Three tree workers, two henchmen, two police women, one hosepipe and an oak tree.
Trees can reveal a lot about a person. Especially the nasty bits of their personality and their warped understanding of the UK law regarding what can be done with trees when they cross boundaries.
This post is about how I spent a morning dragging brash, helping to rig down big lumps of oak, attempting to de-escalate an angry neighbour and ultimately getting sprayed with a variety hose pipes from said angry neighbour whilst out on a job for treecompany. The job looked like this…
Before I get into specifics though I need you to indulge me a quick detour regarding UK law and trees. However, as I am an arborist and not a solicitor I don’t want to spend too long on the topic so I will keep it brief 😀.
⚖️ The Arborists Quick Guide To “The Law”
In the UK we have two flavours to our laws - Statue Law and Common Law.
Statue Law is when the Government (on behalf of the people with magic blood aka Monarchy) passes an Act or a set of Regulations that demand and enforce something because reasons.
Statue law has led to the concept of Tree Preservations Orders (TPO) through the Town and Country Planning Act and later the more specific The Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation)(England) Regulations . Any tree with a TPO on it requires that planning permission be granted to perform any works such as pruning or removal. Failure to have planning permission when working on a tree that has a TPO could lead to eye watering fines 😢.
I often work the ground when we’re doing work on trees with TPO’s and the specifications are always very precise. Specifications (spec) such as “prune three metres back towards the boundary” or “thirty percent crown thin” are the common ones. There is no there’s wiggle room in these specs and it is wise to do what the spec says. You don’t do any more than the spec because the tree officer will club you over the head and possibly handy out a tasty fine. You don’t do any less because the customer is paying you to do a job and you’ll be there all day playing “I like the shape, but…”
Common Law is the concept that no one party is above the law of the land (🙄) and the mechanism for one party to bring a case against another party in front of a judge.
When a case is brought to a judge, the result is recorded and in the future when other cases of a similar nature are brought to a judge a previous judgement may be used to rule on the case. If there is no clear cut case to base a ruling off then one side will probably argue an existing ruling applies “because reasons”. The other side will argue it does not “because other reasons”. The judge listens to the cases, issues a ruling which is then recorded. The whole cycle starts all over again when the next case is brought. The cycle has been going on for approaching a thousand years since the Magna Carta started to become a permanent thing when it was sealed in 1215.
Common law in the UK has led to two main concepts regarding trees. “Trespass” is when a tree that doesn’t belong to someone “trespasses” from the owner’s land over a boundary and into a neighbours land. The continued presence of the branches and tree structure creates a “nuisance”1. If a neighbours tree crosses into your garden, you can cut it back to the boundary – but you should probably cut it back to a proper pruning point if neighbourly relations can withstand it (as defined in BS3998).
If you cut over the boundary without permission (even if your intention is to correctly prune the tree), then it is you who trespasses and you may find yourself on the wrong side of a criminal damage case. Even if you only go back to the boundary you must also give the parts that you have pruned back to the owner because if you don’t, that falls under “theft”. To defend against charges of “theft” you must return the parts without creating damage. No throwing the limbs over the fence as any divots in grass or smashed fencing would constitute criminal damage. So always ask the owner of the tree if they want the parts back, or if they’d like you to dispose of said waste.
Finally, as an operator in the tree you cannot use any part of the tree that is beyond the boundary to perform your work. This means no ladders resting on a trunk and no using limbs as an anchor point for work positioning as either of these would be trespass. It really is a murky world of joy.
The final concept I’ll mention with regards to Common Law, is that courts typically expect people to behave in a “reasonable” manner. So, if the only place to anchor your ropes so that you could work safely was over the boundary line, then there’d be every chance a judge would rule that even though you crossed a boundary, your reason for doing so fell under “reasonable”. Perhaps you repeatedly asked the owner of the tree if they’d like their tree back and they mindfully didn’t answer and so you chipped it, then a judge would likely rule that you made “reasonable” efforts to ask and that the owner was not responding in a “reasonable” manner. However, don’t make assumptions. Solicitors are the ones who make the case in courts for a reason and any sufficiently skilled “attack dog” lawyer (such as the ones wealthy people like to employ) could turn any situation around so that reasonable becomes unreasonable.
Long story short – If neighbourly relationships are anything other than healthy then a property boundary needs to be treat like the border of two countries. Breaching it could start a battle which turns into an inter-generational war. The initial issue that started the feud between the two families from from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” (Montagues and Capulets) actually started over a boundary issue with a conifer hedge.2
😡 💦 Angry Hose Pipe Man
Ok, thanks for that little indulgence, back to the story. The tree that this prose is concerned with has a TPO. It is a one hundred year old oak in the middle of a rather swanky housing estate in the North East of England.
