High Hedges (Hansard, 10 December 2001)

§ Ms Keeble

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) and Tree Advice Trust have now completed their project to develop an objective method for assessing whether high hedges block too much daylight and sunlight to adjoining properties, and to provide guidance on hedge heights to alleviate these problems.

Copies of the final report of their work, together with guidelines for calculating hedge height, have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses. These documents are also being published on my Department's website.

The guidelines explain how to calculate whether a hedge is likely to block out too much light from a garden and from the main rooms of a house. In relation to gardens, the procedure looks at what portion of the garden is shaded by the hedge and what direction it faces. For the rooms of a house, the main factor is the distance from its windows to the hedge. Some of the details of this formula have been refined in the light of the results of consultation and field-testing on a sample of problem hedges.

We want to encourage people to apply the BRE guidelines to their problem hedge and to use the results to try to settle matters with their neighbours amicably. We will, therefore, be preparing a leaflet specifically designed for this purpose. It will include a simplified version of the BRE guidelines as well as advice on how people might approach their neighbours with this information to try and agree a solution. We will be involving local authority, professional, consumer and advice groups in its development and expect to launch the leaflet in spring next year.

We recognise, of course, that in some cases guidance and voluntary action is no substitute for a legal remedy. We remain committed, therefore, to bringing forward legislation to set up a statutory complaints system for dealing with high hedge problems as soon as there is space in the Parliamentary timetable.