TPOs - a local government case study

[Tim Lund]

The Harvard Business School style subject line here is for a reason - to make the point that the point is to think seriously about management problems for local government, and not just score cheap points. But the advantage of a case study is that it forces concrete thought, and avoids getting lost in abstractions.

The 'case' is that local governments - certainly Lewisham and Bromley - seem to impose unnecessary costs on themselves and citizens by not publishing a register of Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) on line, even though other local authorities can - e.g. Teignbridge http://www.teignbridge.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=6489. So the conscientious citizen who wants some work done on a tree has to go to the trouble of finding out who to contact at the Council, contacting them, and then having the relevant officer, who will generally be someone relatively senior and experienced, and who knows what they're doing, waste some more of their time responding.

It would seem such a simple thing to do, and yet going back nearly a year, in connection with voluntary work I do for a Bromley Allotments web site - http://www.balgf.org - I have an email thread with Bromley officers in which they offer what seem to me nonsensical reasons why they can't send me a listing of TPOs. They have objected that any information once sent may at any subsequent time become out of date, to which my counter is that a new TPO would not be imposed, or an existing on revoked with out the owners or agents responsible for the tree it applies to being informed, so there would have no excuse for being misinformed if at any one time a listing of current TPOs was supplied - as managed in Teignmouth. I have also, on one occasion, asked about whether there is a TPO on a tree in Lewisham, and it seems that here we have a similar system.

I think it's a clear case of organisations being slow to respond to new technology - but why? I know that the officers in this particular firing line are good competent public servants, and yet new technology has made some - probably small - part of their jobs redundant. The staff involved will probably not be IT experts themselves, so not in a position to push through such productivity improvements themselves, even if it was in their interests, which it could be if senior management rewarded initiative. From my own experience, I know such intelligent management is not necessarily found in the private sector, so it would be wrong to see this as just a problem with the public sector. But it is a problem nonetheless, and even though administering TPOs is a minor element of local government spending, and yet I am fairly sure many more similar cases are out there.

[mummycat]

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[jmc]

A very late reply to this thread

I feel that mummycat is correct in suggesting the root of the problem is the historic use of paper. There would be a hell of a lot of work involved 'digitising' this info. I can see no other reasonable explanation for not publishing this data.

There is an email list, to which I subscribe, that is dominated by tree officers
http://www.tree-care.info/uktc
It's worth having a look through the archives to gain some understanding of the problems they face. It might be worth joining the list and asking for the opinions of the many tree officers who use the list, but probably not a good idea to name Bromley.

[Tim Lund]

jmc

I think the problem is more that TPOs come under planning departments rather than the Parks, green spaces departments. Lewisham Greenscene have very good digital records of their tree locations - but TPOs are another department. I think it's the same in Bromley

[Robin Orton]

More importantly, Tim, what the hell's a 'Harvard Business School style subject line' ? ( A Google seach referred me to your posting!) Not that I'm trying to 'score cheap points'.....but, honestly, what a show-off!

[Tim Lund]

Harvard Business School gave the world case studies rather than abstract management concepts as a way of thinking about business issues

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[Robin Orton]

OK, fair enough, thanks. At least I've learnt something new today!