Tree Consultancy Group is a chartered arboricultural practice which carries out professional tree surveys for safety, risk management and planning. Although we mainly serve clients in the Scottish Borders, Edinburgh and the Lothians, we operate nationally and will work elsewhere in Scotland and in the rest of the UK. 

We provide:

  • Tree safety surveys.
  • Tree risk assessment and management advice in accordance with HSE recommendations and NTSG Guidance.
  • Duty of care safety surveys to comply with The Occupiers' Liability (Scotland) Act 1960 and The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

Why we do it:

The Occupiers' Liability (Scotland) Act 1960 places a duty of care on property owners and/or occupiers to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable, that people entering onto, or passing by, the property do not suffer injury or damage as a result of any act or omission which could reasonably have been foreseen. 

The owner/occupier may be held liable for physical harm or damage to property arising from an accident to a third party, where the cause of the accident was both reasonably foreseeable and reasonably preventable, bearing in mind all the circumstances of the situation. 

Regular inspection of trees growing on a property should therefore be undertaken to identify any visible defects and assess the risk of those trees causing harm or damage. Recommendations for appropriate remedial works can then be made to control or eliminate the risk and thereby reduce the liability of the tree owner.  

We provide a cost-effective service which gives clients robust protection against litigation in the event of harm arising from tree failure, and also reduces the cost to their trees and finances of excessively cautious management. We aim to identify trees where a risk of harm is reasonably foreseeable and, when the risk is also reasonably preventable, recommend only the minimum works necessary to eliminate the identified risk or reduce it to an acceptable level. 

We do not carry out tree work (tree surgery) or felling ourselves, and are not connected to any firm of contractors. We are therefore completely independent and objective with no incentive to recommend any unnecessary work to clients’ trees. This means we usually save clients considerably more than our fees have cost.  

Our clients include local authorities, councils, charities, private estates, housing and residents’ associations, solicitors, insurers, property owners and managers.


Please contact us for more information.

Tree Consultancy Group
Crownhead
Stobo
Peebles
Scottish Borders
EH45 8NX

Tel: 01721 760268

e: mail@treeconsultancygroup.com (preferred method)

Principal Consultant:

Kenneth Harvey MICFor. 
Chartered Arboriculturist

Background and experience