one response, not even to acknowledge that I've contacted them, so I don't have much faith in that route.

I think given my neighbours lengthy correspondence about the tree, in which is is assured it's safe, it's probably not going to be removed without a bit more pressure. We took quite a lot of photos before it was hastily removed and so will make sure we use these, and looking at the damage this bit of the tree has done it's going to cost the council to sort that out. Will update once I've managed to speak to someone about what is happening next....

Ps, is definitely not a conifer or leylandii, it's a pine tree. I know this from the hundred of pine cones I clear away each year

Just to update. We have done a few things, individually and as a group with our neighbours.

We emailed a couple of days after the incident, all attempts to get through on the phone have been fruitless. My neighbour who's garden the tree fell into wrote a long detailed letter to the council and I think copied it to councillors. As a group of neighbours all within the reach of the tree should it fall we sent a co-written letter about our concerns, copying to councillors.

We got a response today to say the tree officer dealing with it has recommended the crown is almost completely removed, and the trunk will remain. I'm hoping this at least removes the risks that another large section will fall without warning. I hadn't realised but a similar sized section of the tree fell off about 18 months ago onto the land behind our house. So presumably two incidents in close proximity, the risks of it happening again, along with the costs of having to reinstate fencing, garden, and roof tiles has persuaded the council to take preventative action...