Guides · Dover Hedges & Tree Services

Hedgerow Regulations 1997: what rural landowners near Dover need to know before removing a hedge

Most people assume they can remove a hedge on their own land without asking anyone. For garden boundary hedges in Dover's residential streets, that is broadly correct. For field boundary hedgerows on agricultural land, the answer is quite different. The Hedgerow Regulations 1997 (SI 1997/1160) make it a criminal offence to remove most rural hedgerows without first giving at least 42 days' notice to the local planning authority and waiting for a response. Rural properties on Dover's chalk downland, in the Alkham and Elham valleys, around Lydden, Shepherdswell, River and Capel-le-Ferne, and along the downland edge between Dover and Folkestone, are the areas where these rules most often apply without the landowner knowing they exist.

This guide explains what the Regulations cover, what you must do before removing a rural hedgerow, and what makes a hedgerow "important" in the east Kent downland context. It does not cover high-hedges law under Part 8 of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 (which governs height disputes between neighbours) or the Section 211 notice requirement for trees in conservation areas: those are separate regimes covering separate situations.

Do the Hedgerow Regulations 1997 apply to my hedge near Dover?

The Regulations apply to a hedgerow that is growing in, or adjacent to, land that is used for any of the following purposes: agriculture or forestry; the keeping or breeding of horses, ponies or donkeys; common land as defined in the Commons Act 2006; or land notified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a National Park, or certain other categories of protected land. If the hedgerow borders land that meets any of these descriptions on either side, the Regulations are very likely to apply.

The critical exclusion is domestic gardens. A hedgerow that forms part of the boundary of a dwelling's curtilage, where neither side is agricultural or otherwise qualifying land, falls outside the Regulations. This covers most front and rear garden boundary hedges in Dover town, in the estates of Buckland, Whitfield, Kearsney and River village, and along the residential streets of the Western Heights. If your property has a garden on both sides of the hedge, and neither side is used for agriculture or horse-keeping, the Regulations do not apply.

The boundary case is the tricky one. Many rural properties on the Dover downland have a domestic garden abutting agricultural paddocks, field boundaries, or land used for grazing. Where a hedgerow sits on the boundary between a garden and an agricultural field, it is likely to be covered by the Regulations on the strength of the agricultural side alone. Landowners who have extended their domestic curtilage into a former field should not assume the hedgerow has lost its protected status simply because the garden now runs up to it.

Properties in the villages that ring the downland south and west of Dover, including Alkham, Lydden, Temple Ewell, Eythorne, Waldershare, Shepherdswell, Coldred, Ringwould and Kingsdown, frequently have outbuildings, paddocks or smallholdings that constitute agricultural land under the Regulations. The chalk plateau above the port town, particularly the belt between the A2 corridor and the Kent Downs National Landscape boundary, has a mix of residential and agricultural parcels where the Regulations apply more often than owners realise.

What must you do before removing a rural hedgerow near Dover?

Before removing any part of a hedgerow covered by the Regulations, you must submit a hedgerow removal notice to the local planning authority. In the Dover District, that is Dover District Council. The notice must: identify the hedgerow or the section you want to remove; state the reasons for removal; and include a map or plan showing the location and the extent of the proposed removal.

Once the notice is received, the council has 42 days to respond. If the council determines the hedgerow is not important, it may issue a notice confirming you can proceed before the 42 days are up, which allows you to start earlier. If the council issues a hedgerow retention notice (because it has determined the hedgerow is important), removal is prohibited. If 42 days pass from receipt without any response from the council, you may proceed with the removal as if consent had been given.

The 42-day clock runs from the date the notice is received by the council, not the date you posted it. For removal notices submitted by post, add a margin. The council's planning department handles hedgerow removal notices; there is no fee for submitting one.

There is no requirement to submit a notice before carrying out routine hedge management: trimming, cutting back, laying or coppicing does not constitute "removal" under the Regulations. Removal means taking out the hedge body itself, including the root system, not managing the above-ground growth. This distinction matters in practice: a contractor reducing the height of an overgrown field hedgerow or relaying a gapped section is managing, not removing, and does not need a notice.

When will Dover District Council object to a hedgerow removal notice?

The council can only object by issuing a hedgerow retention notice if it determines the hedgerow is "important" under the criteria set out in Schedule 1, Part II of the Regulations. The council has no general discretion to refuse removal for landscape or amenity reasons alone, and cannot refuse simply because neighbours value the hedge or because it improves the appearance of the area. The importance criteria in the Regulations are the only grounds for issuing a retention notice.

If the council does not issue a retention notice within 42 days of receiving the notice, the landowner may proceed. The council cannot later seek to stop removal on the grounds that it has discovered the hedgerow is important after the 42-day window has closed: the right to remove stands once the period elapses without a response. This makes it important for the council to assess notices promptly, and it makes it important for applicants to submit notices well in advance of the intended removal date.

Where the council issues a retention notice, the landowner may appeal to the Secretary of State. An appeal must be made within 28 days of the retention notice being served. The Planning Inspectorate handles hedgerow appeals in England.

What makes a hedgerow important under the Regulations in east Kent?

The importance criteria fall into three broad groups: historical and archaeological criteria, wildlife criteria, and a short list of specific landscape and ecological criteria. A hedgerow is important if it meets at least one criterion from the list in Part II of Schedule 1 to the Regulations.

