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• Comment: In accordance with the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, I disclose that I have been paid by my employer for my contributions to this article. Rob-Arbtech (talk) 16:33, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Arbtech Consulting Ltd is a British ecological consultancy firm, with headquarters in Chester and office locations in Birmingham and London.

Founded in 2005, the company provides specialist arboricultural and ecological services, primarily to support the development process and applications for planning permission.

As for late 2025, the firm employs over 150 members of staff and completes over 18,000 projects annually, assisting with more than 80,000 projects since opening business in 2005^[1].

Arbtech was founded in 2005 by Robert Oates, a former infantry soldier and customer service advocate.

The firm initially began as an arboricultural survey specialist and has since expanded to provide nationwide ecologist assessments for homeowners, property developers and government bodies. Among the services it now offers are tree surveys, biodiversity net gain plans, and protected species surveys.

In September 2024, Arbtech was acquired by the Celnor Group^[2], a testing, inspection, certification and compliance (TICC) platform backed by private equity firm Inflexion. The acquisition was noted as Celnor's largest at the time, integrating Arbtech into a group of over 35 specialist businesses.

By the first half of 2025, the company reported record growth, with turnover exceeding the total for the previous year, which was attributed to services helping developers to navigate the biodiversity net gain (BNG) requirements in the UK.

The consultancy is an active participant in UK environmental policy debate and industry standard-setting, spearheaded by CEO Robert Oates.

Primarily examples include:

• Policy Opposition: Arbtech has been a vocal opponent of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill (2025). In a report titled The Green Faultline^[3], the firm argued that the proposed "Nature Restoration Fund" - a levy-based system allowing developers to pay to bypass site-specific surveys - risks caused local extinctions of site-faithful species like bats and barn owls, as well as harming employability options across the sector.
• Parliamentary Engagement: In 2025, the company submitted written evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC). The evidence detailed structural flaws in proposed "Environmental Delivery Plans" and advocated for the accreditation of private-sector consultants to address backlogs in the planning system.
• Industry Standards: Oates has publicly campaigned against plagiarism by competing consultancies and poor quality services throughout the sector. The stance is supported by the firm's commercial policy of offering a money-back guarantee is a report is rejected by a local planning authority based on its technical advice.
• Public Research: The Company commissioned the British Wildlife Insights 2025 Report^[4] - a survey of 2,000 UK adults. The findings highlighted that 88% of respondents were concerned about wildlife decline, yet only 40% maintained wildlife-friendly gardens, indicating a significant "concern-action gap" in UK conservation.

Arbtech is recognised for a non-traditional, "people-first" management philosophy and was named in The Sunday Times Best Places to Work list in 2024^[5] and 2025^[6].

The company operates a remote-first model with a "relatively flat" management structure and no internal timesheets.

In 2025, it introduced a minimum base salary of £30,000 for all roles, including new graduates and administrative staff.

Key employee frameworks include:

Leave and Sabbaticals: A 40-day annual leave allowance and a paid sabbatical programme providing up to six months of leave for long-tenured staff.

Unlimited CPD Fund: An unlimited continuing professional development (CPD) fund and four days of annual paid leave for independent research and development (R&D) projects.

The "Cheers Mate Scheme": A peer-to-peer reward system allowing staff to gift colleagues items from personal "wish lists" using company funds.

Sector Training: The firm operates a large-scale Ecology Internship Programme intended to address the industry's skills gap. In 2025, the programme offered approximately 50 paid positions with a base salary of £25,000, focusing on training in BNG and preliminary ecological appraisals (PEAs).