Paul Jenks

Just to clarify. The £250-500 is the bill for the accountant. The amount of personal tax you pay is far too complex to work out, but as I said, should be much less if you use a sensible and reasonable accountant. Ps. Self-employed or running a company I've never not used one. I find it too dull and I'd rather work a couple of extra days cutting than sit at a desk for a week.

Best bet is to speak to a few different accountants. Gradually work out the pertinent questions you want answered, like what you can legitimately claim for. PPE, Office at home, heating, toilet roll, paper, internet, fuel, vehicle etc. Ask someone you know and trust who is in business to recommend an accountant. A good accountant should save you considerably more than he or she costs per year. A self-employed arborist shouldn't be paying more than £250-500 per year depending on earnings and how tidy their shoebox of receipts is. This may sound a lot to a self-employed person but in my view it's a sight easier to get a professional to do it and steer you to saving more than to slog your own way through it. You are more likely to stay off the HMRC radar if you have a bonefide accountant submitting your annual return. However don't always take what they say as gospel, i.e. they may not know all the things that can be claimed for, and under new regulations they are supposed to report any cash dealings they discover if they feel tax is unlikely to be forthcoming.

Any one who works in trees should get a log burner or suchlike. Makes a helluva difference to the bills. Could put a chimenea outside the back door for really cold nights. Also, we recently got one of the electric usage display units from BGas. If you put the kettle, toaster,microwave and hoover on at the same time it frightens the life out of me. Sure makes you put less water in the kettle.

I think you're right. We always check our photos for compliance prior to publication for just that reason. I've noticed such things before but thought I was the only one to get worked up about it. Now I know there's 2 of us.:lol:

One custard pie away from obesity:thumbup:

I concur. It does depend on what you want from the membership. If what the organisation delivers is access to courses, information, publications, qualifications, standards, accreditations and a logo and this fits in with your goals then that's the organisation for you. If you want a logo, membership status and a jumble of letters after your name the aspire to other ones. As I understand it to put letters after you name you have to have a recognised professional qualification. My step-dad has FEP after his though he rarely uses it nowadays. (Failed Eleven Plus) The best I ever got was Esq.

Did you check out the Mahoosive lime above the house. When we did some work up there a few years ago I thought it was a copse but turned out to be a single tree that had layered 3 times. They hold wedding ceremonies under it. It's amazing. Also the cut leaf beech.

There's a lapsed plane pollard on the way into Henley-on-Thames we reduced for highways about 5 years ago. At crown break it has 6 trees/shrubs growing. Holly, Rowan, Pyracanthos, Elder, Cherry and Cotoneaster. It's the one just past the register office on the other side of the road.

Depends what you mean by necessary. If you know how to sharpen/maintain a saw, is it necessary to have a ticket? If you know how to climb a tree, is it necessary to have a ticket? Generally, if you are carrying out an operation or series of operations commercially you should have the relevent tickets. This doesn't show you can do the job well but for insurance purposes, and sometimes piece of mind, you and your staff are covered should anything go wrong. If a member of staff injures themself on a chainsaw, HSE and your insurers will want to see certificates to show that firstly the saw was maintained by a competent person, complete with documented evidence of PUWER checks, and that the person was certificated to use the saw and that they were certificated to carry out the operation they were carrying out. Sometimes it all seems a bit draconian but ultimately if we as an industry are going to get the respect in the work place we feel we deserve we need to start complying with current legislation more often than not. At least then if we do bend the rules a little the operation is backed up with a good deal of training we are less likely to get injured or damage anything.

:thumbup: Like it.

The reason the bigger boys are generally more expensive is that to get to be bigger one has to target bigger jobs. These generally come from councils, housing associations, construction companies, MOD, etc. All these clients demand significant levels of compliance documentation, certification, PPE, insurance levels, vehicle compliance with VOSA regs. The list goes on. All this has to be implemented, managed, audited and maintained and as a result has a cost associated with it. As was rightly pointed out the bigger companies are not necessarily better than small operators, it does depend on how they manage and moniter themselves. As far as pricing goes, I don't believe in charging what I can get away with. Charging for a job has to be profitable and if you want to build a long term business there has to be some consistency built into your pricing model using some form of system. This consistency should be learnt as someone said earlier, 'the hard way'. Getting a steer every now and then helps but much more detail would be required to enable most of the professionals on this site to give a valid answer.

Could be frost damage. We're still coming across trees that have succummbed this winter, it was pretty cold for a protracted period. Cordyline, eucalyptus, bay and pittosporum seem to be the main ones affected.

This is by no means a personal dig at you Jonesie but I had to chuckle at your response. I think virtually every time I've ever taken things back to suppliers;gloves, vehicles, boots, chippers, clothes the automatic response is ,'Never seen that before.'

