When can I trim a hedge?

[stewamax]

I have a lot of hawthorn hedge around my house. I usually wait until end-July before trimming to avoid disturbing any nesting birds. I recently noted a comment from agricultural regulation firm CXCS (vide Hedge Cutting Dates on their website) and on DEFRA’s website that “the cutting and trimming rules do not apply to hedges within the curtilage of a dwelling-house or to the whole hedge when it marks the boundary of the curtilage of the dwelling-house”

However, primary legislation (The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981) appears to make no mention of either, in which case the usual ‘nesting season’ of March through August – which appears anyway to be a DEFRA rule of thumb rather than enshrined in law – applies.

DEFRA may say one thing, but the legislation does not have this derogation.
Could I still be prosecuted?

[88V8]

I have a lot of hawthorn hedge around my house. I usually wait until end-July before trimming to avoid disturbing any nesting birds. I recently noted a comment from agricultural regulation firm CXCS (vide Hedge Cutting Dates on their website) and on DEFRA’s website that “the cutting and trimming rules do not apply to hedges within the curtilage of a dwelling-house or to the whole hedge when it marks the boundary of the curtilage of the dwelling-house”
However, primary legislation (The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981) appears to make no mention of either, in which case the usual ‘nesting season’ of March through August – which appears anyway to be a DEFRA rule of thumb rather than enshrined in law – applies.
DEFRA may say one thing, but the legislation does not have this derogation.
Could I still be prosecuted?

Our local farmer who has been in business over 30 years and is very pro-environment, has recently been trimming his hedges, and I began cutting ours two weeks ago.
So if you are sure that there are no birds to be disturbed I would crack on.

V8

[monabri]

https://protectthewild.org.uk/campaign/ ... %20gardens.

"Yes, there is a ban on cutting hedges between March and August (or was until the end of 2023 when the regulations lapsed) but that only applies to subsidised or protected agricultural land. The regulations protecting hedgerows in the countryside don’t apply to hedges in or marking the boundary of gardens."

[bungeejumper]

I've been aware for several years that gardeners are encouraged to respect the nesting season and not cut hedges between March/April and end-July, but it's news to me that there's ever been a ban. The last time I looked, the RHS was recommending that we should be senstive to nesting periods and that we should only cut if we were sure that there were no nests.

Which seemed fair enough, until some bright spark at the RHS suggested that April was the last allowable hedging month, and October the first hedging month of the autumn. Cue a robust response from Monty Don (https://www.idealhome.co.uk/garden/gard ... cut-hedges), who rightly objected that April was far too late because the nesting season was in full swing by then. (Actually it's been going since February.)

But no trimming till October? Most of our hedges are laurel and bay, and there are no birds nesting in any of ours (we always look). Besides, the bushes start their summer growth spurt in mid-May, after which they'll put on four feet of growth in all directions by the end of August, and by October we'll have sealed ourselves visually off from the world, and all for the sake of birds who simply aren't there. Can they be serious?

Not that we have very many nesting birds anywhere else in the garden. Not since our neighbour started doing a no-mow May, which he ends each year with an extended strimmer extravaganza that always fills the whole street with four whole days of shattering engine noise and a dense smelly pall of two-stroke smoke.

Our birds are lucky indeed that they can escape from all this chaos to the open fields around us. Which they do. Heaven only knows how many nests are abandoned in the process?

BJ

[scrumpyjack]

Mine are being cut tomorrow by a contractor - couldn't leave it any longer as they are so overgrown and road safety issues apply.

Still we back onto several miles of fields so the birds have plenty of room

[Imbiber]

Hawthorn, attractive but very spiky. Long sleeves and gloves probably...

[SebsCat]

AFAIK there's no legislation to prevent cutting hedges at any time of they year - certainly not domestic ones. But it is an offence to intentionally harm nesting birds or their eggs. The act (Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981) does specifically say "intentionally" so that would seem to preclude not just accidentally damaging ("I didn't know there were any birds nesting in the hedge") but also recklessly ("I knew there were birds nesting but didn't take reasonable steps to avoid disturbing them"). I have no idea what legal precedents might exist.

FWIW, my advice would be to take reasonable steps to determine if there are any nesting birds before undertaking any work. Look to see if there are nests and spend a while observing to see if any birds are flying into and out of a specific part of it. The amount of effort should be commensurate with the scope of the works - a light trim to the sides with shears probably won't cause meaningful disturbance but a significant reduction in size with petrol powered hedge cutters is bound to be worse.

I tend to cut ours from July onwards. The local cat population (including ours) means that birds don't favour nesting in our hedges compared to the plentiful stretches farther away from houses. But I would avoid any section where I had observed birds possibly nesting - it's a good excuse to put off a job I don't enjoy!

[brightncheerful]

Most of our hedges are laurel and bay

Our bay tree, despite having been pruned to a sociable height a few years ago, resumed its upward path a while back and is now again almost at the ridge of the neighbour's roof. Small birds nest in it, as do a couple of pigeons. In the hope of a deterrent, Mrs Bnc uses her water pistol. The dog helps herself to the little ones, whereupon the larger birds gather on nearby rooftops and glare at the dog. A friend who recently tidied the garden and, being a countryman who knows about these things, said he wouldn't want to prune the bay before September, by which time the birds would have flown.

[scotview]

Mine are being cut tomorrow by a contractor -

Do you have a hedge fund ?

[stewamax]

Thanks for the replies.
When in doubt, I have usually read the primary legislation (with its usual forest of amendments).
So my underlying question is that whereas various websites, including DEFRAs, state that the W & C Act does not apply to domestic hedges, I can find no mention of this in the Act.
The Act itself does not define its scope, so should be construed to apply ubiquitously, not just to 'rural' areas.

It is similar to an issue I raised many years ago in the Letters page of the Daily Telegraph when I suggested that the 'anti-harassment' provisions of some industrial relations legislations could be applied to the more militant actions of hunt saboteurs. There were some rather scathing ("Don't be silly...only applies to industrial disputes") replies, which begged the question that the legislation itself did not say so.

[GoSeigen]

A forest of amendments, eh?

Often legislation gives ministers discretion to define regulations which then supplement the statute. Have you checked whether that is the case here?

This gov't site seems to be fairly clearly written, have you seen it?



GS

[stewamax]

Yes - it is a clear summary, and says at the outset that it applies to hedges bordering or adjacent to agricultural land.

[Lootman]

https://protectthewild.org.uk/campaign/illegal-to-cut-a-hedge-in-spring-yes-and-no/#:~:text=Yes%2C%20there%20is%20a%20ban,marking%20the%20boundary%20of%20gardens.

"Yes, there is a ban on cutting hedges between March and August (or was until the end of 2023 when the regulations lapsed) but that only applies to subsidised or protected agricultural land. The regulations protecting hedgerows in the countryside don’t apply to hedges in or marking the boundary of gardens."

Yes, it surely has to be the case that hedges that are 100% on private land cannot be subject to any restriction. Or at least it's hard to see how such a provision could be enforced. If I can remove a hedge then I can certainly trim one.

Perhaps it is a similar situation to how LAs try and micro-manage trees on private land. In practice it is near impossible to detect violations, let alone punish them.

That said I would not disrupt nesting. But that is my decision and not anyone else's.