Cities set limits for pruning trees

Auckland councils have set limits for pruning trees on private land, saying homeowners will be safe from prosecution if they keep their lopping to about 20 per cent of a tree's leaves and branches.

Auckland City Council has gone further and allowed up to 30 per cent to be lopped if a qualified arborist is hired.

Spokeswoman Suzanne Cookson said homeowners were not expected to use an arborist for every tree trim, but the council recommended they did so "for safety reasons". Trimming must be "in accordance with currently accepted arboricultural practice" and must not damage the tree's health, say Auckland City's guidelines.

And the natural shape of the tree must be kept. "If you take 50 per cent off a tree, all down one side, you will be breaching the definition," said Ms Cookson.

A new law means trees that are not listed as protected in a district plan can be trimmed without council permission, starting one week from today. Resource consent will still be needed to remove, damage or work in a tree's dripline - if the tree is over a certain size - until January 1, 2012, after which only individually listed trees will be protected.

The change affects residents of Waitakere, Manukau, North Shore and Auckland City, where rules limit chopping large trees, whether they are individually protected or not. The councils raced to come up with shared guidelines when trimming rules were scrapped in a last-minute change to the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill.

Representatives of the four councils met and agreed trimming 20 per cent of the live leaves and branches was a reasonable limit.

The guidelines are designed to deter homeowners from "trimming" trees slowly to death in an attempt to beat felling rules.

Ms Cookson said each council had written its own definition, but all agreed on the 20 per cent limit.

Auckland City's definition of trimming would be in the district plan by the time the law changed on October 1.

Councils have separate rules covering chopping parts of a tree that are already dead.

Environment Minister Nick Smith introduced the change to trimming limits to free up council officers' time, after councils told him scrapping rules protecting trees of a certain size would create too much work individually listing trees.

Councils are expected to use the time they would have spent processing tree trimming consents between now and January 2012 to identify and add new trees to their protected lists.

From January 2012, any unlisted tree on private land will be able to be without a resource consent.