Tree Surgery or Tree Survey? What Your Tree Actually Needs

Half the people who ring a tree surgeon do not need one yet, and some do not need one at all. Here is the difference, and the one question to answer before anyone picks up a chainsaw.

Written by John McNamara, arboricultural consultant, McNamara Tree Consultancy

Tree surgery is the physical work: pruning, crown reduction, removing deadwood, dismantling and felling, carried out by climbers with chainsaws. A tree survey is the paperwork and the judgement: what species this is, what condition it is in, what risk it poses, and what, if anything, should be done about it. One holds the chainsaw, the other holds the pen. They get mixed up constantly, and the mix-up costs people real money.

When you genuinely need a tree surgeon

Some jobs are exactly what they look like. A storm-snapped limb hanging over the drive. Deadwood above a footpath. A hedge or crown that has outgrown its space. A tree that has already been assessed and has agreed work specified for it. That is tree surgery, it is skilled and dangerous work, and it belongs with a competent, insured contractor. We carry out no tree surgery ourselves, so nothing in this article is an argument against the trade. Good tree surgeons are worth every penny.

When tree surgery is the wrong place to start

The difficulty is that many calls to a tree surgeon start one step too early. Three situations in particular.

The tree might be protected. If a Tree Preservation Order covers the tree, or it stands in a Conservation Area, work without the council's consent is an offence, and it is the owner who is liable, not only the contractor. Our article on whether you need planning permission to cut down a tree explains how to check in minutes. Where consent is needed, a tree works application with proper evidence is what gets it granted.

The tree might not need work at all. A big tree close to a house feels like a threat, but size is not danger, and plenty of trees are condemned by nothing more than nerves. A tree risk assessment establishes what condition the tree is actually in and what risk it actually poses. Sometimes the answer is a small amount of specified work. Quite often the answer is none. An assessment costs a fraction of unnecessary surgery, and the tree keeps doing everything a mature tree does for a garden.

Nobody actually asked for surgery. When a mortgage lender, a surveyor, an insurer or a planning officer raises a query about a tree, they are asking for a report from a qualified person, not a quote for tree work. A tree condition survey or the relevant report is what answers them.

Why the order matters

A tree surgeon quotes for the work, because the work is what the trade sells. That is not a criticism. But it means the one question their quote can never answer is whether the work should happen at all. That question belongs to someone independent, and answering it first is nearly always cheaper: an assessment that says the tree is sound costs less than surgery the tree never needed, and a consent obtained before work costs nothing compared to prosecution after it.

So the order is: check whether the tree is protected, establish what it actually needs, then bring in the tree surgeon with a clear specification. Work specified in writing also gets you comparable quotes, because every contractor is pricing the same job rather than their own guess at it.

McNamara Tree Consultancy provides the first two steps across Northern Ireland, Ireland and the wider UK: independent assessments, surveys and tree works applications, with no tree surgery sold and no interest in inventing any. If you are standing in the garden wondering which of these your tree is, send us a photograph and we will tell you straight. And if what you need is simply a good tree surgeon, our article on choosing between a consultant and a contractor explains who does what.