BTC/79/2013 - Decision-making for arborists: How to get it right and sleep tight on windy nights. Article 6/6 for ISA Arborist News (February 2013)
In a previous article in this series, Jeremy Barrell (www.barrelltreecare.co.uk) described a decision-making framework for duty holders who want to know how much tree management will be enough to assist them in robustly defending allegations of negligence in the event of a tree failure causing harm. In this concluding article, he turns his attention to the anxieties facing the arborists carrying out tree inspections in the day-to-day routine management of risk. Because modern times have become increasingly complex, Jeremy thinks there may some value in stepping back and looking at tree risk assessment from a slightly different perspective. His legal experience suggests that a more careful consideration of how the courts analyze tree failure cases may offer the prospect of a simpler and more practical approach to tree inspections.