Tree pruning

Description

This contract is primarily for the maintenance of the authority’s street trees and trees within parks, cemeteries and open spaces. However, the contractor may be offered additional work on other authority owned sites listed in the procurement documents. The contractor is not assured of this work, the letting of which will be at the discretion of the relevant executive directors who have jurisdiction. The contract is for an initial period of 6 years with provision for a temporal extension of up to 36 months. Street trees: The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has almost 7 000 street trees. Approximately 3 000 of these trees are forest canopy species consisting mainly of London plane and lime species. The remainder is a mix of medium-sized trees, such as wild cherry, birch and sweet gum and various ornamental species. The Borough has data on all street trees, which is kept on our ‘Ezytreev’ database. For maintenance purposes the Borough is split into 3 areas: north, central and south. The trees in these areas have historically been inspected and pruned on a 3-year rotation. There are no plans to change this cyclical regime for this contract. In addition, trees on certain streets in the north of the Borough, where there is a shrinkable clay subsoil, are inspected and pruned every 2-years as part of the authority's Risk Limitation Strategy. Approximately 1 000 street trees are pruned on a 2-year rotation. Parks, cemeteries and open space trees: The authority approximately 3 100 trees in parks, cemeteries and open spaces. Parks trees have historically been managed by the Parks Dept. However, responsibility for these trees was passed to RBKC’s Arboricultural Section in August 2016. The tree stock is spread across 38 different sites.