Tree Preservation Orders: what is protected and how

A Tree Preservation Order makes it an offence to cut down, top, lop, uproot, wilfully damage or wilfully destroy a protected tree without the council's written consent. Orders are made under section 198 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and run under the Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation) (England) Regulations 2012. They can cover a single tree, a group, an area or a whole woodland, and they attach to the land rather than to whoever happens to own it.

What they cannot cover is a hedge, a bush or a shrub. That surprises people who assume a mature boundary hedge is protected, and it matters when a neighbour objects to its removal.

What an order can cover and how one is made

Four classifications exist. Individual trees are listed separately with a number and a species. Groups protect a defined collection where the value lies in their combined effect. Area orders protect all the trees of a specified kind within a mapped area at the date the order was made, which is a snapshot rather than a rolling protection. Woodland orders protect all trees within the woodland, including those that grow up later.

Area classifications are a historic device that councils are now discouraged from using, because they age badly. If your order is an area one made decades ago, the trees protected are the ones that were there on the day it was made, and establishing which those were can require aerial photography.

An order is made by the local planning authority where it appears expedient in the interests of amenity. Amenity is not defined in the Act, and in practice authorities assess visibility from public vantage points, the condition and life expectancy of the tree, and whether it makes a real contribution to the character of the area.

Provisional orders and the confirmation period

An order can be given immediate provisional effect on the day it is made, under section 201, which is how councils stop a felling that is about to happen. The protection then runs for up to six months.

Within that window the authority has to confirm the order, with or without modification, or it lapses. Anyone served with the order, and anyone else with an interest, has at least 28 days to object or comment, and the authority must consider objections before confirming.

An objection is worth making properly. The strongest ones are not "I do not want this tree protected" but evidence about the tree itself: a report from an arboriculturist on its condition, its structural defects, its proximity to foundations or drains, and the practical management that protection would prevent. Councils do modify orders at confirmation, most often to take out a tree that should never have been included.

Applying for consent and the determination period

Consent applications are made to the council on the standard form, free of charge, and the authority has eight weeks to decide. Refusal, conditions or non-determination all give a right of appeal to the Secretary of State, handled by the Planning Inspectorate.

Write the application as a tree surgeon would specify the work, not as a homeowner would describe it. "Reduce crown by up to 2 metres, thin by 15 per cent, remove deadwood, to current arboricultural practice" tells the tree officer what is proposed. "Cut the tree back" does not, and it will either be refused or granted in a form you did not want.

Where the work is driven by damage or risk, send the evidence with the application. Photographs of the lifted paving, the engineer's note on the foundations, or the arboricultural report on the decay pocket will carry the decision. A Tree Survey to BS 5837:2012 is the right document where the trees relate to a development proposal rather than to maintenance, because it sets out root protection areas and categorises each tree for retention.

Exemptions, including dead and dangerous trees

The 2012 Regulations narrowed the old exemption. The wording most people remember, dead, dying or dangerous, is no longer the test.

What is exempt now includes cutting down a tree that is dead, removing dead branches from a living tree, and works urgently necessary to remove an immediate risk of serious harm. A dying tree is not exempt on that basis alone. Other exemptions cover work required to implement a full planning permission, work by statutory undertakers, fruit trees cultivated for fruit production in the course of a business or trade, and work to abate a nuisance in the legal sense rather than the everyday one.

Notice requirements attach to the main exemptions. Five working days' written notice to the authority is required before cutting down a dead tree, except where the work is urgently necessary, in which case notice is given as soon as practicable afterwards.

The burden of proving an exemption sits with whoever relied on it. Photograph the tree before the work, keep the arboriculturist's written opinion, and send the notice even when you are confident, because it costs nothing and removes the argument entirely.

The duty to replace

Section 206 imposes a duty to plant a replacement tree of an appropriate size and species, at the same place, as soon as reasonably practicable. The duty arises where a protected tree is removed in contravention of the order and also where it is removed under the dead or dangerous exemptions.

That second limb catches people out. Felling a dead protected tree lawfully does not end the matter, because the replacement duty still applies unless the authority dispenses with it.

The duty runs with the land, so a purchaser inherits it. Enforcement is by a tree replacement notice under section 207, which the authority may serve within four years of the failure to plant, and which is appealable to the Secretary of State.

Penalties for unauthorised works

For cutting down, uprooting or wilfully destroying a protected tree, or damaging it in a manner likely to destroy it, the offence is prosecuted in the magistrates' court and the fine is unlimited. The court is directed to have regard in particular to any financial benefit that has accrued or is likely to accrue from the offence, which is how development value finds its way into the sentence.

Other contraventions, such as topping or lopping without consent, carry a lower maximum penalty on the standard scale.

Prosecutions happen. They tend to follow the cases where the tree stood in the way of a scheme, and the replacement duty and a tree replacement notice usually follow the conviction rather than replacing it.

Checking whether a tree is protected

Three checks, in order, before anyone touches anything.

1. The council's own tree preservation order register or map, which is usually searchable by address and is the authoritative local record.
2. The national tree preservation order and tree preservation zone datasets published on planning.data.gov.uk, useful for a quick look and only as current as the authority's return.
3. The local land charges search on a purchase, which is what you can actually rely on.

Then check the conservation area position separately, because it is a different regime with a different trigger. In a conservation area, six weeks' written notice must be given to the authority before works to a tree with a stem diameter exceeding 75 millimetres measured at 1.5 metres above ground, or 100 millimetres where the work is thinning to help the growth of other trees. During those six weeks the council can make an order, and often does.

Trees near a proposed extension need the survey work before the drawings are fixed, not after. Two related notes cover neighbouring consent regimes that run alongside planning in the same way: common land, village greens and section 38 consent and the duty on decision makers in National Landscapes.

Browse all 66 report types to see which documents a scheme affecting protected trees usually needs. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.

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