Tree rules in Bexley: preservation orders and conservation areas
What the London Borough of Bexley's own pages say about its register of tree protection orders, the fine of up to £20,000 per tree, what the council will and will not prune, its three year street tree inspections and its published felling list.
Checked against the sources at the bottom of this page on October 8, 2026. Rules, fees and pay change: the source has the last word.
This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. It describes three Bexley Council pages as read on October 8, 2026: questions about trees, hedges and fences, the trees in the borough page, and the oak processionary moth page. The national rules, including the time limits in the England regulations, are on the guide to checking tree rules with UK councils. This page covers only what Bexley's pages add. Bexley calls its orders Tree Protection Orders, where most councils say Tree Preservation Orders.
Protected trees and the register
Bexley's planning page says a protected tree cannot be cut down, uprooted, lopped, damaged or destroyed without the council's permission, and that a person who removes or damages one can go to magistrates' court and be fined up to £20,000 for each tree affected, as well as having to replace them. It lists three kinds of protection: a TPO, a conservation area, and a planning permission condition that keeps the tree. It says a TPO can cover an individual tree, a group, an area or a woodland, that TPOs cannot be used for hedges, shrubs or bushes, though a tree in a hedgerow can be covered, and that trees grown for food, such as fruit trees, are also out.
This is the part particular to this borough. The page carries a register of trees under a protection order, shown with a reference, a description, a status and a link to the order document. The statuses shown include CONF, PROV and LAPSED. A second view lists the same orders by street, town, address and postcode. Because the register shows the status beside each order, a lapsed order and a confirmed one appear side by side.
Hedges, fences and money
The same page describes the high hedge complaint: a hedge of two or more trees or shrubs, evergreen or semi-evergreen and more than 2 metres tall. It gives the complaint fee as £550, with £50 kept as an admin charge if the council finds the complaint wrong or frivolous. It says a remedial notice cannot ask the owner to make the hedge shorter than 2 metres or remove it, and that non-compliance can bring a fine of up to £1,000 in magistrates' court. For fences, it gives 1 metre next to a road used by vehicles and 2 metres elsewhere as the height limits without planning permission.
Council trees
The trees page says the council is responsible for over 14,000 street trees and hundreds of thousands of trees in parks, woodland, cemeteries and allotments. It says all highway trees are inspected once every three years, parks and woodland follow a risk-based survey, and tree works are done by a specialist contractor. It lists what the council does not prune or remove a tree for: leaf, seed or fruit fall, shading or lack of light, sticky sap, insects, bird mess, squirrels and other wildlife, and poor TV or satellite signal. Outside the inspection cycle it prunes or removes trees that are dead, dying or dangerous, causing an obstruction, proven to cause unacceptable direct damage to property, or in the way of approved planning permissions and road schemes.
The page publishes a planting and felling table by financial year. For 2024/25 it shows 91 highway trees planted and 184 felled, and 1285 parks trees planted and 266 felled. For 2023/24 it shows 70 highway trees planted and 127 felled. It also lists each street tree removal by ward, road, species and reason for periods from April 1, 2026. The oak processionary moth page describes the caterpillar hairs as a strong irritant and names May to July as the greatest risk period.