A Valid approach to Tree Risk

Tree Risk is an overstated thing.

Plenty of Risk Entrepreneurs, who want to top up the pension pot, and Tree surgeons who need to keep up the finance payments on grapple saws and chippers, will regularly overstate the level of risk presented by trees. For reference it’s pretty low, around one in 10 million according to the HSE, so you’ve got as much chance of winning the lottery or being struck by lightning than being killed by a falling tree.

As such in a view to presenting a more honest approach, we went on QTRA training two years ago and have now upgraded to VALID.

VALID is the only tree risk system that has been built with a professor in Risk and the Natural Environment and while some might say it’s never been “tested” in court, we look at that as a good thing. If your strategy and systems are good enough you should never be in a position where you’d end up there.

We are confident that VALID is at the cutting edge with a robust risk evaluation method baked into a common-sense Tree Risk-Benefit Management Strategy.

With VALID, we believe we are better able to demonstrate:

• Trees give us many benefits that we need

• The overall risk from trees and branches falling is extremely low

• We can’t remove the risk entirely. Trees are living structures that sometimes
shed branches or fall during severe weather

• Our duty of care, when managing the risk, is to be reasonable, proportionate, and reasonably practicable

• We’re going to help our clients manage the risk to an Acceptable or Tolerable level