Save the trees!

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james graham

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Mar 24, 2014, 4:44:37 PM3/24/14
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Hello, this is a call for help to create a site that will monitor applications to fell trees in Manchester and present them in map form. Lots of mature trees are getting lost at the moment, particularly around Ardwick/Upper Brook St, and the trouble is once permission is granted there's not much opponents can do except watch them vanish. I'd like to make a platform that gives people advanced notice that trees are under threat and the time to object.
This would require harvesting info about tree applications and presenting the information in an easy to digest way, maybe with an easy link to the planning department for residents to air their views. Scraperwiki said Open Data Manchester might be able to help on the coding side of things. I hope that's the case. Many thanks, James.

Julian Tait

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Mar 25, 2014, 8:19:40 AM3/25/14
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This is an interesting one. Do you know what the process is for applying for tree removal? Who do you apply too?

Cheers

Julian

On 24 Mar 2014, at 20:44, james graham wrote:

Hello, this is a call for help to create a site that will monitor applications to fell trees in Manchester and present them in map form. Lots of mature trees are getting lost at the moment, particularly around Ardwick/Upper Brook St, and the trouble is once permission is granted there's not much opponents can do except watch them vanish. I'd like to make a platform that gives people advanced notice that trees are under threat and the time to object.
This would require harvesting info about tree applications and presenting the information in an easy to digest way, maybe with an easy link to the planning department for residents to air their views. Scraperwiki said Open Data Manchester might be able to help on the coding side of things. I hope that's the case. Many thanks, James.

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Julian Tait
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james graham

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Mar 27, 2014, 7:41:30 AM3/27/14
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Hello,
My understanding is that you need planning permission from Manchester City Council to remove trees that are covered by tree protection orders (TPO) or are in conservation areas. These applications routinely show up on the council's weekly planning lists and are often from homeowners seeking to chop down an individual tree.

However, the most significant tree loss comes from large developments where there is no need for a specific application regarding the trees. But the trees will be mentioned in the planning materials, in a tree survey or report, and in a report prepared by planning officers for councillors when they meet on the planning committee.

An example of this at the moment is the regeneration of the Brunswick estate in Ardwick which sits between Stockport Road and Upper Brook Street. Trees are being felled right now in quite large numbers but it's happened under the radar even though a tree survey would have been included in the original planning documents.

I don't know anything about coding but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to pull information from Manchester City Council planning applications, but it may be trickier to get tree information when it's buried in larger applications. There is also the regular cull carried out by the council's own tree department which may just require them being on board and giving regular updates.

In cases of tree loss it's too late to object when they turn up with chainsaws and that's often the first sign a tree is under threat. The idea of a tree website would be to alert people to plans in the pipeline so they can take whatever action they wish.

I think I mentioned I got in touch with Scraperwiki to see if they could scrape the info. They said: "If you can get access to a Python coder - he or she could write the script on ScraperWiki for you. We have the libraries and an API to make it easy for a coder to get the data, allow exploration of the data and also a simple mechanism to get the data out in map format suitable for your website."

Do you think this is feasible and would anyone be able to help?

Many thanks,
James






On Tuesday, March 25, 2014 12:19:40 PM UTC, Julian Tait wrote:
This is an interesting one. Do you know what the process is for applying for tree removal? Who do you apply too?

Cheers

Julian
On 24 Mar 2014, at 20:44, james graham wrote:

Hello, this is a call for help to create a site that will monitor applications to fell trees in Manchester and present them in map form. Lots of mature trees are getting lost at the moment, particularly around Ardwick/Upper Brook St, and the trouble is once permission is granted there's not much opponents can do except watch them vanish. I'd like to make a platform that gives people advanced notice that trees are under threat and the time to object.
This would require harvesting info about tree applications and presenting the information in an easy to digest way, maybe with an easy link to the planning department for residents to air their views. Scraperwiki said Open Data Manchester might be able to help on the coding side of things. I hope that's the case. Many thanks, James.

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