Felling licences under the Forestry Act and planning consent

The felling licence threshold catches far more rural owners than they expect, because the test is volume and diameter rather than anything to do with woodland. Fell five cubic metres of timber in a calendar quarter and you are at the limit. Sell more than two cubic metres of it and you are over a second, separate limit. Neither has anything to do with whether the trees sit in a wood, a hedgerow or a shelter belt.

A felling licence is issued by the Forestry Commission under the Forestry Act 1967, and it is a different consent from anything the local planning authority grants.

When a licence is required and when it is not

A licence is needed to fell growing trees, subject to a set of exemptions. The exemptions people rely on most:

• Trees in a garden, orchard, churchyard or designated public open space.
• Trees below the diameter thresholds, measured 1.3 metres above ground over bark: 8 centimetres generally, 10 centimetres where the work is a thinning, and 15 centimetres for coppice or underwood.
• Small volumes within the quarterly allowance described below.
• Felling that is immediately required to carry out development authorised by a planning permission.
• Trees that are dead, dangerous, or causing a nuisance in the legal sense, and felling required to comply with a statutory obligation.
• Work by certain statutory undertakers within their own operations.

Note what is not on that list. Lopping, topping and pruning are not felling, so crown reduction does not need a licence however heavy it is. Neither does the removal of a tree from a garden, however large, which is why the question of where a garden ends matters on a farmhouse with paddocks.

The garden exemption is narrower than owners assume. A tree in an enclosed area used with the house is in a garden. A tree in a field beyond the fence is not, even if the same family has mown around it for 50 years.

The exempt volumes and how they are counted

The quarterly allowance permits felling of up to five cubic metres in any calendar quarter, of which no more than two cubic metres may be sold. Both figures apply to the owner across their land, not to each wood separately, and the quarters are calendar quarters rather than a rolling three months.

Volume is standing timber volume, not the volume of stacked logs, and estimating it properly needs the diameter and height of each stem rather than a look at the woodpile. On a mixed hedgerow removal, three mature ash can exhaust the whole allowance.

Two mistakes recur. Splitting a felling operation across the end of a quarter to stay inside the allowance works only if the operation actually stops, and a contractor who finishes the job on 2 April having started on 28 March has not created two quarters of allowance in any meaningful sense. And firewood sold to neighbours counts against the two cubic metre sale limit whether or not money changes hands in a way anyone records.

Overlap with tree preservation control

Both regimes can apply to the same tree, and the interaction is specific. Where a tree is subject to a tree preservation order and a felling licence application is made, the Forestry Commission consults the local planning authority before deciding. Where a licence is granted, work carried out in accordance with it does not need separate consent under the order.

The same principle applies to trees in a conservation area, where felling under a licence removes the need for the six weeks written notice that would otherwise be required.

That does not make a licence a route around local protection. The consultation means the authority's objection is in front of the decision maker, and a licence application for a category A oak in a conservation area is unlikely to succeed simply because it was made to a different body. The note on how woodland orders and felling licences interact covers the detail of that relationship.

Ancient woodland is a separate consideration again. A licence does not authorise the loss of an irreplaceable habitat in planning terms, and the buffers and policy tests described in the note on ancient woodland buffers on a development site still apply to any development that follows.

Applications, conditions and restocking

Applications are made to the Forestry Commission, with a map showing the felling area, the species and volumes, and the restocking proposals. Felling is assessed against the UK Forestry Standard, which sets out what sustainable forest management means in practice.

Almost every licence carries a restocking condition: replant the felled area, or regenerate it naturally, to a stated specification, and maintain the new crop for a period of years. That obligation runs with the land, which matters if you are buying a holding where felling has recently taken place.

A woodland management plan approved under the standard is the better route for anyone with more than a few hectares. It can carry felling approval for a period of years across the whole holding, which removes the need for separate applications each time thinning comes round.

There is also an environmental assessment regime. Deforestation, and afforestation, above prescribed thresholds can require consent under the forestry environmental impact assessment regulations, and those thresholds are lower in sensitive areas.

Enforcement and restocking notices

Felling without a licence where one was required is an offence. The Forestry Commission can prosecute, and separately it can serve a notice requiring the land to be restocked and the new trees maintained.

A restocking notice is the part that hurts. It is served on the owner, it can require replanting of an area that has been cleared for a purpose, and non compliance can lead to the work being carried out and the cost recovered. Enforcement powers in this area were strengthened by the Environment Act 2021, so check the current position rather than working from older advice.

The practical risk is not usually deliberate illegal felling. It is a contractor who quotes for clearing a hedgerow or a shelter belt, does the work in a week, and leaves the owner holding an offence they did not know existed.

Felling to implement a planning permission

The exemption for felling immediately required to carry out development authorised by planning permission is useful and narrower than it reads.

"Immediately required" means what it says: the felling has to be necessary to carry out the development now, not at some future phase, and the permission has to be in place and capable of implementation. Clearing a site in advance of a permission, or under an outline permission before reserved matters are approved, is outside it.

So the sequence matters. Where a scheme involves woodland or hedgerow removal, establish which trees are covered by the exemption, which need a licence, and which are protected by an order, before anyone mobilises. Then get the arboricultural position onto the same drawing, because a tree survey prepared to BS 5837:2012 and a felling plan prepared for a licence application are usually drawn by different people who have not spoken.

Replacement planting is often required by both regimes for the same site, on different specifications and different timescales. The note on tree planting conditions covering species, stock size and establishment sets out what the planning side typically demands, and reconciling the two before either is agreed saves planting the same area twice.

Records to keep on a holding

Keep a felling record: the date, the compartment, the species, the estimated standing volume, whether timber was sold and how much, and the licence number or the exemption relied on. Keep the maps. Keep the restocking records and the beating up records for the maintenance period.

It sounds bureaucratic until the Forestry Commission asks what happened to a shelter belt that appears on an aerial photograph from three years ago and does not appear now.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which tree and woodland reports a rural scheme 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.