Who pays for what
The rule that surprises most people: your insurer pays for your damage, whoever owned the tree. A healthy tree brought down by an exceptional storm is treated as an act of God — if your neighbour's oak lands on your garage, you claim on your own buildings policy, and they claim on theirs for whatever it damaged at home.
The exception is negligence. If the tree was visibly defective — leaning with soil heave, carrying obvious decay, dead for two seasons — and the owner had been warned or should reasonably have known, liability can follow them. That is an argument between insurers after the fact, not a reason to leave a dangerous tree standing over your house tonight.
The first hour
- Make it safe firstAnyone hurt or at risk, or a tree blocking a public road: 999. Tree on a power line: 105 — the network operator attends free. Gas smell after root heave: 0800 111 999.
- Photograph everything before anything movesWide shots showing the tree and what it hit, close-ups of the failure point, and the root plate. Your insurer will ask for exactly these, and they cannot be recreated after clearance.
- Prevent further damagePolicies require you to mitigate — a tarpaulin over an open roof matters more to your claim than whose tree it was. Keep every receipt.
- Call your insurer, then call usMost buildings policies have a 24-hour claims line. We provide the photo report and itemised invoice insurers ask for as standard on storm work.
What insurers actually ask for
After hundreds of storm jobs, the paperwork that settles claims fastest is consistent: photographs of the failed tree in situ, a short written report from a qualified arborist describing the failure and why the work was necessary, and an itemised invoice separating the emergency make-safe work from any subsequent clearance.
We supply all three as part of emergency call-outs where the work is going through insurance — tell us on the phone that a claim is involved and the report is written for the insurer, not just for the file.
The parts policies quietly exclude
Two exclusions catch people every winter. First: a fallen tree that damaged nothing. If it missed the house, the shed and the fence, most policies will not pay for its removal — clearance of a tree lying harmlessly on the lawn is usually your cost. Second: fences, gates and hedges are frequently excluded from storm cover entirely, or capped well below the real cost. Read the schedule before the storm, not after it.
And a caution on timing: emergency work to make a structure safe is generally covered under your duty to mitigate, but non-urgent clearance should wait for the insurer's go-ahead. Authorised-in-advance is the phrase that keeps a claim smooth.
If the tree came from next door
Photograph it where it lies, claim on your own policy, and let the insurers argue about negligence between themselves — your insurer will pursue the neighbour's if the evidence supports it (that is what subrogation means, and it happens without you doing anything). What not to do: confront the neighbour, admit or assign blame in writing, or let anyone clear the tree before both insurers have seen the photographs.