Check Tree Preservation Orders in the Peak District

For land inside the Peak District National Park, the Peak District National Park Authority — not the surrounding district councils — is the Local Planning Authority. It makes and holds the Tree Preservation Orders for property within the park boundary, covering settlements such as Bakewell, Hathersage, Castleton and Edale.

This is an important distinction: a property just outside the boundary falls to a district council instead. Enter a postcode above for a first indication, then confirm with the right authority.

Inside the park, tree protection works much as it does elsewhere, but the authority is the national park, which also applies its own landscape and conservation considerations. Many trees here may be protected by TPOs or by conservation areas within the park's villages.

Because the park boundary is the deciding factor, the first step is always to confirm whether the specific address actually sits inside it.

Unusually for this region, the Peak District National Park Authority publishes its tree-protection records to the national planning.data.gov.uk dataset: over 550 Tree Preservation Order zones and more than 300 individually protected trees across the park (as of July 2026). That makes the checker genuinely useful inside the boundary — a search near Bakewell, Hathersage or Tideswell can show real TPO zones on the map, unlike the surrounding district councils, none of which had published their records at the same date.

The dataset also lists over 130 conservation areas within the park's villages. A result here is still guidance — the authority's own register remains definitive — but it is a far stronger starting point than in most neighbouring areas.

Even with the park's good data coverage, one thing a map cannot settle is whether an address actually sits inside the park boundary — and that decides which authority you deal with.

The report sets that out for the exact address, lists the Tree Preservation Orders found around it, and checks conservation areas, Article 4 directions and listed buildings alongside them. Dated and in writing, for a job or a sale that turns on the answer.