What developers, contractors and landowners across North London and Hertfordshire need to know
A digger opening a trench a couple of metres from a mature oak looks like ordinary groundworks, and on most sites it is. Where that oak carries a Tree Preservation Order, or the permission came with a condition about protecting it, those few metres separate a routine morning from a criminal record. Tree offences are among the handful of planning breaches that put a company, and the people working for it, in front of a magistrate.
What counts as an offence
Under section 210 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, it is a criminal offence to cut down, uproot or wilfully destroy a protected tree, or to damage, top or lop one in a way likely to destroy it, without written consent from the local planning authority. A Tree Preservation Order, usually shortened to TPO, is the council order that gives a tree that protection in the first place.
The word most people skate past is wilfully, because damage does not need a chainsaw. Severing roots while excavating, compacting the ground over a root system with plant and materials, or trenching for services inside the root protection area all count where the harm is likely to kill the tree. That area is the circle of ground around a trunk which an arboricultural survey sets aside as off limits, and most construction damage happens inside it.
The fines are unlimited, whatever you have read elsewhere
Almost every guide online still quotes a maximum fine of £20,000 in the magistrates’ court. That ceiling came off in March 2015. Section 210 now says only that an offender is liable on summary conviction, or on conviction on indictment, to a fine, which leaves no upper limit in either court.
The subsection that follows should concentrate any developer’s mind. When setting the fine, the court is directed to have particular regard to any financial benefit that has come, or looks likely to come, to the offender as a result of the offence. Where a tree came out because it sat where an extra unit was going, the profit on that unit is in scope. Lesser breaches that do not threaten the tree’s survival are capped at £2,500, though development sites rarely end up there.
Your contractor gets prosecuted alongside you
The offence covers anyone who causes or permits the work, so instructing it is enough, and it equally catches the firm holding the saw. That is why these cases so often produce two defendants. When Woking Borough Council prosecuted over the felling of more than a hundred protected trees, the developer and the contractor were both convicted at Guildford Magistrates’ Court, paying £15,140 and £2,900. North Devon Council convicted a tree surgeon and four households together. Checking a tree’s status before quoting is part of the job, and ARB approval is a fair proxy for a contractor who treats it that way.
Breaching a tree planning condition is a separate route
Permission on a site with retained trees usually arrives with a pre-commencement condition: an arboricultural method statement and tree protection plan must be approved in writing before anything starts. The method statement sets out how work near the trees will be done, and the protection plan shows where the fencing goes.
Starting groundworks before that condition is discharged is a breach in its own right, whether or not a tree is harmed, and it can leave the whole development unauthorised. Councils can serve a breach of condition notice, which in England carries an unlimited fine and, unlike an enforcement notice, gives no right of appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, leaving judicial review as the only challenge. A temporary stop notice or an injunction can halt the site outright.
The duty to replant does not go away
Where a protected tree is removed in breach, the landowner falls under a duty to plant a replacement of appropriate size and species in the same place. That duty runs with the land, so it passes to whoever buys the site next, and it applies even where the tree came out lawfully because it was dead or dangerous. If it is ignored, the council can serve a tree replacement notice, appealable, and serveable up to four years after the failure.
Conservation areas catch trees with no TPO on them
Plenty of trees across Camden, Barnet and Hampstead carry no order at all and are protected regardless, because they stand in a conservation area. Six weeks’ written notice has to reach the council before cutting down, topping, lopping or uprooting one, which gives it time to decide whether to make a TPO. Work done without that notice draws the same section and the same penalties. The exceptions are narrower than people hope, since a dead tree still needs five working days’ notice and urgent work on a dangerous tree needs notice as soon as practicable afterwards.
FAQs
Does it count if the damage was an accident?
The offence turns on the word wilfully, so a genuine accident is treated differently from a deliberate act. That distinction rarely rescues a development site, because once a survey has identified a tree and marked its root protection area, driving through it is a decision rather than an accident.
Can I be prosecuted for work my contractor carried out?
Yes. The offence covers causing or permitting the work as well as doing it, so a developer or landowner who instructed or allowed it can be convicted without ever touching a tree. Both parties appearing in the same case is common.
What if the tree was dead or genuinely dangerous?
There are exemptions, but they are not a free pass. Dead trees need five working days’ notice, urgent work on a dangerous tree needs notice as soon as you reasonably can afterwards, and the burden sits with you to show the tree met the test. Photographs and a written arboricultural opinion taken beforehand are what make that stand up.
How long does the council have to prosecute?
Proceedings have to begin within six months of the council having enough evidence, and within three years of the offence itself. A breach picked up during a later site inspection can therefore still be pursued well after the work happened.
Get the tree constraints settled before the machines arrive
Nearly every prosecution here traces back to the same thing, which is work starting before anyone established what was protected and what the conditions asked for. As an ARB Approved Contractor working across North London and Hertfordshire, Thor’s Trees can identify protected trees and set the constraints out in a survey or arboricultural report, produce and implement the method statement and protection measures a planning condition calls for, and support architects and engineers at design stage before a layout commits you to something the council will refuse. For sites already under way, our commercial team can assess damage and put an independent opinion in front of the planning officer early.
