About NTSG

The NTSG was formed in response to growing concern about the unnecessary removal of trees from our streets and landscapes. The Group leads a nationally recognised approach to tree safety management and develops and maintains common-sense risk management guidance that is proportionate to the actual risks posed by trees.

Position statement

NTSG believes that one fundamental concept should underlie the management of risks from trees; it is that the evaluation of what is reasonable should be based upon a balance between benefit and risk. This judgement can only be undertaken in a local context, since trees provide many different types of benefit in a range of different circumstances.

The Key Principles

Our concept underpins a set of five key principles for considering and managing tree safety in the public interest, that strikes a balance between benefits and risks:

Trees provide a wide variety of benefits to society.
They are living organisms and naturally lose branches or fall.
The risk to human safety is extremely low.
Tree owners have a legal duty of care.
Tree owners should take a balanced and proportionate approach to tree safety management.

This underlying philosophy, articulated by the NTSG and central to its guidance, will assist all types of tree owner in considering what constitutes reasonable management in their particular circumstances.

Membership

The NTSG is an inclusive organisation with representatives from governmental and non-governmental agencies and professional and corporate bodies involved in the management of trees. Its membership is open to all stakeholders with responsibility for trees.

Membership currently includes the Forestry Commission, The Arboricultural Association, The Country Land and Business Association, the Woodland Trust, the Ancient Tree Forum, The Confederation of Forest Industries, English Heritage, The National Farmers Union, The Institute of Chartered Foresters, The British Standards Institution, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, The London Tree Officers Association, the Visitor Safety in the Countryside Group and the National Trust.

See our NTSG partners for further information on our partners and contact details.

Tree safety and risk management

There is growing concern about the way that tree management addresses public safety. Fear of litigation is leading many landowners to remove trees in the name of ‘health and safety’ and with that, the benefits the trees provide to society and the environment. People’s tendency to remove trees for fear of them failing ignores dependable evidence that associated deaths and injuries are very rare indeed. Despite the fact that millions of trees grace our landscape and that nearly everybody passes under trees every day, there are on average less than 5 deaths a year caused by falling trees or branches.

Felling is also an exaggerated response to the actual risk of prosecution. Court judgments have shown regard for landowners undertaking reasonable and proportionate tree assessment and management without the implied need for burdensome record keeping or costly professional surveying. A number of lower court judgments against the responsible defendant landowner have been overturned in the higher court in favour of the wider common good. In the past twenty years there have been only seven successful criminal prosecutions in relation to a death caused by a falling tree or branch.

Striking a balance between benefits and risks

The spirit of health and safety legislation that addresses public safety recognises that tree owners and managers are best placed to assess risk and take the necessary actions to reduce that risk to a reasonable level.

The general approach of HSE is to set out the (safety) objectives and to give duty holders considerable choice to as to the measures they should put in place to meet these objectives. In doing so, HSE also recognises the complexity of the decision-making involved. For example, it recognises that there are necessary trade-offs between benefits to society and ensuring that individuals are adequately protected, including the need to avoid imposing unnecessary restrictions on people’s freedom.

For such a non-prescriptive regime to work, duty holders must have a clear understanding of what they must do to comply with their legal obligations. The NTSG believes that the evaluation of what is reasonable can only be undertaken in a local context, since trees provide many different types of benefit in a range of different circumstances that may, in some instances, also pose a range of risks, from negligible to significant.

Trees and risk

There are billions of trees in the UK and they make a vital contribution to our health, wealth and wellbeing. There are few landscapes in the UK that can be thought of as untouched by human activity, but not all trees are actively managed. Where it occurs, tree management means many different things depending on management objectives. Trees grown to supply timber and wood products are not dealt with in the same way as trees lining a busy street.

While tree safety management in all cases focuses on deaths and physical injuries resulting from accidents, the approach needs to strike a balance between both the benefits and the risks from trees. Although people’s safety is undoubtedly an important consideration whether trees are managed for their cultural, amenity, or environmental benefits or for timber production and other commercial interests, it must be evaluated alongside the other benefits.

Because trees present a very low risk to people, owners and managers should be able to make decisions within this context and avoid unnecessary interventions and cost. In so doing they can reduce unacceptable risks while optimising the many values conferred by trees. Good tree safety management does not seek to eliminate risk but reduces it to a reasonable level. In some situations, people exposed to risks from trees are expected to make reasonable decisions about their own behaviour, particularly for example, during storms.

Managing the risk from trees

People enjoy ‘natural’ and ‘unmanaged’ environments, and value trees that have received minimal or no intervention. People are therefore prepared to accept a degree of risk because of the value of the trees, and the pleasure they derive from visiting or participating in leisure activities in treed environments.

However, a situation has arisen where some of those responsible for trees are managing them defensively, though fear of litigation. This circumstance is exacerbated by the fact that, generally speaking, while the public gets the benefit of the trees, it is the owners and managers who bear the legal duty and attendant cost.

This unnecessary loss of trees, which the landowner would have otherwise retained, can be addressed if the public good (in terms of health, environmental and social benefits for example) is brought into the calculation of benefit to demonstrate a reasonable position that will be accepted by the courts.

Tree management cannot seek to eliminate all risks, but it should not expose people to the likelihood of significant or life-threatening injuries. While it may on occasions be unavoidable that tree management exposes people to a very low risk of serious injury or even death, this is only tolerable in the following conditions:

The likelihood is extremely low
The hazards are clear to users
There are obvious benefits
Further reducing the risks would remove the benefits
There are no reasonably practicable ways to manage the risks.

As an example, a mature tree in a city park presents a low but irremovable risk of falling on somebody, even if it is frequently inspected and treated. This risk is usually tolerable. The likelihood is typically low, and people benefit through the retention of a feature that is inextricably linked to the reason they visit the park. Further reducing this risk is not possible without removing the tree and taking away the benefits.