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Posted By Ian Bruce
Dear All,
As a safety adviser for a local education authority, I am putting together a bulletin to go out to all of our schools following the recent tragic death of a student in a school in Surrey, caused by a falling tree.
I am basing the advice that will be contained within the bulletin around the need to risk assess any trees on the school site, this being a fundamental of HASAWA and the Management Regs in essence. Obviously any local site must consider whether or not they believe themselves to be competent or not and source such competency to assist them fulfill this need, if they feel this appropriate. Certainly I feel competency must be taken into account to devise control measures dropping out of the assessment process.
I seem to remember, however, that some guidance was issued fairly recently about tree maintenance following a similar incident one or two years ago, in the West Midlands I think.
Can anyone confirm my failing memory for me! Was there any guidance issued by the HSE? If there was, I can't find it! Or failing that can anyone point me towards any specialist arborial systems/publications?
Thanks in advance.
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Posted By Zoe Barnett
This is also causing us some problems at the moment. My perception is that trees are more likely to pose a risk in public areas other than schools (where after all the children spend most of the time indoors and are supervised when outside). For instance in a tree lined avenue trees are at risk of being damaged by vandals, traffic etc. My view is that trees in schools should be part of an overall Local Authority strategy to maintain its trees which would hopefully be done by professionally qualified arboriculturists (if that's the right word).
What do other LA colleagues think? Am I barking up the wrong tree?
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Posted By Bill Elliott
Ian, I'm sort with Zoe on this one, in as much as I was under the impression that the LA undertook to maintain its trees. Sure schools have their own duties but would look to their competent advisors for help. I am sure there is unlikely to be any aboriculturists employed at school level and Heads/Governors may need to seek advice from the centre ie the LA.Competence for such work should exist at this level.
Not so sure that supervising pupils is going to minimise the risks to children, I cannot imagine the pupil/staff ratio necessary to stop a 20 ton tree!
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Posted By Margherita Alineri
Camden fortunately still employs full time arboriculturalists to manage the borough's trees. Tree management is incorporated into the school property management programmes where schools buy back the service. The tree surgeons tell me that our regime of three-yearly inspections and pruning etc is based on best practice. Visits are also undertaken on an ad-hoc basis where concerns are raised by school staff. Our advice to schools outside the SLA is that they arrange for their grounds maintenance contractors to incorporate full tree inspections on a 3-yearly basis in the contract, by professionally qualified staff.
One area that caused us problems recently however, was the installation of CCTV cabling at a school. Contractors cut through tree roots and destabilised / killed large trees next to tennis courts, because no-one had properly assessed the risks beforehand.
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