← All guides · Diagnosis · Trees, conservation areas & paperwork · Updated September 2026

Tree in your hedge and you live in a Whitstable or Tankerton conservation area? How to apply for permission, step by step

Most people call it a conservation area permit. The paperwork is actually a notice to Canterbury City Council, because Whitstable sits in the Canterbury district and Canterbury City Council is its planning authority. You send it at least six weeks before the work, it costs nothing, and it only applies to trees over a certain size. Here is how to work out whether you need one and how to send it.

Step 1: which Whitstable conservation area is your address in?

Canterbury City Council says the district has 97 conservation areas. The ones in and around Whitstable, as the council's own map layer names them, are Whitstable Town, Church Street (Whitstable), South Whitstable, Tankerton, Courts Lee Manor (Whitstable), the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway and Whitstable Station area, and The Chestfield. I could not find an area named for Seasalter or Swalecliffe, so many addresses there will fall outside, but a boundary can clip a garden, so check the actual plot.

Use the council's conservation areas page and its Planning Constraints map. Type your address, switch on the conservation area layer, and look at whether the plot is inside the coloured edge. The council also publishes appraisals for several of these areas, including Whitstable Town, Tankerton, South Whitstable, Church Street, the Crab and Winkle line and Chestfield (all PDFs). They explain why the area is protected. They do not replace the map for a yes-or-no answer.

It is worth knowing this now because it changes what you can do with the rest of the hedge as well. Our guide to reducing an overgrown hedge has the wider paperwork check for the Whitstable conservation area.

Step 2: is it a tree or a hedge plant?

The rule is section 211 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990: in a conservation area you must give the council six weeks' written notice before cutting down, topping, lopping, uprooting, wilfully damaging or wilfully destroying a tree. Answer these four questions about what is standing in your hedge.

1. How thick is the trunk? The test is over 75mm across, measured over the bark at 1.5m above ground. At 75mm or less, no notice for cutting down, topping, lopping or uprooting. There is a separate 100mm limit, but it is only for cutting down or uprooting to help neighbouring trees grow (thinning), not for pruning.
2. How many stems? If the tree has several stems at 1.5m and any one is over the limit, the exception does not apply.
3. What kind is it? The size test does not care about species. Sycamore, ash, holm oak, poplar, leylandii and other conifers all count if they are trees and over the limit. Native or non-native, evergreen or deciduous makes no difference.
4. Is it a clipped hedge plant, or has the hedge grown into a row of trees? Clipping privet, escallonia, pittosporum, laurel and similar as a hedge is ordinary hedge care, and the guidance says shrubs are not normally treated as trees. But it does say trees in a hedge, or an old hedge that has grown into a line of trees of reasonable height, can be. If you are about to cut thick old stems hard back, ask the council before you start.

To measure: wrap a tape round the trunk at 1.5m and divide by 3.14. Say a sycamore on the Tankerton side measures 26cm round. 26 divided by 3.14 is 8.3cm, or 83mm, over the line. At 22cm round it is 70mm, under it. If it is close, measure twice.

What is not covered even when it is a tree: dead or dangerous trees (Step 8), work that is necessary to carry out a full planning permission, work to prevent a legal nuisance (minimum necessary), work required by an Act of Parliament, and pruning fruit trees grown for their fruit in line with good horticultural practice. Removing dead branches from a living tree does not need prior notice or consent.

Check for a TPO. If the tree has a Tree Preservation Order, the normal TPO rules apply instead and you need the council's consent. The Planning Portal says a TPO overrides the conservation area. The same council map, which the council labels “Check if a tree is protected”, shows them. See the council's work to trees page.

Step 3: decide the exact work, and photograph it

Canterbury City Council's guidance notes for trees in a conservation area (PDF) say that “cut back”, “lop” or “trim” is too vague. Say how much. The three terms it uses are crown thinning (a percentage of leaf area, and the council says over 30% is likely to be refused), crown lifting (to a stated height above ground) and crown reduction (to a stated overall height and spread). Take photos of the whole tree and the branches concerned before anything is done. On this coast a wind-shaped tree can look worse than it is, so show it as it stands.

Step 4: gather what the council asks for

• The species of each tree, if you know it (a common name will do).
• A rough sketch plan: boundaries, house, road, the tree numbered, and any nearby trees you are not touching marked as such.
• The works and the reasons, tree by tree, using the numbers from your plan.
• Photographs, marked up to show which tree is which, plus your contact details.
• The date. The government guidance says a notice must carry the date it is submitted.

One notice can cover several trees and several jobs, and it can cover phased work, so a hedge with two or three trees in it is still one submission.

Step 5: send it to Canterbury City Council

The council's route is the Planning Portal: Apply to do work to a tree in a conservation area. The Planning Portal's works to trees page confirms there is no fee, and its guidance note (PDF) helps you word the description. A typical Tankerton entry might read:

Tree 1 (sycamore, 83mm at 1.5m, front garden, marked 1 on the plan): crown lift to 3m above ground and remove one limb overhanging the pavement, to clear the footway and the bay window. No work to the escallonia hedge (not a tree). Photographs attached.

Step 6: the six weeks, and what the council can say

The council has three options: make a Tree Preservation Order, tell you it will not make one and you can go ahead, or do nothing and let the six weeks pass, after which you can go ahead. It cannot refuse, and it cannot grant with conditions, because a section 211 notice is not an application. If it makes a TPO, you can still apply for consent under that Order at any time. Do not start early unless the council has said you may.

Step 7: after the notice

Where no Order is made, the work has to be done within two years of the date of the notice, and only what the notice describes. Give your contractor a copy of the notice and the plan, and keep the submission confirmation and any reply. Check for nesting birds before cutting between 1 March and 31 August: section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 applies whatever the notice says. Breaking section 211 is an offence, with a fine of up to £20,000 in the magistrates' court and an unlimited fine in the Crown Court, and the owner has a duty to replace a tree removed in breach.

Step 8: dead, dying or dangerous trees

If a tree is dead, the government guidance says to give the council five working days' written notice before the work, with evidence that the tree is dead. If there is an immediate risk of serious harm (a split limb over a road after a gale, say), you can act at once, with written notice as soon as practicable afterwards. “Dying” or “diseased” is not dead, and needs the normal notice unless another exception applies. Photograph everything first. A replacement tree can still be required.

Sources: GOV.UK, Tree Preservation Orders and trees in conservation areas; Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 211; Planning Portal, trees; Canterbury City Council work to trees and conservation areas pages; Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 1. Council page contents checked 30 September 2026.