T ree surgery is one of the few trades where the wrong choice of contractor can leave you with a damaged property, a £20,000 council fine, or a paramedic call. Most homeowners only commission tree work once every few years, which is why the same avoidable mistakes turn up again and again. This is the seven-point checklist we run every contractor through before they join our Stoke-on-Trent network — and the same checks any homeowner can do before signing off a quote.
Why hiring a tree surgeon is different from hiring a gardener
A gardener trims roses and mows lawns. A tree surgeon climbs into 20-metre canopies with a running chainsaw, removes limbs that weigh more than a car, and drops trees within a metre of conservatory roofs. The kit is industrial, the risk is real, and the regulatory paperwork — TPOs, Conservation Areas, nesting checks, waste-carrier licences — is genuinely complex.
The trade is not statutorily registered in the UK. Anyone with a chainsaw and a transit van can call themselves a tree surgeon, and a significant minority do exactly that. The good operators are NPTC-qualified, insured to £5m, members of the Arboricultural Association approved contractor scheme, registered waste carriers and listed on Checkatrade or similar with a long track of named local jobs. The bad ones knock on doors after a windy weekend offering cash quotes, no paperwork, and a willingness to top a TPO-protected lime that will land you in court.
The seven checks below cost you nothing beyond a few minutes of asking. They are the single biggest predictor of whether a job goes smoothly or becomes the kind of horror story the local paper writes up.
Check 1 & 2: Qualifications and insurance
"Anyone with a chainsaw and a transit van can call themselves a tree surgeon in the UK. The seven checks below are the single biggest predictor of whether a job goes smoothly."
The qualifications you're looking for are the NPTC chainsaw tickets. The relevant ones for domestic tree work are CS30 (chainsaw maintenance and cross-cutting — the foundation ticket), CS31 (felling small trees up to 380mm diameter), CS38 (tree climbing and aerial rescue), and CS39 (aerial chainsaw use). A climbing tree surgeon should hold all four; a ground-only operator at minimum CS30. Each ticket is a laminated certificate with a unique number; ask to see them and check the dates.
The insurance is two-part. Public liability of at least £2m is the floor for domestic work; £5m is standard for anything near a highway or commercial premises. Professional indemnity — usually £1m to £5m — covers advisory negligence, for example where a contractor's assessment that a tree was safe turns out to have been wrong. Ask for a copy of the current schedule of insurance, not just a verbal assurance, and check the renewal date hasn't passed.
Arboricultural Association approved contractor status is the highest-quality signal in the trade. The scheme audits qualifications, insurance, work practices and customer outcomes every three years, and rejection rates on first inspection are high. A genuine AA member can be verified on trees.org.uk in 30 seconds — type the company name into the contractor search.
Check 3 & 4: References and reviews
Online reviews are useful but easily gamed; named local references are harder to fake. Ask for three jobs completed in the last six months within ten miles of your postcode, with the customer's first name and rough location. A reputable contractor will provide them in writing; a chancer will dodge the question.
Look at the contractor's Checkatrade, Google Business and Facebook reviews together — patterns matter more than star averages. A two-year backlog of detailed five-star reviews with photographs of the work is the gold standard. A flurry of recent five-star reviews with no detail, or a long gap followed by a sudden burst of activity, is a red flag — it usually means the company has rebranded after problems with the previous name.
A photo portfolio is undervalued. Tree work either looks tidy or it doesn't, and ten minutes scrolling a contractor's recent Instagram or Facebook posts will tell you whether the finished cuts are clean, the brushwood is properly chipped and cleared, and the lawn isn't churned up afterwards. If they won't show you photographs of recent jobs, assume there's a reason.
Check 5: Written, itemised quote — and what should be in it
A verbal quote scribbled on the back of a leaflet is worth nothing. The contractor should deliver a written quote, either on letterhead or by email, within a few days of the site visit. The quote should itemise: the work specification in arboricultural terms (not "chop it back a bit"), the access plan, the labour and crew size, the kit (chipper, MEWP if needed, climbing rigging), the waste removal and disposal route, any council paperwork the contractor is taking on, and the timescale.
