Tree Preservation Orders.
A TPO protects specific trees, groups or woodlands where their amenity value justifies it. Cutting down, topping, lopping or uprooting a protected tree without consent is an offence — and a constraint that quietly reshapes site layouts.
- Proportionate crown maintenance
- Removal of genuinely dead or dangerous trees
- Works supported by an arboricultural method statement
- Layouts that respect root-protection areas
- Removal for development convenience
- Works near a retained tree’s RPA
- Reductions affecting amenity / form
- Pruning beyond good arboricultural practice
- Felling healthy high-amenity trees
- Unauthorised works (an offence, fines to £20k+)
- Loss of woodland TPOs
- Damage to protected roots during construction
An LPA may make a TPO under s.198 where it is "expedient in the interests of amenity" to protect trees or woodlands. Once made, consent is required for works, and the authority weighs amenity value against the reasons for the works. Trees in conservation areas have similar protection via a six-week notice procedure.
TPOs rarely stop development outright, but the British Standard root-protection area around a retained tree can dictate where you can build, dig or route services — so they shape layout and viability more than they block schemes. Replacement planting is usually required where consent to remove is granted.
A TPO is a layout problem more than a permission problem: the root-protection areas of retained trees often decide where you can build. Survey early and design around them.
Applications framed around real arboricultural need and backed by a BS5837 method statement fare far better than removals justified by development convenience.
How schemes actually fare inside this designation — approval rates, appeal survival, which authorities apply it hardest — needs the designation joined to the decision record. That join isn’t built, so those figures aren’t published here. We won’t estimate them.
The Atlas maps TPO areas against INSPIRE parcels. Check whether protected trees affect your site and how tree-works applications nearby have fared.