Trees & Planning: Tree Preservation Orders, Conservation Areas & Tree Work

A local planning authority can make a Tree Preservation Order to protect trees or woodlands if it is expedient in the interests of amenity. An order can apply to any species. A tree is not protected because it is an oak, or any other species, and a tree without an order is not automatically unrestricted.

Where an order applies, cutting down, topping, lopping, uprooting, or wilful damage or destruction generally needs the authority's consent. Whether that applies to a particular tree, and whether an exemption applies, depends on the order and the circumstances. This page does not decide that for a property.

Trees in a conservation area can be subject to additional controls even where no Tree Preservation Order has been identified. For some works, the person proposing the work must give the local planning authority notice. That does not mean every tree in a conservation area is automatically protected, or that notice is required for every kind of work. Exemptions exist, including for some small trees and for some dead or dangerous trees, and those exemptions have conditions.

Pruning, lopping, topping and coppicing can all be tree work that an order or a conservation-area control covers, depending on the tree and the work. Routine gardening is not a general exemption. If you are unsure whether the work is covered, check with the local planning authority before you start.

A felling licence, administered by the Forestry Commission, is a separate control from a Tree Preservation Order or conservation-area tree notice. Some felling needs a licence even where no order applies, and some felling is exempt. Having consent under an order does not by itself answer the licence question, and a licence does not by itself answer the order question.

There are exceptions for some work to dead trees, and for work that is urgently necessary to remove a risk of serious harm. Those exceptions are limited. Where they apply, the authority often still has to be told, and the person doing the work may need to be able to show why the exception applied. This page cannot say whether a particular tree is dead or dangerous.

Ancient woodland, and ancient or veteran trees, are treated as irreplaceable habitat in national planning policy. That is not the same thing as a Tree Preservation Order, and it is not decided by species. Development that could affect them needs particular consideration. Verilio can show whether ancient woodland was identified in the Planning Data checked for a property. It does not survey trees on the ground.

A planning application can be affected by trees even when the proposal is not itself tree work. The authority may ask how trees would be retained or protected during building. That is separate from whether consent is needed to cut a particular tree.

Property & Planning Research checks the Planning Data available to Verilio at the property point. That can include a tree protection zone, an individual tree record, ancient woodland, and whether the property is in a conservation area. It also looks at planning history that appears to relate to tree works.

That check does not retrieve the Tree Preservation Order document, does not decide whether a particular operation is lawful, and does not prove that trees are unprotected when nothing is identified. Coverage in Planning Data is incomplete.

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