Paragon Community Housing Group

Contract period: September 2012 – current

Treework Environmental Practice won a competitive tender to provide surveys of trees to support Paragon to meet their duties of care for both public safety risk and minimising nuisance to their residents.

Treework has carried out Tree Surveys of Paragon’s landholding, across 12 boroughs in the South East of England and provided:

 Budgeted work specifications for tree management
 Tree and work schedules
 Tree maps of each site
 Analysis of the condition and cost of managing the tree stock

Treework continues to support Paragon to meet their duties of care for trees by carrying out reinspections of selected trees on an annual basis.

Treework carried out a Grounds Maintenance / Green Space Survey that captured landscape and amenity assets, assisting Paragon to manage contractors and their tender process.

Treework have provided Contract Administration services to manage the Tree Works Contracts to ensure that they are cost-effective and deliver the required quality of work. For this we provided:

 Production of tender documents
 Selection of sufficiently qualified and experienced contractors
 Review of tender bids
 Gaining TPO approvals and liaising with Local Planning Authority
 Onsite management of health and safety
 Onsite management of quality of work
 Signing off of completed works
 Checking of invoices

Treework have provided further proactive arboricultural support and detailed inspections of specific trees through a “Tree Amnesty” scheme in which residents can request help with problem trees in their own gardens.

Where required we have carried out Detailed Tree Assessments including Static Load Tests and Climbing Inspections.

Treework have installed our tree management GIS (MyTrees) with the survey data on the estate management team’s computer, enabling the direct service of survey data straight to the estate team.

Treework has reviewed and updated the Paragon Tree Policy and continues to support Paragon to set and meet their policy in accordance with their values and current best practice.

Treework has provided services to support planning applications for Paragon developments.

In 2015 we supported Paragon Community Housing Group to be the first Social Housing Organisation to give the public access to their tree information online by imbedding Check Trees with the survey data that we have collected into their website.

Our service to Paragon has been defined by cooperation, a desire to understand their needs as an organisation and to support them to gain value for money from contracts and be responsive to their residents. Responsiveness, efficiency and provision of clear expert information have been some of the qualities that have enabled this project to be successful.