Trees overhanging a highway and the council's notice powers

If a tree or hedge on your land overhangs a road or footway so that it endangers or obstructs people using it, the highway authority can serve a notice under section 154 of the Highways Act 1980 requiring you to cut it back, and the usual compliance period is 14 days. Ignore a tree overhanging highway notice and the council can do the work itself and send you the bill. The power applies to hedges and shrubs as well as trees, and it covers obstruction of the view of drivers and of the light from a street lamp.

None of that depends on planning permission. It is highways law, and it runs in parallel with tree protection.

The duty on an owner to keep growth clear

The obligation is reactive rather than a standing duty to prune. Section 154 bites where growth from land next to the highway overhangs it in a way that endangers or obstructs passage, or interferes with a driver's view, or blocks light from a public lamp. Until the authority forms that view and serves notice, there is nothing to comply with.

But a limb that fails onto a footway can expose the owner to a civil claim quite separately, and the standard applied there is whether a reasonable owner would have inspected the tree and acted on what an inspection would have shown. Those two exposures pull in the same direction: inspect, record, and deal with the obvious.

Highway land itself is a different matter. A tree on the verge usually belongs to the highway authority, and the boundary between verge and garden is not always where the fence sits.

Notice powers and the period for compliance

A section 154 notice names the land, identifies the growth and specifies the work. The recipient is the owner or occupier.

Fourteen days is the usual period in a section 154(1) notice. It is short, and arborists in a town are often booked weeks ahead in late summer, so phone the officer named on the notice and agree a date rather than letting the period lapse in silence. Authorities are generally pragmatic where the owner is engaging and inflexible where they are not.

Dangerous trees adjoining a highway

The second limb deals with the tree that is going to fall rather than the one that is in the way. A notice under it can require removal or treatment of a tree that is dead, diseased, damaged or insecurely rooted where it is likely to cause danger by falling.

Condition is assessed by someone competent, and the owner is entitled to put forward their own evidence. A tree with a bracket fungus at the base and a lean towards the carriageway will not survive that argument. A tree with deadwood in the upper crown and a sound stem usually should, with a reduction rather than removal.

Where the tree is near a boundary and you are not sure who owns it, resolve that before you commission anything, because cutting a neighbour's tree beyond the boundary line is trespass. The common law right to abate a nuisance lets you cut overhanging growth back to the boundary, and the cuttings belong to the tree's owner, so they should be offered back.

Where the tree is protected by an Order

A notice and an Order can apply to the same tree, and the law resolves the conflict in favour of compliance. Works carried out in compliance with an obligation imposed by or under an Act of Parliament fall outside the Order's control, so cutting required by a section 154 notice does not need separate consent from the local planning authority.

Do not treat that as a general licence. The exemption covers what the notice requires and no more, so a notice asking for clearance over the footway does not authorise felling. Keep the notice with your records as evidence of why the work was done, and tell the authority's tree officer what you are doing, which avoids an enforcement letter arriving a fortnight later.

Conservation area trees are handled the same way, and the six week notification duty is displaced to the same extent. Bats and nesting birds are not displaced at all, and the breeding season runs through the months when overhanging growth is most noticeable. Where features suggest a roost, the Bat Survey page explains when an assessment is needed before cutting.

Works in default and recovering the cost

Where the notice is not complied with, the authority can carry out the work and recover its reasonable expenses from the person on whom the notice was served. The sums are not trivial, because the authority is paying a contractor at short notice with traffic management on a public road.

Illustrative example: a leylandii hedge along a footway outside a 1960s semi, grown out to 1.2m over the surface so pedestrians step into the carriageway. The owner receives a 14 day notice, does nothing, and the authority arranges the cut with two operatives, a chipper and a footway closure. The invoice reflects all of that, including the traffic management, and it is recoverable as a debt.

Visibility at junctions and accesses

Obstruction of sight lines is where most notices originate, usually after a complaint or a near miss. Hedges at the mouth of a junction and at private accesses are the common culprits.

Where a visibility splay was secured by a planning condition when the access was approved, that condition usually requires the splay to be kept clear of anything above about 0.6m in perpetuity. A hedge that has grown through it is a breach of condition as well as a potential highways matter, and the planning enforcement route sits behind the highways one. On a corner plot, section 79 gives the authority a power aimed specifically at obstructions to the view at bends and junctions, which can extend to requiring a boundary feature to be altered.

Winter is the sensible time to assess growth against a splay, though a bare hedge hides how far it will push out in July. Our note on the winter inspection limits on a tree survey covers the same seasonal blind spots.

Appealing or disputing a notice

A section 154 notice carries a right of appeal to the magistrates' court, exercised within the period the notice states. Grounds include that the growth does not endanger or obstruct, that the work required goes beyond what is needed, and that the notice is served on the wrong person.

Before appealing, write to the officer with an arboricultural opinion and a proposed specification. Most disputes settle at that stage, because the authority wants the hazard dealt with and does not care greatly about the method. Keep everything in writing and keep the dates, since an appeal runs on a short clock.

Keeping a maintenance record

1. Walk the boundary twice a year, in full leaf and in winter, and photograph anything overhanging the highway.
2. Note the dates and findings in a simple log, with the name of anyone who inspected the trees for you.
3. Commission a condition inspection for mature trees within falling distance of a road or footway, at an interval your arboriculturist recommends.
4. Keep invoices and specifications for every pruning visit.
5. Record which trees are protected and which sit in a conservation area.
6. Keep any planning conditions relating to visibility splays with the property papers.

Where development is proposed and trees are involved, the council expects a survey to BS 5837:2012, and our Tree Survey page sets out what that covers and who should prepare it. You can also enter the postcode on PlanScope to see which supporting documents a scheme is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Notice periods, appeal rights and cost recovery are set by the Highways Act 1980, so read the notice and take advice before relying on this.

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