Based in west London, ARB-Approved Contractor The Tree Company has spent much of the lockdown in Richmond and Bushy Parks, maintaining veteran trees and tackling OPM.
ON a hot and breezy day, south-west London is idyllic. With much of the country still in lockdown, the skies are flight-free, the air is clean and the traffic light. Around Bushy Park, parking spaces are abundant and free. It is a good time to be working here safely, or visiting.
Lying north of Hampton Court Palace on the River Thames floodplain, Bushy Park is topographically flat, encompassing waterways, gardens, grassland, woodland and herds of red and fallow deer. At 415 hectares, it is a spacious and popular destination. Small groups of visitors are strolling or gathering for picnics, horses are being exercised and several bike-riding families pause beneath the spreading branches of maiden oaks and hunker down in the shade. Under one, a pre-schooler repeatedly attempts to rearrange the poles – cut much larger and longer than himself – of a wigwam shelter.
A relaxed Bill Malin walks purposefully through the park towards the Woodland Gardens, where two of his teams are dismantling a Lombardy poplar for the Royal Parks. Bill is founder of The Tree Company and these works are among many arb operations to be performed over the next four years, since the company won the four-year tree maintenance contract for Bushy Park in April 2020. This will run concurrently with works in nearby 1,012-ha Richmond Park (under a separate contract) that The Tree Company (TTC) has held for the last 18 years.
Bill explains: “In London, there are eight Royal Parks, each with their own flavour. In Central London they are more manicured, while those further out are a little more wild. Generally, one contractor serves the central parks. I believe that this time contracts were awarded to three different contractors. Massaria inspections and oak processionary moth (OPM) are making things busy. We are very pleased to win Bushy and in July and August this year, we will have six teams on OPM treatments across both Richmond and Bushy Parks.”
TTC usually runs nine teams (20 direct employees and four subcontractors) from its two-acre yard in Hounslow, a longish strip of land at the end of an industrial estate, sandwiched between a train line and the Heathrow flight path. Yard infrastructure comprises a large area of hardstanding, one end accommodating a 50-tonne pile of woodchip (collected weekly by a bulker lorry for biofuel), a large and secure warehouse in which to store tools and machinery, and an office where three busy staff run the administrative side of this successful arboricultural business.
With a bit of creative parking, the yard accommodates a 17.5-tonne grab lorry, two 7.5-tonne box-backed chip lorries, five 3.5-tonne box-backed chip lorries, two 4x4s, a Land Rover, three estimating cars and two MEWPs (a wheel-mounted CGE with 23-metre reach and a track-mounted Hinowa with 20-metre reach).
“Yard spaces are few and far between in West London,” says Bill. “Normally conversations are drowned out by planes flying overhead. Conversely, we don’t get complaints when occasionally running chippers or chainsaws.”
Bill, now 58, left school with no specific tree ambitions. He responded to an advert for a trainee tree surgeon in Richmond Park (then managed by the Department of the Environment) and got the role. “I loved it: chainsaws, climbing trees, keeping fit, being out in all weathers.” He went on to work directly for Richmond Council, then subcontracted for arb companies as a groundsman and climber during the 1987 post-storm clear-up.
In 1989, he established TTC, the company receiving Arboricultural Association ARB-Approved Contractor status in 1993 (and Bill personally, an AA Technician’s Certificate in 1997). Explaining why the AA’s approval was important, he says: “Domestic work provides variety, but working purely on domestic contracts is limiting. Certification is a door-opener to getting quality work and decent volumes.”
READ MORE: Tree-climbing equipment spotlight: ISC Singing Tree rigging rope wrench
TTC grew significantly. From 1995 until 2010, Bill spent his time quoting, estimating, bidding for local authority work and managing approximately 35 staff. “We were servicing street tree contracts for Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham and for Hounslow, as well as bits of work for Richmond and for Kingston. The business model for street trees is high productivity for a lower price. It is a different mindset to the work we do now. Since 2010, we have scaled back. We have not stopped street trees entirely, but we don’t win as many tenders, partly because we don’t want to and partly because we have refocused, concentrating our efforts on where we can put a reasonable price on work to have half a chance of making an income, while still doing a good job and being competitive. It is less pressure, better for yard space and better for my sanity.”
