Tree work in Leicester
Leicester City Council is the tree authority across all city postcodes, and the city has extensive conservation areas — Stoneygate, New Walk, Clarendon Park, Knighton and the Market Place among them. Stoneygate in particular has both conservation-area cover and a dense concentration of individual TPOs on very large Victorian garden trees.
Clarendon Park and Highfields are terraced-street work: no vehicle access to rear gardens, sectional dismantling, timber out through the house. Knighton and Stoneygate are the opposite — big mature specimens, plenty of room, but almost always protected.
The city’s street tree stock leans heavily on lime, London plane and Norway maple. Lime is the one that generates the most calls, because of the aphid honeydew that coats cars parked underneath all summer. Thinning reduces it; it does not eliminate it, and anyone promising otherwise is selling you something.
For anything on the public highway or in a park — Victoria Park, Abbey Park, Aylestone Meadows, Western Park — the tree belongs to the council and the report goes to them, not to us. We will point you to the right team.
Protected trees in Leicester
Leicester falls under Leicester City Council for tree protection. Before any work we check two things for your address: whether the tree carries a Tree Preservation Order, and whether it sits inside a conservation area.
If it has a TPO, works need a written application and the council has eight weeks to determine it. If it is in a conservation area, you must give six weeks' written notice under section 211 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 for any tree over 75mm diameter measured at 1.5m — even with no TPO on it. Doing the work without either is a criminal offence, and for the most serious cases the fine in the Crown Court is unlimited.
Dead trees and trees posing an urgent safety risk are exempt, but the exemption is narrow: five working days' written notice is still required unless the danger is immediate, and the burden of proving the tree qualified sits with you. Where a Leicester job is anywhere near that line, we photograph and document the defect before starting. We prepare and submit the paperwork to Leicester City Council as part of the job — there is no extra charge for it.
Emergency call-outs in Leicester
Leicester is roughly 15–25 minutes from our Wigston base, which puts it comfortably inside our 45-minute typical emergency response. The line is answered by a person 24 hours a day. Send two photos — one wide, one close to the failure point — and we can usually give you a fixed price before the truck moves.
If a tree is on a power line, call 105 first: your distribution network operator attends free and makes the conductor safe. If it is blocking a public road or anyone is at risk, call 999 first. Then call us.
Local landmarks and access
We know Leicester — Victoria Park, Abbey Park, Knighton Park, Aylestone Meadows, Western Park and the New Walk conservation area. That matters more than it sounds: knowing which streets a chipper can park on and which need timber carrying out by hand is the difference between an accurate quote and a price that changes on the day.
Trees on the public highway, in parks and on other council land are Leicester City Council's responsibility, not the adjacent householder's. If that is what you are looking at, report it to them and they will attend at no cost to you — we will point you to the right team rather than quote you for something you should not be paying for.