Wellingborough Walks Action Group Ltd, R (on the application of) v North Northamptonshire Council

Under regulation 14(a)(vii) of the Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation) (England) Regulations 2012, protected trees may be cut down without separate consent only so far as their removal is necessary to implement a planning permission in accordance with its terms. The permission must be construed as a whole, including relevant conditions. Where approved plans do not identify the extent of tree loss, conditions requiring approval of a tree-retention plan may determine which removals are authorised. Work carried out inconsistently with an express planning condition, or before a required approval, is not within the exception. The exception does not permit avoidable tree loss merely because a developer prefers that method of implementation.

The claimant, a local action group, sought judicial review of North Northamptonshire Council’s position that the felling of trees protected by a tree preservation order was exempt from consent requirements because it was necessary to implement planning permission for Route 2, part of the Stanton Cross development.

The works began in February 2023 and 16 protected trees were felled before they were stopped. The relevant permission was a 2017 permission granted under section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The central issue was whether regulation 14(a)(vii) applied when the permission’s plans did not identify the full extent of tree loss and conditions requiring approval of landscaping and tree-retention details had not been discharged.

1. Grounds 1, 2 and 4 succeeded to the stated extent. The February 2023 works were not authorised by regulation 14(a)(vii), and the statutory-undertaker exception in regulation 14(a)(iii) did not apply.
2. The relationship between tree preservation orders and planning permission is governed by the complementary statutory scheme described in Barney-Smith v Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council [2016] EWCA Civ 583. The court must construe the planning permission and determine which tree removals are necessarily required. The exception applies to unavoidable loss, but not to trees which can be retained while implementing the permission.
3. A planning permission must be interpreted objectively and as a whole, including its conditions and stated reasons. The approach summarised in R (Dennis) v Southwark LBC [2024] EWHC 57 (Admin) was applied.
4. Conditions 23, 32, 34 and 36 were directly relevant. Condition 34 required, before trees were removed to facilitate Route 2, a plan identifying existing landscape features, the trees to be retained and protective measures, submitted for the local planning authority’s approval. It was not merely an information-gathering condition. Read with condition 23, it gave the authority a function to assess whether proposed retention and loss were acceptable, consistently with section 197 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
5. Removal of trees in breach of conditions protecting nesting birds or bats would likewise fall outside regulation 14(a)(vii). The wider suite of conditions relied on by the claimant was too remote from defining or directly controlling tree loss. The environmental statement was not incorporated into the permission beyond the parts expressly referred to in conditions.
6. The Council’s initial legal analysis was incorrect or incomplete, but its later position aligned with the correct approach. No wider declaration or quashing order was necessary. The Council was required to determine the tree-retention and associated applications and to decide, as a matter of planning judgment, whether enforcement was expedient.