High hedges complaints and the appeal that follows

A high hedge complaint appeal goes to the Secretary of State, is handled by the Planning Inspectorate, and has to be lodged within 28 days of the council's decision. Both sides can appeal: the hedge owner against a remedial notice, and the complainant against a refusal to issue one or against terms they consider too weak. Before any of that, the council has to accept the complaint at all, and it will not do so unless you have already tried to sort the matter out with your neighbour.

The regime is narrower than most people expect. It is not a general law about trees or about light, and a good number of complaints fail on the definition rather than on the merits.

What the regime covers and what it leaves out

Part 8 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 applies to a high hedge, which means a barrier to light or access formed wholly or predominantly by a line of two or more evergreen or semi-evergreen trees or shrubs, rising more than two metres above ground level.

Every part of that definition does work:

• Two or more. A single tree, however large, is outside the regime entirely.
• A line. A group or a clump is not a line, though councils take a practical view where the planting reads as a boundary.
• Evergreen or semi-evergreen, wholly or predominantly. A deciduous hedge is excluded, even a tall one.
• More than two metres above ground level, measured from where the hedge grows, which on sloping ground can be contentious.
• A barrier to light or access, or one that would be if the gaps were filled.

Who can complain is also defined. You have to be the owner or occupier of domestic property adversely affected, and the complaint is about the effect on your reasonable enjoyment of that property.

What falls outside: single trees, deciduous hedges, hedges below two metres, hedges affecting commercial premises, and disputes about roots, overhanging branches or boundary lines. Those have other routes, and mixing them into a hedge complaint weakens it.

Steps required before you complain

The council will ask what you have already done, and a complaint that arrives without that history is usually returned.

Reasonable steps means genuine attempts to resolve it directly. In practice:

1. Speak to your neighbour, and follow up in writing so there is a record of what was asked and when.
2. Set out specifically what you want, with a height, rather than asking for the hedge to be dealt with.
3. Offer to share the cost of the cutting, which resolves a surprising proportion of these.
4. Suggest mediation, and keep the reply or the absence of one.
5. Allow a reasonable period for a response before escalating.

Keep copies of everything. Dated letters, texts and emails are what the council reads when deciding whether to accept the complaint.

There is a fee. Councils set their own charge for a high hedge complaint and it is commonly several hundred pounds, with some authorities refunding it in defined circumstances. Check the published charge on your council's website before you start, because it is not a nominal sum.

The remedial notice and what it can require

If the council decides the hedge is adversely affecting your reasonable enjoyment of your property, it issues a remedial notice to the hedge owner and occupier.

The notice specifies the initial action required, with a compliance period, and any preventative action needed afterwards to stop the problem recurring. It records the height to which the hedge must be reduced and maintained.

Two statutory limits matter, and they disappoint complainants regularly. The notice cannot require the hedge to be reduced below two metres, and it cannot require the hedge to be removed. So a two metre evergreen boundary is the best outcome available, whatever the original height was.

A remedial notice is registered as a local land charge, which means it binds subsequent owners of the land. That is useful, because it survives a sale and a new owner cannot let the hedge grow back.

The council can also decide not to issue a notice, either because the hedge does not meet the definition or because the effect on your property is not sufficient. It must give reasons, and those reasons are the material for an appeal.

Appealing a notice or a refusal to act

The appeal period is 28 days from the date the notice is issued, or from the date of the decision not to issue one. That is short, and it does not extend while you negotiate.

Appeals go to the Secretary of State and are determined by an inspector, usually on written representations with a site visit. The inspector can uphold the notice, quash it, or vary its terms, including the height and the compliance period.

The discipline is the same as for any appeal. Identify precisely what you are challenging, address the reasons the council gave, and provide evidence rather than assertion. The approach in the article on reading reasons for refusal before you decide to appeal transfers directly, because the council's reasons define the ground you have to cover.

Where you are the neighbour of the complainant rather than a party, you may be able to make representations that the inspector takes into account, and the article on interested party representations at appeal covers how those are handled.

Decisions on comparable hedges are helpful for judging what inspectors have accepted on height, and the article on using appeal decisions as evidence explains the weight they carry. They are indicative rather than binding.

Evidence on light and enjoyment

This is where complaints succeed or fail, and photographs taken over a year beat any amount of description.

What to gather:

• Photographs from inside the affected rooms, and from the garden, at different times of day and in different seasons, each dated
• A measurement of the hedge height, with the method and the ground level reference noted
• The distance from the hedge to the affected windows and to the garden, measured
• A note of which rooms are affected, their use, and at what times of day light is lost
• Anything showing the change over time, including older photographs from before the hedge grew

Government guidance on hedge height and light loss sets out an approach many councils use to judge whether a hedge is too tall for its position, working from the height of the hedge, the distance to the affected window and the orientation. Ask your council whether it applies that guidance, and if so, provide the measurements it needs rather than leaving the officer to take them.

Be precise about enjoyment, too. Loss of light to a kitchen used all day is a different case from shading of a corner of a lawn, and the notice you get will reflect which one you evidenced.

Enforcing a remedial notice

Failure to comply with a remedial notice is a criminal offence, prosecuted by the council, and the council can also enter the land, carry out the work itself and recover the cost from the owner.

In practice councils are cautious about both, and enforcement takes time. If the compliance date passes, write to the council with photographs and the notice reference, ask what action is being taken and under which power, and keep the reply. A written request produces a written answer and starts a record.

Preventative action in the notice is what stops the cycle repeating. If the notice you were issued specifies only initial cutting and no ongoing maintenance height, that is a point worth raising within the appeal period rather than two years later.

When the dispute is really about something else

Worth saying plainly: a fair number of high hedge complaints are the visible part of a longer neighbour dispute, and the hedge regime will not resolve the rest of it.

Check three things before committing time and the fee. Whether the trees are protected, because a tree preservation order or conservation area status means the owner needs the council's consent before cutting, and that consent process runs separately from the hedge regime. Whether what you actually object to is overhanging branches or roots, which is a civil matter with its own common law remedies. And whether the real issue is a boundary line, which is a matter for the title deeds and, if necessary, a surveyor.

Where protected trees are involved, or where you need to understand what a council will require before any work to trees, the tree survey page sets out what a BS 5837 survey covers and when one is expected.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.