Tree Preservation Order consent or a section 211 notice

If the tree is covered by a Tree Preservation Order you apply to the council for consent and wait for a decision. If it is protected only because it stands in a conservation area, you give the council six weeks written notice and, if nothing happens, you may go ahead. That is the practical difference in tpo consent vs section 211 notice, and the two regimes carry different forms, different timescales, different appeal rights and different replanting duties.

When a tree is protected by an order

A Tree Preservation Order is made by the local planning authority under section 198 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and administered through the Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation) (England) Regulations 2012.

It can cover an individual tree, a group, an area or a woodland, and it applies wherever the tree stands. Once made, cutting down, topping, lopping, uprooting, wilfully damaging or wilfully destroying the tree without consent is an offence.

You can check whether an Order exists by asking the council's tree officer, and most authorities publish a map. Do the check before you buy a site, not before you hire a contractor.

When protection comes from the conservation area alone

Trees in a conservation area that are not covered by an Order get a different, lighter protection under section 211 of the 1990 Act.

The rule catches trees above a size threshold, measured as stem diameter at a set height above ground. Smaller trees are exempt, and so is work carried out for specified purposes such as thinning to help the growth of other trees, again subject to a size limit. Measure before you assume the tree is too small to matter.

The obligation is to give the authority six weeks notice in writing of the intended works. During that period the council decides whether to make an Order. If it does, you are into the Order regime. If it does not, you may carry out the works as described in the notice, and that permission to proceed lasts for two years.

The application process for order consent

An application for consent to works to a protected tree goes to the local planning authority, usually through the planning portal, and there is no fee.

It has to describe the works precisely and give arboricultural reasons for them. This is the part applicants underestimate. A request to reduce a crown by a stated proportion, with no justification, invites refusal. A request framed around removing deadwood, clearing a highway or building, addressing a structural defect identified in a survey, or implementing a management plan usually does not.

Support it with evidence. A short report from an arboriculturist, photographs, and where the case is structural, a decay assessment. The wider survey framework is set out in the Arboricultural Impact Assessment, and the approach to drafting the case is covered in writing the consent statement for pruning works.

The authority usually determines within eight weeks, it can attach conditions, and there is a right of appeal to the Planning Inspectorate against refusal or against conditions.

Comparing the two routes

The absence of an appeal right on a section 211 notice is less of a problem than it sounds, because the council's only real option is to make an Order, and an Order can be objected to while it is unconfirmed.

One trap sits in the overlap. A tree in a conservation area that is also covered by an Order is governed by the Order, and the notice route does not apply. Councils in historic towns have Orders scattered through their conservation areas, so check both rather than assuming the conservation area regime is the lighter one available to you.

Exemptions, and how narrow they are

Both regimes carve out exemptions, and both are narrower than people hope.

Dead trees are exempt, subject to giving the authority five working days notice before the work, except in an emergency. The 2012 Regulations replaced the older reference to dying trees, so a tree in poor condition is not exempt merely because it is declining.

Urgent works to remove an immediate risk of serious harm are exempt, again with notice requirements. The test is immediacy. A defect that needs attention within the year is not an emergency.

Other exemptions cover works required by an Act of Parliament, works by statutory undertakers in defined circumstances, and fruit trees cultivated for fruit production. Where a felling licence from the Forestry Commission is required, that regime interacts with both, and on a woodland Order that interaction is the first thing to resolve.

Works to trees required to implement a planning permission are treated separately again. The exemption is narrower than most applicants expect, and it does not cover pruning that merely makes the build more convenient. Where a scheme needs a protected tree altered, include the tree works in the planning application drawings and say so explicitly.

The burden of proving an exemption falls on the person who cut the tree. Photograph the tree before the work, keep the arboricultural opinion, and send the notice even where you think you might not need to.

Replanting duties

Where a protected tree is removed, a duty to plant a replacement generally follows. It attaches to removal under the dead tree and urgent works exemptions, and to removal in contravention of an Order, and the authority can enforce it.

In a conservation area a similar duty applies where a tree is removed after a section 211 notice or in contravention of the provisions.

Replace like with like in canopy terms where you can. A semi-mature replacement does not replace a veteran, and where the loss is substantial the council may look for several trees or for a contribution to planting elsewhere. A Landscape Strategy showing species, sizes, positions and an establishment maintenance period is what gets a replanting condition discharged.

Penalties for unauthorised works

Cutting down, uprooting or wilfully destroying a protected tree without consent is a criminal offence, and the courts can impose a substantial fine. Lesser damage, such as unauthorised lopping, is also an offence.

Prosecutions do happen, and councils take them more seriously where the tree was removed to enable development. The replanting duty runs alongside the penalty, so the outcome is a fine and a requirement to replant.

The practical advice is dull and effective. Check the position in writing before any work. Get the answer from the tree officer by email. And tell your contractor in writing what is protected, because the contractor who cuts the tree commits the offence alongside whoever instructed them.

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.