Olis

Hi Chris. Looking back over my work history I've always changed the focus of my career after 5 to 7 years and I suspect I'll continue to want a new challenge after about that time. I'm keen to get into tree surgery in a way that makes it easy for me go on to get the qualifications to be an inspector or a tree officer, rather than getting qualifications as cheaply as possible and then working on commercial stuff where quality isn't the focus

Plus a tree surgery route into the field doesn't pay particularly well. I know its probably not the most sensible thing to be doing but I really want to spend a bit of time doing a job where at the end of the day you've got something to show for your efforts

Kingswood actually have courses for the first couple of nptc qualifications in May, which is the soonest I've seen it. Useful to know they're good, thank you

Haya, I'm keen to retrain as a tree surgeon. I've spoken to a couple of tree surgeons and they've both suggested that I do an intensive course that gives me all of the npct tickets as it gives a better overview of tree health and species ID than doing them individually. I was specifically recommended Merrist Wood's 10 week course. However they're not running one until next year. Plumpton college has a 8 week course covering the same content sooner but I wondered if you guys had any recommendations for courses. Realistically I'm probably only going to want to do practical tree surgery for 7-10 years before moving into a more theoretical role so I am interested in a holistic approach.