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Planning conditions and hedges in Gravesend: what a landscape condition on your permission actually binds you to.

Planning permission for an extension, outbuilding or new development in Gravesend or the wider Gravesham borough often comes with a landscape condition requiring you to retain a boundary hedge, plant new hedging along a specified line, or protect existing vegetation during construction. Many people read these conditions once and then forget them. Removing a hedge that a condition requires you to keep is a breach of planning control under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, and Gravesham Borough Council can take enforcement action against it. The question before any hedge work on a site that has had planning permission is not just whether the hedge is in a conservation area or carries a Tree Preservation Order: it is also whether a planning condition says it must stay.

What the law says

Section 70 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 provides that a local planning authority may grant planning permission subject to conditions as it thinks fit. That is a wide power, and landscape conditions are one of the most commonly used results of it. A typical condition requires the applicant to retain all existing hedges and boundary planting along specified boundaries, to carry out replacement planting of any hedge that is removed or dies within five years, and not to carry out tree or hedge works other than those shown on the approved drawings. The condition may also require a landscaping scheme to be submitted and approved before work starts: that is a pre-commencement condition, and it is enforceable independently of the main works.

Section 171A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines "breach of planning control" to include failing to comply with any condition or limitation subject to which planning permission has been granted. This matters because it means removing a conditioned hedge is not a civil dispute between neighbours: it is a breach of the planning permission granted by Gravesham Borough Council, and the council's enforcement powers apply.

Two enforcement tools are directly available for condition breaches:

• Breach of condition notice (section 187A TCPA 1990). The council can serve a breach of condition notice specifying what is required to remedy the breach and a compliance period of at least 28 days. There is no right of appeal against a breach of condition notice: unlike an enforcement notice, you cannot contest it at the Planning Inspectorate. Failure to comply within the period is a criminal offence with a fine at the level set by the standard scale in force at that time.
• Enforcement notice (section 172 TCPA 1990). The council can serve an enforcement notice setting out the breach and requiring specified remediation steps within a stated period. An enforcement notice can be appealed to the Planning Inspectorate on specified grounds, including that the breach has not occurred or that it is not expedient to take enforcement action. However, the appeal does not automatically suspend the notice unless the inspector grants a temporary stay.

The enforcement time limit was changed by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, which amended section 171B of the TCPA 1990. Since 25 April 2024, the enforcement time limit in England is a single period of ten years for all breaches of planning control, including breaches of conditions. The previous four-year immunity period for operational development has been abolished for breaches occurring on or after that date. The ten-year rule already applied to breaches of conditions before the 2023 Act, so for a landscape condition breach, the effective time limit has always been ten years, and that remains unchanged.

How to check and act on a landscape condition: four steps

Step 1: Locate the original planning permission and read every condition

Every planning permission granted by Gravesham Borough Council includes a schedule of conditions. Older permissions may be in paper form at the property; all permissions granted since the introduction of the Planning Portal are searchable on Gravesham Borough Council's online planning register using the application reference number, the address or the postcode. When you find the decision notice, read the full schedule of conditions, not just the main approval letter. Look for any condition that refers to: landscaping, soft landscaping, hard landscaping, boundary treatment, hedgerows, existing vegetation, tree protection, or replacement planting. The wording varies between applications, so a condition may use any of those terms.

If you bought the property after the planning permission was granted, the conditions run with the land, not with the original applicant. The obligation binds you as the current owner or occupier of the site. Check your conveyancing documents and Land Registry title register for any landscape or planning condition entries, and ask your solicitor to confirm the current position if the title reveals an old permission you have not seen the conditions for.

Step 2: Understand what the condition actually requires

Landscape conditions fall into several distinct types, and the obligation they create differs between them:

• Retention conditions require specified hedges or trees to remain in place for the life of the development. Removing them, even to replant the same species, is a breach unless the condition includes an approved-replacement mechanism or you have Gravesham Borough Council's written consent to the variation.
• Replacement conditions require that any retained planting removed or dying within a stated period (typically five years) is replaced in the next planting season with the same species and a specified size, unless the council consents to a variation. These are frequently attached to conditions about retained hedges to deal with unexpected die-back during construction.
• Pre-commencement conditions require a landscaping scheme to be submitted to and approved by the council before any works begin on the main development. Starting works before this condition is discharged is itself a breach of planning control, separately from any later removal of vegetation.
• Post-occupancy maintenance conditions require that all approved landscaping is maintained in accordance with the approved scheme for a stated period, and that any plant that dies, is removed or is seriously damaged is replaced in the next planting season. These run beyond the end of construction and bind subsequent owners.

