Tree surgery and fencing in Rye.

Rye is a different job from anywhere else we work. The old town sits on a sandstone hill with cobbled streets, flint-walled gardens and a conservation area boundary that takes in most of what you can see from the church. The trees in those gardens are often mature, often TPO'd, and rarely accessible without a sectional dismantle and sometimes a crane on the High Street. The wider postcode tells a different story: out toward Camber and Iden you've got Romney Marsh edge, exposed coastal aspect, salt-laden west wind off Rye Bay, and long post-and-rail and stock fencing runs round paddocks and smallholdings.

Rye and the villages out to Northiam and Beckley fall under Rother District Council, the same authority as Battle and Bexhill, so the Section 211 process is one we know well. Most coastal towns get the salt off the Channel; Rye gets the salt off the Marsh and the Bay, which has the same effect on a fence run on the wrong spec. We know which gardens in the Citadel sit inside the conservation area, we know to warn you about access on Mermaid Street before we quote, and we know that a Camber fence needs a proper spec and a capping rail or it's gone in five winters. That's the reason the second visit is usually a quicker conversation.

Rye sits inside one of the larger conservation areas in East Sussex. The Citadel, Mermaid Street, Church Square and most of the streets running off the High Street are inside the boundary, and many of the back gardens carry TPOs on top of that. If a tree inside the conservation area is over 75mm in diameter at 1.5 metres off the ground, you generally need to file a Section 211 notice with Rother District Council before any work starts. The council has six weeks to respond. We file the notice for you, with the method, the species and the reason, and we wait the clock out before we put a saw in.

A Tree Preservation Order is a separate process and it's common round Rye, partly because the Citadel gardens have been quietly maturing for centuries. A TPO'd tree needs a formal application to Rother, regardless of the diameter or whether the tree sits inside the conservation area. We handle that paperwork too. Most of the time the answer comes back as a consent with conditions, and we work to those conditions on the day. If you're not sure whether your tree is TPO'd, sitting in the conservation area, or both, send us the address and we'll check Rother's planning map before we quote.