New Standing Advice from Natural England on Ancient Woodland and Veteran Trees

In November 2017, Natural England updated the Standing Advice relating to Ancient Woodland and Veteran Trees - this advice has been tweaked in January 2018 to revise some of this advice.

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The standing advice recognises that ancient woodland, and trees classed as 'ancient', 'veteran' or 'aged' are irreplaceable and take hundreds of years to establish.
​In November 2017, the standing advice suggested a 50m buffer should be applied between development and ancient woodland - to mitigate effects of trampling and pollution on the woodland habitat, rather than to individual trees.
​This has been revised (January 2018) following feedback received and reverts to the previous position, which includes:  "leaving an appropriate buffer zone of semi-natural habitat between the development and the ancient woodland or tree (depending on the size of the development, a minimum buffer should be at least 15 metres)"

What is Standing Advice?
Standing advice is important as it represents the 'standard' guidance provided by Natural England and should be taken into account when making decisions on planning applications.  As such, standing advice is a material planning consideration  and has the same authority as individual responses to planning applications. 
​The Standing Advice relating to ancient woodland and veteran trees can be viewed here. 

In relation to veteran trees, the advice updated in November 2017 has not been amended.  This advice introduced a key recommendation for a "buffer zone at least 15 times larger than the diameter of a veteran tree or 5m from the edge of its canopy, if that’s greater" and "protecting veteran trees by designing open space around them".
​This is potentially important for developers as it is an increase on the maximum root protection area of 15m recommended by the arboricultural British Standard, BS 5837).

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