A tree comes down in the night, or a major limb lands on the shed roof at three in the morning. What happens in the next twelve hours determines whether your insurance pays out cleanly, whether you stay on the right side of the law if the tree was protected, and whether anyone gets hurt. This is the sequence: safety first, then documentation, then the insurer, then the contractor.
First: do not approach the tree
The instinct after a storm is to walk straight up to the damage and see how bad it is. Resist it. A storm-damaged tree is one of the most unpredictable things in arboriculture. Branches that look stable can be held in place by a single fibre that lets go without warning. Limbs hung up in the canopy can fall vertically with no horizontal travel. Root plates can be partly lifted, with the tree apparently upright but sitting on a hinge that releases at the next gust.
Keep clear of the area immediately under and around the tree. Move cars, move bins, move anything you can without going underneath the canopy. If a tree is across a power line, treat the line as live regardless of whether your own power is on — it may be a feeder line from another property. Ring 999, and they will alert the Distribution Network Operator (in Staffordshire that’s National Grid Electricity Distribution, formerly Western Power Distribution) who will isolate the line before any cutting is allowed near it.
If the tree is on the public highway, blocking a road, or down on a vehicle with someone in it, that’s a 999 call. The fire service will handle the immediate make-safe and contact the highways authority. Don’t try to clear it yourself.
Document before you do anything
Before any work begins, take photographs and video. As many as you can. From multiple angles. Daylight if possible, but even phone-torch photos in the dark are better than nothing. Insurance assessors work from evidence, and an emergency contractor arriving four hours later will, quite reasonably, want to make the site safe before the assessor has seen it.
What to capture: the tree as a whole, the area of damage in close-up, any damage to your property (roof, fence, outbuilding, vehicle), any items underneath the tree, and a wide shot showing the relationship between the tree and the building. Get the time and date stamped on the photos (most phones do this automatically in the file metadata).
If there is damage to a neighbour’s property, photograph that too, with their permission. Keep a note of when the storm passed through — the Met Office storm name and the time of peak winds at your nearest weather station is useful detail for a claim.
This is the single most important step in the whole process. A complete photographic record turns an awkward insurance discussion into a straightforward one.
Call your insurer, then call an emergency contractor
Ring your home insurer’s claims line first. Most major UK policies have a 24-hour line, and most have a panel of approved emergency tradespeople they can dispatch directly. If they can get a contractor to you within the timeframe you need, that’s usually the simplest route.
If they can’t — or if your tree is across a road or near a power line and time is critical — the insurer will normally authorise you to engage your own contractor for the make-safe, provided you keep itemised receipts. Be explicit on the phone: ask whether they require a quote in advance or whether they accept "reasonable necessary make-safe costs" up to a stated limit. Take a name and a claim reference number before you hang up.
Then ring the contractor. Our network attends storm callouts across Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Leek and the surrounding villages, typically within two to four hours of the call. The job at this stage is the make-safe — stabilising the tree, removing hanging limbs, clearing access — not the full removal. That comes later, in daylight, with the insurance position confirmed.
Make-safe versus full removal
These are two different jobs and they belong in two different visits. The make-safe is what happens in the dark, in the rain, with the goal of stopping further damage and clearing immediate hazard. A skilled emergency crew will section out the hanging limbs, secure or fell what cannot be left standing, and tarp any holes in the roof or boundary.
The full removal — stump grinding, debris clearance, possible replanting — happens later, often a few days afterwards, with the loss adjuster’s position settled. Trying to do everything in one overnight visit is more expensive and more dangerous than splitting it, and it often complicates the insurance picture.
Ask the contractor for a written, itemised invoice covering the make-safe alone, with the labour, equipment, time on site, traffic management and waste removal broken out separately. That itemisation is what the insurer needs.
Section 14 of the TCPA 1990 — the emergency exception
If the damaged tree has a Tree Preservation Order on it, or sits within a Conservation Area, normal rules require council consent before cutting. Storm damage doesn’t wait for that.
Section 14 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (and the associated regulations under the Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation) (England) Regulations 2012) creates an emergency exception. Where work is necessary to remove immediate danger, it can be carried out without prior consent. The owner must, however, notify the local planning authority as soon as practicable afterwards — in writing, with photographs, explaining what was done and why.
In practice, the contractor handles this. Our network contractors know the notification process for Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council and Staffordshire Moorlands District Council, and will file the paperwork on your behalf as part of the job. Don’t skip this step — unreported emergency work on a TPO’d tree can be challenged retrospectively if the council decides the work went further than was strictly necessary for safety.
The emergency exception covers what is necessary to remove the immediate danger. It doesn’t cover, for example, felling the rest of a tree that’s only partly damaged, or taking down a neighbouring tree because it might fail in a future storm. Those decisions go through the normal consent process.
What insurance will and will not cover
UK home insurance typically covers storm damage under the "storm" peril, but the scope varies. What’s usually covered: emergency make-safe to remove immediate danger; clearance of fallen tree material from the insured property; repair of buildings (house, outbuildings, walls, fences) damaged by the fall; alternative accommodation if the damage makes part of the house unusable.
What’s often not covered: the full cost of felling a partly damaged tree that’s still standing (this is often classed as maintenance); landscape replacement — most policies will pay to clear a fallen tree, but not to replant; trees that were already in poor condition before the storm. Insurers will, in some cases, ask for a tree-condition survey if they suspect the tree was dangerous before the storm and the failure was a matter of when not if.
Some policies require winds to have exceeded a stated threshold (commonly 55 mph) at the nearest weather station for storm cover to engage. If the wind on the night was below that threshold, the failure may be treated as an "accidental damage" claim instead, which sits under a different excess and may not be covered on a base policy.
Read the storm-peril wording on your own policy before you need it, not after.