Tree Health & Biosecurity
Tree Health: For Advisers & Agents
What Tree Health changes for agronomists, agents, vets and consultants.
Advisers need scoped access, defensible records and a way to work across a client base without re-keying. Tree health is a biosecurity discipline first and an arboriculture discipline second. This module carries tree inventory and condition, ash dieback assessment and safety management, plant passport records for material moved onto the holding, statutory pest and disease reporting, and the funded restocking that follows a health-driven felling.
In their words
What the job actually looks like
These are not marketing personas. Each one is a distinct job with a distinct constraint, and the module is designed so that solving one does not create work for the others.
Local authority tree officer
Public safety
Needs consistent, auditable assessment methodology.
- Survey and inventory trees
- Assess condition and assign risk
- Triage and schedule works
- Report notifiable findings
Nursery operator
Producing plant material
Needs plant passport compliance built into despatch.
- Assess condition and assign risk
- Triage and schedule works
- Report notifiable findings
- Instruct contractors safely
Estate forester
Managing 300 ha woodland
Needs condition data at compartment and individual tree level.
- Triage and schedule works
- Report notifiable findings
- Instruct contractors safely
- Fell or manage as required
End to end
How Tree Health runs, start to finish
The module is modelled as a state machine, so at any point the business knows exactly which stage every record is at and what has to happen next.
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1
Survey and inventory trees
This is where the record starts, and getting it right here removes work at every later stage.
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2
Assess condition and assign risk
The platform prompts only for what this stage genuinely needs, and carries everything forward.
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3
Triage and schedule works
Conflicts with scheme rules, regulatory windows and existing commitments are flagged here rather than discovered later.
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4
Report notifiable findings
Capture works offline, so this stage is completed in the field rather than remembered afterwards.
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5
Instruct contractors safely
Everything recorded at this point becomes evidence automatically, in every format that will later ask for it.
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6
Fell or manage as required
This is the stage most businesses currently do twice, once for the operation and once for the paperwork.
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7
Restock with diversified species
Results feed the whole-farm view, so the effect of this stage is visible against the rest of the business.
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8
Re-inspect on the risk-based interval
The cycle closes here, and what is learned is carried into next season's plan rather than lost.
Capabilities
What Tree Health does
Every capability below is built on the same underlying record, so entering something once is enough for it to appear wherever it is needed.
Record and plan
- Tree and woodland condition inventory with individual tree records where required
- Ash dieback assessment scoring with safety-priority triage
- Highway, footpath and boundary tree risk register with inspection intervals
Operate and monitor
- Statutory notifiable pest and disease reporting workflow
- Plant passport record for incoming propagating material
- Biosecurity protocol for visitors, contractors and machinery
Comply and evidence
- Tree Health scheme grant application and restocking planning
- Felling licence interaction where health-driven felling is required
- Contractor instruction and safe system of work documentation
Analyse and improve
- Photographic condition monitoring with repeat-point comparison
- Species diversification planning to reduce future epidemic exposure
- Insurance and liability evidence pack for tree-related claims
Payment schedule
What is due, and when it lands
Farm support arrives in instalments from several bodies on different calendars. Set against your own overdraft, the question is not how much but when — so the ledger is ordered by date, not by scheme.
| When | Payment | From | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March | Tree Health Scheme | Forestry Commission | — | Expected |
| March | Countryside Stewardship | Defra / Natural England / Rural Payments Agency | — | Agreed |
| September | England Woodland Creation Offer | Forestry Commission | — | Eligible |
| June | Sustainable Farming Incentive 2026 | Defra / Rural Payments Agency | — | Eligible |
| June | Environmental Land Management Capital Grants | Defra / Rural Payments Agency | — | Eligible |
| December | Farming Equipment and Technology Fund | Defra / Rural Payments Agency | — | Eligible |
- — Agreed and scheduled
- — Claimed, awaiting payment
- — Eligible, unclaimed
What the statuses mean
- Agreed
- Under a signed agreement with a scheduled payment date.
- Expected
- Claimed and assessed; payment date per the published standard.
- Eligible
- Your holding appears to qualify but nothing is claimed yet.
Worked example
How a business like yours would use Tree Health
The problem: Needs a defensible inspection record with dates and decisions.
What they do
- Survey and inventory trees
- Assess condition and assign risk
- Triage and schedule works
- Report notifiable findings
What changes
- Trees inspected on schedule
- High-risk trees resolved
- Notifiable findings reported within the statutory window
This is an illustrative worked example built from the module design, not a customer reference. Named case studies are published only with the business's written consent.
What we are hearing
The problems people describe to us
These are composite statements drawn from user research conversations, not attributed customer quotes. We publish named references only with written consent.
I am not short of software. I am short of one place where the same field means the same thing in all of it.
The scheme closed on a Tuesday evening. I had the application half built. Nobody told me the budget was nearly gone.
We farm on both sides of the border. Everything takes twice as long and I still cannot see the whole position on one screen.
Audit week costs me three days. Every single record they ask for is already written down somewhere on this farm.
Measurement
How you will know it is working
The module reports against these measures from the day it is switched on, so the value is demonstrable rather than assumed.
- 01Trees inspected on schedule
- 02High-risk trees resolved
- 03Notifiable findings reported within the statutory window
- 04Restocking survival rate
- 05Species diversity index
Free assessment
Find out where you stand in about ten minutes
A structured assessment producing a scored report with a prioritised list of what to fix first, and what it is worth fixing.