decide which trees you are going to record individually. A tree only gets its own inspection record if it exists as its own asset, so plot the ones that matter as points on the map and draw larger groups as areas. See should every tree be its own asset, or can I group them as a clump?
Trees are the asset class where councils most often have a lot of something and very little record of it. The usual reason to start is a complaint about a low branch, a storm that brings something down, or an insurer asking what the council actually does about its trees.
The general expectation on a landowner is to take reasonable care, and for trees the widely used reference point in the UK is the National Tree Safety Group's guidance, Common Sense Risk Management of Trees. Its central idea is proportionality: the attention a tree deserves depends on what is underneath it, not on the tree. A dead branch over a hedgerow is habitat. The same branch over a play area is a job for this week.
That principle is what separates the three approaches below. Which one fits depends on your trees and your capacity, and councils genuinely choose differently.
Approach 1 - cover trees inside the area walk-round
If your trees are mostly in parks, greens and woodland, and few of them overhang anything, the simplest option is not to record trees individually at all.
The area sweeps already look up. The Park Sweep carries an Overhead Hazards item, and the Woodland & Nature Sweep carries the same, prompting the inspector to check trees and vegetation for dead branches, hanging limbs and unstable trees across the whole site. One inspection covers the area and everything in it.
Good for: a council with woodland and open space, no street trees, and no tree officer.
The trade-off: the record says "the site was walked and the trees looked fine", not "this tree was checked". If a specific tree fails, you have no history for it. There is also nowhere to record that a particular tree is being monitored.
Approach 2 - record the risky trees and run a Tree Sweep
The middle approach, and the one most councils land on, is to be selective. Record as individual assets the trees that carry the risk, which in practice means the ones over roads, footpaths, play areas, car parks and neighbouring property. Leave the interior of the woodland to the area sweep.
Each of those trees then gets the Tree Sweep, a 32-question ground-level visual inspection. It works from the ground up: the root plate and soil, the base and buttress, the trunk, the crown, then out to what the tree overhangs. Every item offers OK, N/A or a named fault, and only the fault raises a defect, so a healthy tree is a quick series of taps and a problem tree produces a specific, separate defect for each thing found.
The first question is Target Below, recording what sits underneath: a play area or school route, a highway, a footpath, open grass, a field edge. That answer is what tells whoever reads the inspection later which findings actually matter.
Set it up as a routine on an annual cycle and Civic.ly creates one inspection per tree each year. A council with a hundred street trees gets a hundred dated, individual records rather than one line saying the trees were fine.
Good for: any council with street trees, or trees over anywhere people gather.
The trade-off: it only works on trees you have taken the trouble to record, and the inspection is only as good as the person doing it.
Approach 3 - add the arboriculturist's survey
The most rigorous version keeps everything in Approach 2 and adds the specialist layer on top.
Many councils buy a periodic survey from an arboricultural consultant, who inspects to a depth a grounds operative cannot: decay detection, species-specific judgement, and sometimes climbing. That survey usually arrives as a PDF listing recommended works per tree.
In Civic.ly, each of those recommendations becomes a job against the tree it belongs to, with a cost, a due date and an owner. The pipeline view then becomes the outstanding tree-works tracker, and completing a job leaves the evidence that the work was done. Your own Tree Sweeps sit between the surveys as the record that somebody was looking in the meantime.
Good for: councils with a tree officer, a TPO population, or an insurer who asks detailed questions.
The trade-off: cost, and it needs someone to key the survey's recommendations in as jobs.
How to choose
Work from the target, not the tree. Walk your estate and ask what is underneath each tree.
- Trees over roads, paths, play areas or property belong in Approach 2 as a minimum. These are the ones that generate complaints and claims.
- Trees in the middle of open space or woodland are usually served well enough by Approach 1.
- A mature, prominent or protected tree is worth Approach 3 even if you use Approach 1 everywhere else.
Most councils end up mixing them, and that is the right answer rather than a compromise.
What the Tree Sweep is not
It is a duty-holder check: a visual inspection from the ground, by someone trained to look, recording what can be seen. It deliberately asks only what an operative can answer. "Is there a bracket fungus at the base" is a fair question. "How serious is that fungus" is not, because the answer depends on species, extent and decay type.
So the Tree Sweep does not replace a survey by a qualified arboriculturist, and it does not tell you a tree is safe. What it does is catch the visible problems early and create a dated record that somebody looked. When something needs an expert, the defect raised from the inspection is how it gets escalated, with a photo and a location attached.
Common Questions
Annually is the common cycle for a ground-level visual inspection, which is why the Tree Sweep is set up as an annual routine. Many councils also do a quick reactive pass over the trees along roads and paths after a named storm. If your trees vary a lot in risk, inspect the high-target ones more often rather than inspecting everything more often.
A ground-level visual inspection is normally done by a trained non-specialist rather than an arboriculturist. "Trained" is doing real work in that sentence: the person needs to know what they are looking at. Civic.ly gives you the form and the record, not the competence, so make sure whoever runs it has had some instruction.
Not as structured fields today. Those live in the asset's notes as free text, which works but is not filterable or reportable. See can Civic.ly manage a council's tree register? for the full picture of what does and does not have a home.
No, and we would not recommend it. Draw the woodland as an area and sweep it as a site. Record individually only the trees you would want a separate history for, which is usually the ones on the edges and over paths.
Selecting the fault offers to raise a defect there and then. The photo and the written detail go on the defect rather than on the question, and the defect carries a priority, so an urgent hanging limb and a slow-growing canker can be treated differently.