Smith: Use common sense on pruning

Trees on private land can be trimmed without a resource consent from next month, unless they are protected. Photo / Martin Sykes

Auckland councils are working to quickly come up with shared guidelines for homeowners who want to lop their trees, before trimming rules for most trees are scrapped.

Staff at Auckland City, Waitakere, Manukau and North Shore councils want to agree on a definition of "trimming" that is consistent across the four districts before the way is opened for pruning in two-and-a-half weeks.

Environment Minister Nick Smith, who last week introduced a last-minute change to the Resource Management Act (Simplifying and Streamlining) Bill allowing tree trimming from October 1, said the Government did not intend to set pruning limits and people should apply common sense.

From October, trees on private land can be trimmed without a resource consent, unless the tree is listed as protected in the local district plan.

Felling trees protected by height or size in the district plan will still be illegal until January 2012 - when general rules against felling will be scrapped.

Auckland Labour list MP Phil Twyford has said that landowners could use the law change as a way to get rid of unwanted trees by slowly chopping them to death.

Auckland city development committee chairman Aaron Bhatnagar said his committee agreed last week homeowners needed a definition of "trimming" to help tell them how far they could go.

His council was working on an information pack telling people how to chop trees safely.

North Shore City environmental policy and planning manager Phill Reid said officers from the four councils, which all have rules about trimming trees of a certain size, would need to decide on a definition by next week if they were to have it in place before the law changed.

The Government originally planned to give councils two years to make lists of individual protected trees, before scrapping rules covering felling and trimming. That was cut to three weeks for trimming on the day the law was passed.

Dr Smith said the Government did not intend to define trimming "because that would suggest that courts and enforcement officers are not able to work it out."

"There are Environment Court decisions that provide a pretty clear boundary," he said. "I think it is just a further extension of bureaucracy going over the top when we have to start having detailed Government regulations and guidelines about what is a trim, what is a prune and what is not."

Dr Smith said people had been prosecuted under the law for damaging protected trees with aggressive pruning. "If people act in good faith, I am quite confident this law can work quite effectively."

"If they [homeowners] are taking steps that are likely to put the tree at risk and it moves into the category of either removing the tree or destroying or damaging the tree then that is beyond a prune or a trim."

In the case of significant trees, Dr Smith said he expected people would use an arborist.

Mr Bhatnagar said his council would encourage people to use an arborist if they were unsure about any trimming. More information would be on the Auckland City council website within a few weeks and a pamphlet was planned, he said.

The Labour Party has promised to suspend and review the ban on council tree felling rules if it is elected in 2011.

"The public can stop the felling of Auckland trees by ensuring National is not the Government on 1 January 2012, when the change is due to take effect," New Lynn MP David Cunliffe said last week.