How a Tree Preservation Order is made and confirmed

A council makes a Tree Preservation Order when it appears expedient in the interests of amenity to protect a tree, group of trees or woodland. That is the whole statutory test, set out in section 198 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Anyone can ask for one. The council decides, and it can act within a day where a tree is under immediate threat.

Understanding how a tree preservation order is made matters most to two groups: neighbours who want a tree protected before the chainsaws arrive, and owners who have just been served with an order they did not expect.

Who can ask, and on what grounds

There is no application form and no fee. A written request to the council's tree officer is enough, and it should contain four things: where the tree is, what it is, why it matters, and why it is at risk.

The last of those is what triggers action. Councils receive far more requests than they can visit, and the ones that get attention describe a threat: a planning application that would remove the tree, contractors on site, a for-sale board on a garden with mature trees, or a notice under section 211 in a conservation area.

Photographs help more than adjectives. A picture showing the tree from the pavement, and a second showing it in the wider street scene, tells the officer most of what the amenity assessment needs.

Requests commonly come from neighbours, parish and town councils, ward councillors and civic societies. The council is not obliged to act on any of them, and it must be able to justify the decision it does make.

The amenity test

Amenity is not defined in the legislation, so authorities apply a structured assessment, and national guidance encourages them to do so consistently.

The first question is almost always visibility. A tree hidden behind a high wall in a back garden, invisible from any public place, is a weaker candidate than an ordinary tree on a street frontage, however fine the hidden one is. Public visibility is not an absolute requirement, and it carries a great deal of weight.

Beyond visibility, officers weigh the tree's size and form, its future potential, its condition and expected safe life, any rarity or cultural or historic value, and its contribution to the character of the area, including as part of a group. A group of six ordinary limes lining a road can be more significant collectively than any one of them individually, which is why orders are often made over groups and areas rather than single specimens.

Expediency is the second limb, and it is frequently forgotten. A council does not make an order simply because a tree is good. It makes one because protection is expedient, which usually means the tree is at risk or could become so.

Some things cannot be protected this way. Hedges, bushes and shrubs are not trees for these purposes, and a dead tree is outside the regime.

Provisional effect and the six months

An order takes effect provisionally as soon as it is made. This is the part owners find surprising: the protection is immediate, before anybody has had the chance to object.

That provisional protection lasts six months. Within that period the authority must either confirm the order, with or without modifications, or let it lapse. If it lapses, the trees are unprotected again unless a fresh order is made.

The immediate effect is deliberate. It is what allows an officer to protect a tree the same afternoon a report comes in, and it is the reason a request that describes a genuine threat gets a faster response than one that does not.

During the provisional period the order has full force. Cutting down or damaging a protected tree is an offence, and consent is needed for works in the same way as under a confirmed order.

Serving the order and who is notified

The council serves a copy of the order, with the map, on the people it considers are affected. That means the owner and occupier of the land the trees stand on, and normally the owners and occupiers of adjoining land where the trees are close to a boundary.

The order must be made available for public inspection, and the covering notice states the period within which objections and representations can be made. That period is at least 28 days from service.

Check the map carefully on receipt. Orders are drawn by people working from aerial imagery and site notes, and mistakes in the mapped extent of an area or woodland classification are not rare. An error is much easier to correct before confirmation than afterwards.

Read the classification too. An order can cover individual trees, groups, areas or woodland, and the practical consequences differ. An area classification captures all trees of whatever species within the mapped area at the date of the order, which is a blunt instrument and one councils are advised to use sparingly.

Making representations for or against confirmation

Objections must be in writing, within the stated period, identifying the trees and stating the grounds. The authority has to consider them before it confirms.

Grounds that carry weight are grounds the amenity and expediency tests can absorb. The condition of the tree, supported by an arboricultural report. Damage it is causing, supported by engineering or soil evidence. A dispute about whether it is visible from any public place. An error in the map or the schedule. A proposal for management that removes the need for an order.

Grounds that carry little weight on their own include leaf fall, shading of a garden, gutter maintenance and a general wish to develop the land. Development potential is not irrelevant, and it does not outweigh amenity by itself.

Supporters can write in too, and a short letter from a neighbour describing how the tree is experienced from the street is more useful to a tree officer than silence. Where a scheme is being designed around retained trees, an Arboricultural Impact Assessment is the document that shows the council the trees can be kept.

Variation, revocation and challenge

An authority can vary or revoke an order, normally by making a new one, and it can also confirm an order with modifications, removing trees from the schedule where an objection has succeeded.

There is no right of appeal against the making or confirming of a Tree Preservation Order. That surprises people who are used to planning appeals. The route for a landowner who believes the council has acted unlawfully is a challenge in the High Court, which is a serious step and rarely proportionate.

The practical route is different. Once an order is confirmed, an owner applies for consent to carry out works, and a refusal of that consent can be appealed to the Planning Inspectorate. In other words the order settles that the tree is protected, and the argument about what may be done to it happens afterwards, on the evidence, with a right of appeal attached.

Where trees are being retained as part of a development, set out the long-term management in a Landscape Strategy so the council can see who maintains what. Browse the 66 report types to see which tree and landscape documents a scheme is likely to need.

This is general guidance and not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified arboriculturist 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.