Detailed information regarding the health and structural integrity of your trees and how to reduce the risk and potential liability.

Visual Tree Assessment (VTA) is a method of tree diagnosis that is used world-wide and is legally accepted. It interprets the body language of trees, linking internal defects such as mechanical faults, pathogens, pest and disease, to the tree’s own repair-structures, assessing them and deducing measures for remedial action. Avoiding therefore, unnecessary felling and also accidents caused by part or entire failure.

For those with larger tree numbers a site can be prioritised into Risk Zones depending on usage. This allows the surveys to focus on those trees with greater targets ensuring that survey budgets are kept to a minimum. Determines areas of most risk to people and property so that not all of the trees have to be inspected and that those that are, are not subject to inspection all of the time and thus creates a proportionate response. This focuses resources on the highest area of risk and recognises those trees which can be left thereby increasing wildlife value.

Specialist tree management software focuses on increasing efficiency. The software allows organisations with large tree populations to take a proactive and responsible role in the management of their trees and allows the storing of tree information to be central for multiple sites. The central software allows production of reports, mapping and management of tree works servicing requirements in key areas concerning risk, duty of care, budget management, admininistration and workforce efficiency. This builds a detailed and historical collection of data, photos and tree works carried out on an entire tree stock facilitating a defendable tree management system.

‘Under both the civil law and criminal law, an owner of land on which a tree stands has responsibilities for the health and safety of those on or near the land and has potential liabilities arising from the falling of a tree or branch. The civil law gives rise to duties and potential liabilities to pay damages in the event of a breach of those duties. The criminal law gives rise to the risk of prosecution in the event of an infringement of the criminal law.

The owner of the land on which a tree stands, together with any party who has control over the tree’s management, owes a duty of care in common law to all people who might be injured by the tree. The duty of care is to take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions that cause a reasonably foreseeable risk of injury to persons or property. If a person is injured by a falling/fallen tree or branch, potential causes of action arise against the tree owner in negligence for a breach of the duty of care, in the tort of nuisance and, where the injured person was on the land of the tree owner at the time of the injury, under the occupiers’ Liability acts of 1957 or 1984 (oLa 1957, oLa 1984)’

It is the duty holder’s fundamental responsibility, in taking reasonable care as a reasonable and prudent landowner, to consider the risks posed by their trees. The level of knowledge and the standard of inspection that must be applied to the inspection of trees are of critical importance….the courts have not defined the standard of inspection more precisely than the standard of “the reasonable and prudent landowner”. Generally, the courts appear to indicate that the standard of inspection is proportional to the size of and resources available (in terms of expertise) to the landowner. It is of note that the Hse states in the Hse sector information minute Management of the risk from falling trees (Hse 2007), that: “for trees in a frequently visited zone, a system for periodic, proactive checks is appropriate. This should involve a quick visual check for obvious signs that a tree is likely to be unstable and be carried out by a person with a working knowledge of trees and their defects’.

(National Tree Safety Group Common Sense Risk Management of Trees, 2011)