What we promise

1. Fixed written quotes

You get the price in writing before anything starts, and it is the price. The sheet names the trees, the work on each, the method, the access route, what happens to the waste and how long we expect to be there. Where something genuinely cannot be known until the tree is opened up, it is named as a possible variation with a price against it rather than appearing as a surprise at the end.

No deposit is asked for before you accept. No discount expires tonight.

2. No cold calling, ever

We do not knock doors. We do not leaflet a same-day price. We do not ring you because you looked at a website once. Every job we do begins with you contacting us.

This matters more in tree work than in most trades. The days after a storm are when doorstep operators go street to street offering to deal with the damage while their lorry is in the area, and the pattern is always the same: cash, today, no paperwork, and a price that moves once the work has started. If somebody appears at your door claiming to be from this company, they are not, and we would like to hear about it.

3. Insured, qualified climbers

Public liability cover is in place on every job, and the certificate goes out with the quote if you ask for it, before anyone climbs rather than after. Where more than one person is on site, employers' liability cover applies too.

Ask us for the certificate. Then ask everybody else quoting for theirs, and notice who hesitates.

4. The protected-tree register checked as standard

Before we quote, we check whether your tree carries a Tree Preservation Order and whether your address sits inside one of the district's 19 conservation areas. The answer goes to you in writing, with the quote, whichever way it comes out.

If the tree is protected we prepare and lodge the paperwork, and we do not start until the position is confirmed. If the honest answer is that the work will not be consented, you hear that before you have spent anything.

What we are not claiming

Being straight about the limits is more useful than a long list. This site does not display trade association logos, scheme memberships or accreditation badges, because a badge is only worth what the register behind it says and we would rather you checked the register than trusted a picture. We publish no review count, no star rating and no "established in" date.

When a firm's real credentials are in place, they will appear here with numbers you can verify on the issuing body's own site. Until then, what is on this page is conduct: how we behave, not what we have been given.

The work itself

Tree work is different from a building trade in one important way: the thing we work on is alive and keeps growing afterwards. Nobody can guarantee how a tree responds to pruning, and any firm promising you a specific outcome three years out is guessing. What we can be held to is the standard of the cuts, the timing, the method and the tidy-up.

• Cuts made back to suitable growth points, not stubs. We do not top trees.
• Rigged and lowered wherever there is anything below worth protecting.
• Nesting checked before hedge and canopy work in season.
• Waste dealt with the way the quote says, and taken away under a proper waste carrier registration.
• The site left rakeable: chip swept, ruts made good, gates shut.

If something is not right, ring us with a photograph and we will come and look. If it is our work, we put it right. If it is not, we will tell you what it actually is and what it would take to fix, and you are free to have somebody else do that.