Look for a contingency clause. Tree work routinely reveals surprises — rot in what looked like sound timber, an old metal fixing buried in the trunk, a wasps' nest hidden in the canopy. A grown-up quote will say what happens if such finds change the scope: usually the work pauses, the customer is informed, and a revised price is agreed before going further. Quotes that read like they assume everything will go to plan are quotes written by inexperienced people.
For work on protected trees, the quote should reference the TPO consent or §211 notice by date and reference number, and should make clear who is responsible for obtaining and supplying the paperwork. (Answer: the contractor.) If the quote mentions "council" only in passing or not at all, the contractor either doesn't know the regime or is hoping you don't.
Check 6: Waste carrier licence and disposal
Removing arisings — branches, brushwood, timber, chip — from your property and disposing of them elsewhere is a controlled waste activity under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Any contractor moving that material off your site needs to be registered as a waste carrier with the Environment Agency. The registration is free for tree surgeons ("upper tier exemption" for arboricultural arisings does not apply once material leaves the site of origin), and the certificate number is searchable on gov.uk in seconds.
Why this matters to you, the householder: if a contractor flytips your tree waste in a lay-by off the A50 and the Environment Agency traces it back to your address, the duty-of-care offence under Section 34 of the Act lands on you, not just on the contractor. You are required to take reasonable steps to ensure waste leaving your property goes to a properly licensed carrier. "I assumed they were licensed" has been argued and rejected in court.
Ask for the carrier registration number and check it. Ask where the timber and chip are going — most go to a registered transfer station, firewood processor, or biomass facility. A contractor who can name their disposal route without hesitating is a contractor whose chain of custody is clean.
Check 7: Council paperwork — who handles the TPO / §211
The single most reliable separator between a competent contractor and a chancer is who deals with the council. A competent operator runs the postcode through the planning constraints map before quoting, identifies any TPO or Conservation Area status, drafts the application or notice with the correct arboricultural specification, submits it, manages any queries from the tree officer, and supplies you with the granted consent before any work begins.
A chancer says "oh, you'll need to ring the council yourself", quotes for the work, and books it in regardless of whether the paperwork actually clears in time. The result, frequently, is the homeowner discovering at week five that the council has refused or modified the consent and the booked job no longer matches what was approved — or, worse, the work goes ahead without consent and both parties end up in court.
The paperwork is the contractor's job. They know the forms, they know the tree officers, and they know the local quirks — Stoke City's six-week §211 turnaround, Newcastle-under-Lyme's slightly different form, Staffordshire Moorlands' preference for site visits, Cheshire East's online portal. Insist that the quote names a person at the contractor as responsible for the council submission, and that the work date is conditional on the paperwork being in hand.
Red flags
The patterns to walk away from are consistent. Door-knockers after a storm offering to "have a look while we're in the area" — almost always uninsured, almost always cash-only, almost always vanished before any complaint can be registered. Cash-only quotes from anyone, in 2026, with no VAT registration, no invoice and no paper trail — you are uninsured by association and likely funding undeclared work.
"We'll come back to top it again next year" — topping a tree (cutting the main stems back to stubs) is bad arboricultural practice, weakens the tree's structure, and is the calling card of operators who don't understand crown reduction. A proper crown reduction respects the natural shape and reduces specific outer growth back to suitable lateral branches, not to indiscriminate stubs.
No insurance details on the quote. No NPTC ticket numbers offered when asked. A reluctance to put anything in writing. A price dramatically below three other quotes — tree work has a real, predictable cost structure (labour, kit, waste disposal), and a quote that's 40% below the market is a quote that's cutting one of those corners. A pressure-sell to book "this week, because we've got the chipper booked anyway" — proper contractors are booked weeks out; the ones with capacity tomorrow usually have it for a reason.