Tree preservation order offence: cutting down a protected tree

 

A tree has come down, or been cut back hard, and somebody has now told you it was protected. Perhaps you did the work yourself. Perhaps you paid a tree surgeon and never thought to check. Either way the council is asking questions, and the letter you have been sent does not read like an ordinary planning letter.

That is because it is not one. A tree preservation order offence is a criminal matter, not a planning one. There is no notice to appeal against and no inspector to persuade. If the council decides to prosecute, the case goes to a criminal court, and the fine has no upper limit.

This page explains what counts as an offence, what the penalty can be, how trees in a conservation area are caught by the same rules, and the separate duty to plant a replacement tree that follows you even if you sell the house.

If what you actually need is the basics, what a tree preservation order is, how the council makes one and how you ask permission to work on a protected tree, start with our guide to tree preservation orders and our page on whether you need permission to cut down a tree. This page picks up at the point where the work has already been done.

Whilst we are happy to give you some help via this page, it is often easier to consult a professional. If in doubt – STOP – and reach out to us. We are here to help. Contact us here. 

 

What counts as a tree preservation order offence

 

The Act sets out three ways of committing the serious version of the offence, where the work breaches the tree preservation rules:

• cutting down, uprooting or wilfully destroying a tree
• wilfully damaging, topping or lopping a tree in a way that is likely to destroy it
• causing or permitting anybody else to do either of those things

The third one is the limb that catches ordinary householders, and it is worth reading twice. You do not have to touch the tree yourself. Instructing a contractor to do it is enough, so paying somebody else does not move the risk onto them. In practice the council can look at both of you.

Notice also that the tree does not have to die. Damaging, topping or lopping it in a way that is likely to destroy it is enough on its own, which is why heavy cutting back of a protected tree is treated far more seriously than most people expect.

 

The fine has no ceiling

 

This is the part that surprises people. The offence can be dealt with in the magistrates court or in the Crown Court, and in either the fine is unlimited. That has been the position since March 2015, so any figure you find quoted as a maximum on an old council web page is out of date.

There is also a specific instruction to the court about how to set the fine. It must have particular regard to any financial benefit that has come to you, or looks likely to come to you, because of the offence.

That instruction is doing a lot of work. If the tree was in the way of a building plot, or was blocking a view that adds value, or its removal made a development possible, that gain is not background colour. It is the starting point the court is told to look at. It is the reason tree cases occasionally produce fines that dwarf anything a planning breach would attract.

 

 

What does a serious TPO fine look like?

 

R v Chamdal [2025] EWCA Crim 1384 is now the clearest modern example. At least 132 protected trees were felled over a substantial area. The landowner had not deliberately set out to defy the TPO, but he knew there was an order, left the detail to contractors and failed to make the checks he should have made. The Court of Appeal treated that as at least negligent culpability and upheld a fine of £200,000 after credit for the guilty plea.

The judgment is useful for more than the headline figure. The serious offence under section 210 is one of strict liability: the prosecution does not have to prove that the defendant knew of the TPO. Knowledge and the quality of the checks made still matter when the court assesses culpability and sentence. Harm matters too, including the number and age of the trees, the area affected, their amenity and arboreal value and any relevant landscape designation.

The court also stressed deterrence and confirmed that a wealthy defendant’s means can justify a larger fine. Replanting is a separate statutory duty under section 206, so simply agreeing to plant replacement trees is not, by itself, mitigation for the offence.

 

The lesser offence, and the time limits that go with it

 

 

Not every breach is the serious offence. Any other contravention of the tree preservation rules, for example breaking a condition attached to a consent you were given, is a lower level offence. It can only be dealt with in the magistrates court and the fine is capped at level 4 on the standard scale, currently £2,500.

That lesser offence comes with its own timing rule, and it is more generous to the council than people assume. Proceedings can be started within six months of the date on which the prosecutor had enough evidence to justify them, rather than six months from the work itself. There is a long stop: no prosecution more than three years after the offence was committed.

A certificate signed by or for the prosecutor, stating when it had sufficient evidence, is conclusive proof of that date. So the practical effect is that the clock starts when the council says it started, and arguing about it is hard.

