Tree rules in Kensington and Chelsea: preservation orders and conservation areas
What the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's own trees page says about its street-by-street lists of preservation orders, the 75mm trunk test for tree work, its tree works form, and what its older tree strategy says about street tree pruning cycles and replacement.
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 the Royal Borough's trees page, its tree works application form and its tree strategy, as read on October 8, 2026. 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 the Royal Borough's pages add.
Looking up a protected tree
The trees page, last updated September 28, 2026, says a preservation order legally protects a tree, that consent is needed to cut any part of a protected tree including the roots, and that trees in conservation areas are also protected. It states a fine of up to £20,000 for damaging a protected tree on conviction in a magistrates' court. This is the part particular to this borough: instead of a map, the council publishes its list of orders as PDF files by the first letter of the street name, in four groups, A to D, E to K, L to R and S to W. The A file is 15 pages, B is 8, C is 24, D is 6, E is 14, F is 4, G is 4 and H is 13, as the page lists them. For a tree that is not on a list, the page gives the arboriculture team's phone numbers and the PlanningLine.
Which tree work needs approval
The page says most tree work on private property needs approval first, and lists three kinds of tree: those protected by an order, those in a conservation area, and those with a trunk diameter greater than 75mm measured at 1.5 metres above the ground. Applications are made on the council's tree works form, which is emailed to the council. The form is headed as an application for works to trees under an order and a notification of proposed works to trees in a conservation area, and its text says the form must be used for work on an order tree and may also be used to give notice for a conservation area tree. Its title block carries a 2009 revision stamp. The page also says the council has no approved list of tree surgeons of its own and recommends the Arboricultural Association's approved contractors list, and that tree applications and decisions are found with the planning search tool.
Council trees and the tree strategy
The page says the council manages more than 7,000 street trees and gives a form, a phone line and an out of hours line for reporting a dangerous or overgrown tree. The council's tree strategy, a long document that is undated and cites a Unitary Development Plan adopted May 25, 2002, so it may not reflect current practice, gives 8,000 street trees, with those beside Red Routes managed by Transport for London. It states that street trees are inspected on at least a three-year cycle and that pruning can be commissioned every two years in areas of subsidence risk and otherwise every three years. It says requests to prune outside the cycle get a low priority unless there is safety, nuisance or threat of legal action, that hazardous trees are felled after notification to ward councillors, and that a felled street tree is replaced in the current planting season or the one after, with the same or closely matching species where trees form an avenue or group. For trees the council does not manage in a conservation area, it restates the six week section 211 notice and says permission is obtained before work on an order tree.