Choosing an arboriculturist and reading their credentials

The first thing to work out is whether you are hiring a consultant or a contractor, because the two do different jobs and hold different qualifications. A contractor climbs, prunes and fells, and holds practical certificates for chainsaw and aerial work. A consultant surveys trees, writes reports and produces the drawings a council asks for with a planning application. Asking a contractor for an arboricultural impact assessment, or a consultant to take a limb off, wastes everybody's time.

For a householder application affected by a tree, what you almost always need is a consultant who works to BS 5837:2012, the British Standard on trees in relation to design, demolition and construction. That standard sets out the survey, the categorisation of trees, the root protection area calculation and the protective measures, and a report that does not reference it is unlikely to satisfy a case officer.

Qualifications that indicate consultancy competence

Arboriculture has a ladder of qualifications, and the useful signal is the level rather than the initials.

A tree safety inspection qualification is not the same as competence in planning work. The two overlap but they answer different questions: one is about whether a tree is likely to fail, the other about how a development and a tree can coexist.

Professional body membership and what each grade means

The Arboricultural Association operates graded membership. Associate grades reflect an early career position, full Member status carries the designation MArborA, and Fellow is the senior grade. The letters after a name therefore tell you something about assessed experience rather than just subscription.

Chartered status through a forestry or arboricultural institute is the other marker, and it brings a code of conduct and a continuing professional development requirement with it.

Neither membership nor chartered status is a legal requirement. There is no protected title in arboriculture, so anyone may describe themselves as a tree consultant. That is precisely why the check matters, and our note on what competent person means in planning legislation explains where the law does impose a competence requirement and where it leaves it to the council's judgement.

Registered consultant schemes

The Arboricultural Association runs a registered consultant scheme with an assessment process covering technical knowledge, report quality and professional practice. Registration is a stronger signal than membership alone, because someone has reviewed the applicant's actual work.

Ask two questions about any scheme a consultant cites: whether registration required an assessment of submitted reports, and when it was last renewed. A scheme that only requires a fee tells you nothing.

Distinguishing a consultant from a tree contractor

Some firms do both, which is fine, but the conflict needs managing. A free survey offered by a company that also quotes for the felling has an obvious incentive problem, and a council reading a report that recommends removal of the only tree constraining the layout will notice who wrote it.

What to look for on each side:

• A consultant should hold professional indemnity insurance, produce reports and drawings, and have no financial interest in the works recommended
• A contractor should hold practical certificates, public liability insurance and, for larger jobs, an approved contractor accreditation, and should work to a specification someone else has written
• Where one firm does both, the survey and the works quotation should be separately priced and separately dated

Checking experience of the specific drawing you need

This is where most householders under-specify, and then receive a document the council rejects. Ask for a sample of the exact deliverable, redacted if necessary.

1. A tree survey schedule listing every tree with a reference number, species, dimensions, condition and BS 5837 category
2. A tree constraints plan showing root protection areas and canopy spreads to scale
3. An arboricultural impact assessment relating the proposed layout to each retained tree
4. An arboricultural method statement with tree protection details and a schedule of works
5. A tree protection plan that a contractor can actually build from

A quotation for "a tree report" that does not name these outputs is a quotation you cannot compare with another. Councils typically ask for specific documents by name on their validation lists, so get the list first and buy against it. Our note on checking whether a survey is still valid covers how long the resulting data lasts.

Ask also whether the consultant has worked on applications with your council. Local validation lists vary, and a consultant who has had reports accepted there will know what the tree officer expects.

Insurance and the scale of your project

Professional indemnity cover should be in place and proportionate to the value of what could go wrong. On a single extension near one protected tree, the exposure is the cost of redesign and delay. On a plot where a tree constrains the position of the whole building, it is larger.

Ask for the level of cover and the renewal date, and check it covers the type of advice you are buying. Some policies exclude certain activities, and a consultant who cannot answer the question quickly may not have read their own policy.

Warning signs in a quotation

Several of these come up repeatedly, and each is a reason to ask another question rather than to walk away immediately.

• No reference to BS 5837:2012, or a reference to a superseded edition
• A price given without any idea how many trees are involved or whether they are protected
• No site visit included, with the survey offered from aerial imagery
• A promise about the planning outcome, which nobody can give
• Text in a sample report that plainly belongs to another site, including a different species list
• No mention of root protection area calculations or of category grading
• A survey bundled free with a quotation for felling work
• No professional indemnity insurance stated

One more practical point. A consultant cannot tell you whether a tree is protected by a preservation order; only the council's own records can, and trees in a conservation area are protected separately with a notice requirement before work. Check that yourself before you commission anything, because it changes the scope of the report.

As an illustrative example, a rear extension within the root protection area of a neighbour's protected sycamore needs a tree survey, a constraints plan, an impact assessment and a method statement with a no-dig construction detail. A quotation covering a survey alone, at a price that looks attractive, leaves three of those four documents unbought and the application unvalidated.

Councils usually expect a suitably qualified author for arboricultural work, and professional review is strongly advised before submission. A tree survey page sets out what the document covers, reviewers can be found through the professional directory, and the wider document set for an application is listed under the 66 report types.

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.