Technically, you don’t need planning permission to prune nuisance limbs on a tree with a TPO as you are not the owner of the tree. However, the local tree officer has the power to disagree with you and slap you with a fine (courtesy of Statute Law). If you wanted to contest this fine then you’d have to go to court (thanks Common Law) to appeal. That’d cost you a pretty penny in legal fees and I’d not like to wager my money on the outcome. So the wise person contacts the local planning department, speaks to a local tree officer and follows their advice. This is what the customer had done. They were in possession of a granted planning permission application to carry out tree works on the nuisance branches that were trespassing into their land. This is where treecompany comes into the story.
The first time treecompany went to this job the team left without even getting as far as setting up. As soon as the team arrived on site the owner of the tree (let’s call him “angry hose pipe man 😡 💦”) came out and got quite aggressive with one of the team and threatened the team with a “good drenching from his hose pipe” if they even attempted to work on the tree. Reasoning with angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 didn’t work and the team left. The day was getting on and there were other jobs to be done.
The customer rang the police, he gave a statement and was told by the police that the work should be re-scheduled and if angry hose pipe man “piped up” 😆 again, he was to call 999 (not 101) and request support.
🏅 End of Level Boss
I was not there the first time. But I did specifically ask to go the second time because of the “hose pipe” issue. Learning about becoming an arborist isn’t always about trees, climbing and cutting. Sometimes there are other skills to develop, skills such as de-escalation, conflict resolution and giving bad news to someone who really doesn’t want to hear any more bad news. The not-fun stuff. It was technically a two person job, but we needed a third to handle angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 should he pop into action.
I normally work at treecompany on Wednesdays and Fridays as they are the days I am not at treeschool. However, this particular Friday (15th March 2024) was my last regular day at treecompany for a while because I start my new job at the estate on Wednesday the 20th of March 2024. I was looking to use this Friday as a day to test how far I’d come since I started at treecompany back in September of 2023. Angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 represented something of an end of level boss 🏅 to me and when the teams were being organised on the Friday morning, I couldn’t have been clearer in my desire to be on angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 team and hopefully get to handle him.
We arrived on site and knocked on the customers door. He informed that two of his rather burly foremen were here to “help handle the situation” and be the two henchmen. Two units of human beings they were too - quite formidable.
As soon as we started setting up, angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 came out and singled me out. To be fair, I was wearing hi-vis and I am the oldest person on the team so people tend to assume I’m “the gaffer”. It also doesn’t help that I am the most qualified and least skilled3 member on the team either which is a trait that most gaffers seem to have. As a result, I frequently find myself having conversations that I probably shouldn’t have.
However on this occasion I wanted to be the target for angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 and I was. The hi-vis and strategic, but casual, positioning of myself in his field of vision attracted him straight to me – winner winner chicken dinner 🍗.
🤡 Idiot
A set of swanky, large, motorised gates opened and a well dressed older gentlemen walked through them saying “I am telling you now that getting your tools out is pointless because no work is taking place on that tree until I get notification from the council”. Ladies and gentlemen, this is angry hose pipe man 😡 💦.
Angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 walked straight up to me, got right into my personal space and started saying words at me. Angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 had not done his homework and had a misinformed understanding of the law regarding trees and boundaries. What he did have at his disposal, in ample amounts I may add, was the appearance of being threatening, an intense ability to talk at you, being “a bit spitty” when irritated and he also had access to a rather impressive array of water dispersal devices.
I repeatedly informed angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 as best as I could that we were here to do the work, and that “the job was going ahead” regardless of how he interpreted the law. Angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 had two central bones of contention. The first, which was rather lame (but valid) was that he didn’t want us in the tree in case we injured ourselves and then we could sue him. He didn’t know it, but he was making a valid claim under The Occupiers Liability Act. However, at the end of the day, every team member that day was covered under the Health & Safety at Wort Act, Management of Health & Safety at work Act, PUWER, LOLER and a veritable tonne of other professional qualifications. In short, we were all skilled enough, and had the right legal permissions in place to do the work.
His second bone of contention was that work could not proceed as he had not received a letter from the council regarding the works. I repeatedly informed him that such a letter didn’t make any difference to us, as we had a copy of the approved planning permission and specification. However, angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 was adamant he was in possession of letter from the planning department stating that works cannot proceed until such communication was received. So he went away for five minutes and printed the email off. To the best of my ability to remember this is what it said (names have been changed for lols)
to: hosepipe@aim-it-at-the-bloke-in-the-tree.com
from: treeofficer@council.uk
Dear Angry Hose Pipe Man 😡 💦 ,
Please find attached the result of the planning application decision regarding the tree works. As to why you have not received a letter from the planning department in the post, I will chase that up for you and get back to you.
