Emergency and storm damage tree work in St Albans

What we promise on a call-out

• A person answers. Day or night, storm or not. Not a voicemail, not a chatbot, not a form.
• A straight triage on the phone. Whether it is safe to leave until daylight, whose tree it is, and what you should do in the meantime.
• Same-day attendance for anything unsafe that is genuinely ours to deal with, and a stated time rather than a vague "later".
• A price before we start. Even at two in the morning. If we cannot see enough to price it, we make the tree safe on a stated hourly basis and tell you what that rate is first.
• No pressure to sign for the rest. Making a tree safe and taking the whole tree away are two different jobs. You are not obliged to buy the second because you needed the first.

Whose tree is it?

This is the first question and it saves a lot of wasted money. In this district it usually resolves one of four ways.

• Yours. A tree standing on your land is yours to deal with, and your insurer is the one to speak to about damage it has caused.
• St Albans City and District Council. Trees in parks, green spaces, council housing land, allotments and cemeteries. The district surveys its own stock on a rolling three-year cycle and runs its own emergency line.
• Hertfordshire County Council. The highway authority, so trees on the public highway are theirs.
• A neighbour's, or an estate's. Common in this area, where houses back onto commons and estate land. A limb overhanging your garden from their tree is a different legal position to a tree standing in your garden.

We will tell you which of those you are looking at before we quote. If it is not your tree, we say so and point you at the right number rather than invoicing you for somebody else's problem.

The five-day exemption, properly explained

People assume a protected tree cannot be touched in an emergency. That is not right, and the detail matters.

Two things people get wrong. First, "dangerous" is a higher bar than "worrying": a tree that has dropped a limb is not automatically exempt. Second, the exemption only covers the work needed to remove the danger. Taking the rest of the tree out on the same visit is not covered, and that is exactly the point at which a fine becomes possible.

Take photographs before anything is cut. Wide shot, close shot of the defect, and something in frame for scale. That evidence is the difference between a defensible position and a bill, and it takes thirty seconds. We take our own as well and give you copies.

What a storm call-out costs

Access and risk drive it, not the size of the tree. A windblown tree lying flat on a lawn is straightforward. The same tree hung up in a neighbour's canopy over a conservatory, in the dark, in wind, is not.

Our price comes from what we can see, and we give it before we start. Where a job genuinely cannot be priced until the tree is opened up, we say so and work to a stated hourly rate that you agree first.

What to do while you wait

• Keep people and pets away from underneath, and from anywhere the tree could still move. Hung-up limbs drop without warning.
• Do not go up a ladder to have a look, and do not try to pull anything down with a car or a rope.
• Move vehicles out from under, if it is safe to walk there.
• Photograph everything from a safe distance, before anything is moved.
• If a power line is involved, stay well back and ring the electricity network emergency line on 105.
• Ring your insurer early. Most household policies cover storm damage, and most want to hear from you before the repair, not after.

The doorstep warning

The day after a storm, this trade fills up with people knocking on doors offering to sort out the tree while their lorry is in the area. Some are fine. Many are not, and the pattern is always the same: cash, today, no paperwork, and a price that changes once the work has started.

We never cold call and we never knock doors. If somebody turns up at your door claiming to be from us, they are not, and we would like to hear about it. Every job we do starts with you contacting us. That is a promise you can hold us to, and it is on our what we promise page in writing.