Can I Cut This Tree?

There is a book on the law of trees. It is authoritative, it is excellent, and on the day this one was written it was on sale at one hundred and ninety five pounds. For the person who actually has the tree there is nothing. This is that book. Every provision in it was read at legislation.gov.uk on 27 September 2026 and is quoted with its address so you can check it.
It starts with the error. The most repeated sentence in this subject is that a protected tree may be dealt with if it is dead, dying or dangerous. It is a genuine quotation from section 198(6) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, it is still on the face of the Act, and in England it is not the rule. On 6 April 2012 the Planning Act 2008 moved the English regime into regulations, and regulation 14 of the 2012 Regulations exempts a tree which is dead. Dying has gone. Danger survives only where the works are urgently necessary to remove an immediate risk of serious harm, and only to the extent that they are. And regulation 14(2) requires notice in writing to the authority, at least five working days before work on a dead tree, which almost nobody serves.
Then the penalty, which is two penalties. Section 210(1) covers cutting down, uprooting, wilful destruction, and topping or lopping in such a manner as to be likely to destroy the tree, and the fine has no upper limit and the case can be tried on indictment. Section 210(4) covers every other contravention and is capped at level 4. And section 210(3) directs the court, in particular, to have regard to any financial benefit that has accrued or appears likely to accrue, which is why fines for removing a tree in the way of a development are measured against the development.
Then the duty that arrives without anyone mentioning it. Section 206 makes replanting automatic on the owner of the land, the replacement inherits the order, and subsection (5) attaches the duty to whoever is the owner from time to time. A person can buy a house and inherit a duty to replant a tree they never touched.
There is good news too, and most of it is unknown. A tree in a garden never needs a felling licence, at any size, ever, because section 9(2)(b) of the Forestry Act 1967 puts trees in an orchard, garden, churchyard or public open space outside the requirement altogether. Pruning never needs one either. And the high hedges regime is far narrower than its reputation: section 66 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 needs a line of two or more evergreens over two metres, so a single tree is never a high hedge and a deciduous hedge never is, and section 69(3) means the best a remedial notice can ever achieve is a hedge cut to two metres, never lower and never removal.
Also inside: what a conservation area actually requires, where serving notice is a defence you must prove and the window opens at six weeks and shuts at two years; the five cubic metre quarterly felling allowance and the two cubic metre limit inside it on what may be sold; nesting birds, which carry the only prison sentence in the book; bats, and the trees where you should stop and ask; the Highways Act notice that gives you fourteen days; and the covenants and planning conditions that are not criminal law and will stop you anyway.
Where the answer sits in case law this book has not read, it says so, including on the most famous rule of all: what you may do with a branch that overhangs your garden. With a table of every provision and its address, a table of the amendments that changed the answers, and logs for tree status, notices, works and replacement duties. England. Nothing in this book is sold.