Regards,
Tree Officer
Planning Department
It was the contention of angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 that work couldn’t start, and indeed must not start, until a physical letter from the planning department had arrived. A letter that would contain - wait for it - the planning application decision. The very same planning application that was attached as a PDF to the email he printed out. I pointed it out to him that he should read the first sentence of the email again. He wasn’t having it. Angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 was of the opinion that because the decision came through on an email rather than a letter in the post, no work could proceed.
At this point he was starting to get up in my face and his incessant pointing was verging on tapping my chest. He was getting quite confrontational and my heartbeat was quite high. At least 150bpm I reckon. On par with sets of ten burpees every minute on the minute. To quell the adversarial nature that the interaction was headed down I asked his name, which he gave and I introduced myself. It worked for a bit but then it didn’t and we started going around in circles. Angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 was wrong but he wasn’t having any of it. I tried stating his point back to him (steelmanning) to get him to see that I understood his point. I managed to do this but he wouldn’t act in good faith and listen to the counterpoint (and correct point) that planning permission had been granted and work was going to start.
The henchmen loomed about ten feet away and were recording everything on their phones. Angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 landed one poke on my chest. I told him to stop it, which he did. I gave him a very clear look. The kind of look that a wealthy man in his latter years doesn’t want to see from a manual labourer in solid physical shape. The kind of look that says, please - do that again – I could use the money from settling the assault charges to buy a whole bunch of machinery. Fortunately for me, the cameras couldn’t see my face – only his.
At this point I’d walked angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 through the “arborists quick guide to the law”. He may have been surprised that a manual labourer understood and could explain it all in a concise manner and I’d also walked him through the fact that because planning permission had been granted (a fact he chose to ignore even though it was printed for him to read) the work was going ahead – now.
The henchmen commented on how calmly I’d handled it. I was glad that’s how it looked, my heart rate was going nuts. Inside my head I was repeating to myself “low voice, slow pace, palm down gestures”. I sometimes convince myself I’m a coward at heart and so I use these opportunities to practice having courage. If there’s a way to learn how to do this without the heart rate, I’d love to know what it is.
🤫 🐏 It Gets Down From the Tree Otherwise it Gets the Hose Again and Again.
I want to climb more at treecompany, but there is a hierarchy and a pragmatism at play. The hierarchy is that I’m at the back of the queue, and the pragmatism is that even if I could climb, the aim of the game is to get through as many jobs as you can in a day. I’m a slow climber (nothing practice cannot solve) and so having me climb is diametrically opposed to the doing of more jobs because I am not the quickest. The jobs I get to climb on are the ones where it is impossible to take a long time (up – chop – drop) or jobs that can be dragged out a little bit because all the jobs are done and there’s a little spare time.
So on this job, I was not climbing. It was the first job of the day and I’d made it clear I wanted to handle angry hose pipe man 😡 💦. At this point he had been handled the best that I could – we were in a position to start work and the confrontation had been done. As my colleague started to ascend up the tree, angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 started spraying him with his hose pipe. This was the first of many aquatic assaults.
My colleague was the one who normally handles the confrontation with people and so he wasn’t holding back. “I’m not sure if you’ve not figured this out angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 but I get rained on quite a bit doing this job. The only difference here is that it’s coming from below”. Angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 started singing “🎶 la la la la la la 🎶” as if he was simply out watering the garden and he happened to accidentally spray my colleague.
The bit angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 hadn’t thought about is how high his hose could spray. 15ft was the limit and as soon as my colleague was above that mark angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 turned the hose on those of of us working the ground. Eventually he got bored of soaking us on the ground and proclaimed “I think it is time to jet wash my fence”. Five minutes later of background “🎶 la la la la la la 🎶” and we heard a pressure washer spring into life and few seconds later we felt a mist. Angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 was left defeated as the jet washer nozzle he was using had a shorter range than his hose pipe and it also atomised the water which turned it into a fine mist. For the next 30 minutes we endured a man learning in anger about how far each of his pressure washer nozzles would send water. Nothing sent water higher than the hose pipe. Angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 was being an idiot and acting like an idiot.
He was repeatedly attempting to escalate the situation and so I recommended the customer called 999. The henchmen departed and I explained to the customer that we needed someone that was both in a position of authority and power to tell angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 to cease his angry aquatic antics.
👮♀️👮♀️ Two Police Women
To be absolutely honest, the gentle mist of cooling water was quite nice. It was a lovely sunny day with little wind and we were working in a sun trap of a south garden in type c chainsaw trousers (all around kevlar). I was sweating and the mist was most welcome.
To be fair, this was not a high priority incident for the law and so it took the police about an hour to get to site. When they arrived, they asked what was happening, I explained it to them as best as I could and they then went to speak with angry hose pipe man 😡 💦. About thirty minutes later, they emerged from his house and stated “He will not be bothering you again, he has agreed to remain on his property until the job is completed and you’ve left”.