Looks like an old lightening strike. If it's got good leaf cover and is fairly sheltered it should stay up. Often quite alarming surface defects only go in an inch or so and the structural timber is fine. Have a look to see if the decay goes in a long way at any point. Even then it doesn't always mean the tree will fail soon.

Stihl have a years warranty even on professional saws. Most reasonable dealers would do the job for you if you take it back, bit of a pain I know, but they would probably be glad to know if there is a defect or a defective worker as it does their image no good to have saws that fall to bits.

On a point of order. VAT is now charged at 20%. From memory, a while ago now, when my turnover was expected to go over the threshold I became VAT registered at the end of the month following the month my turnover went over the threshold. So we went over at the beginning of September and on Oct 30 any invoices we issued after this date we had to apply VAT. Any invoices issued before this date were not subject to VAT. HMRC are generally very helpful, if a little humourless. If you are going to make a retrospective claim for capital expenditure that means you actually claim more money back from HMRC than you collect in the first 3 months of being registered, expect either a visit or a request for an interview from HMRC, just to keep you on your toes. The flat rate system is ok. You collect VAT from your clients at 20% and pay HMRC approximately 10%, instead of going through all your receipts and working out who owes what to whom. I think this has a maximum turnover threshold of about £150k. We never used it as I planned to go through this maximum threshold pretty swiftly. If anyone has doubts about the use or validity of someones VAT status report them to HMRC. I do like that calculator thingy.

As you have to get permission to plant trees within a certain distance of the highway, and if you are planting a tree in a footpath, which is technically highway too, I'd have thought whoever has asked you to plant said tree would have the required specs.

Also, the BS is a document that allows non-tree professionals to understand more precisely what is being specified. Anyone who went on the recent set of roadshows instigated by the AA will have a better understanding of why this is. The focus of the BS is about what is best for the tree, (I know this isn't always whats best for the client or the situation but there are caveats for these circumstances.) A good old school crown clean has the capacity to remove 30% of the foliar area of a tree and to then carry out other pruning works to the tree would damage it long term. Crown clean is a generic catch-all, which I agree, a good arborist will be able to interpret. The client and sometimes the arbitrater in a dispute are the ones who need to understand what processes were carried out. Therefore be specific.

You have to have a think about where you want your business to go and what shape you want it to develop into. The old Chinese proverb of 'Start with the end in mind' is very apt. Starting any business needn't be too demanding as the structures that support it are essentially the same. It's what is delivered at the sharp end that changes. If you've worked in the tree industry for a bit then you'll be aware of what is needed to deliver tree work, customer care, equipment etc. The mechanics of business you'd be as well to learn from people who run businesses not necessarily from other tree surgeons. Don't use bank managers as they have very little awareness of the realities of the commercial arena. Accountants can be ok but tend to inhabit their own world so use with caution. Ask your parents, grandparents etc for contacts. Your close personal contacts usually have a wealth of information that you can tap for free. We are all guilty of overlooking those closest to us. Ask questions and formulate more questions that arise from the answers. Only seek professional help when you have a good idea of what you want an answer to. Ask to have a look at cashflow forecasts, budgeting reports and profit and loss accounts to see where all your hard earned cash has to go when running a business or a company, yes there is a difference.

In the storms we had 4 years ago I climbed a tree that was rocking on it's root plate and got the top out pdq. Does that count? Seen big sections come out of trees and my previous company dealt with a large poplar that was very slowly tipping over onto a house. Using a crane as an anchor it was dismantled and sat back up again.

Don't sell it all in the same quarter. Even as firewood. Anyway, once it's cut up, seasoned and processed who knows which trees it came from.

Typically the angle first on a conventional felling cut I.e. the angle at the top. The theory, as I understand it, is the horizantal cut is easier to line up with the angled one. Understanding the engineering principles behind the hinge is what underlays good felling. Some of the cuts I've done on big trees with small saws look like an angry beaver has been at it. But the important bits line up and the tree falls in the right place. Dead trees can be a challenge as sometimes there is no strength at all in the hinge so wedges and ropes may be in order to control the direction of fall. Even trees with no appreciable lean can have grain that may compromise the hinge if it's angled. Hollow trees aren't always a challenge as it can save the effort of letterboxing. As always training and experience. A few close calls and the occasional screw up embed care and attention for most of us.

Well a Jubilee clip would take years and years to rust through

If you warmed it up then tried it on a pat of butter it'd work, probably.

Always go for a solid flywheel. The dual mass ones cause problems and don't last as long I've been told. We recently had the clutch replaced in our 53Navarra, 140k, and it came back judderring. Turned out the flywheel was warped. This was then skimmed and all seems fine. If the vehicle is a good runner spend a little more and get a decent clutch replacement