That six month rule does not apply to a tree in Wales.

 

A tree in a conservation area is protected too

 

This is the trap that catches the most people, because there is nothing on the tree and nothing in the deeds to warn you.

A tree standing in a conservation area is protected even where no order has ever been made about it. Doing anything to it that could have been prohibited by a tree preservation order is an offence in its own right, and the penalties are exactly the same as they are for a tree with an order on it.

There is a way through, and it is a defence you have to prove rather than something the council has to disprove. You must show two things:

• that you gave the council written notice of what you intended to do, with enough detail to identify the tree
• that you then did the work either with the council consenting to it, or after six weeks had passed from the date of that notice and within two years of it

The six weeks is not a formality. It is the council’s window to decide whether to make an order and protect the tree properly. If it does, you are back to needing consent. If it does nothing, you may go ahead, but only inside that two year window, after which the notice goes stale and you have to start again.

 

You may also have to plant a new tree

 

Prosecution punishes you. It does not put the tree back. So there is a second and entirely separate duty, and it falls on the owner of the land rather than on whoever did the cutting.

Where a protected tree is removed, uprooted or destroyed in breach of the rules, the owner has to plant another tree of an appropriate size and species, at the same place, as soon as they reasonably can. The council can let you off that duty if you apply and it agrees, but you have to ask.

Three further points matter:

• woodland is treated differently: it is enough to plant the same number of trees on or near the same land, or on other land agreed with the council, in the places the council designates
• the replacement tree is protected by the same order as the tree it replaces, so you cannot plant it and quietly remove it later
• the duty attaches to whoever owns the land from time to time

That last point deserves its own sentence, because it is the one that costs people money. The duty is not personal to the person who felled the tree. Buy a house where a protected tree was taken out and never replaced, and the duty to replace it is now yours.

 

The tree replacement notice

 

If the duty is not carried out, the council can serve a notice requiring you to plant. The notice names the size and species of tree it wants and the period you have to do it in.

Two limits protect you here:

• the notice can only be served within four years of the failure to comply
• it has to state a period at the end of which it takes effect, and that period cannot be less than 28 days from the day it is served on you

There is a useful point buried in the wording. The duty to replace can only be enforced through this notice and in no other way. So there is no separate prosecution for simply failing to replant. The notice is the whole of the council’s route.

 

How to challenge a tree replacement notice

 

You can appeal to the Secretary of State, and there are five grounds:

• the duty does not apply here, or the conditions in question have already been complied with
• in all the circumstances the duty ought to be dispensed with for that tree
• what the notice demands is unreasonable, whether in the time allowed or the size or species asked for
• planting is not needed in the interests of amenity, or would go against good forestry practice
• the spot where the tree has to go is unsuitable for it

The appeal has to be given to the Secretary of State in writing before the end of the period the notice specifies, meaning before the notice takes effect. Once you have appealed, the notice has no effect at all until the appeal is decided or withdrawn, so appealing buys you breathing space as well as a hearing.

On the appeal the Secretary of State can correct a defect or error in the notice, or vary what it requires, so long as doing so causes injustice to neither side. The notice can also be quashed outright. If either you or the council asks, you are entitled to be heard by a person appointed for the purpose.

One warning. Once you have appealed, you cannot afterwards argue in other proceedings that the notice was never properly served on you. If service is your point, take advice on it before you appeal rather than after. Our page on planning appeals explains how the appeal system works more generally.

 

If you do not plant, the council can plant and bill you

 

Where the trees required by the notice have not been planted in time, the council may come onto the land, plant them itself, and recover its reasonable expenses from whoever owns the land at that point.

This is expensive for the obvious reason. You are paying for a contractor the council chose, at the price the council agreed, on a job nobody competed for.

There is a genuinely useful rule for anyone who has inherited somebody else’s mess. Money you spend complying with the notice, and money you pay the council for planting it did itself, is treated by law as having been spent at the request of the person, other than the owner, who was responsible for cutting down, destroying or removing the original tree. In plain terms that is your statutory footing for going after the previous owner or the contractor who felled it. It is a civil claim and you will need a solicitor, but the basis is there.

