Tree preservation order appeal: when the council says no

 

If the council has refused you permission to cut down, prune or lop a tree it protects, a tree preservation order appeal is how you ask for that decision to be looked at again by somebody independent.

You do not go back to the council. The appeal goes to the Secretary of State, and in practice it is decided by a planning inspector who had nothing to do with the original decision.

The deadline is much shorter than for most planning appeals, so the first thing to know is that you have 28 days.

 

When you can make a tree preservation order appeal

 

There are three situations where an appeal is open to you.

• the council refused your application for consent
• the council gave consent but attached conditions you are unhappy with
• the council did not decide at all within eight weeks of receiving your application

The same applies where a condition on an earlier consent required you to get something approved by the council, and the council then refused that approval or attached further conditions to it.

Only the person who made the application can appeal. If you are a neighbour who is unhappy that somebody else was given consent, there is no appeal against that, which is the same position as with an ordinary planning application.

 

You have 28 days – use the decision notice date as your safety date

 

Government material is not completely consistent about the trigger. The public GOV.UK appeal service tells you to appeal within 28 days of the date on the council’s decision notice, while Planning Practice Guidance refers to the date of notification and the published appeal-form guidance refers to receipt. Do not gamble on postal days: use the date printed on the decision notice as the safe working date and get the appeal in within 28 days of that.

That is a good deal tighter than the six months allowed after a listed building consent refusal, or the twelve weeks after a householder planning refusal, and it is the single thing that catches people out most often.

There is one piece of useful flexibility. The rules let the Secretary of State accept an appeal made after the 28 days have run out. That is a discretion rather than a right, so do not plan around it, but if you are slightly late it is worth asking rather than assuming the door has shut.

Where the council never decided at all, the timing works differently. You can appeal at any time once the eight weeks have passed. But if the council then refuses before you have got your appeal in, you are back to 28 days running from that refusal.

 

How the appeal is handled

 

You send written notice to the Secretary of State and, at the same time, a copy to the council. Most of these appeals are then dealt with on paper. The council sends in the application and its decision, completes a questionnaire, and either side can be asked for more information.

If you or the council would rather be heard in person than have it decided on the papers, you can ask for that, and the request has to be granted.

The inspector can allow the appeal, dismiss it, or change any part of the council’s decision, including a part you did not complain about. That cuts both ways, so be sure you are content with the parts of the decision you are not challenging before you start.

 

The decision is the end of the road

 

The rules say in plain terms that the decision on the appeal is final. There is no second appeal and no route back to the council.

What remains is a challenge in the High Court, and that is only open to you where the decision was wrong in law rather than simply wrong in your opinion. Disagreeing with the inspector’s judgement about the tree is not a point of law. Our page on judicial review explains what that route involves.

 

Compensation is a separate claim

 

This is the part most people never hear about. If a refusal, or a condition, causes you real loss or damage, you may be able to claim compensation from the council. That is a claim against the council rather than part of the appeal, and the two run separately.

Several limits matter. You have twelve months from the council’s decision, or from the final decision on an appeal if you appealed. Claims worth less than £500 cannot be made at all. You cannot claim for a fall in the value of your land caused by losing the chance to develop it. And you cannot claim for loss that was not reasonably foreseeable when consent was refused.

You also cannot claim back what the appeal itself cost you. The rules expressly rule that out.

 

What it costs

 

The real cost sits in the evidence. A refusal usually turns on the health, safety or amenity value of the tree, and an appeal resting on your own opinion alone tends to struggle. Most people who succeed have a report from a tree specialist behind them, and that is where the money goes.

Each side normally meets its own expenses, and as above you cannot recover the cost of appealing through a compensation claim. Fees for planning applications are a separate matter and are set nationally rather than by your council: see our page on planning application fees.

 

Is it worth appealing at all?

 

Often the better move is a fresh application rather than an appeal. If the council objected to how much work you proposed rather than to any work at all, a reduced scheme worked out with the council’s tree officer will usually get you further, and faster, than arguing about the original one.

It is also worth being clear about what an appeal cannot do. It cannot lift the order from the tree. If your real complaint is that the tree should never have been protected in the first place, that is a different argument on a different route.

If the work is genuinely urgent because the tree is dead or presents an immediate risk of serious harm, an appeal is the wrong tool altogether, because separate rules let some of that work go ahead without consent as long as you notify the council. Guessing about this is expensive: our page on the offence of damaging a protected tree explains why.

See also our pages on trees and whether you need permission and on tree preservation orders.

 

 

Relevant legislation for a tree preservation order appeal

 

Links below go to legislation.gov.uk. Always check the “Changes to Legislation” panel at the top of each provision, because amendments are often listed there before they are written into the text.

• Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation)(England) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/605): regulation 19 creates the right of appeal and sets the 28 day period, regulation 23 governs how it is determined and makes the decision final, and regulation 24 deals with compensation
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, Part VIII: the power to make tree preservation orders and the offences that go with them

Other Planning Appeal Sections

 

Tree Preservation Order Appeal Page Updated: 29th August 2026