Am I in the Rochester Conservation Area? Here's what that actually changes.
This is the single most common thing we have to explain to customers who've never had it come up before. Most people near the historic core don't know they're in it until we mention it at the quote.
Q. How do I even know if I'm in the Conservation Area?
A. Medway lists several conservation areas in and around Rochester: Historic Rochester, New Road Rochester, Watts Avenue and Roebuck Road Rochester, Star Hill, and Star Hill to Sun Pier. The Historic Rochester one is the old core around the High Street, the Cathedral and the Castle. Medway Council (the unitary authority that covers Rochester, not Kent County Council) publishes the exact boundaries on its interactive map, but honestly, most people just ask us and we check the address for them as part of the quote, at no charge.
Q. Okay, I'm in it. What does that actually mean for cutting my hedge?
A. Less than most people fear, and more than most people realise, in different ways. Routine cutting of hedging species - privet, laurel, leylandii, beech, hornbeam, box, yew when it's being kept as a clipped hedge rather than a tree - is not normally covered, because a clipped hedge is not normally treated as a tree. You can trim, shape and maintain a hedge in the Conservation Area exactly as you would anywhere else. What changes is trees: any tree, including a hedge plant that's grown out to tree form, with a stem over 75mm diameter measured at 1.5m height, needs six weeks' written notice to Medway Council under section 211 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 before you touch it.
Q. 75mm sounds small. How do I know if my hedge crosses that?
A. 75mm diameter is 7.5cm across, measured over the bark at 1.5 metres up the trunk. It's smaller than most people picture. A neatly maintained clipped hedge, even a tall one, is often still well under that on individual stems, because regular cutting keeps the wood thin. It's the overgrown leylandii that's been left to run up as an individual tree, or the mature yew standard behind a lower hedge, that tends to catch it. We measure with a tape on every quote in the Conservation Area - it's a two-minute check that avoids a real problem later.
Q. What actually happens if I skip the notice and just get it cut?
A. Section 210 of the same Act makes unauthorised work on a protected tree in a Conservation Area a criminal offence, and GOV.UK gives the penalty on conviction as a fine of up to £20,000 in the magistrates' court, and an unlimited fine if the case goes to the Crown Court. That's a real number, not a scare figure, and you can also be required to plant a replacement tree. It's also entirely avoidable: the notice is free to file and Medway Council has six weeks to decide whether to make a Tree Preservation Order on the tree, after which the work can go ahead as planned if it hasn't. We file it as standard, included in the quoted price, so this is genuinely not something you need to manage yourself.
Q. Six weeks feels like a long wait if I just want the hedge tidied.
A. It only applies to the tree-diameter stems, not the routine hedge cutting around them, so in practice most jobs aren't held up at all - we cut the hedge itself straight away and file the notice in parallel for anything that crosses the threshold. Where a job genuinely does need the notice first, we build the six weeks into the quote and timeline honestly rather than let you find out partway through.
Q. Does the Conservation Area rule apply the same way in Delce or Borstal, further out from the centre?
A. Not necessarily. The designated areas follow particular boundaries, and many streets further out, in Delce or Borstal for example, may well sit outside them, in which case the section-211 rules don't apply by default. Don't guess, though: Medway's interactive map shows the exact lines. What can still apply anywhere in Rochester, inside or outside the Conservation Area, is an individual Tree Preservation Order (TPO) on a specific tree - those are placed tree by tree, not by zone, so we check for one regardless of whether the Conservation Area applies. Our tree pruning & surgery page covers TPO checks in more detail.
Ready to give the notice? Our step-by-step Q&A on applying for permission to prune trees in a Rochester conservation area walks through the paperwork.
If the tree or hedge in question is on a shared boundary with a neighbour rather than purely on your side, the Conservation Area rules sit alongside a separate set of questions - see our high hedges and neighbour law Q&A. If storm damage has forced work before a notice could be submitted, what the rules say about dead or dangerous trees is covered in our storm damage Q&A.
Not sure if your address is covered?
Send your postcode to hello@rochesterhedges.co.uk or call 07763 100 477. We'll check the Conservation Area boundary and any TPO for you before you commit to anything.
Sources: GOV.UK, Tree Preservation Orders and trees in conservation areas; Town and Country Planning Act 1990, sections 210 and 211; Medway Council, conservation areas and protected trees pages.