Red Squirrel Tree Surgery

RED Squirrel Tree Surgery last met with essentialARB at its depot and office in South Harrow. The invitation to visit followed a chance encounter on a suburban North London street, where bilingual teams performing a severe reduction on a private domestic customer’s large London plane was a project too intriguing to pass by.

Our conversation ended then with company co-founder Fletcher Jenkinson about to launch a Red Squirrel (RS) subsidiary in Malaga, Spain, where he grew up. He was also waiting to hear if a tender for the company’s first long-term local authority arb contract, maintaining all the street trees and park trees across one London borough, had been successful.

Towards the end of March two years later, and RS is performing a similarly severe reduction (covered in an extensive case study in eA issue 77), this time on Cheyne Walk, a street boasting multi-million-pound properties and some of the most prestigious addresses within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC). For the council, the teams are reducing a similarly mature London plane suffering tip dieback for no clear reason.

Company co-founder and lead climber Fletcher Jenkinson.

Established in 2011, Red Squirrel has grown steadily ever since. Under two commercial contracts managers (Fletcher Jenkinson and Terry Earl) and one domestic contracts manager (Pip Forbes Adam, company co-founder) it directly employs 25 staff. A team of four (Steph, Calli, logistics manager Katie and depot manager Kiko) work in the office and depot, with up to nine highly organised tree surgery teams (charge hand/groundsman, all overseen by arb manager James) working across London on an average day.

Two years ago, RS’s work was evenly split between private domestic clients and commercial work. Now it is 30 per cent private (domestic and commercial construction companies) and 70 per cent long-term local authority contracts (won during the last two years).

Social distancing during his lunch break, Fletcher, now 36, outlines why he prefers this balance. With his voice muffled by the face mask he says: “Servicing council contracts feels like we have moved into the league of larger companies. Because councils only use Arboricultural Association-approved contractors, we are competing with our peers. Although the money is a lot less, this is how arb companies grow, with work secured for a few years. It is difficult to expand solely through domestic work, because each job comes with quite a lot of administration. With two to three domestic clients per team per day, there is a huge amount of work behind the scenes. However, with council work I could have a million pounds’ worth of work and only one customer to keep happy. While we must be meticulous about batching and scheduling works, we have more flexibility to organise our own timetable.

Arb manager James Jenkinson, also a lead climber on many jobs, demonstrating what being 20 metres above the worksite looks like.

“We still have our yard and office in Harrow, where you visited two years ago. Since then, we have obtained 3.5 acres of space on a farm in Ruislip, giving us the capacity to service our new contracts. This is where we keep vehicles (including 3.5-tonne and 7.5-tonne tipper trucks to accommodate more staff) and do our arb recycling.” 50 tonnes of woodchip and 30 tonne of logs a week go for biomass.

On an average morning, he says: “All the drivers go to the farm to collect their vehicles (single or double tipper trucks, Mercedes 18-tonne grab truck or MEWP), drive 10 minutes to Harrow to load up with the teams’ ropes and tools (chainsaws, rakes, brooms, blowers) and machinery (woodchipper or stump grinder). The chargehand comes in, the teams are briefed on their daily jobs, given their work phone and work folder and off they go.”

While RS did not win the first long-term council contract (tendered for two years ago), it did win contracts with two very different London boroughs, Kensington & Chelsea and Hillingdon, while retaining their ‘preferred contractor’ status with the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. 

A Nissan Cabster MEWP platform is extended to 15 metres and rests next to the tree’s trunk. The lead climber steps onto the platform, lowers it to the ground, steps off and walks to the edge of the drop zone. Understandably concerned about spreading or catching COVID-19, Fletcher, wearing a black ‘bank robber’ style face mask under his arb helmet visor, is identifiable only by his eyes.

Fletcher elaborates: “In September 2018, RS was asked by RBKC’s tree officer to carry out remedial pruning on ornamental fruit trees, pruned poorly by the previous tree work supplier.” Establishing a working relationship with the council’s tree team and completing these remedial works, “we were issued with more.  When the former contractor’s contract was terminated early, we were issued with the outstanding workload, including whole streets’ worth of London planes re-pollards. We spent a year getting the cyclical pruning schedule up-to-date, including working on dusty planes up to July 2019.”

When RBKC’s official tree work contract went out to tender (November 2019), Fletcher spent three weeks on the application. “In February 2020, we received an email to say we had been awarded the contract for the next six to nine years.”

RBKC’s style of management is proactive. RS has a year-round (seasonal) works schedule that keeps three or four teams busy throughout the year. “70 per cent of the contract is a cyclical pruning programme for their 700 London plane and lime trees, pollarding back to previous reductions. This must happen before spring – it is written into the COSHH risk assessment that we cannot work on planes when they are in leaf. In leaf, they are nasty because of the dust. By Friday we should have finished all of our planes for this year.

Clean worksite area from the MEWP platform, with tools being guarded by a member of staff.

“In the second week of April, after the fruit (cherry) trees have stopped flowering, we would normally have started a general prune on their 300 to 400 street-planted fruit trees and smaller ornamental trees growing in parks, and smaller greens taking us to winter.” The 30-metre high Cheyne Walk London plane is a one-off, a severe reduction to 13 metres of scaffold limbs to give the tree a fighting chance of recovering.