Refocusing meant concentrating on their speciality, working with veteran trees. “Richmond Park holds the single largest collection of vets in the country. We started out with Richmond under the direction of Neville Fay (of Treework Environmental Practice) working on veteran trees: short, squat, 500- to 700-year-old pollarded oaks, reducing canopies with natural fractures and coronet cuts and more, anything that stopped them looking like managed street trees. Then we won the entire tree maintenance contract. We still perform veteran works almost continuously in Richmond Park.”
Sometimes this specialism extends to stumps. “We do bits for the Crown Estate at Windsor, OPM and special projects. Eighteen months ago, we translocated six 1.8 m-diameter veteran oak stumps lining the avenue of the Duke of Edinburgh’s carriage ride from Windsor to Ascot. He didn’t like their look and wanted them moved. Natural England wanted to protect the habitat they provide. The Crown Estate used their JCB to pre-dig around the stumps and dig out new pits to receive them. We cut the stumps and hired in a crane (Lee Lifting Services Limited) capable of lifting four to six tonnes and moved them elsewhere. It took a day.”
Bill works three days a week. “I have very good managers. Senior manager (and shareholder) Edward Campbell-White has been with me for 18 years. He is out estimating today and manages the teams. Arb manager Andy Russell is in charge of the kit, sorting out problems and repairs.”
Overseeing company strategy, direction and finances, Bill is one of two private domestic work estimators. “Between Ed and myself, quoting for around 60 to 80 jobs a week, we probably win 50 per cent. Normally, domestic work is booked-in a month in advance. Currently, it is two-and-a-half weeks. If I get too short, I panic.”
TTC also maintains good working relationships with longstanding clients Imperial College, the National Trust, the London Port Authority and Lensbury Sports Club. It continues to service smaller local authority contracts for west London councils in addition to its work with the Royal Parks, an organisation Bill has a lot of time for. “They pay quickly and it is nice working with an organisation filled with people who actually want to be there.”
In a roped-off section of Bushy Park’s Woodland Garden, four team members crouch behind a sturdy felled stem, rolling it over on the count of three. Sawn in two by Ed Davis using a Stihl MS 661C chainsaw, both sections are rested beside a pile of neatly stacked branches.
Arb manager Andy Russell explains this job: “The tree officer identified decay in the base of a 16-metre Lombardy poplar. We are felling it to mitigate the risk and using a MEWP so we don’t have to climb the tree. The wood and brash will be left onsite for habitat.”
Bill adds: “Richmond and Bushy Parks, being less manicured, can accommodate deadwood logs and broken branches in certain areas.”
Each team member is smartly dressed and all wear a different coloured helmet out of personal choice. They are the best advertising the company has. In a white helmet, Adam Hansbury raises the track-mounted Hinowa’s platform. Using a smaller Stihl chainsaw, he removes any surrounding branches that could derail the poplar‘s fall. The branches are piled for habitat and the MEWP folded away.
Leaving the immediate area, Ed Davis and Milo Shyka take up the end of a directional rope tied to the poplar’s stem and get ready to pull. Using the Stihl MS 661C chainsaw, Andy makes his cuts. Directional cut. Directional cut. Wedge. Final cut. Pull. “Puull.” “Puuull!” Whump! “Good job!”
Leaving the worksite, it appears the MEWP’s trailer is attached to a Land Rover whose licence plate ends in ‘OAK’. For the estimating Peugeot, ‘YEW’. Two further 3.5-tonne box-backed chip truck plates end in ‘YEW’ and ‘ELM’. Bill says it is a bit of marketing. Observing social-distancing rules, each team member travels to site separately. “Under normal circumstances, a team of three would have come to site in one works vehicle. We are dictated to by the number of vehicles we have and working is uneconomic at this time.”
The trucks are badged with the LTOA (London Tree Officers Association) logo. TTC is a contractor member. “We go to LTOA meetings and I sit on the LTOA OPM working party. It is in our geographic region and keeps us up-to-date with what tree officers are thinking.”
