How high is too high

[middi]

Excuse the question if you please as this is not exactly P/P orientated,but,
I had a phone call from my sister in law upset at the fact that her relatively new neighbour has complained that her leylandii hedge, at the bottom of her (suburban) garden, is a monstrosity about 30 + feet high and he has asked her to cut it down otherwise he will take action to make her cut it down. Apparently it blocks out the sun light into his garden.

I did not have the heart to tell her that I also think that her edge IS a bl**dy monstrosity, or the fact that the chap must have seen the edge when he purchased the house and could have had choises of houses to buy with less aggro , so I just confined myself to an hear ache for 20 minutes and diplomatically said I was not familiar with trees and hedges unless they had a preservation order on them.

Short of telling her to do nothing and wait untill someone legally tells her to cut it down and fall out completely with her neighbour, has anybody on this forum a better idea as to where she stands legally on this matter, or better advise.

As I said to her I would try and find out a bit more, any comments would be appreciated.

 

[Schoolmarm]

http://www.gardenlaw.co.uk. the forum part.


or hedgeline site has calculations for height, distance etc. Someone on garden law will know the hedge address

 

[skier-hughes]

I'm sure it links through from gardenlaw, but I was investigating some of this the other day and the DCLG (the new ODPM) has lots of info,

http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1127822

Graham

 

[biffvernon]

Leylandii, being a hybrid of the Alaska yellow cypress and the Monteray cypress, is not only very fast growing but also a surprisingly strong and durable timber. It is grown commercially in New Zealand for the construction industry.
The trimmings are very useful for heating as the high resin content makes it a firewood of exceptional calorific value. We should all be encouraged to plane Leylandii and harvest them when mature.

 

[NT]

A row of 30ft tall trees sound like a good opportunity to do some building, in timber.

There is one approach I wouldnt sreiously suggest, and thats to tell your neighbour he can indeed force you to cut them down, but the day you do is the day you're gonna build something even bigger with the wood. Theres a case of someone doing just this, using metal, as a protest at iirc planning refusal. Twas huge.


NT

 

[Me!]

The trimmings are very useful for heating as the high resin content makes it a firewood of exceptional calorific value.

I've often wondered though, do woods with high resin content leave more tar and deposits up the chimney than logs with less resin?

 

[worms]

While the trimmings undoubtedly burn fast and hot, I was burning Leylandii logs last winter and they didn't really work all that well as firewood.

I can vouch for the wood though as I split some and it has dried quite hard. I wonder, though if it might prove brittle if cut too thin?

The logs I was burning were the top 17 feet off the hedge, the remaining 25 foot logs are still upright and growing and should provide better timber!

 

[jess marley]

We have the opposite problem in that our house is surrounded, coffin-like by a leylandii hedge reaching 50 feet in places, and we're having to go through the whole conservation area hoo-haa to get permission to remove them...grrr. This takes an astonising six weeks, 5 copies of all paperwork and statements from our tree surgeon as to exactly why they need to go. I know these rules are there to stop idiots chopping down 2000 year old yews, but.. bah humbug etc etc.

 

[Nemesis]

It's galling to consider that substantial demolition of a historic building in a conservation area needs no permission at all.

And total demolition of a historic building which doesn't meet the far too strict rules for listing, and which isn't in a conservation area, can happen almost overnight with no-one able to prevent it.

Trees have much more protection.

http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/column...9975&headline=more-bland-boxes-name_page.html

And to add to the above:

Demolition of pub is loss to our town Aug 17 2006


by Evening Gazette


I have just watched the start of the demolition of one of Middlesbrough's oldest pubs, The Acklam at Newport.

When the Infirmary goes, there will be almost nothing left of the original buildings from Newport roundabout, Cannon Street and the approach to what is now the town centre.

Before anyone mentions progress and regeneration, I would urge people to look at what, if anything, has replaced these buildings - nondescript units. It's a real pity this old pub has gone. It was the last decent little building at that end of Newport.

This just shows how fragile our historic buildings are.

Picture here:
http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/bridgeender/page24.phtml


Of course. on the old style forum a relevant change of topic could be indicated by changing the heading within a thread...

A very useful facility.

 

[NT]

I thought the historic forum format suited the subject quite well.

NT

 

[Nemesis]

I did too. Far more flexible and suited to the wider ranging nature of the way responses are given, and how these at times wandered off at tangents within a thread. There is no means of indicating this at all with this format. OK it may suit the basic 'I have a problem can someone give me a quick reply' type of forum, but the joy of the old one was that any question could lead to a series of byways and the road less travelled.

It was, in my view, a rather basic mistake to suddenly lump this one onto people.

The old and wobbly may have had its problems (and some of those could have been solved quite easily) but it was a far better place to inhabit than this is. And it would seem many others thought so also.