P.G. Biddle

Dr Giles Biddle was awarded the O.B.E. for services to arboriculture and the environment in the New Year's Honours, 2000. He is a past-Chairman and Registered Consultant of the Arboricultural Association, and a holder of the Association's Award for services to arboriculture. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Foresters in 2000. He has a degree in Forestry from Oxford University, and his doctoral thesis at Oxford was on 'Virus Diseases of Forest Trees'.

The majority of his work for the past 36 years has concentrated on all aspects of tree root damage. In 1978 he was commissioned by Milton Keynes Development Corporation to start the research which is described in Volume 2 of 'Tree Root Damage to Buildings'. The National House-Building Council commissioned an extension to the research in 1984, with this leading to Giles Biddle's appointment as consultant to NHBC for the 1985 revision of Practice Note 3 "Building near Trees". He provided all the technical input, both for this edition and its subsequent revision as NHBC Standards, Chapter 4.2. These have become the industry standards for foundation design near trees.

The research has also provided the basis for reappraising methods of site investigation, and developing techniques which are practical and relevant to decisions on remedial action and the prevention of subsidence damage, with emphasis on the arboricultural options which are available. These techniques and concepts, which have evolved and been honed during about 3000 detailed investigations, are presented in Volume 1 of 'Tree Root Damage to Buildings'. The investigations have been for a wide variety of clients, particularly insurers, loss adjusters, solicitors and local authorities throughout the country.

Since publication of Tree Root Damage to Buildings, he has been a member of the Institution of Structural Engineers Task Group for the revision of their report on 'Subsidence of low-rise buildings'. In addition to contributing to the drafting of the new Chapter 8 on 'Trees and Tree Management', Giles Biddle was invited to chair the sub-group drafting the revisions to Chapters 5, 6, and 7, and personally undertook the extensive revisions to Chapter 7 on 'Further Investigations', which reflects his expertise in this work.

Giles Biddle regularly gives evidence in the High Court and elsewhere; this has included many of the important tree root cases, such as Solloway -v- Hampshire CC, Russell -v- Barnet LBC, Bridges -v- Harrow LBC, Greenwood -v- Portwood, and Delaware Mansions -v- Westminster CC.

He was previously chairman of the British Standards committee for the extensive 1991 revision of BS 5837 'Trees in relation to Construction' which provides the definitive guidance for building near trees. He was also on the panel for the 2005 revision of this Standard. He was one of the principal authors of the NJUG publication No. 10 on utility services near trees.

In 1988 Giles Biddle was asked by the Department of Environment to set up a small panel of arboricultural consultants to sort out a massive back log of Tree Preservation Order appeals. Once this was resolved he was appointed by the Department of Environment to report on written representation TPO appeals. Since then he has continued to work for successive government departments (ODPM and DCLG) on TPO appeals. This work has now been transferred to the Planning Inspectorate, for whom he acts as an Inspecting Officer. In all he has dealt with about 1000 TPO appeals, which provides very considerable insight into this topic.