The majority of trees in Bushy Park are oak. A blue tag on a stem indicates OPM nests have been found. “In the last few years, we have found hundreds of thousands of nests in Richmond Park,” says Bill. “We use the MEWPs to locate them. We remove the nests and put them into small food bags. The food bags are collected in black bin liners and thrown into the park’s incinerator and burned at a ridiculous heat to kill the hairs.”
Oak processionary moths’ barbed hairs are responsible for extreme skin irritations. “Teams wear considerable PPE, disposable Tidex suits (papery suits with plastic coating), disposable rubber gloves, masks and eye protection. Gaffer tape is used to seal-over all joins to stop hairs coming into contact with skin. When finished, the climbing kits are cleaned down and stored separately to our everyday kits.”
The Royal Parks work ebbs and flows throughout the year. “In Richmond, we have a couple of teams there during the winter and the work thins out during bird nesting season. In summer, we can have one on general tree work and up to four teams on OPM. They are funny contracts and you need the capacity to expand and then retract. It works well if you have domestic work. If your sole focus is local authority contracts, you need steady work throughout the year.”
READ MORE: Red Squirrel Tree Surgery
Crossing the Longford River, an artificial waterway (distributary) built in 1638 for King Charles I to supplement the water supply to Bushy Park and Hampton Court Palace, Bill nods to an avenue of hornbeams that he expects TTC will work on at some point. Do the previous tree maintenance contract holders mind that TTC won the tender this time? “I hope not. They took over Hammersmith and Fulham from me. Arboriculture is a small world and most of us are mates. We see each other at the Arb Association Annual Tree Conference and find out who has won what contracts and who is getting what for their chip.”
In the late 1990s, Bill found the Arb Association to be more focused on education than the business of arboriculture. “Myself and other contractors wanted to know how business was done elsewhere. American organisation the National Arborist’s Association dealt with the issues of running a commercial business, dealing with questions like ‘what is the best chipper’, or ‘the best climbing kit for sale’, so we started a British branch.” Latterly, the Arb Association expanded its remit and Bill sat on the professional committee.
Maintaining ARB-Approved Contractor status is not easy. “Now that assessments are annual, everything has to be on the money. If not, you are leaving yourself exposed.” TTC maintains quality control by making random weekly site assessments. “Ed, Andy or I turn up at a worksite and check that all kit and vehicles are in order and so on. External consultant Paul Elcoat pre-assesses us to check we are doing things correctly. If legislation has changed, we can then make those minor tweaks. We do quite a bit of CPD, attending AA events and the Royal Parks run courses, for example in ‘bat awareness’, so that we know the areas we are likely to find them. Investing in training keeps the guys up to speed and benefits the company. There is a raft of NPTCs out there and technician’s certificates or national diplomas in arboriculture to try for, if they stay with us for certain lengths of time.”
Bill has been in business for 30 years and, although unlikely to be exercised anytime soon, plans for succession have been made. He says a career highlight was winning the initial contract with Richmond Park in 2002. A surprising moment came 15 years ago, when fewer arb companies had good chip recycling facilities (hardstanding). “For a while, I was doing better on chip than I was on tree work. We were doing a lot of street trees but the rates were not great. Slough Heat and Power was down the road. They wanted a lot and we generated a lot. I was getting very good rates right on my doorstep.”
A plane flies overhead: loud, intrusive, an unwelcome reminder of how awful noise pollution can be. In March 2020, when the COVID-19 lockdown was first enforced, The Tree Company had to rethink what work it could do and where it could do it. Working safely in Bushy Park could not have come at a better time.
Forestry Journal remains dedicated to bringing you all the latest news and views from across our industry, plus up-to-date information on the impacts of COVID-19.
Please support us by subscribing to our print edition, delivered direct to your door, from as little at £69 for 1 year – or consider a digital subscription from just £1 for 3 months.
To arrange, follow this link: https://www.forestryjournal.co.uk/subscribe/
Thanks – and stay safe.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here