Tree surveys and reports for planning · UK-wide
BS5837 surveys, constraints plans and impact assessments, produced and signed by a qualified arboricultural consultant. Most domestic surveys come to £395 to £900. You get a written quote within one working day, before anyone visits, and the report within five working days of the survey. The industry norm is two to three weeks.
No guesswork
Sites vary, so nobody in this industry will tell you what a survey costs or when you will get it. Here is what we commit to.
What it really costs
£395 to £900
What a domestic BS5837 survey and constraints plan comes to, small site to large.
What drives the price →Your quote
One Working Day
A written quote within one working day of your enquiry. One number, no hourly rates, held for 30 days.
Ask for one →Your report
Five days
Delivered within five working days of the survey, against an industry norm of two to three weeks.
Why we are faster →Impact assessments from £345 and method statements from £145 when taken alongside a survey. We will tell you free of charge if you need less than you think you do.
We quote from what you tell us about the site. That number is held for 30 days and it is what you will be invoiced.
If the surveyor arrives and the site is materially different from the description — forty trees where you said fifteen, or access nobody mentioned — we stop and re-quote before doing the work. You either agree the new number or walk away owing nothing. What will not happen is a bigger invoice landing afterwards.
Because it is the real one. Entry prices advertised elsewhere start at £249 to £349, and they buy a minimal survey on a small, simple site. Industry figures put a typical residential job at £600 to £1,200 — so most people who click a £249 advert are quoted several hundred pounds more once someone has actually looked at the site.
The range above is what you are actually likely to pay. If your site is small and simple, you will pay the bottom of it.
How it works
Postcode, roughly how many trees, what you're proposing and your deadline. If you have your council's validation checklist, send it — it tells us exactly which documents you need and, often, which you don't.
One number and a survey date, held for 30 days. No hourly rates and no open-ended invoices.
A qualified arborist records every relevant tree to BS5837:2012: species, dimensions, condition, category. TPO and conservation area status gets checked on the same visit.
Survey schedule, constraints plan and recommendations, signed by the consultant who wrote it. Ready to go straight into your application.
Why five days, not three weeks
Most consultancies quote two to three weeks because the same people who do the site visits also write the reports, and the writing queues behind next week's surveys.
We split the two. Surveyors survey; a separate consultant writes. Your report gets drafted the day after the visit rather than the week after.
What we produce
The one most planning officers mean when they ask for a tree survey. Records every tree that affects your proposals and maps where you can actually build.
£395 to £900 →Takes your actual design and sets out, tree by tree, what it does to them and how the damage is avoided. Usually what decides a contested application.
£345 to £700 →The instruction manual for building near retained trees. Often conditioned rather than required up front, so it can frequently wait.
£145 to £450 →Our prices, what the wider market really charges, what pushes a quote up, and which documents you can avoid buying altogether.
Read the guide →What a TPO actually restricts, how to check whether your tree has one, how to apply for consent, and what changes in a conservation area.
Read the guide →Coverage
We survey across the United Kingdom. Our own surveyors are densest across the Scottish Central Belt — Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stirling — and the Leeds to York corridor, so those are the sites we can usually get to soonest.
Every application is submitted to a local planning authority with its own validation checklist and its own approach to protected trees. See the authorities we cover.
Tell us about the site and we will come back with a number and a date. No charge for asking, and no charge for being told you need less than you thought.