Objecting on tree grounds and asking for a protection order

You can ask a council to make a Tree Preservation Order, and there is no form, no fee and no right to compel one. A letter to the authority's tree officer, naming the tree, saying where it can be seen from and explaining what threatens it, is the whole process. Whether the council makes the order is a judgement about amenity and expediency, and the way to ask council for tree preservation order protection is to give the officer the evidence that judgement needs.

If the tree is already protected, or stands in a conservation area, the route is different and the timescales are short. Work out which situation you are in before you write.

How trees are protected and how they are not

There are three positions, and most trees are in the third.

A tree covered by a Tree Preservation Order made under section 198 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 cannot be cut down, topped, lopped, uprooted, wilfully damaged or wilfully destroyed without the authority's written consent. Breach is a criminal offence.

A tree in a conservation area that is not covered by an order is protected by a notification requirement. Anyone proposing works must give the authority six weeks' written notice under section 211, during which the authority can make an order. Works carried out without that notice are an offence.

A tree with neither protection can be felled by its owner without planning consent, subject to any felling licence requirement from the Forestry Commission for larger volumes and subject to wildlife law on nesting birds and roosting bats. That is the position most garden and street-adjacent trees are in, and it is why a request for an order has to be made before the chainsaw arrives rather than after.

Requesting an order and the evidence that helps

Government guidance on tree preservation orders expects authorities to assess amenity value before making an order, taking account of the tree's visibility from a public place, its individual impact, its wider impact on the character of the area, and whether making an order is expedient.

Write to that framework. Six things make a request far stronger:

• The exact location, with a photograph and either a sketch plan or a what3words reference, plus the address of the property the tree stands in.
• The species and an estimate of height and stem diameter at chest height.
• Where the tree can be seen from, named: the road, the footpath, the park, the number of houses with a view of it.
• Its contribution to the area, in plain terms: it closes a view, it screens a car park, it is the only mature tree in the street.
• Its apparent condition, described honestly, including any obvious decay or damage.
• The threat, with the evidence: a planning application reference showing it inside the development footprint, a notice of intended works, a contractor's visit, or marks on the trunk.

That last point is what makes a request urgent rather than theoretical. Authorities have limited tree officer capacity and they prioritise trees under threat.

Where the authority agrees but needs time, it can make a provisional order that takes effect immediately and lasts up to six months while the order is considered. Once an order is made, there is a 28-day period for objections and representations, and the authority must confirm the order within six months or it lapses.

Trees already covered by an order

Works to a protected tree need a written application to the authority, which has eight weeks to determine it. A refusal, or a condition, can be appealed to the Planning Inspectorate.

Several exemptions apply and they are narrower than people assume. Dead trees may be removed, with five days' prior notice to the authority except in an emergency. Work necessary to remove an immediate risk of serious harm is exempt, and the burden of proving it falls on whoever did the work. There are exemptions for statutory undertakers, for work required by an Act of Parliament, and for abating a nuisance that would support a civil claim, which in practice means encroaching branches or roots causing real damage.

The owner of a tree subject to an order has a duty to replace it where it is removed in reliance on the dead or dangerous exemptions, under section 206 of the 1990 Act. That duty is enforceable by a tree replacement notice.

The six week notice in a conservation area

A section 211 notice is the mechanism that most often saves a conservation area tree, and it is also the one most often bypassed.

The notice must describe the works and be given to the authority at least six weeks before they start. The authority can do three things: make an order, give written consent or raise no objection, or say nothing, in which case the works may proceed after six weeks and must be carried out within two years.

Exemptions apply to small trees. Trees with a stem diameter not exceeding 75mm measured at 1.5m above the ground are outside the requirement, and the threshold rises to 100mm where the work is thinning to help the growth of other trees. Fruit trees cultivated for fruit production and dead trees are also treated differently.

If you believe works have started in a conservation area without a notice, that is a potential offence and the authority's tree officer is the person to tell, immediately and in writing, with photographs and a time.

Trees shown for removal on an application

Where a planning application proposes felling, objecting to the application is the route rather than asking for an order, because the authority cannot refuse an application solely to protect a tree it has chosen not to protect, and an order made during an application does not prevent permission being granted.

Read the submitted tree information first. A proper tree survey to BS 5837:2012 categorises each tree as A, B, C or U, shows the root protection area, and is accompanied by an arboricultural impact assessment and a tree protection plan. Objections that engage with that document carry weight. Objections that assert the tree is lovely do not.

Specific points worth making where they apply: the survey omits a tree that exists, the category assigned is too low for an evidently healthy specimen, the root protection area is understated, the proposed construction encroaches into it without a no-dig specification, or the replacement planting proposed is a sapling where a mature canopy is being lost.

Where a tree is removed in breach of a condition after permission is granted, the enforcement route is different again, and breach of condition notices and what they achieve explains what the authority can actually do.

Root protection areas and construction impact

The root protection area under BS 5837:2012 is calculated from the stem diameter and defines the area to be kept free of construction activity, with a cap for very large trees. The standard also sets out how to design and supervise works inside or close to it.

Most trees lost to development are not felled. They die three to five years later because the ground within the root protection area was compacted by plant movement, because a service trench was dug through it, or because the levels were changed. Those are the points to raise during the application and during construction, not afterwards.

Ask for a condition requiring a tree protection plan and an arboricultural method statement to be approved and implemented, with protective fencing installed before any machinery arrives and retained until completion. Ask for arboricultural supervision at defined stages. Both are standard and both are regularly omitted.

Replacement planting conditions

Where loss is accepted, the replacement is the thing to argue about. A condition requiring replacement planting should specify the species, the nursery stock size, the location, the planting season, the maintenance period and the obligation to replace failures within a stated number of years.

Vague conditions produce vague outcomes. "Landscaping to be implemented in accordance with a scheme to be approved" leaves everything to a later discharge application that nobody will tell you about. Ask for the detail in the condition and ask to be notified when the discharge application is submitted.

Chasing what happened afterwards is its own exercise, and the practical steps for getting an answer out of an enforcement team are set out in how to get an update on an enforcement case. Reading the decision notice itself is where to start, and reading a decision notice as a neighbour goes through the parts that matter.

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