Branch of tree over hanging into the road

Updates

• State changed to: For Triage

  Updated by Buckinghamshire Council at 09:03, Wednesday 4 February 2026

• A Highway Officer will carry out an initial assessment of the tree, emergency issues will be corrected or made safe at the time of the inspection, if reasonably practicable to do so. In this context, making safe may constitute displaying warning notices, coning‐off or fencing‐off to protect the public from the tree or other suitable action.

  If the inspection team cannot make safe the defect at the time of inspection, then they will instigate the relevant emergency call procedures to ensure appropriate resources are mobilised to make the tree safe. Highway Officers are not qualified as tree experts and in some cases they may need to arrange for a tree surgeon to visit the site and carry out a survey on the tree which can take up to 12 weeks.

  There may also be occasions when the issue reported will be classified as a minor defect and does not pose any risk to either the safety or the integrity of the highway, these are called minimum recording levels as specified in our Highways Safety Inspection Policy, in these cases no action will be taken.

  We do not prune or remove council owned trees to improve natural light for a private property (including obstruction of solar panels). If you wish to carry out any work on a tree, you must first check the tree is not protected before any work is started. How to find out if a tree has a Tree Preservation Order (TPO) in Buckinghamshire.

  State changed to: Open

  Posted by Buckinghamshire Council at 14:45, Wednesday 4 February 2026

• Category changed from ‘Other tree issue’ to ‘Emergency Road/Footway - Fallen tree causing an obstruction’

  Posted by Buckinghamshire Council at 15:49, Wednesday 4 February 2026