Tree preservation order garden tree: before you cut

Someone has told you a fruit tree in your own garden is yours to fell. Tree preservation order garden tree is the check that sentence skips. In England a house garden often sits outside a Forestry Commission felling licence, and the same trunk can still need council consent, or six weeks' notice in a conservation area. Fruit on the branches does not wipe that second duty away.

Peter F. followed the GOV.UK planning practice guidance on tree preservation orders and trees in conservation areas, and the Forestry Commission booklet Tree felling: getting permission (July 2025). The Commission describes that booklet as guidance, not a legally binding reading of the Forestry Act 1967. A qualifying purchase through our links can earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

In short

A garden tree in England can be exempt from a felling licence and still be protected by a tree preservation order or by a conservation-area notice. The commercial fruit exception is for a tree grown for fruit in the course of a business. Ordinary pruning that matches good horticultural practice is the narrow allowance on a fruit tree. Heavy cutting needs a conversation with the council first.

Three permissions sit on the same tree

A felling licence, issued in England by the Forestry Commission, is permission to cut down growing trees. A tree preservation order is made by the local planning authority to protect specific trees, groups, or woodlands for amenity. Section 211 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 covers trees in a conservation area that are not already on an order. Passing the licence test leaves the order and the conservation area in place.

Where a felling-licence exception applies, and the Commission's illustration is a garden tree, you do not need their licence. You are still likely to need the council's permission if an order protects that tree. Ask whether an order or a conservation area covers the trees you want to fell, and keep the reply.

An order prohibits cutting down, topping, lopping, uprooting, wilful damage, and wilful destruction without written consent. In the Secretary of State's view, cutting roots needs consent as well. When you apply, the authority has eight weeks to decide. If it does not, you can appeal to the Secretary of State. Consent lasts two years unless a condition says otherwise. Lopping and topping need no felling licence and can still be prohibited under an order. Owner and contractor can both be prosecuted where a licence was required and was missing.

What a garden and a fruit tree skip

The July 2025 booklet lists exceptions by species and by place. Fruit trees are one, with apple, pear, and plum named as orchard examples. Trees in an orchard, a garden, a churchyard, or a public open space are another, and trees in the inner London boroughs are a third. A pear beside the house can sit on more than one of those lines.

Small stems are measured at 1.3 metres. A licence is not required at 8 centimetres or less over the bark, at 10 centimetres or less for thinning, or at 15 centimetres or less on coppice. A separate allowance is 5 cubic metres in a calendar quarter, with no more than 2 cubic metres sold. You have to show the exception, with photographs, a map, and the date, and it cannot be added after the tree is down. If the land may be a wood rather than a garden, ask the area office before you fell.

The top pick in our hardy ornamental trees comparison is a Carbeth Laurus nobilis at about £11.99, in a 10 centimetre pot, with 4.6 out of 5 from 24 amazon.co.uk ratings. That stem is nowhere near a felling measurement. A later crown still inherits any order or conservation area on the address.

Pruning is the narrow fruit-tree exception

Under an order, the fruit exception is narrow. Consent is not required for work on a protected tree cultivated for fruit in the course of a business or trade, where the work is in the interests of that business. A commercial orchard can use that line. A garden tree that happens to crop cannot. Consent is otherwise generally required for prohibited work on a protected fruit tree that is not grown commercially.

Consent is not needed before pruning a fruit tree when the work follows good horticultural practice. For an apricot, Royal Horticultural Society practice is a summer cut, covered in summer pruning for stone fruit. A hard winter reduction, or felling because the tree shades the table, needs consent where an order applies.

Topping and lopping are named in the prohibition. A tidy-up that removes most of the living crown can be those jobs whatever the invoice calls them. The planning practice guidance states a fine of up to £20,000 in the magistrates' court, and an unlimited fine in the Crown Court, taking account of any financial benefit.

A conservation area uses a six-week notice

If the tree is in a conservation area and is not already on an order, section 211 requires notice before you cut it down, top it, lop it, or uproot it. Give that notice six weeks in advance, and not more than two years in advance. The pause lets the council decide whether to make an order. If it agrees, the work can start sooner.

The council can make an order inside those six weeks, tell you to proceed, or let the six weeks expire. The work you described may then be done within two years of the notice date. The notice is not a consent application. Name the tree and the cut, because a vague notice can be sent back.

Very small trees sit outside the notice: 75 millimetres diameter over the bark at 1.5 metres, or 100 millimetres if you are only cutting down or uprooting to improve other trees. On a forked tree, one stem over the figure brings the notice back. If a felling licence is also in play, the Commission notifies the council and you do not send a separate section 211 notice.

A dangerous tree is a present risk

The test is an immediate risk of serious harm. You may do only the work needed to remove that risk, and you give written notice as soon as practicable after the work becomes necessary. The risk must be present, such as a limb about to fail. A tree that is merely large or shady waits for an ordinary application. Dieback is a health question, which when a tree is in trouble treats separately.

A dead tree needs five working days' written notice first, unless the danger is already immediate. Dead branches on a living tree can come off without that notice. Felling a dead protected tree brings a duty to plant a replacement unless the council waives it. Old or diseased is not automatically dangerous, and you have to prove that exception. Shade and a blocked gutter are not a legal nuisance. A nest in use is protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and a bat roost means you stop and call Natural England on 0300 060 3900.

England's forms stop at the border

The booklet and the tree-preservation regulations used here are England's. A Forestry Commission licence, and a section 211 notice headed for an English council, are the wrong papers for Edinburgh, Cardiff, or Belfast. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland each have their own forestry body and their own rules. Copying the English heading does not start the six weeks.

A plant passport is a seller's duty when certain plants move within Great Britain. Buying a tree on amazon.co.uk does not put that duty on you, and a passport in the parcel is not permission to fell or to cut hard later. For a tree already in the garden, stay with the felling exception, any order, and any conservation-area notice.

An order can protect a tree of any size. The 75 millimetre line is a diameter at 1.5 metres, which a new planting is under. Before you cut, send photographs, a stem measurement, and a sentence that says summer prune, reduction, or felling. The reply from that council is the decision this page cannot make for you.