Anyone know anything about Tree Preservation Orders?

[Celestia]

We are moving house and due to exchange and complete next Friday. Today we've had a rather obscure complication thrown up by the solicitors.

Apparently, a previous owner of our current house, cut down a tree with a preservation order on it and when we bought the house 10 years ago, our solicitor failed to pick this up . Our solicitor now has to investigate this and has said we may be liable for charges against it .

When we bought the house we weren't even made aware that we had any trees under the order and certainly not that any had been breached.

Can anyone advise please? Thanks.

I think the issue with the OP is they haven't got the insurance so unless this breach has already been dealt with they may well be liable.

I think it is best to wait for your Solicitor to check back and discuss your options with them.

However someone with more knowledge may come along and give you more professional advice. My law degree was done for a hobby and Contract and Conveyancing was the one year I did question the "hobby" part.

Good luck with your issue and hope your sale is sorted soon.

As far as I know the fine applies to the person who has done the damage not the landowner and this seems to be the case in the guidance on www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/PDF/tposguide.pdf
Can you check if the TPO is definitely still in force (usually available on the planning search on your councils website)?
Usually they only prosecute after a complaint or if it's a particularly significant location. I would say that if it was over 10 yrs then it's unlikely to come out now and even so they would need to prove it was you who did the damage and the fine would be proportional to the 'gain' you got from it.
You can probably purchase indemnity insurance but I personally wouldn't bother in this case.
And be aware of TPOs in future
We always look for them on clients properties you can be sure if you want to remove or trim a tree it's likely to have one.... All the others you don't want to touch won't!

Thank you for the advise however, panic over :o It turns out that the solicitor got it wrapped round her neck and the only question that needed answering was were we aware of any TPO being breached in the area so all sorted thankfully!