We completed the job. We had repeatedly asked angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 if he wanted his tree back, but he never responded. So we chipped it. We cleaned up the site and left. I’ve had a few angry jobs at treecompany, but this was the best by far and the first one I’ve handled myself.
I’m not lying when I say that I could practically feel the seething anger emanating from angry hose pipe man’s 😡 💦 house once the police had left. He fought the law and the law won.
Plot twist time…
🤯 I’ve Been the Angry Hose Pipe Man Tree Owner
The reason I am so familiar with the law on this topic is that I’ve been on the other side of it. Many years ago around 2015, I was the angry hose pipe man. Although to be fair to me, I didn’t use a hose pipe so I guess that makes me Angry Tree Owner 😡🌳. It’s a long story, but I didn’t get on with my neighbours for close to a decade, so I used a tree I owned as a political weapon against them4.
I mindfully didn’t prune the tree in question and eventually it grew to a point where the branches touched the neighbours garage. As soon as that happened, they called in an arborist to remove the offending branches and even offered to pay for the removal of the tree. When the arborist turned up to do his work I came out (😡🌳) and said he was not to cut back beyond the boundary, stated the relevant laws and went back into my house (😡🌳). My heart was pumping. A few minutes later he knocked on and said something like this.
Hello mate, look I understand you don’t get on with your neighbour for whatever reason. To be honest, I’m not bothered or interested in all that side of things. But they’re offering to remove the tree at their expense and I’m here to remove a few of their trees and either prune back this one, or remove it for you for free. Will you let me me at least prune it back properly? If I prune it to the boundary, it’ll not be doing it properly and your tree could suffer as a result.
I said no (😡🌳).
I was being an arse (😡🌳).
I was being a less aquatic version of angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 .
Three weeks later, on a Sunday morning, I got the ladder and a handsaw out, I got up that tree and it became my first dismantle. A few weeks later I started to repair relationships with my neighbour. That took a while, as we had both reached levels of petulance that most reasonable humans couldn’t reach. To be precise, it took five years on my part and when they moved house we all parted on good terms.
It was from this experience that three things happened. First, I got a taste for tree work and secondly, I got my first logs. I had no idea at the time, but the sycamore logs I managed to get out of that tree became the first wood I’d mill by hand and turn into things. It became incense holders, nice little boxes, drawer fronts and a host of other things. The third thing was that I learned that being a petulant arse of a human being doesn’t get you anywhere. It is fun, but it gets you nowhere.
It also became an integral part of the story today. It’d be easy to read this and think that you’d never be angry hose pipe man 😡 💦. Maybe that’s true for you. But it was not true for me. I’m grateful I managed to identify this petulant part of my personality and make efforts to deflate and eject it when I find it claiming squatters rights in my actions. If I’d not have done so I may not be doing what I do today. I may still be sat at a desk writing code, or managing people who write code. Or writing policies and procedures that apply to people who manage people who write code. Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, if that’s what you’re happy doing with your time on Earth. I wasn’t. Instead, on Wednesday the 20th of March I start a new part time job working as an assistant forester at the estate5.
So when I heard there was a job on for the day where I got to be the arborist rather than the angry tree owner (😡🌳) I wanted to be on it so I could attempt to repay some karmic debt to the universe. In one sense I’m grateful to angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 for giving me the chance to think about such matters and connect some dots. Although if I were to be objective about matters - angry hose pipe man 😡 💦 is a vile bell-end 🍆 of a human being. One of these days, someone is gonna thump that man good and proper 👊🏻.
It was a great end to my first stint at treecompany. I ran the ground, assisted on the ropes and handled the angry hose pipe man 😡 💦. It may not have ended with me up a tree, rigging out some massive stuff in a productive and safe manner, that would get me a tonne of likes on instagram, but, I did end up realising how far I’d come in getting to grips with the basics of being a groundie and an appreciation of the continual effort it takes to work yourself into becoming a good human.
I appreciate your attention.
Thanks for reading
Cheers,
Jamie.
It is important to note that leaf litter isn’t considered a legal case of trespass or nuisance. That’s called “living around trees”. Picking up leaves is a small price to pay in exchange for the oxygen we need to breathe.
Gotcha. I’ve no idea why the Montagues and Capulets fell out with each other.
An achievement I wear with pride but that I am keen to rid myself of. Having nine NPTC certificates but only six months of on the job experience makes Jack an over qualified brash monkey who is “all gear and no idea”. Also, being the most qualified and least skilled is typically the same set up that qualifies a person for middle management. Again – I am keen to rid myself of this acheivement.
They were being more petulant that I was - honestly gov’.
I don’t give the name of the places I work at or people I work for. They are not relevant to the story so instead I call them factual names such as treeschool, treecompany and now the estate.
Hahaah! Great story :-)