Hedge trimming is the most common tree surgery job and the one where quotes vary least, because the work is predictable.
What it costs
A small domestic hedge starts around £70. Beyond that the price scales with length and height, and a long, tall boundary hedge across a suburban garden runs into several hundred pounds.
Green waste removal, which MyJobQuote puts at £90 to £500 across tree work generally, is frequently quoted separately. On a large conifer hedge the waste volume is substantial and can exceed the trimming cost.
What drives the price
Height. Anything worked from the ground is straightforward. Once the crew needs ladders or a platform, the job slows and the safety requirements increase. A hedge over about 3m is a different job from one at 1.8m.
Length. Priced roughly linearly, so measure it before ringing round.
Species and condition. A regularly maintained privet or beech hedge is quick. A conifer hedge that has not been touched in five years is slow, heavy work producing enormous volumes of waste.
Access. Rear gardens on terraced streets mean the arisings come out through the house or over a fence.
The overgrown conifer problem
Leyland cypress, the ubiquitous fast-growing screening hedge, will not regenerate from old wood. Cut it back beyond the green growth into the brown interior and it stays brown permanently.
This constrains what a contractor can do with a neglected leylandii hedge. They can reduce the height, since the top can be cut hard, but the sides can only be taken back to the edge of the living foliage. If you were hoping to reclaim a metre of garden width from an overgrown conifer hedge, the honest answer is usually that you cannot without killing it.
Yew, beech, hornbeam, privet and hawthorn all regenerate from old wood and can be cut back hard, so a neglected hedge of those species can genuinely be restored.
The nesting season
Between roughly March and August, hedges and trees may contain active birds' nests. It is an offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to intentionally damage or destroy the nest of a wild bird while it is in use or being built.
That does not prohibit hedge trimming in summer, but it does mean the hedge must be checked for active nests first, and work must stop if one is found. A reputable contractor will check, and will tell you if a section has to be left.
If the work is not urgent, trimming outside the nesting season avoids the problem entirely. Late summer through to early spring is the usual window for most hedges.
High hedges and neighbours
If a neighbour's evergreen hedge over 2m is blocking your light, local authorities have powers to intervene under the high hedges provisions, but only after you have made genuine efforts to resolve it directly and usually on payment of a fee.
Your common law right to cut back growth overhanging your boundary applies to hedges as it does to trees. You may cut back to the boundary line, no further, and the cuttings remain your neighbour's property.