Who prepares and supervises an arboricultural method statement

The arboricultural method statement author and the person supervising the works on site do not have to be the same individual, but both need arboricultural competence and the condition usually names only one of them. That gap is where tree protection fails. A consultant writes a careful statement in March, the groundworks contractor arrives in September, and nobody with the authority to stop a digger is on site when the excavator tracks across a root protection area.

Get the appointment right at the start and the condition discharges in a fortnight. Get it wrong and you are negotiating a retrospective method statement with a conservation officer who has already seen the photographs.

What a method statement has to specify

An arboricultural method statement is the document that explains how the approved layout is built without damaging the trees that are being kept. It sits alongside a tree protection plan, and it is written against BS 5837:2012, the British Standard on trees in relation to design, demolition and construction.

A statement that will survive discharge covers:

1. The trees retained, their reference numbers from the tree survey and their root protection areas, calculated from stem diameter and shown as an area on a drawing rather than described in text.
2. The protective fencing specification, its position and the date it goes up, which is before any plant arrives rather than before the foundations start.
3. The sequence of operations, including demolition, service runs, level changes and hard surfacing, each with the arboricultural constraint attached to it.
4. Any construction within a root protection area, with the engineering solution set out and the load case stated.
5. Facilities siting: the site compound, material stores, cement mixing, spoil heaps, welfare units and the vehicle route, all outside the protected areas.
6. The supervision schedule, naming the arboriculturist, the trigger points for a visit and how records reach the local planning authority.
7. Contingency: what happens when a root over 25 mm is found, or when the ground proves wetter than assumed.

Root protection areas are calculated as twelve times the stem diameter, expressed as an area and capped at 707 square metres for a single tree. That figure is a starting point that the arboriculturist adjusts for soil, species and the likely rooting pattern, and a statement that applies the default to every tree on a sloping site with a shallow soil has not been thought about.

Author competence and supervisor competence compared

The author needs consultancy competence: reading a tree survey, understanding structural root plates, judging tolerance to root loss by species and age, and writing something a site manager can follow. The usual markers are membership of the Arboricultural Association at professional grade or entry on its register of consultants, chartered arboriculturist status through the Institute of Chartered Foresters, and a Level 4 or higher arboricultural qualification.

The supervisor needs something different. They need the same technical understanding plus site experience, the confidence to intervene in front of a contractor, and availability at short notice. A consultant in another county who visits monthly cannot supervise a six week groundworks package.

Neither role requires a statutory licence. There is no legal register for arboriculture equivalent to the licensed ecologist position for bats, so competence is judged on qualification, membership and demonstrated experience. Councils that are alert to this ask for a curriculum vitae with the discharge submission, and the ones that do not ask still read the report differently when the author's credentials are on the front page. The wider question of what competence means when a condition or a statute uses the word is covered in what competent person means in planning legislation.

No-dig construction and who designs it

Driveways, parking bays and footpaths inside a root protection area are the most common reason a method statement gets technical. The standard answer is a no-dig construction: a geotextile separation layer, a cellular confinement system filled with angular granular material, and a permeable surface, built up above existing ground level rather than dug into it.

The arboriculturist specifies the arboricultural constraints, which are no excavation, no compaction of the existing surface, a minimum build-up and a permeable finish. The load-bearing design belongs to a civil or structural engineer, because the build-up has to carry a refuse vehicle or a fire appliance where the road serves dwellings. Those two inputs have to meet on one drawing.

Where they do not meet, the discharge stalls. An engineer's pavement design with a 300 mm sub-base excavation inside a root protection area and an arboricultural statement promising no-dig construction cannot both be built.

Supervision frequency and the written record

Supervision is a schedule, not a promise. The statement should tie visits to operations: fencing installation, demolition, any excavation within the protected area, service trenching, hard surfacing construction, and fencing removal at the end.

Each visit produces a short record with the date, who attended, what was inspected, any non-compliance and the action agreed. Photographs matter more than prose. Councils typically require the records to be submitted either as they are produced or in a single pack before occupation, and the condition wording tells you which.

Where the arboriculturist finds a breach, the record should say so. A supervision file with twelve visits and no issues raised on a site where the fencing was demonstrably moved reads as a document written afterwards, and officers notice. The same suspicion falls on survey data that has quietly aged, a problem set out in checking whether a survey is still valid.

Authority to stop works and how the condition confers it

An arboriculturist has no statutory power to halt construction. What they have is a contractual position and a planning condition standing behind it.

The condition normally requires the development to be carried out in accordance with the approved method statement and tree protection plan. Departing from it is a breach of planning control, enforceable by the authority under the enforcement provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, and where the trees are protected by a Tree Preservation Order or stand in a conservation area, damage can be a separate offence under the tree regulations.

Give the arboriculturist real authority in the appointment. Wording that lets them issue a written instruction to suspend works within a root protection area, copied to the client and the principal contractor, converts a polite observation into something a site manager acts on. Put the same wording in the method statement so the council can see it.

Illustrative example

A scheme retains a mature lime on a boundary with a root protection area extending four metres into the proposed parking court. The statement specifies a cellular no-dig build-up, fencing outside the protected area from the day the compound is set out, and hand-dug service trenching on a single approved line. Supervision is scheduled at five points with photographs. This example is illustrative and the specification for any real tree depends on species, soil and the engineer's load case.

Where a statement fails at discharge

Four failures account for most refusals of discharge. A generic document with another site's tree numbers in it. No cross-reference between the statement and a tree protection plan drawing at a readable scale. Silence on levels, which is where most root damage actually happens. And a supervision section that names a firm rather than a person and gives no visit triggers.

A fifth is timing. Submitting the method statement after the fencing was needed leaves the authority with a condition it cannot discharge honestly, and the applicant with a breach on the record.

Appointing for the whole construction period

Appoint the arboriculturist through to completion, not to the point of planning approval. The fee difference is small against the cost of a stop notice or a replacement planting scheme, and continuity means the person who wrote the statement is the person judging whether a root found at 600 mm can be cut.

Where the client has a construction management plan or a site waste plan in the same conditions pack, the tree protection measures should be reflected in the Construction Management Plan so the site team reads one consistent set of constraints. If you need to find a suitably qualified arboriculturist to review or sign off a draft, the professional directory is the route.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval, and councils normally expect arboricultural documents to be prepared by a suitably qualified author, so professional review is strongly advised.