Step 3: If the hedge has already been removed or damaged

If the conditioned hedge has been removed, cleared or substantially damaged before this check was made, the position is a live breach of planning control. The ten-year enforcement window means the council can still take action for up to ten years from the date the breach occurred. The practical steps are:

1. Read the condition carefully and confirm that it does require the hedge to be retained. A condition that required a landscaping scheme to be approved, but does not explicitly require retention of the existing hedge, may be a pre-commencement condition only, which is a different type of breach.
2. Contact Gravesham Borough Council's planning enforcement team to understand whether the breach has been registered and what voluntary action the council would accept. Proactively engaging with enforcement, including offering to replant to the original specification, is treated more favourably than waiting for a notice to be served.
3. Consider whether applying for retrospective consent under section 73 (see below) or a fresh minor material amendment application is the appropriate route. Retrospective applications are not guaranteed to succeed, but they are a legitimate part of the planning system.

Do not carry out any further works to the site that might constitute a breach while enforcement correspondence is open. Additional breaches complicate the position and can affect the council's decision on whether to proceed to formal enforcement action.

Step 4: Applying to vary or remove a condition under section 73

Section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allows an applicant to apply to a local planning authority for permission to carry out development without complying with conditions subject to which a previous planning permission was granted, or to vary those conditions. This is the formal route for changing a landscape condition that you consider unreasonably restricts what you want to do with a hedge.

Key points about the section 73 route:

• It does not affect the original permission. A section 73 application, if refused or if you withdraw it, leaves the original permission and its conditions in place. Granting a section 73 application issues a new planning permission with the varied condition; the original permission still exists on the register alongside it.
• The council must determine it within eight weeks, unless a longer period is agreed in writing. If the council fails to determine within that period, the applicant can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate on the ground of non-determination.
• The council can refuse it or grant it with different conditions. A section 73 application is a fresh application in its own right. The council assesses whether, on the current facts, the original reason for the condition still applies. If the reason for requiring hedge retention was to protect landscape character or biodiversity in a conservation area, the council may refuse a section 73 application to remove it.
• A fee is payable. The fee for a section 73 application is set by the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012 as amended. Confirm the current amount with Gravesham Borough Council before submitting, as fees are revised periodically.

A section 73 application is distinct from a "discharge of conditions" application. If a pre-commencement condition requires a landscaping scheme to be submitted for approval, the correct route is a discharge of conditions application (section 96A TCPA 1990), not a section 73. The two routes exist for different purposes: discharge of conditions satisfies the condition by providing the required details; section 73 changes or removes the condition itself.

How Gravesham Borough Council handles landscape condition enforcement

Gravesham Borough Council operates under a planning enforcement strategy that prioritises cases by seriousness and public interest. Removal of a conditioned hedge in a conservation area or in a location that was specifically protected because of its biodiversity or landscape contribution is treated as a higher-priority breach than damage to a replacement planting condition on an otherwise complete development. The council's enforcement team can be contacted through the planning enforcement pages of the council's website.

In practice, landscape conditions are among the more commonly breached conditions in any local authority area, partly because they operate after the main development is complete and partly because many owners have not read all the conditions attached to the permission. I see it directly on jobs in Gravesend and Northfleet: a hedge that appears to have been removed during a renovation has sometimes been conditioned as retained on a permission granted years earlier. Confirming the planning history before any hedge removal, particularly on sites in DA11 or DA12 that have had extensions or conversions in the past decade, is a straightforward check that avoids a difficult enforcement conversation later.

How this interacts with other protection regimes

A hedge subject to a landscape condition may also require a separate consent or notice under:

• A Tree Preservation Order under sections 198-214 of the TCPA 1990, if the Order specifically names the hedge or trees within it. TPO consent and planning condition compliance are separate requirements: holding one does not satisfy the other.
• Section 211 of the TCPA 1990, if the hedge is in one of Gravesham's 23 conservation areas and contains trees with a trunk diameter exceeding 75mm at 1.5 metres from the ground. The section 211 six-week notice is a separate procedure, and failure to give it is a separate criminal offence from a planning condition breach.
• The Hedgerow Regulations 1997 (as amended by the Management of Hedgerows (England) Regulations 2024), if the hedge is a qualifying hedgerow on agricultural or other land and you are proposing to remove it. The hedgerow removal notification route requires a separate application to the local planning authority before removal, regardless of any planning condition position.

Sources: Town and Country Planning Act 1990, sections 70, 171A, 171B, 172, 187A and 73; Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, section 115 (commencement 25 April 2024); Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 1; Gravesham Borough Council, Planning Enforcement Strategy (2022); Planning Portal, "Discharge or vary a planning condition" guidance; GOV.UK, "Planning enforcement" guidance; East Devon District Council, "Trees subject to planning conditions" guidance note (checked against current sources).