Tauranga City Council may have to go back to the drawing board over ongoing issues between its trees policy and the region's ratepayers.

'The issue won't go away because trees just keep on growing,” says councillor Catherine Stewart.

Photo: File.

Mayor Stuart Crosby, alongside Catherine, raised the issue during a Strategy and Policy Committee discussion in relation to proposed changes to the City Plan.

The issues have a long history with council, who experimented with a special tree sub-committee in February 2013.

It was formed after councillors began complaining about the amount of time the full council was spending adjudicating neighbourhood tree disputes.

Around five years ago, council changed its policy and pruned all but 300 trees from its notable list –ones that cannot be felled without council permission – via the assessment of trees according to The Standard Method of Tree Evaluation, the Stem test.

The trees that passed/failed became Notable Trees and were enshrined in the City Plan, becoming untouchable unless a resource consent is obtained, which would cost upwards of $15,000 says councillor Steve Morris.

'It's just not appropriate to do that,” he says.

The example that's been brought to the council's attention is a tree in Otumoetai, around 80 metres down a driveway.

'There's lots of examples of trees around our city that are giving grief to people,” says Catherine.

'There's one in Lever's Road – it's been chopped around the power lines and yet it's a protected tree. It gave a huge amount of grief to the owners and the people concerned because they are older and they have got mobility issues.

'The driveway was all uneven because of the tree. It is cut into an L shape and it's a protected tree, which is nonsense.”

Another woman sought resource consent to fell a protected tree on a section she owned. The consent was declined at significant cost. Catherine says the tree's protection was pushed through before she could submit on the process.

'Unless that resident had made a submission in the earlier part of the process, they were locked out of that process even though it affected them. It was really wrong.

'When those stem analyses were done for the City Plan purposes, that was way back then. Since then the trees have grown because they grow so fast in Tauranga. We need to re-look at it.”

While most people appreciate the value and amenity of trees, Catherine says she's seen examples of the effects trees have on health, stress levels and costs.

'It's something we have to review,” she admits.

The committee agreed and the city planners will add the tree policy to the review process.