Agenda item

Councillor Keith Henson, Cabinet Member referred to the purpose, to the reason scrutiny had requested the information and to the background included in the report. It was important to consider the lack of resources and to understand the additional cost and the amount of work involved to ensure the safety of citizens.

Phil Jones explained that officers had undertaken work to explore whether the work could be done in-house and the use of biproducts for fuelling the authority’s biomass. Reference was given to the three appendices included in the report. Ash Dieback was noted to be a corporate issue. The Council is dealing with the issue on a risk based prioritised basis.  Since council assets had begun to be surveyed in a prioritise manner, the scale of the issue on council-owned land was not as great as initially estimated.

Members asked many questions relating to their area of interest which were

answered in turn by Phil Jones, Norman Birth and Rhodri Llwyd. The main points raised were as follows:

·       Initially, the project programme has been to carry out the work over 10 years to, with most of the work done between the third and sixth year. Dependent on the budget and contractor availability, hopefully, the work could be completed sooner, although dealing with the airborne disease would be ongoing.

·       Most trees adjacent to and abutting highways and public rights of way are owned by the landowner, who has a responsibility to carry out inspection of their trees. If an officer during inspections deemed a tree to be unsafe on land not owned by the authority, a Section 154 Notice of the Highways Act would be issued to the landowner. As a result, landowners would need to hire contractors within 14 days. The authority would be able to assist with the process if required.

·       In terms of priority, there were 4 classes of deterioration with trees in class 4 prioritized with notices. Some trees in Class 1 and 2 would gain resistance and survive, which was important to maintain the native stock.

·       In the event there was a tree preservation order in place, a notice of application for the removal of a tree would need to be done.

·       Concerns were raised that the agriculture sector in Ceredigion had not been consulted with helping with the work of cutting trees in exchange for the chip. There were questions around economies of scale as felling individual trees as opposed to woodland had different requirements.

·       Members felt that undertaking the work in-house would not have made business sense although long-term, the equipment would have been in the authority’s possession.

·       To ensure everyone had an opportunity to tender for the work, members felt that transparency was key in setting the matrix. A Tree works contractor framework was in the process of being developed and a meet the contractor event would be held to assist with the online tendering process.

·       NRW were the enforcement agency if more than 5 cubic metres of timber per quarter was removed without a felling licence.

·       Due to public protection concerns, it was suggested that work was done to communicate the problem to the public and to emphasise that responsibility lay with landowners if affected trees were on their land. Following up on notices served was key to ensuring public safety.

Following questions by the Members of the Committee, members agreed to

note the report.