← All guides · Rules & paperwork · Updated October 2026

The six-week Section 211 notice, explained.

Wingham has a designated conservation area covering the historic High Street core: the historic village core around the A257. Check your address on Dover District Council's conservation area map. If your garden is inside it, Section 211 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 catches you the moment a tree in your garden gets big enough. Most homeowners don't realise until they hire a contractor who spots it.

This is a short walk-through of what the rule actually says, what is exempt, and what happens if you skip it.

What Section 211 does

Inside a conservation area, work on any tree with a trunk more than 75 millimetres in diameter measured at 1.5 metres from the ground requires six weeks' written notice to the local planning authority before work begins. The point of the notice period is to give the council time to decide whether to make a Tree Preservation Order on the tree to stop the work. If they don't respond, or say fine, in the six weeks, you can proceed.

For Wingham that means Dover District Council. Enquiries and notices go to tree.enquiries@dover.gov.uk.

What counts as "work"

Cutting down, topping, lopping, uprooting, wilful damage, or wilful destruction. In practice: heavy reduction, felling, coppicing, or hard pruning of a mature tree.

Routine cutting of a hedge that happens to be made of hedging species (privet, laurel, leylandii, thuja, box, yew grown as a hedge, beech grown as a hedge) is exempt because the individual stems don't tend to breach 75mm at chest height in a hedge that has been kept trimmed. Cutting an ornamental garden tree because it has got too big is not exempt.

What is exempt

• Trees under 75mm at 1.5 metres
• Trees that are dead. Not caught by the six-week rule, but you must give the council five working days' written notice before the work (unless there is an immediate risk of serious harm).
• Trees that are an urgent and immediate danger: storm-damaged and about to fall on the house, for example. Give the council written notice as soon as practicable afterwards.
• Work under a felling licence from the Forestry Commission
• Fruit trees grown for fruit production

How the notice actually gets filed

1. Identify each tree that needs a notice. Species, approximate girth at 1.5 metres, approximate height, position in the garden.
2. Describe the intended work in plain terms. Not "tidy the garden": "reduce crown by approximately one third, remove two low branches on north side."
3. Submit the notice to Dover District Council. There is no fee.
4. Wait six weeks. If the council makes a TPO in that period, the notice is superseded and you now need a formal TPO application (see below).
5. If no TPO is made, you can proceed with the work as described.

When we quote a Wingham address in the conservation area, we can walk the site and identify anything over the 75mm threshold, and I will tell you what the notice needs to say. The council charges no fee for the notice.

What happens if you skip it

Doing works on a conservation-area tree without notice is a criminal offence. GOV.UK gives the penalty as a fine of up to £20,000 in the magistrates' court, or an unlimited fine in the Crown Court, and there can be a duty to replant. Do not risk it, and do not use a contractor who tells you not to worry about it.

TPOs are separate

If the tree is under an existing Tree Preservation Order, the Section 211 route does not apply. You need a formal application for consent, and you cannot proceed until the council says yes in writing. Dover District has more than 600 TPOs in force across the district. Our TPO check guide walks through how to find out.

Rural hedgerows: a separate legal regime

Section 211 applies within the conservation area boundary. It does not cover the countryside hedgerows on rural and agricultural land outside the village core, where a different set of rules applies. If you are on a rural plot toward Preston, Nonington or Staple and want to remove a long native hedgerow on agricultural land, the Hedgerows Regulations 1997 may require a 42-day notice to Dover District Council regardless of conservation area status. The two regimes are independent of each other.

Practical Wingham examples

• Church-facing High Street garden with a mature yew grown from the boundary hedge into a specimen tree. Almost certainly over 75mm at chest height. Section 211 notice required for any hard work.
• Front garden privet hedge, kept trimmed to fence height for the last 40 years. Individual stems typically under 75mm. Exempt. No notice needed.
• Rear-garden Bramley apple that has gone over the neighbour's shed roof. Fruit tree exemption applies. No notice needed for the crown-lift.
• Storm-damaged sycamore hanging over the pavement. Urgent danger exemption. Deal with it now, and give Dover District written notice as soon as practicable afterwards.

Sources: GOV.UK, Tree Preservation Orders and trees in conservation areas (checked 12 October 2026); Town and Country Planning Act 1990 s.211; Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation) (England) Regulations 2012; Dover District Council tree.enquiries@dover.gov.uk.