Historical and archaeological criteria are among the most likely to apply in the east Kent downland. A hedgerow that marks or forms part of the boundary of a pre-1850 parish, town or village is important. So is a hedgerow that marks the boundary of a historical field system predating the Parliamentary Enclosure Acts: much of the chalk downland north and west of Dover was enclosed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the hedgerows that survived from earlier open-field and common-land systems are automatically important under this criterion. Hedgerows that incorporate or are adjacent to archaeological features, including earthworks, lynchets, drove roads, pillow mounds and ancient trackways, are also important; the downland between Dover and the Alkham valley has a dense archaeological landscape that puts many of its hedgerows within this criterion.

Wildlife criteria cover hedgerows that contain seven or more species of woody plant counted in any 30-metre section (species diversity is the key measure here: hawthorn, blackthorn, elder, ash, field maple, dogwood, spindle, guilder rose, hazel and wayfaring tree all count); hedgerows that are continuous with or within 50 metres of ancient woodland; hedgerows providing a habitat for a protected species under Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 or the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017; and hedgerows used by bats as a regular foraging corridor. The mixed native hedgerows of the Kent Downs National Landscape, particularly those on the downland slopes above Alkham, Lydden and Drellingore, routinely contain nine or ten woody species in a 30-metre section and qualify comfortably under the species-count criterion alone.

Ecological and landscape criteria include hedgerows that are listed or lie adjacent to land listed as a Grade 1 or Grade 2 SSSI, and hedgerows that mark the boundary of or are associated with a local nature reserve. The White Cliffs SSSI, the Lydden and Temple Ewell Downs SSSI, and the Dourne Coombe SSSI near Swingfield are all in the Dover District; hedgerows adjacent to or forming part of the boundary of any of these designations will meet this criterion. See our guide to hedge work near the White Cliffs SSSI for the separate Natural England assent requirements that apply in those areas.

In practice, a landowner in the Dover downland considering removing a field hedgerow should treat importance as the default assumption for older hedgerows on chalk until a simple species-count check (seven or more woody species in any 30m stretch) and a basic age check (is the hedgerow shown on a pre-1850 Tithe Map or early Ordnance Survey map?) have been carried out. Both checks are feasible with freely available historic mapping at the Historic Environment Record and through the Kent HER at kent.gov.uk.

Are there any exemptions from the Hedgerow Regulations 1997?

Several exemptions allow hedgerow removal without a notice even on qualifying agricultural land. The most practically relevant in the Dover context are:

Planning permission: where the removal is required to implement a planning permission already granted for development, a separate hedgerow removal notice is not required, provided the planning permission was granted by the local planning authority (not under a general permitted development right). If you are clearing a hedgerow to build a house, barn or access road for which planning consent has been obtained, the planning permission covers the removal. General permitted development order rights (Class A agricultural buildings, for example) do not automatically confer this exemption: the permitted development right must itself have been granted under a formal planning decision.

National defence: removal required by or on behalf of a defence authority is exempt. This has limited everyday relevance in Dover, though the historic military ownership of parts of the Western Heights and the downland behind the castle means some landowners have inherited parcels where this exemption may have historical significance.

Statutory undertakers: removal required for certain utilities and infrastructure purposes, including by highway authorities, is exempt subject to conditions. If the removal is required by a highway authority to maintain sight lines at a junction, or by a utility for emergency infrastructure work, it may be exempt.

Dead or diseased hedgerows: the Regulations do not require a notice for removing a hedgerow that is dead, diseased, or dying, provided the removal is reasonably necessary. In east Kent, this exemption is sometimes applied to hedgerows killed by ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus): where the principal structural species is ash and the hedge has lost its form, removal may be possible without a notice. However, this is a narrow exemption: a hedgerow that still contains living plants, even if the ash component has died, is not simply "dead" and a notice may still be required. See our guide to ash dieback in Dover hedgerow trees for the management considerations.

What is not an exemption: the fact that a neighbour wants the hedge removed, that the hedge is causing damage to drains or foundations, that the hedge blocks light or has grown too tall. These are not grounds for removing a hedgerow without a notice under the Regulations. They may be grounds for managing the hedge (which does not require a notice), or in the case of height disputes between neighbours, grounds for a complaint to Dover District Council under the high-hedges regime.

What are the penalties for ignoring the Hedgerow Regulations near Dover?

Removing a hedgerow without having submitted a valid removal notice, or removing a hedgerow after a retention notice has been issued, is a criminal offence under regulation 7 of the Hedgerow Regulations 1997. The offence is tried in a magistrates' court. Following the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, the maximum financial penalty at magistrates' court for environmental offences is unlimited, replacing the previous cap of £2,500 that had applied since the Regulations were enacted. Courts can impose significant fines, and cases involving deliberate removal of historically or ecologically important hedgerows have attracted fines well above the old cap.

Beyond the fine, Dover District Council can serve a hedgerow replacement notice under regulation 8, requiring the landowner to plant a new hedgerow of equivalent species composition and length to the one removed. The notice specifies a planting period (typically a planting season within the next 12 months). Failure to comply with a replacement notice is a further criminal offence. The cost of replanting a mixed native hedgerow at current east Kent plant prices is not trivial: a 100-metre run of mixed-species bare-root hedging at 4 plants per metre, including stakes and spiral guards, runs to several hundred pounds in materials alone, before any labour cost. See our guide to bare-root native hedge planting on Dover chalk for establishment costs and species to consider.

The practical lesson is straightforward: if there is any possibility that a hedgerow removal on agricultural or rural land near Dover requires a notice, submit one. The 42-day process is not onerous, and the risk of proceeding without it substantially exceeds the inconvenience of waiting.

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