Tree Preservation Order registers and how to check them

To check a Tree Preservation Order you need two documents, not one: the order itself and the map that goes with it. Every local planning authority has to keep copies of its orders available for public inspection free of charge under the Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation) (England) Regulations 2012, and most publish a searchable map online. The map tells you whether a tree is covered. The order tells you how.

Get both before instructing a contractor, because the designation type changes what you can and cannot do without consent.

Where the registers are published

Start with the council's own planning constraints map. Most authorities carry a layer for Tree Preservation Orders, usually alongside conservation areas and listed buildings, and clicking a tree or a polygon returns the order reference and date.

The national dataset at planning.data.gov.uk holds tree preservation order and tree preservation zone data where councils have published it. Coverage is partial and depends on the authority, so a negative result there means nothing on its own. Use it to cross-check a positive result rather than to clear a site.

Where the online map is ambiguous, or the tree sits on a boundary between two polygons, ask the tree officer for a copy of the order and the sealed map. Authorities are obliged to make them available, and the sealed map is the legal record. A GIS layer is a convenience copy and occasionally wrong by a few metres, which matters when the tree in question is the one on the line.

Reading an order and its schedule

The order follows a standard form set out in the 2012 Regulations. It names the authority, carries a date, and refers to a schedule and a map.

The schedule is where the detail is. Trees are listed by reference against four classifications, and each behaves differently:

• Individual trees, numbered T1, T2 and so on, with a species for each. Only the specific tree at that location is protected.
• Groups, numbered G1 and so on, protecting a stated number of trees of stated species as a group. The group is protected collectively, which matters when one member dies.
• Woodlands, numbered W1 and so on, protecting all trees within the defined area including those that grow there after the order was made. This is the broadest classification.
• Areas, numbered A1 and so on, protecting all the trees of whatever species that stood within the defined boundary at the date of the order. Trees that grew up afterwards are not covered.

The area classification is the source of most confusion. National guidance discourages its use for new orders and treats it as a temporary measure, because establishing which trees existed on a date decades ago is difficult for everyone involved. If a site carries an area order from the 1970s, historic aerial photography is usually the deciding evidence.

Check the date on the order as carefully as the map. Orders made before 2012 remain valid under the earlier forms, and some were varied or partly revoked later without the online layer being updated.

New orders, provisional effect and objections

An authority makes an order under section 198 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and can direct that it takes effect provisionally from the date it is made, for a period of up to six months, while it decides whether to confirm it. That provisional effect is immediate, which is why a tree can go from unprotected to protected overnight once an application draws attention to it.

Notice of a new order goes to the owner and occupier and to anyone else the authority thinks appropriate, with at least 28 days to object or make representations. The authority must consider objections before confirming, and it can confirm with or without modifications.

Objecting to a new order on the basis that you want to fell the tree rarely succeeds. Objecting on the basis that the tree has structural defects, is the wrong species in the wrong place, or is suppressing a better specimen, supported by an arboricultural report, sometimes does.

The six week notice for conservation area trees

Trees in a conservation area that are not already covered by an order have their own regime. Section 211 of the 1990 Act requires six weeks written notice to the authority before cutting down, topping, lopping, uprooting or wilfully damaging a tree whose trunk exceeds 75 mm in diameter measured 1.5 m above the ground. The threshold rises to 100 mm where the work is thinning to help other trees grow.

During the six weeks the authority can make an order. If it does nothing, the work can go ahead at any point within two years of the notice. Carrying out the work without serving the notice is an offence in its own terms.

The practical sequence for a householder in a conservation area is to serve the notice, wait, and then act. Serving it and starting work three weeks later is the single commonest way people end up in correspondence with an enforcement officer, and the way those cases are handled is set out in the note on council enforcement priorities and complaints.

Applying for consent

Consent for works to a protected tree is applied for on the authority's form, with a plan showing which tree and a description of the work in arboricultural terms. "Reduce by a third" is not a specification. A crown reduction expressed as a reduction in branch length, by aspect, with a statement of the intended final shape, is.

The authority has eight weeks to decide. No decision within that period counts as a refusal, which gives a right of appeal, and an appeal against a refusal or a condition must be made to the Secretary of State within 28 days of the decision notice.

Where the application supports a development proposal, the stronger route is usually to deal with the trees inside the planning application rather than separately. A tree survey to BS 5837:2012 with an impact assessment and a method statement answers the tree officer's questions and the case officer's at the same time, and where replacement planting is proposed a Landscape Strategy shows what the site will look like in fifteen years rather than next spring.

Note: consent granted under an order does not authorise works that need permission for some other reason, and a planning permission does not by itself authorise works to a protected tree unless the permission covers them.

Exemptions, and why they are riskier than they look

The 2012 Regulations exempt certain works, including trees that are dead, the removal of dead branches from a living tree, work necessary to abate a legal nuisance, and work required to implement a full planning permission. For dead or dangerous trees, five working days notice to the authority is required before the work, except in an emergency where notice must be given as soon as practicable afterwards.

Three things make this riskier than the wording suggests. The burden of proving the exemption applies falls on whoever did the work. "Dangerous" means presenting an immediate risk of harm, not merely large or leaning. And where a tree is removed under the dead or dangerous exemption, section 206 of the 1990 Act imposes a duty to plant a replacement of appropriate size and species at the same place as soon as reasonably possible.

Photograph the tree before the work, from several angles, with a scale in shot. Get a written assessment from an arboriculturist. Both cost less than the alternative.

What happens when an order is breached

Cutting down, uprooting or wilfully destroying a protected tree, or damaging it in a way likely to destroy it, is an offence under section 210 of the 1990 Act, carrying an unlimited fine on summary conviction. The court is directed to have regard to any financial benefit that has accrued or is likely to accrue from the offence, which is aimed squarely at trees removed to clear a development site.

The authority can also serve a tree replacement notice under section 207 requiring a replacement to be planted, generally within four years of the failure to comply with the replanting duty. And the duty to replant attaches to the land, so a buyer can inherit it.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. To see which documents a scheme affecting trees is likely to need, enter your postcode on PlanScope. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.