Tree surveys where a high hedge complaint is live

A high hedge complaint runs under Part 8 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, and it is a council complaint rather than a planning application. If your neighbour's leylandii has taken the light from your kitchen, you do not apply for anything and there is no planning route. You complain to the council, it charges a fee, and if the complaint succeeds it issues a remedial notice requiring the hedge to be cut back and kept cut back.

The procedure is narrower than most people expect, and a tree survey has a specific and limited role in it.

What the high hedge procedure covers

Four conditions all have to be met before the council can consider a complaint at all.

The hedge must be formed wholly or predominantly by a line of two or more trees or shrubs. A single tree, however large, is outside the procedure entirely.

It must be evergreen or semi-evergreen. A beech hedge that holds brown leaves through winter may qualify as semi-evergreen. A deciduous hedge that loses its leaves does not.

It must rise more than two metres above ground level.

And it must act as a barrier to light or access, to the extent that it adversely affects the reasonable enjoyment of a domestic property.

Gaps matter less than people assume. A hedge with breaks in it can still qualify if it would still be a barrier to light or access were the gaps filled by growth. Roots, falling leaves, overhanging branches, loss of a view and interference with television or satellite reception are all outside the procedure.

The tests the council applies

The council must first be satisfied that you have taken all reasonable steps to resolve the matter yourself. Write to your neighbour, keep the letter, and allow a reasonable time for a reply. Councils reject complaints at this stage routinely.

There is a fee, set by each council and payable when the complaint is made. It is not usually refunded if the complaint fails.

The council then decides whether the hedge is adversely affecting the reasonable enjoyment of your property, weighing your amenity against the hedge owner's and against the wider amenity of the area. Government guidance on high hedges sets out the approach, including a method for working out a reasonable hedge height based on the distance between the hedge and the affected windows and the orientation of the property.

Two limits on the outcome. A remedial notice cannot require the hedge to be removed. And it cannot require it to be reduced below two metres above ground level. If what you want is removal, the procedure cannot give it to you.

Evergreen hedges against individual trees

This distinction decides which route you are on, and getting it wrong wastes the fee.

A line of two or more evergreens over two metres is a high hedge matter. A single mature tree, a line of deciduous trees, or a mixed group where the evergreen element is not predominant falls outside it.

For an individual tree, the remedies are different and mostly civil. Branches overhanging your boundary may be cut back to the boundary line at your own cost, with the arisings offered back to the owner, subject to any tree protection. Damage caused by roots is a matter of nuisance between the parties. A dangerous tree can be dealt with by the council under separate powers relating to dangerous structures and trees.

Where the concern is structural damage to your house rather than light, the position is different again and is covered in trees and subsidence claims on neighbouring property.

Where tree protection overrides the complaint

Protection does not disappear because a high hedge complaint has been made.

If the hedge or any tree in it is covered by a Tree Preservation Order, works still require consent from the local planning authority under the tree regulations. If it stands in a conservation area, works to trees over 75mm in diameter still need six weeks written notice. The council will take existing protection into account when deciding what a remedial notice should require, and a notice will not require work that could not lawfully be carried out.

In practice this means a protected hedge complaint takes longer and produces a more modest outcome. It also means the hedge owner has a second route to resist, because they can argue the protection case separately from the amenity case.

If you are the hedge owner and you want the protection question settled, do it before the remedial notice is drafted rather than afterwards. The consent route is set out in the tree preservation guidance, and where the volume of material is substantial a felling licence may also be relevant, as woodland felling licences and when planning is not enough explains.

Evidence that helps either side

A formal tree survey is not required and will not usually change the outcome on its own. What helps is evidence directed at the specific tests.

• Photographs of the hedge from the affected windows, dated, in more than one season.
• Measurements of the hedge height above ground level at several points, with the ground level stated, since sloping ground changes the answer.
• The distance from the hedge to each affected window, measured rather than scaled.
• The orientation of the affected windows, because a hedge to the south takes more light than one to the north.
• Copies of correspondence with the neighbour and the dates.

A tree survey and arboricultural assessment becomes worth commissioning in two situations. Where the hedge is protected and the argument is about what work the trees can tolerate. And where the hedge owner wants to show that the reduction sought would damage or destroy the trees, which is a point the council can weigh.

For the hedge owner, a specification written by an arboriculturist is worth more than a general objection. Reduction of a mature conifer hedge below the green growth will not regenerate on most species, and saying so with a species-specific explanation is a real argument. Getting the specification right matters for whoever carries out the work, and the principles are in writing pruning specifications properly.

Remedial notices and what they do

If the complaint succeeds, the council issues a remedial notice on the hedge owner and every occupier. It states what work must be done, the period for doing it, and any preventative action required afterwards to keep the hedge at the stated height.

The notice runs with the land. A new owner inherits it. It is registered as a local land charge, so it appears on searches when the property is sold.

Either party may appeal to the Secretary of State, and the appeal must be made within 28 days of the notice being issued. Appeals are decided by the Planning Inspectorate, usually on written representations.

Failure to comply with a remedial notice is an offence and can lead to a fine, and the council can enter the land, carry out the work and recover the cost.

When the planning route is the wrong one

People arrive at this expecting planning to help, and it usually cannot.

Planting a hedge is not development and needs no permission, whatever its eventual height. Growing a hedge is not development either. Height restrictions on hedges do not appear in permitted development rights, which deal with walls, fences and gates rather than vegetation. A planning condition on a nearby development may control landscaping, but that binds the development it was attached to rather than a neighbour's garden.

The exception is where the hedge was planted as part of an approved landscaping scheme and the condition specified its management. Then the council's enforcement team has a route, and that is worth checking on the planning register before paying the high hedge fee.

For anything else, the Part 8 procedure is the mechanism, and its limits are deliberate. The legislation was written to deal with the barrier to light, not to give neighbours a power to have hedges removed.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.