Woodland creation, felling licences and planning permission

Planting trees on agricultural land is not usually development, so it needs no planning permission. Felling them almost always needs a felling licence from the Forestry Commission under the Forestry Act 1967. Two separate regulators, two separate consents, and an owner who assumes the council controls both will either apply to the wrong body or fell without cover and face a restocking notice.

The overlap is narrow but it matters. Access tracks, buildings, deer fencing and anything on best and most versatile land can pull a woodland scheme back into the planning system.

When a felling licence is required

A licence is needed to fell growing trees, and the duty sits on whoever fells them. Application is to the Forestry Commission, which consults the local authority, the county archaeologist and other bodies depending on the site, and decisions take time, so plan around a lead-in of several months rather than weeks.

A licence granted for a defined felling operation usually comes with a restocking condition. That condition binds successors in title, so a buyer who takes on recently felled land inherits the obligation to replant and maintain, and the obligation is registered as a local land charge.

Felling without a licence where one was needed is an offence, and the Commission can serve a restocking notice requiring replanting at the owner's cost. The notice can be appealed to the Secretary of State, but the appeal is on the terms of the notice rather than on whether a licence was needed, so the point to argue is timing and species, not liability.

Exemptions and the quarterly allowance

Several exemptions run alongside the licence requirement, and the practical ones for a farm are straightforward.

• Trees in a garden, orchard, churchyard or public open space.
• Trees below 8 centimetres in diameter measured 1.3 metres from the ground, 10 centimetres for thinnings and 15 centimetres for coppice or underwood.
• Up to five cubic metres in any calendar quarter, of which no more than two cubic metres may be sold.
• Felling that is necessary to implement a planning permission granted under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
• Felling carried out under an approved forest plan or felling licence already in place.

That last planning exemption is the one that catches people out in the other direction. A permission for a farm building does not authorise clearing an unrelated block of woodland at the other end of the holding, and the exemption reaches only as far as the permitted works require.

A felling licence does not override a Tree Preservation Order or the notice requirements for trees in a conservation area. Where both regimes apply, the Commission and the council coordinate, but you should confirm the position with the tree officer rather than assume the licence covers everything. The survey work behind that conversation is the same Tree Survey that a development scheme would need.

Forestry environmental impact assessment consent

Afforestation, deforestation, forest roads and forest quarries can require EIA consent from the Forestry Commission under the Environmental Impact Assessment (Forestry) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999. This is a separate process from planning EIA and from the felling licence.

Area and length thresholds trigger the need for an opinion, and they are lower in sensitive areas such as National Parks, National Landscapes, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and scheduled monuments. The thresholds are revised from time to time, so take the current figures from the Forestry Commission before you commit to a planting area.

The process begins with a request for an opinion on whether consent is needed. Get that opinion in writing early, because a planting scheme that turns out to require consent after grant funding has been agreed loses a planting season.

How the two systems differ

One more difference is worth holding onto. A felling licence lasts for a defined period and covers a defined operation, while a planning permission lapses if it is not implemented within three years and then runs with the land indefinitely once begun. Programming a scheme that needs both means working to two clocks.

Planting itself is not an engineering or building operation and does not change the use of agricultural land in planning terms, so it falls outside section 55. What does fall inside it is the infrastructure: a new field access onto a classified road, a timber store, hardstanding, or a change of use to commercial recreation once the wood is established.

Woodland creation on the better land

National policy protects best and most versatile agricultural land, meaning grades 1, 2 and 3a, and expects poorer land to be used in preference where significant development of agricultural land is shown to be necessary. Grant schemes for woodland creation apply their own restrictions on planting the better grades.

The published Natural England mapping is provisional and drawn at a scale too coarse for a field. Where the grade matters to a grant application or to a related planning case, a site-specific Agricultural Land Classification survey by a soil scientist is the evidence that carries weight, and it needs to be done when the soil is neither frozen nor waterlogged.

Where woodland is proposed at the edge of a holding, the character question overlaps with the work described in landscape and visual evidence for a countryside application.

Biodiversity units and the funding question

New woodland can generate biodiversity units for the statutory metric, and landowners increasingly plant with that market in mind rather than for timber. Registering a gain site brings a 30-year management commitment, a legal agreement or conservation covenant, and entry on the biodiversity gain site register.

Two cautions. Units cannot be claimed for habitat that was going to be created anyway under a separate obligation, and the rules on combining public grant funding with private unit sales change as Defra refines them. Check the current guidance before pricing a scheme, and expect the local planning authority to ask how additionality has been demonstrated.

Tracks, fencing and operational buildings

Forestry operations carry their own permitted development rights. Part 6 of Schedule 2 to the GPDO allows buildings and private ways on land used for forestry, subject to prior approval for siting, design and external appearance, and subject to limits that the local authority will check. Anything falling outside those limits needs a full application, and the access question is the one highway officers look at hardest, as set out in farm tracks and new accesses.

Deer fencing is normally within the two metre allowance for means of enclosure away from a highway, but a gate or fence adjoining a road is limited to one metre. Where a block of new planting adjoins the curtilage of a dwelling, the boundary question raised in extending a curtilage in the countryside is worth settling before the fence line is set out.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with the Forestry Commission, 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.