Tree preservation orders explained: the guide you can send to customers.

September 2026 · 11 min read · By TreeLine Marketing Agency

Every tree surgeon has had the conversation. A customer wants a tree reduced or taken out, you spot that it might be protected, and the job stalls while everyone works out what the rules are. This page is written so you don't have to explain it from scratch every time. Send the link to the customer, and use the second half yourself.

It covers England. Scotland and Wales run similar systems with their own regulations and notice arrangements, so check with the relevant council or Scottish Forestry and Natural Resources Wales before relying on any of the detail below. None of this is legal advice. When a specific tree and a specific council are involved, the tree officer's written answer is what counts.

What a Tree Preservation Order actually is

A Tree Preservation Order (TPO) is made by the local planning authority, usually the district, borough or unitary council, under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. It can cover a single tree, a group of trees, all the trees in a defined area, or a woodland. Councils make them to protect trees that contribute to the look of a place, typically when there's a risk they'll be felled, for example when land is about to be developed or sold.

Once an order is in place, the government's guidance and the 2012 regulations are clear on what it stops. Without the council's written consent, nobody may cut down, top, lop, uproot, wilfully damage or wilfully destroy the tree. That includes the roots. It doesn't matter who owns the tree or who ordered the work. The order sticks to the tree, not the owner, so it survives a house sale.

A TPO doesn't mean the tree can never be touched. It means the council decides. Sensible work on a protected tree gets approved all the time; the paperwork is the point.

How to check whether a tree has a TPO

There's no national register you can type a postcode into. TPOs are held by each council, so the check is local:

• The council's planning pages. Most councils publish a TPO map or a searchable list. Search for the council name plus “tree preservation order map”.
• The tree officer. Ring or email the council's arboricultural or tree officer with the address and a description of the tree. Ask for the answer in writing and keep it with the job file.
• The conveyancing search. Anyone who has bought a house has had a local authority search done. It flags TPOs and conservation areas. The seller's paperwork often has it.
• The site itself. A protected tree looks exactly like an unprotected one. Nothing on the tree tells you. Assume nothing.

Check the conservation area position at the same time, because a tree with no TPO can still be covered by the six-week rule below.

Applying for consent to work on a protected tree

Applications go to the local planning authority on the standard form, and there's no fee. The council then has 8 weeks from receiving a valid application to decide it. Consent, once granted, normally lasts 2 years unless the decision says otherwise. If the council refuses, adds conditions you object to, or simply doesn't decide within the 8 weeks, you can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. The decision notice states the deadline for doing so.

What separates a quick approval from a long argument is the quality of the application:

• Describe the work in industry terms, not in outcomes. “Crown reduce by up to 2 metres to leave a balanced crown of approximately 10 metres” is something a tree officer can approve. “Cut it back a lot” is not. Use the language of BS 3998, the British Standard for tree work, because that's the standard the council will hold the work to.
• Give a reason the council can accept. Excessive shading, structural defects, decay, subsidence investigations, clearance from a building. “The customer doesn't like it” won't get a felling approved.
• Attach evidence. Photos, and where a felling is proposed, a report from someone qualified to give one. If subsidence is the reason, the council will expect the engineer's or insurer's evidence.
• Propose replacement planting if you're asking to remove. Councils routinely condition consent on a replacement tree. Offering one up front shortens the conversation.

When you don't need consent

The exceptions are narrower than most people assume, and each comes with its own procedure. The main ones under the 2012 regulations are:

• Dead trees. You must give the council 5 working days' written notice before removing a dead tree. Removing dead branches from a living tree needs no notice.
• Dangerous trees. Where work is urgently necessary to remove an immediate risk of serious harm, you can do the minimum work needed to deal with the risk, and you must give the council written notice as soon as practicable afterwards. Take photographs before you start. “It looked dangerous” is not the same as “there was an immediate risk of serious harm”, and the council is entitled to ask you to prove the difference.
• Commercial fruit trees grown for business, and pruning of fruit trees under good horticultural practice.
• Work needed to implement a full planning permission (outline permission doesn't count).
• Statutory undertakers such as utilities, the highway authority and drainage bodies, for specified works.

One consequence people miss: where a protected tree is removed because it was dead or dangerous, section 206 of the Act puts a duty on the landowner to plant a replacement. The council can serve a tree replacement notice to enforce it. Tell the customer before the tree comes down, not after.

Trees in conservation areas: the six-week rule

Trees inside a conservation area have a lighter form of protection under section 211 of the Act. Instead of applying for consent, you give the council 6 weeks' written notice of the work you intend to do. The council uses that period to decide whether the tree is worth a TPO. If it makes one, you're back to needing consent. If it doesn't respond, or it tells you it has no objection, you can go ahead once the six weeks are up. The council can also agree in writing that the work can start earlier.

