TreeAZ guidance for councils
TreeAZ has been designed for use by tree consultants to support planning applications where existing trees may be affected adversely. TreeAZ information is helpful to councils when they are processing these applications because it provides the opportunity to review the quality of the trees and the impact that the submission proposals will have on them. This is an essential requirement for the effective determination of planning applications where trees are considered an important planning consideration.
Although tree assessment is just one aspect of dealing with trees in the planning system, it is still very important because all tree management decisions flow from it. The correct place in the planning process to do the tree assessment is right at the beginning (pre-design stage) before any detailed proposals have been produced. This assessment identifies the trees that are of sufficient quality to be a material constraint in the planning process and is used by the designers to produce draft proposals (design stage). Once the layout has been finalised and formally submitted to the planning authority, the tree assessment information allows the planners to understand the scale of tree losses and the calibre of mitigation proposals before consenting or refusing the submission.
