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Nationally recognised guidance on tree-safety management in the UK. It is intended for anyone responsible for trees, including duty holders, who may be landowners of estates or smallholdings, householders, as well as those who manage, advise and work on trees The National Tree Safety Group (NTSG) has produced this publication in response to growing concerns regarding the unnecessary felling of trees. It aims to develop an approach that is proportionate to the actual risks from trees and recognises the importance of trees to society and the natural environment. Tree owners and managers are well placed to assess risk and take the necessary actions to reduce that risk to a reasonable level. The NTSG believes that the evaluation of what is reasonable will fit into a tree-management strategy that considers the benefits that those trees bring. This calculation can only be undertaken in a local context, because trees provide many different types of benefit across a range of different circumstances and pose a range of risk levels, from negligible to significant. In criminal law the duty holder’s responsibility is to ensure that risks are managed ‘as low as reasonably practicable’ (ALARP). 1 This is defined in the Court of Appeal judgment (Edwards v National Coal Board, [1949] 1 All ER 743) as ‘“reasonably practicable” is a narrower term than “physically possible”…a computation must be made by the owner in which the quantum of risk is placed on one scale and the sacrifice involved in the measures necessary for averting the risk (whether in money, time or trouble) is placed in the other, and that, if it be shown that there is a gross disproportion between them – the risk being insignificant in relation to the sacrifice – the defendants discharge the onus on them’. A summarised version of this guidance publication is available to order or download from the NTSG website. Note that this full guidance publication should be consulted for detail and regarded as the principal reference