Appealing a refused tree consent decision

If the council has refused consent to fell or prune a tree protected by a Tree Preservation Order, you have a right of appeal to the Secretary of State, decided in practice by an inspector from the Planning Inspectorate. There is no fee. The appeal is normally dealt with by written representations with a site visit, and the deadline is short, so the decision notice is the first thing to read rather than the last.

One distinction decides whether you have an appeal at all. A refusal under a Tree Preservation Order can be appealed. A council objection to a section 211 notice for a tree in a conservation area cannot, because that notice is not an application.

Which decisions carry a right of appeal

The Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation) (England) Regulations 2012 give a right of appeal against a refusal of consent, against conditions imposed on a grant of consent, and where the authority has failed to determine the application within the period allowed. A failure to decide is treated as a refusal for appeal purposes, which matters on an application that has been sitting for months.

Separate rights exist elsewhere. A tree replacement notice served under section 207 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 is appealed under section 208 of that Act. A refusal of a felling licence goes to the Secretary of State under the Forestry Act 1967, with a reference to a committee, and that route is nothing like a planning appeal. Where a site carries both a Tree Preservation Order and a woodland interest, check which regime bites first, because woodland orders and felling licences interact awkwardly.

For a tree in a conservation area that is not the subject of an Order, you give the council six weeks notice of intended works. The council can either let the period run out, in which case you may proceed, or make a Tree Preservation Order. If it makes an Order, your route is an application under the Order, followed if necessary by an appeal.

The time limit and how it is calculated

The 2012 Regulations set a 28 day period. It runs from the date of the decision notice, not from the date you received it, and not from the date you opened the envelope.

Read the notice itself. It must tell you that you have a right of appeal and by when, and the stated date governs. Where the council has not decided at all, the period runs from the expiry of the time the authority had to determine the application.

Late appeals are rejected as invalid, and the Inspectorate has no general discretion to extend. If the deadline is close and your arboricultural report is not ready, submit the appeal with the grounds and ask to supply the supporting report within the timetable the Inspectorate sets. Getting the appeal in on time is the part you cannot fix afterwards.

Grounds that succeed and grounds that do not

Inspectors weigh the amenity value of the tree against the reasons for the works. That framing tells you what to argue.

Grounds that carry weight:

• Demonstrable structural damage, supported by a report from a structural engineer that links the damage to the tree and rules out other causes.
• Poor tree condition or an identified defect, evidenced by an arboricultural inspection that records the defect and the risk.
• Direct damage to a drain or a foundation, with evidence of root presence rather than an assumption. Root ingress into drains and soakaways is often blamed without being proved.
• A proposal that reduces the works to what is needed, such as a phased crown reduction instead of felling.
• Replacement planting of a species and size that will deliver comparable amenity in a reasonable period.

Grounds that rarely succeed on their own: loss of a view, leaf and fruit litter, bird droppings, honeydew from aphids, general fear that the tree will one day cause damage, an insurance letter that asserts a risk without survey data, and the argument that the tree is simply too big for a small garden. Shading and daylight loss to habitable rooms occasionally succeed where the evidence is specific and the tree is close.

The commonest mistake is asking for felling when the evidence supports pruning. Inspectors can and do allow reduced works, but only if the alternative has been specified. Ask your arboriculturist to describe the minimum intervention that solves the problem, and specify crown work properly so the inspector can grant exactly that.

Written representations and site visits

Almost every tree appeal is decided on written representations. You submit a statement of case, the council submits its own, you get an opportunity to comment, and the inspector visits the site.

The visit is usually unaccompanied where the tree can be seen from public land, and accompanied where access to a garden is needed. If the problem only reads from a particular window or angle, say so in your statement and ask for an accompanied visit, because an inspector standing on the pavement will not see the crown over your kitchen.

Keep the statement short and evidenced. Four pages with a plan, dated photographs and an appended arboricultural report beats twelve pages of narrative. Number your photographs and reference them in the text.

Arboricultural evidence for an appeal

The report should be written by someone with a recognised arboricultural qualification and professional membership, and it should do five things.

1. Identify the tree by species, approximate age class, height, stem diameter at 1.5m and crown spread.
2. Record condition, including any decay, included bark unions, deadwood or previous topping, with the inspection method stated.
3. Assess amenity value honestly, including visibility from public vantage points.
4. Specify the works sought in the language a contractor would use, with British Standard pruning terms.
5. Set out the alternatives considered and why they were rejected.

Where subsidence is the reason, the arboricultural report is not enough on its own. You need soil and foundation information, crack monitoring over a period that covers a dry season, and a structural opinion that connects the movement to moisture demand from that specific tree. A tree survey prepared for a development scheme is a different document and will not answer the subsidence question.

Costs and who bears them

There is no fee to appeal, and each side normally bears its own costs.

Costs awards are possible where a party has behaved unreasonably and caused the other to incur wasted expense, for example by withdrawing a refusal at the last moment or by pursuing an appeal with no evidence at all. Applications for costs are the exception in tree appeals and are made in writing during the appeal, not afterwards.

Your real cost is the professional evidence. An arboricultural report for an appeal costs more than a routine inspection because it has to be written to be read by a stranger.

What an inspector can decide

The inspector can allow the appeal and grant consent, allow it in part, vary or remove conditions, or dismiss it.

Two outcomes catch people out. An inspector who grants consent to fell will usually impose a replanting condition specifying species, size, position and a period for replacement, and that condition is enforceable. And an inspector can grant consent for less than you asked for, which is a good result if you specified the alternative and a wasted appeal if you did not.

An illustrative example: a mature sycamore under an Order, three metres from a 1930s semi, with repeated blockages in a shared drain. The council refuses consent to fell. On appeal, a drainage survey shows root mass in a cracked clay pipe, and the arboricultural report proposes a 30 per cent crown reduction plus root barrier installation and drain relining as an alternative to felling. The inspector dismisses the felling appeal but grants the reduction, and the drain is relined. The householder keeps a smaller tree and a working drain.

Decisions are published and can be searched, though an appeal decision is indicative of how inspectors approach an issue rather than a binding precedent on your tree.

Tree evidence for a development application is a separate exercise. PlanScope drafts the arboricultural narrative and other supporting documents from your site details, structured to UK planning policy, with missing facts flagged rather than invented. Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your site is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.