What counts as a tree emergency
Not every fallen branch needs a crew at midnight, and an honest answer on the phone saves you money. These are the situations where waiting until morning genuinely makes things worse:
- A tree or limb has landed on a house, garage, conservatory or car and is still loaded — meaning it is holding tension and can move again without warning.
- A trunk has split, or a major limb has torn out and is hanging in the canopy. A hung-up limb is the most dangerous thing on any storm site.
- Roots have lifted and the root plate is visibly moving. A windthrown tree that has not finished falling will finish falling.
- A tree is fouling overhead power or telecoms lines. Call the distribution network operator first on 105 — we do not work on live conductors, we work behind them once the line is made dead.
- A tree is blocking a public highway, footpath or shared access. Call 999 if anyone is at risk, then call us.
How an emergency call-out actually runs
- Call, answered by a personNo answering machine, no callback queue. We ask what fell, what it landed on, and whether anyone is near it.
- Send two photosA wide shot and a close-up of the failure point. Nine times out of ten that is enough to give you a fixed price before we leave the yard.
- Make safe first, tidy secondThe first job is removing the danger — releasing tension, dropping hung-up limbs, getting the load off the structure. Clearance and cleanup follow once nothing can move.
- Documented for your insurerBefore-and-after photos, a written description of the failure and the works carried out, itemised invoice. Send it straight to your claims handler.
Storm damage and your insurance claim
Most UK buildings policies cover damage caused by a falling tree, and most cover the cost of removing the tree from the damaged structure. What they very often do not cover is removing the rest of the tree from your garden once the danger is gone — that is usually treated as maintenance.
The practical consequence: it matters that the invoice separates the two. We itemise emergency make-safe works apart from the optional tidy-up so your insurer sees exactly what they are being asked to pay for. We will also supply a short written condition report where the claim needs one.
Photograph everything before you touch it. If the tree came from a neighbouring property, photograph where the trunk sits relative to the boundary — liability turns on whether the owner knew or ought to have known the tree was defective, and the evidence disappears the moment the site is cleared.
What we carry to a night call-out
Emergency work is not day work done in the dark. A storm crew turns up with site lighting, a winch and rigging kit for taking tension out of loaded timber, a chipper, and traffic-management gear where the job touches a road. Anyone quoting a fallen oak over the phone without asking which way it is leaning is guessing.