What we do
Compare Bamboo Removal is a trading name of The Lead Advisory Company Limited, which has been running comparison and introduction services in the UK for two decades. We also run Compare Japanese Knotweed Removal, which is where this site came from — bamboo kept coming up in knotweed enquiries, from people who had been told the two were the same problem and needed somewhere that treated bamboo on its own terms.
You answer five questions about your bamboo. We pass the enquiry to up to 3 vetted specialists who cover your postcode. They contact you directly and quote. You compare them and decide, or decide against all of them. That is it.
How we make money
Because you will wonder, and a service that is coy about this deserves the suspicion it gets.
Specialists pay to be on our panel, and we may receive a commission from a specialist if you go ahead with work. Homeowners pay us nothing at any point — there is no fee, no commission from you, and you are never invoiced by us.
Two things that follow from it, both worth stating:
- ✓It does not change your price. The specialist sets that, and they set it knowing they are quoting alongside two others.
- ✓It does not make us steer you. We do not earn more from excavation than from a barrier, so we have no reason to push the bigger job — which is exactly why our guides recommend whichever genuinely suits the site, including “you need nothing doing”.
Survey and site-visit fees are set by each firm, not by us. Some treat a visit as the cost of winning the work; others charge for a detailed survey, and a written report for a solicitor or a neighbour is normally chargeable outright. Ask on the first call and get any fee confirmed in writing before anyone attends. When we say “free to use” we mean our service — it has never meant a contractor's survey is free.
What we won't claim
Bamboo gets written about as “the new Japanese knotweed”, and a lot of what you will read online has quietly borrowed the knotweed rules. We could do the same and it would raise urgency. We are not going to, so here is what we deliberately never say:
- ✓We do not say our panel is “accredited” for bamboo. There is no bamboo-specific accreditation scheme in the UK. Plenty of good bamboo contractors are PCA members through their knotweed work and plenty are not, and borrowing that credibility would imply a standard that does not exist. We say vetted, which is a claim about our own checks — and we publish exactly what they are.
- ✓We do not promise an insurance-backed guarantee. Those are a knotweed product, underwritten because lenders demanded them. There is no standard equivalent for bamboo; individual firms offer their own workmanship guarantees and they vary a great deal. So we tell you to ask what is covered and get it in writing.
- ✓We do not tell you bamboo will wreck your mortgage. Lenders have no bamboo policy. Saying otherwise would be inventing a problem to sell against.
- ✓We do not claim it is illegal to have. Bamboo is not on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act and its waste is not controlled waste. Both are true of knotweed and neither is true of bamboo.
- ✓We do not publish review scores or customer counts we cannot evidence. When there are real, verifiable reviews to show you, they will be here. Until then there is a gap rather than a rounded-up number.
What bamboo genuinely does carry is encroachment risk: where it spreads across a boundary and causes damage or interferes with a neighbour's use of their garden, that can be a private nuisance and the cost of putting it right can fall on the owner of the bamboo. That is a real problem, it is worth acting on, and it is enough of a reason on its own.
What we are not
- ✓Not a contractor. We do not survey, remove, treat or contain bamboo. Any agreement for work is directly between you and the specialist.
- ✓Not their employer. The firms on our panel are independent businesses. We do not control their pricing, their methods or their timescales.
- ✓Not a directory. We do not list everyone who asks. A firm has to pass our checks and keep passing them.
- ✓Not a lead farm. Your details go to a maximum of 3 firms for this enquiry and to nobody else. We do not sell data on.
If a specialist we introduced you to lets you down, tell us. We cannot fix their workmanship, but we decide who stays on the panel — and that standard is the only thing that makes the word “vetted” worth anything.
The company
The Lead Advisory Company Limited
Company No. 05374791 · VAT No. 857848462
Registered in England and Wales.
Questions about the service: 0808 000 0000 or get in touch. Data protection: see our Privacy Policy. Contractors wanting to join the panel: start here.