Woodland felling licences and when planning is not enough

Planning permission is not permission to fell. The two regimes sit side by side, and the exemption that links them is narrower than almost every landowner assumes: felling is exempt where it is immediately required to carry out development authorised by a planning permission. Not where permission exists. Not where an application is being prepared. Immediately required, to carry out works that are actually about to happen. Anyone looking at a felling licence woodland question on a site with a permission should start there.

The consequence is blunt. Clearing a woodland belt in February for a scheme that starts on site in September is unlawful felling, permission or not, and the Forestry Commission can act on it.

When a licence is needed

The Forestry Act 1967 restricts the felling of growing trees without a licence. The restriction applies to felling, not to pruning or crown work, and it applies regardless of whether the trees are in a formally managed woodland.

Exemptions do the heavy lifting, and they fall into several groups:

• Trees in gardens, orchards, churchyards and designated public open spaces.
• Trees below the size thresholds set in the regulations, measured as diameter at breast height, with different thresholds for thinnings and for coppice or underwood.
• Felling within the permitted volume in a calendar quarter, with a lower limit on the volume that may be sold.
• Dead trees, and trees that are dangerous or causing a nuisance, subject to the conditions attached to those exemptions.
• Felling required to comply with an Act of Parliament or carried out by particular bodies under their own statutory powers.
• Felling immediately required to carry out development authorised by planning permission.

Read the current regulations for the figures rather than relying on a number someone quoted on site. The volume exemption in particular is counted by calendar quarter, which catches out landowners who treat it as an annual allowance.

The planning exemption, read properly

The wording is the whole issue. Felling has to be immediately required for the purpose of carrying out the development.

An outline permission with reserved matters still to be approved does not authorise development in any meaningful sense, so clearance under it is exposed. A full permission where the contractor is not appointed and no start date exists is nearly as exposed. And clearance of trees outside the footprint of the authorised works, tidying up a boundary while the machines are there, is not covered at all.

This is the same trap described in clearing a site before the application goes in, with an additional regulator attached. Where an ecological or arboricultural constraint is inconvenient, felling early looks tempting and is close to the worst decision available.

The practical answer is sequencing. Get a tree survey done to the current standard, establish which trees are coming out and when, then confirm with the Forestry Commission whether the exemption applies to that programme before anything is cut.

Tree Preservation Orders and conservation areas

Three regimes can bite on the same tree, and knowing which one applies matters.

A Tree Preservation Order protects named trees, groups or woodlands and requires the local planning authority's consent for works. In a conservation area, undesignated trees above the size threshold require notice to the authority before work, giving it a period in which to make an Order.

Where a felling licence is required, the licence application is the route, and the Forestry Commission consults the local planning authority rather than the applicant making a separate Order application. Where the works fall within a felling exemption but the trees carry an Order, the Order application is the route. The overlap is easy to misjudge, and the consequences of getting it wrong are set out in the penalties for damaging a protected tree.

Ask both bodies in writing. A short email exchange confirming which consent applies is worth keeping on file for years.

Ancient woodland

Ancient woodland is land that has been continuously wooded since 1600, and national planning policy treats it as irreplaceable habitat whose loss should be resisted other than in the very limited circumstances the Framework allows, and then only with a suitable compensation strategy.

That policy sits alongside the forestry regime rather than inside it. A licence application affecting ancient woodland will be examined closely, and any approval is likely to be tied to restoration objectives rather than to conversion of the land to another use. Plantations on ancient woodland sites are a live category here, where restoration to native species is generally the expected direction.

Buffer zones matter too. Development adjoining ancient woodland is normally expected to keep a meaningful separation, and the design of that buffer belongs in a landscape strategy rather than being left as residual space.

Restocking, notices and enforcement

Felling without a licence is a criminal offence. Beyond prosecution, the more consequential remedy is a restocking notice requiring the land to be replanted and the trees maintained for a stated period.

Two features of that notice matter commercially. It runs with the land, so a purchaser inherits the obligation, which is why a careful buyer asks about felling history. And it can require restocking of land the owner intended to develop, which may be entirely incompatible with the scheme that prompted the felling in the first place.

Licences themselves usually carry conditions, commonly to restock and to maintain the restocking for a period, with the detail set by the approved plan.

Applying, and the timescale

Applications go to the Forestry Commission, and the process includes a period during which the application is publicly available and consultees, including the local planning authority and the relevant conservation bodies, can comment.

Allow months rather than weeks. Check the current service standard rather than assuming, and remember that a determination period running through a survey season can push the felling window into the following year.

Bird nesting is the other calendar constraint, and it is not a licensing matter at all. It is an offence to damage or destroy the nest of a wild bird while it is in use or being built, which in practice keeps heavy felling out of the main nesting season unless a check has been carried out by someone competent immediately beforehand. Build that into the programme alongside the licence period rather than treating it as a site decision on the day.

Where woodland is being managed on an ongoing basis, an approved woodland management plan prepared to the UK Forestry Standard is usually the better instrument than repeated individual applications, because it can cover planned felling across a longer period.

One further consent to check. Projects involving the conversion of woodland to another use can engage separate environmental assessment requirements administered by the Forestry Commission, which is a different application again.

You can check the designations over the woodland with the postcode on PlanScope before deciding which consents your programme needs.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority, the Forestry Commission 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.