We know that arguments over trees, hedges and boundaries can get heated. It’s important that the first thing you do is speak calmly with your neighbour.

If you really have come to a stalemate, you can ask us to intervene – but we’ll ask to see evidence you tried to sort things out first.

The rules about hedges

Hedges can really improve the look of a community and are great for local wildlife. But choosing the wrong plants or letting them get out of control can cause problems.

You can complain if you think your neighbour’s hedge is spoiling your enjoyment of where you live, and all of these are true:

• the hedge (or the section causing problems) is a line of two or more trees or shrubs
• it’s evergreen or semi-evergreen (it keeps at least some live/green leaves all year round)
• it’s more than 2 metres tall

How to complain about an overgrown tree or hedge

• request a High Hedge Complaint form and Guidance Notes by emailing PlanningEnforcement@bexley.gov.uk
• put together your evidence, the guidance we will send you will explain this in detail. We will also need to know you’ve already tried to solve the problem yourself, so make a record of when you spoke with your neighbour, and what you both said
• fill in the form and return it to us, with your supporting information and a fee of £550 (using the contact details on the form). You must also send a copy to your neighbour.

There is a charge for this service because it takes time to thoroughly investigate the complaint and we need to visit the property to take a look. We won’t refund you if we don’t agree with your complaint or can’t solve the problem.

If we think you were making a complaint for wrong or frivolous reasons, we won’t investigate any further. We’ll keep a £50 admin charge and refund the rest of your fee.

How we investigate a complaint

• We’ll invite everyone involved to give us their side of the story. We’ll send you copies of anything we get back.
• We’ll visit the property and take notes of the size of the hedge and how it looks from different viewpoints including yours, your neighbours’ and the general public’s (if it’s somewhere they can see it). We don’t take sides but make a decision based on whether the hedge is affecting how you enjoy your property.
• If we agree with you, we’ll send what’s called a ‘Remedial Notice’ to your neighbour, explaining what we want done and how long they have to do it. For example, we can ask them to trim back a hedge to a suitable height. But we can’t and won’t ask them to:
• Make the hedge shorter than 2 metres
• Remove the hedge
• Do anything that would destroy the hedge
• If either of you are unhappy with our decision, you can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate and we’ll explain how.
• If your neighbour doesn’t do what we ask in the Remedial Notice, we can take them to magistrates’ court. If convicted, they could be fined up to £1,000. We can also carry out the work on their property without their permission.

The rules about trees

Some trees are protected. That means the tree can’t be cut down, uprooted, lopped, damaged or destroyed without our permission. If you remove or damage a protected tree you can be taken to magistrates’ court. And if convicted, you can be fined up to £20,000 for each tree affected, as well as having to replace them.

Trees are protected if:

• they’re under a Tree Protection Order (TPO)
• they’re in a conservation area
• keeping them is one of the conditions for planning permission we’ve granted

You can ask us to consider protecting a tree. And you can sponsor planting a new tree in your area to help keep Bexley beautiful.

Tree Protection Orders

A TPO is a legal document that means we control what happens to a tree. That could be an individual tree, a group, an area or a woodland.

We can’t use TPOs for hedges, shrubs or bushes (but we can put a TPO on a tree if it’s in a hedgerow). And we can’t use them for trees grown for food, like fruit trees.

Tree preservation requests

If there’s a tree you think contributes to everyone’s enjoyment of the area, you or your local Councillor can ask us to consider putting it under a TPO. Or we might do that if someone’s made a development proposal, and we think keeping the trees in place is important. Email the Head of Development Management at developmentcontrol@bexley.gov.uk with TPO requests.

Conservation areas

We have 23 conservation areas in Bexley, which protect both the buildings and the trees. That means you have to give us six weeks’ written notice if you want to change anything about the trees (under Section 211 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990).

You need to tell us in detail what you plan to do, and we recommend you speak to a tree surgeon before you get in touch. You can’t do anything to the trees until we’ve had a chance to look into it. Then we’ll let you know whether you can go ahead or if we’re putting the tree under a Tree Protection Order.

The only exceptions are:

• if the tree is dead, dying or dangerous
• if the tree’s stem, measured at 1.5m off the ground, is no thicker than 75mm round (measured over the bark).

See government information about trees in conservation areas.

Trees protected by planning permission

Sometimes when we give planning permission we make sure the trees in the area are protected and maintained. Or we might ask the developer to plant more.

Check a planning application