Commercial Tree Surgery in Nottingham — Student Lets, HMOs and Agents

Nottingham has an unusually large rented sector, and a lot of it sits in Victorian and Edwardian streets with mature trees in small back gardens that nobody has touched in years.

The broad case for looking after trees at rental properties is covered in our article for Nottingham landlords and the commercial overview. This page is the practical end: the timing, the paperwork and the awkward ownership questions that hold jobs up.

The Academic Year Is Your Calendar

On student lets and HMOs, the constraint is never the tree. It is that the property is occupied by six people from September to June.

The workable window is the changeover, and it is a narrow one. Getting tree work done in the gap between tenancies means it happens in an empty garden, with no negotiation about access, no complaints about a chipper at eight in the morning, and no bicycles and bins to move first.

It also means everyone is trying to book the same fortnight. Planning it in spring for a summer slot gets a better price and an actual date; ringing in the last week of August generally gets neither.

Who Owns It, Who Instructs It, Who Pays

The single most common reason a commercial tree job stalls has nothing to do with trees.

Before booking, it is worth being clear about:

• Whose land the tree actually stands on
• Whether the instructing party has authority to order the work
• Whether the lease puts trees and grounds on the landlord or the tenant
• Whether a managing agent needs the freeholder’s sign-off first
• Whether the tree is protected, which changes what is permitted at all
• Who the invoice goes to, and whether it needs splitting by unit

We check the protection question ourselves as a matter of course before quoting. The ownership and authority questions are not ones we can answer for you, and on a boundary tree between two properties they are usually what holds everything up.

Duty of Care in a Dense City

If you own or manage land with trees that people can get under, you owe those people a duty of care. In practice that is discharged by taking reasonable steps — looking at the trees periodically, acting on what you find, and being able to show you did.

In terraced Nottingham that matters more than it does on a rural plot, because the target is rarely just your own garden. It is the pavement, the alley, the neighbour’s conservatory, or the parking at the back. A branch that would land on grass at a detached house lands on somebody in a street like this.

A dated written record of each look is how that is normally evidenced, and our tree inspection page sets out what one covers.

What Agents Actually Need From Us

Doing the job is half of it. Being able to evidence it is the other half.

We can provide proof of public liability cover, a written record of what was found and what was carried out, before and after photographs where they help, and itemised invoicing split by unit or address where a portfolio is involved. If a site requires a method statement and risk assessment before anyone sets foot on it, tell us at quote stage and it goes in with the quote rather than being chased afterwards.

Early starts, evenings and weekends are all workable where a site needs them. What is not workable is discovering the constraint on the morning, so the more we know up front the better the price and the plan.

Planned Beats Reactive, and It Is Cheaper

The pattern we see on managed property is the same one every time. Nothing happens to the trees for six or seven years. Then a storm turns a routine crown lift into an emergency callout, a blocked back alley and an insurance conversation.

A planned cycle costs less. Deadwood over the parking comes out on a normal Tuesday rather than at eleven at night. A lift over the footpath happens when it suits the calendar rather than when somebody has complained. And there is a record showing the trees were being managed, which is the thing that matters if anything ever does go wrong.

For a portfolio with a reasonable number of trees, we are happy to walk it, set out what needs doing and roughly when, and let you spread it over a couple of years rather than absorbing it in one.

Why Choose Herring