5 Protection of hedgerows and trees
15.53 A number of cross-compliance conditions apply to protect important landscape features such as hedgerows, stonewalls, earth banks and stone banks.140 In England a farmer must not cultivate, or apply fertilisers or pesticides to land within 2 metres of the centre of a hedgerow.141 This basic restriction on cultivations does not apply in several excepted cases:142
•To land on either side of a hedgerow which is less than five years old; or
•To land forming part of a parcel of 2 hectares or less, as measured within permanent boundary features; or
•If the only application of pesticides is the spot-application of herbicides to control the spread of any of the weeds specified above; or
•In some circumstances143 if the farmer is cultivating the land to establish a green cover on it.
15.54 A farmer must not remove a hedgerow in breach of the legislation protecting hedgerows.144 This applies additional protection to hedgerows covered by the Hedgerows Regulations 1997, and growing in or adjacent to any land that forms part of an agricultural holding, provided it has a continuous length of at least 20 metres.
15.55 The cross compliance rules apply to all hedgerows, whether or not they are protected by the Hedgerow Regulations 1997.145 A farmer must not cut or trim any hedgerow during the ‘cutting ban period’ within any year beginning with 1 March and ending with 31 August, unless it is necessary to cut or trim it because–
•It overhangs a highway or any other road or footpath to which the public has access so as to endanger or obstruct the passage of vehicles or pedestrians;
•It obstructs or interferes with the view of drivers of vehicles or the light from a public lamp;
•It overhangs a highway so as to endanger or obstruct the passage of horse-riders; or
•It is dead, diseased, damaged or insecurely rooted, and because of its condition it, or part of it, is likely to cause danger by falling on a highway, road or footpath.146
15.56 A farmer may carry out hedge-laying and coppicing during the period beginning with 1 March and ending with 30 April,147 and may trim a hedgerow by hand during a period of six months beginning with the first day after the hedgerow was laid.148
15.57 For these purposes a hedgerow is defined as any hedgerow growing in, or adjacent to, any land which forms part of the farmer’s holding, if it has a continuous length of at least 20 metres or it has a continuous length of less than 20 metres and, at each end, meets (whether by intersection or junction) another hedgerow. Similar cross compliance conditions apply in Wales.149