Legalities/Ethics

judylou

I have 2 VERY LARGE lilly pilly trees in my back garden. Unfortunately one of my neighbours is obsessive compulsive about most things, and one of my trees overhangs their property. Now these trees are native and it is my belief that you cannot cut natives over a certain height without council permission.
My neighbour had some "loppers" come in and virtually cut my tree in half vertically.
My question is....shouldn't the people who lopped the tree have sought some sort of official permission?

TrevMcRev

Some info in this thread on NSW trees vs fencelines.

Eric Frei

Need to know what council you are in, then figure out if trees are protected. In some cases permission is required in others not, generally the council will give the parameters for tree protection online, what council are you in?

If not protected then neighbours have the right to cut back any trespassing parts to the fence line providing it doesn't compromise the health and integrity of the tree (little chance of that with lillypillys).

If your trees were growing beyond your property boundy did you check with the neighbours that they were OK with that? There always seems to be some implied "right of way" for trees.

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judylou

I'm Sutherland Shire,
and yes the neighbours did tell me they were having it "trimmed" and I was O.K. with that for their sake, I just wondered because it was a native that it needed council permission. It was overhang rather than boundary issues. I guess I just wish it had been done a little more sensitively. Anyway life's far too short to get too upset.

Eric Frei

Well, the council's website isn't very clear or helpful IMHO.

I found this page, it has a link to another page which isn't very descriptive about what is protected ... sounds like everything to me!

http://www.sutherland.nsw.gov.au/ssc...1?OpenDocument

I'd say you'd have to call them to get some sense.

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