Choosing tree surgeon

Earlier I asked about pollarding my willow. The recent strong winds have convinced me that this is the year to do it, watching the branches bending violently filled me with fear that one would break off and crash into the buildings (it is a large willow).
But how do I get the right tree surgeon?
Loads of ads in yellow pages say they will prune trees, but I want a professional who knows what he/she is doing. How can I tell the good from the bad?

Have you tried looking on checkatrade.com ? not sure if it has tree surgeons on it but we used it for the people who did our drive, they certainly have landscapers on there and builders and plumbers and all sorts of different trades.

It's a website that lists tradespeople and then when they've done the job you can leave a comment about them, bit like ebay but obviously not quite the same!!  Idea is to help stamp out dodgy tradesmen.

I'd never heard of it until a leaflet dropped through our letterbox.  Might cost slightly more than any old random chosen out of the yellow pages but probably worth it to at least have a little confidence they know what they are doing?

Also make sure you get several quotes, we had a willow in our back garden removed about 3 years ago and the quotes varied hugely.  Think we paid about £450 but one quote was £1200!  The expensive one was going on about how big the tree was and it being a huge job, chap we actually had looked at it and said that's small for a willow.  It was about 45ft I'd guess.  Other quote we had was about £800 from memory.

Thanks for the advice.
Will try your suggestions and report back.
Never thought about asking at the garden centre (we are good customers and fellow businessmen) or liability insurance.

Shame you're not closer Kris as there's loads of work to do on our tress at school right now -- removing a dodgy polar being one 

 
  Try asking your local council. We had no problem finding a proper one through our council he gave us a few names to use.