Land Owners
Following from or in conjunction with a tree survey property owners and managers have a duty to demonstrate insofar as ‘reasonably practicable’ that people and property are not exposed to unreasonable levels of risk from the failure of trees under their control. For a tree hazard to exist both the defects in the tree and the potential for injury or damage to result must be identified. Likelihood of both occurring can then be estimated to produce a schedule of works which have a defined priority. Financial planning and the allocation of resources completes the assessment and the land owner can now fully demonstrate in report form that a duty of care exists and policy is in place to achieve the actions identified to reduce risk.
When confronted with the management of a large tree population, the scale of the task may often daunt the manager; however, taking an overview of the whole site and combining that with targets will comfortably provide owners with priorities for tree risk management. Peter Scott is also experienced in identifying design led issues and forward planning in conjunction with BS 5837 to reduce the potential for the avoidance of creating additional risk for landowners.
Peter Scott does not advocate the use of any specific tree risk assessment calculation systems however; each method of evaluation is discussed on an individual basis.