Tree Surgeons near you

The British Standard for this work is BS 3998:2010, Tree work. Recommendations, published on 31 December 2010 and still the current edition, having superseded BS 3998:1989. It gives general recommendations for tree work and guidance on management options for established trees, including soil care and tree felling, and for overgrown hedges, while taking account of underlying issues such as tree longevity, value for local amenity, landscape, biodiversity and heritage. It does not attempt to cover the overall management of tree populations.

Two things follow for a homeowner. The first is that BS 3998 is a recommendations standard, not a law and not a licence: nobody is prosecuted for departing from it, but it is the common language in which competent arboriculture is described, and a local planning authority considering an application for work on a protected tree will recognise it. The second is that a written specification referring to it — the operation, the tree, the amount and the reason — is something two contractors can be asked to price on the same basis. The Arboricultural Association notes that the 2010 edition is now fifteen years old and that a revision is under way, with an early proposal to rename the standard from Tree work to Tree care; until that revision is published, 2010 remains the edition to quote.

A report is worth what its detail is worth. Expect it to identify each tree unambiguously, by species and by a position that can be found again, and to say when the inspection took place, in what conditions and from what vantage point — ground level, from within the crown, or with equipment. Expect it to separate what was observed from what is inferred, so that a fungal bracket at the base is recorded as an observation and the conclusion about the wood behind it is presented as a judgement with reasons.

Expect it, too, to say what it did not do. An inspection from the ground in full leaf cannot see everything a winter inspection from within the crown would see, and an honest report says so and recommends what should follow. Where work is recommended, it should be expressed as operations rather than outcomes: a crown reduction of a stated extent, the removal of a named limb, deadwooding, a re-inspection after a stated interval. That is what lets you get two comparable prices, and what a planning authority can assess if the tree turns out to be protected.

The Arboricultural Association runs the ARB Approved Contractor scheme, which assesses tree work businesses against four modules: site safety covering on-site operations; finished work, including pruning, planting and arboricultural knowledge; office support, covering customer care, insurances, licences and wildlife and ecology; and health and safety, covering management, training, environmental policy and the state of the workshop and yard. The Association holds ISO 9001 accreditation through UKAS for the scheme and is a registered member of SSIP, the Safety Schemes in Procurement forum. Applicants have to evidence real jobs, not just paperwork, including photographs of work before, during and after, with the associated site documentation.

What the badge proves is that somebody independent has looked at how the firm works, which is more than a price can tell you. What it does not prove is that the badge holder is the right firm for your particular tree, that the crew who turn up are the crew who were assessed, or that the accreditation is still live. Scope matters too: firms can be assessed for specific additional services such as stump grinding, planting or crane operations, which are then listed on the certificate. Ask to see the current certificate and check the scope against the work you are buying.

The national approach to tree safety in Britain is proportionate rather than precautionary. The National Tree Safety Group's guidance, Common sense risk management of trees, was first published by the Forestry Commission in 2011 and issued in a second edition in 2024 jointly by Forest Research and the Arboricultural Association. Its founding idea is that what is reasonable should be judged by balancing benefit against risk, starting from the facts that trees are living organisms which naturally lose branches or fall, and that the overall risk to public safety from trees is extremely low.

Translated to a garden, that means a routine of looking rather than a programme of cutting. Walk the trees after a gale and at the change of season, note anything that has altered — a new lean, soil disturbed at the base, bark coming away, a limb hanging — and get an opinion on what has changed rather than commissioning work on a schedule. Where a tree overhangs a pavement, a neighbour's garden or a parking space, the frequency of inspection reasonably goes up because the consequences do. Keep the reports; a file showing that a tree was looked at periodically is worth a great deal if anything ever goes wrong.

Two quotations for the same tree can differ because they are not for the same work. What moves the figure is the operation itself and how much of the crown it touches, the size and condition of the wood being cut, the time spent protecting what is underneath, the method of access, the volume of arisings and where they go, whether a report or an application to the council is included, and whether the firm is carrying the overheads of accreditation, insurance and inspected equipment. A written specification is the only way to know which of those differences you are actually looking at.

This is the part LokalMatch is built for. Set the job out once, with your postcode and a note of what the tree is and what is bothering you, and arborists working near you make contact themselves. Using it costs homeowners nothing, and the professionals pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not do the tree work, plays no part in setting prices, and does not vet, rank or recommend any firm that replies — so ask each of them for the specification, the certificate and the insurance, and judge on all three.