About TPO Search
The problem
Tree Preservation Orders are public information, but finding them is unreasonably difficult. Each of the UK's local planning authorities maintains its own TPO register, in its own format, on its own website. Some councils publish TPO data on interactive maps. Others bury it in PDF documents. Many have no online register at all.
If you're a homeowner wanting to know whether the tree in your garden is protected, a tree surgeon checking before quoting for work, or a property buyer doing due diligence, you first have to figure out which planning authority covers your area, then navigate to their specific system, then work out how to search it.
There is no national TPO register. We thought there should be something better.
What we built
TPO Search brings together Tree Preservation Order data from over 160 local planning authorities across England, Wales and Scotland into a single, searchable interactive TPO map. Enter a postcode and see Tree Preservation Orders near you plotted on a satellite map, with details of each order.
We are not creating new data — we are making existing public data easier to find.
Our data sources
We aggregate TPO data from three main sources:
- planning.data.gov.uk — The government's national planning data platform, collecting data from around 58 planning authorities. Refreshed daily.
- Council open data portals — Many councils publish TPO data through ArcGIS, GeoJSON, or WFS endpoints. We import from approximately 100 additional planning authorities. Refreshed daily.
- Ordnance Survey Code-Point Open — Free postcode location data, matching your postcode to nearby TPOs.
All data is publicly available and published under open data licences.
Limitations
TPO Search is a helpful starting point, but it is not a substitute for an official search with your local planning authority.
- We do not cover all planning authorities. Around 170 planning authorities do not yet publish TPO data in a format we can import.
- Data may not be up to date. TPOs are made and revoked regularly. There may be a delay between changes and our data being updated.
- Location data is approximate. TPO locations are based on coordinates published by the planning authority. Postcode searches use the centroid of the postcode area, not your exact address.
- This is not legal advice. If you need certainty about whether a tree is protected, contact your local planning authority directly.
Help us improve
If you know of a council that publishes TPO data openly and we have not included it yet, we would love to hear about it. Equally, if you spot an error in our data, please let us know.