Two smaller points are worth knowing:

• the Act allows regulations to secure those costs against the land itself, so take advice on whether that has been done before assuming that selling up clears the bill
• wilfully obstructing somebody who is planting under that power is an offence in itself, carrying a fine of up to level 3 on the standard scale, currently £1,000

If the tree work sat alongside a wider planning breach, the council has a similar power to do the work and charge you for it there too. That is covered on our page about what happens if you ignore an enforcement notice.

 

Is there a cost?

 

There are four separate costs hiding in a tree preservation order offence, and they stack:

• the fine, which has no maximum and which the court is told to set by reference to what you gained
• the cost of buying and planting the replacement tree, at your expense
• the council’s costs if it plants the tree for you, with no cap and no fixed scale
• the cost of advice, whether that is a solicitor for a prosecution or an arboriculturist for an appeal

We do not quote figures for any of this, because the fine is unlimited and the rest depends entirely on the tree. What councils charge for planning applications is a different matter, and our guide to planning application fees sets those out.

 

What if the tree really was dangerous?

 

Sometimes the tree genuinely had to come down, and sometimes the council has simply refused consent for work that needed doing.

The rules do carry exceptions, and there is a separate route for asking the council’s permission in the first place. Both are covered on our tree preservation orders page, along with what happens when consent is refused. If the council has already refused you, our guide to a tree preservation order appeal sets out the 28 day deadline and the compensation you may be able to claim. The important thing to understand is that the exceptions are narrower than people hope, and that deciding for yourself that one applied to you is a decision you may later have to justify in a criminal court.

If work is urgent because a tree is genuinely unsafe, tell the council before it happens rather than afterwards, in writing, with photographs and ideally with a report from a tree specialist. Evidence gathered before the chainsaw comes out is worth a great deal more than the same account given later.

 

Should you take the chance?

 

Weighing it up honestly, no.

An unauthorised felling is one of the few things in planning where the downside is genuinely open ended. The fine is unlimited and is geared to what you gained. The duty to replace runs with the land and follows a sale. A conviction is a criminal record rather than a planning black mark. And unlike most breaches, there is no way to make it right afterwards, because a mature tree cannot be put back.

Set against that, asking first costs a letter and, in a conservation area, a wait of six weeks.

If a tree has already come down and you are now dealing with the consequences, the sooner somebody looks at the facts with you the better, particularly if the council has invited you to an interview. Our page on an interview under caution explains what that invitation means. You can also reach our team via here to help.

Tree preservation order offence: relevant legislation

The primary sources below are on legislation.gov.uk. Check the “Changes to Legislation” panel at the top of each page for amendments not yet written into the revised text.

The instruction to the court about the size of the fine is in section 210(3) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which reads:

In determining the amount of any fine to be imposed on a person convicted of an offence under subsection (1), the court shall in particular have regard to any financial benefit which has accrued or appears likely to accrue to him in consequence of the offence.

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s210: the offence at subsection (1), the unlimited fine at subsection (2), the financial benefit direction at subsection (3), the level 4 offence at subsection (4) and the time limits at subsections (4A) to (4E)
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s211: trees in conservation areas, the statutory defence at subsection (3) with its six week and two year periods, and the application of the section 210 penalties at subsection (4)
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s206: the duty to replace, the power to dispense with it, the woodland rule and the attachment of the duty to each successive owner at subsection (5)
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s207: the tree replacement notice, the four year limit on serving it, the minimum 28 day period, and the rule at subsection (5) that the duty may be enforced in no other way
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s208: appeals against a tree replacement notice, the five grounds, the suspension of the notice pending appeal, and the powers to correct, vary or quash
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s209: the council’s power to plant and recover its expenses, the recovery route at subsection (2), the power to charge expenses on the land, and the level 3 obstruction offence
• The Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation) (England) Regulations 2012: the England procedure, the exceptions, and the consent regime the offence is measured against

Other Enforcement Sections

 

 

 

Tree preservation order offence Page Updated: 27th August 2026