If the tree already has a TPO, the conservation area rules don't apply on top; you apply for consent as normal.

Small trees are exempt. Under regulation 15 of the 2012 regulations, no notice is needed to cut down, uproot, top or lop a tree with a trunk diameter of 75mm or less, measured over the bark at 1.5 metres above ground. That rises to 100mm where the tree is being removed to improve the growth of other trees. For a multi-stemmed tree, if any stem is over the threshold at that height, the exemption is lost. The dead and dangerous tree exceptions apply here in the same way as for TPOs.

Two practical notes. First, a section 211 notice is your friend in a busy diary: file it the day you quote, and the job can be booked for week seven with no further paperwork if the council stays quiet. Second, the six weeks don't start until the council receives a proper notice, so send it in writing and keep the proof.

Felling licences: the other permission

TPOs and conservation areas are planning law. Felling licences are forestry law, and they catch people out because they can apply to trees with no TPO at all. In England, the Forestry Act 1967 requires a licence from the Forestry Commission to fell growing trees unless an exemption applies. The government's felling licence guidance sets out the main ones:

• Trees in gardens, orchards, churchyards and public open spaces are exempt. Most domestic work never comes near a felling licence for this reason.
• Small trees are exempt: under 8cm diameter measured at 1.3 metres, under 10cm for thinnings, and under 15cm for coppice.
• You can fell up to 5 cubic metres of timber per calendar quarter without a licence, as long as no more than 2 cubic metres of it is sold.
• Felling to prevent danger or abate a nuisance, and felling immediately required to carry out development that has planning permission, is exempt.
• Lopping, topping and pruning are not felling, so they don't need a licence (though they may still need TPO consent).

Where a felling licence is needed, it's a separate process from TPO consent, and one doesn't replace the other. The situations where both bite are mostly woodland, field boundaries and land being cleared for development. If a customer asks you to take out a stand of trees on a paddock or the edge of a field, stop and check before you quote. Felling without a licence is an offence in its own right.

The penalties, in plain terms

Section 210 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 makes it an offence to cut down, uproot or wilfully destroy a protected tree, or to top, lop or damage it in a way likely to destroy it, in breach of a TPO. Since the cap on magistrates' fines was removed in 2015, the fine is unlimited whether the case is heard in the magistrates' court or the Crown Court, and the court must take into account any financial benefit that came from the offence. A developer who removes a tree to unlock a plot can expect the fine to reflect the value of the plot. Lesser breaches carry a fine of up to level 4 on the standard scale.

The wording that matters for tree surgeons is “causes or permits”. The customer who instructs the work can be prosecuted, and so can the contractor who carries it out. “The customer said it was fine” is not a defence. Unauthorised work in a conservation area carries the same penalties as breaching an order.

For customers: what a proper tree surgeon will do

If you've been sent this page by a tree surgeon, here's what to expect from them and what to watch for from anyone else:

• They'll check for a TPO and conservation area status before quoting, or ask you to.
• They'll prepare and submit the application or notice for you, in the right language, and they'll charge for the time it takes. That's normal. Our guide to how tree surgeons price work explains why.
• They'll tell you the timescales honestly: 8 weeks for a TPO decision, 6 weeks for a conservation area notice, and no work until the paperwork is clear.
• They'll refuse to touch a protected tree without consent, however much you'd like it done this week.

A quote that skips all of that and offers to “just get it done” is the warning sign. The fine lands on you as well as them, and the replacement planting duty is yours alone.

For tree surgeons: handling TPO enquiries without losing the job

Protected trees are a chance to look like the professional in the room, and to keep the job rather than watch it drift to whoever promised the fastest start.

• Check early, in writing. A two-line email to the tree officer on the day you visit costs nothing and stops the “I didn't know” problem before it starts.
• Own the application. Customers don't know what a crown lift is. Write the specification, attach the photos, submit it, and diarise the decision date. It's billable admin, and it's the part of the job the cheap quote doesn't include.
• Book provisionally. Put the job in the diary for the week after the decision or the notice period. It keeps the customer committed and turns a delay into a scheduled date.
• Treat the dead and dangerous exemptions as exactly that. Photograph everything, do only the minimum, and send the notice. They aren't a way round the process, and councils know the difference.
• Check your insurance covers it. Council and commercial work involving protected trees often comes with a public liability requirement; our guide to tree surgeon insurance covers what's expected.
• Put the rules on your own website. A page like this one, in your own words, ranks for the questions homeowners in your area are already asking and brings them to you before they've phoned anyone else. That's the core of SEO for tree surgeons.

And if you'd rather link to this page than write your own, go ahead. That's what it's for.

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