In spring 2019, RS rented a 3.5-acre yard on a farm in Ruislip, Hillingdon. Unknown to the borough tree team, Fletcher wanted to win the tender because this arb work is on his doorstep. Hillingdon is five times the size of RBKC and its style of tree management is reactive. Fletcher was unsure of what to expect once he heard the Red Squirrel bid had been successful.

The ground team removes a log to a stack next to the Mercedes 18-tonne grab lorry.

“Hillingdon does not have an inspection cycle for its trees. The council’s motto is ‘Putting tesidents first’, so when a resident calls and complains, they survey and then send worksheets to us as and when.” RS creates the works schedule and time frame. “They are often big trees in rural locations that have never been managed. The jobs often require hiring in cranes and they can be messy. A lot of fun, but less money.”

The Hillingdon contract is not yet a year old. “We have worked on possibly 300 trees, a lot of fells and emergency call-outs. Between Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis, it was like the Wild West out there. We had 60 calls and were out on clear-ups for two weeks, 22 hours a day, anything from small street cherry trees to larger privately owned domestic trees, and sycamores blowing over into council roads. We were mentioned in the council news bulletin, where the procurement team gave us the thumbs up, which was nice.”

Investments in new equipment were made to service these long-term local authority contracts. A remote-control Predator 56 hp stump grinder was bought specifically for Hillingdon. “Almost every fell requires us to grind out the stump. Where we pre-scan the ground area with a CAT & Genny (cable avoidance), there is still a possibility that a cable or gas pipe may have been missed. Using a remote-controlled machine is much safer.”

The worksite, view of the growing stack of logs and 18-tonne Mercedes grab lorry.

Hillingdon is awash with waterways (canals, rivers and lakes) and RS has just invested in an inflatable dinghy with a 12 hp 2-stroke engine. They will use it when removing three trees that fell into a lake during Storm Ciara. Had it not been for the cold temperatures, wet weather and high water levels, they would have been removed earlier. “The largest tree is a weeping willow, with a stem one metre in diameter at breast height. We use biodegradable engine oil and vegetable oil to lubricate the chainsaw chains when working on the waterways.”

The MEWP with 20-metre reach was purchased for the RBKC contract. “When they eventually handed over all works they were behind on, we started from a point of being way behind seasonally and had to work through a period of bad, wet weather. London planes are notoriously dangerous in wet weather. As soon as they get wet, the dust that sits on the branches turns to a slippery sludge. We got the MEWP for our teams’ safety.”

Smaller cordwood logs drop to earth.

Red Squirrel can bid for council contracts because they hold Arboricultural Association accreditation. Certification now runs every year. “Every four years we have a full assessment, where they visit and make their inspections. Every two years we have an interim assessment. In between, we send in a ‘care package’ that they check to ensure LOLER and other inspections are up-to-date. We have just received full re-approval.”

All commercial works carried out are double-checked by Fletcher (and Terry) to ensure that quality and standards are maintained. The downside is that local authority works can take their toll on staff. “It is cyclical, it never ends. We have to be conscientious, rotating the teams between council work and domestic work. It is good for their well-being and the guys seem to like the balance.”

Sweeping around the drop zone and woodchipper.

Domestic bookings can arise from their social media presence on Facebook and Instagram. “We pay for Check-a-Trade and we get a lot of domestic work from it.” Domestic works are subject to spot checks by Pip.

In addition to the AA badge, Check-a-Trade (RS scores 9.96 out of a possible 10), Construction Line, IOSH, Trustmark and CHAS logos that adorn the side of company vehicles, RS has added a SMAS (Safety Management Advisory Services) Worksafe logo. “Developer clients (Lendlease, Multiplex) require a SMAS on top of a CHAS.”

Growing log pile. All will be driven to their 3.5-acre yard in Ruislip and used for biomass.

To RS, winning long-term local authority contracts offers the freedom to move work around to accommodate dangerous weather conditions or when climbers call in sick. “We share the work for the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham with a handful of AA-Approved contractors. They use us for pruning works (among other things) and I think our standards are quite high. In an ideal world, two more local authority contracts would be ideal, and then I will stop. Any domestic work is a bonus.”

And Spain? “Spain went really well very quickly. I went out in April 2018 prepared to give it a go for a year. By summer, we had a lot of work for one team, doing approximately 50 per cent palm trees, 25 per cent pine and 25 per cent eucalyptus. However, travelling the long distances (an hour in the morning to most jobs) was quite tiring. In addition, Spain doesn’t have conservation areas or tree preservation orders. They don’t have the systems in place to actively survey and document trees. Instead, they place blanket preservation orders on all trees and it can take months to receive permissions for any tree work. In London, work got a lot busier and we needed to increase the number of teams quickly, so I returned with the works vehicle and woodchipper. The website is still up and running. If an enquiry comes in, we take down as many details as possible and send tree surgeons (Spanish and English) I know out there to quote on the work for a small fee.”

While Fletcher does not see Red Squirrel expanding UK-wide, he would happily return to Spain. “One day, I hope to go back and retire.”

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