Guidance

Provide your Tree preservation order data

8 November 2025

Working Draft This guidance is under development. Help us improve it and give your feedback by email.

Follow this guidance when providing your Tree preservation order data.

Providing planning data means making it available publicly to a standard so that services such as planning.data.gov.uk can find it, understand its quality, and trust it will be sustained.

Local Planning Authorities and other organisations funded by the Digital Planning Programme to join the Open Digital Planning community are expected to provide data to this specification.

If you're a Local Planning Authority who is interested in becoming a member, you can join the community.

Otherwise there is no obligation on any party to provide data to this specification.

A future version of this specification may be published on GOV.UK, and cited as one of a number of official data standards for the provision of planning data by planning authorities under the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023.

Providing Tree preservation order data

Take the following steps to provide your Tree preservation order data:

  1. Prepare your data
  2. Check your data
  3. Publish your data
  4. Tell us about your data
  5. Keep your data up-to-date

Prepare your data

Start by reviewing any data we may already have about your organisation on planning.data.gov.uk using the check and provide service. This may include any data you have provided in the past, along with information found on your website, or in other open data.

We will take the most recent data you provide as being more authoritative than any data we have collected from you previously, or found in other sources.

You can download tabular data we have for your organisation as a CSV file from the check and provide service and edit it using a spreadsheet or other CSV editors.

Similarly, you can download geospatial data we have for your organisation as CSV or GeoJSON from planning.data.gov.uk and modify it using QGIS or other GIS tools.

Your data does not need to be complete or perfect to start with. For many purposes having some data is better than no data, so start by providing the Tree preservation orders information you have, and continue to iterate and improve it over time.

Files

For Tree preservation orders you need to provide 3 datasets:

Each each dataset needs to be provided in a separate CSV file following the government tabular data standard.

Where your dataset contains geospatial fields, you may use one of the following formats:

  • CSV
  • GeoJSON
  • GML
  • KML
  • Geopackage

The fields and format of the data you need to prepare are documented below, and formally defined in the technical specifications attached to this page.

Field names

You can use uppercase or lowercase names for your fields, and any punctuation characters are ignored, meaning the following examples are all valid ways of naming the start-date field in your data:

  • StartDate
  • Start Date
  • START_DATE
  • start.date

Reference values

Each dataset has a reference field. Reference values are important to help people find and link to the data. Where you don’t have a reference for an item, you will need to create one that is:

  • unique within your data
  • persistent — it doesn’t change when the data is updated

A good reference is something you already use. Where these aren't unique, you make them unique by appending the year, or even the full date. Great references are short, easy to read, to pronounce and remember.

Date values

All dates must be in the format YYYY-MM-DD, following the guidance for formatting dates and times in data.

Where you don't know the precise date you can enter just the month YYYY-MM or even just the year YYYY. The platform will default a start-date to the first of the month, or the first of January, and an end-date to the last day of the month, or the last day of December. For example:

  • 2025-04-19
  • 2025-04
  • 2025

Geometry and point fields

All coordinates in any geospatial data you provide must be in the WGS84 (ETRS89) coordinate reference system following the government guidance on the Exchange of a location point.

A geometry field may contain a single POLYGON or a MULTIPOLYGON object. A point field may only contain a single POINT object.

If you’re providing geospatial data in a CSV, the field must be encoded as well-known text (WKT), for example:

  • MULTIPOLYGON (((1.188829 51.23478,1.188376 51.234909,...
  • POLYGON ((1.188829 51.23478,1.188376 51.234909,...
  • POINT (-3.466788 50.58151)

When providing geospatial data as GeoJSON, GML, KML or in a Geopackage, use the native format for the geospatial data. That is there is no need to duplicate the geospatial data into a point or geometry property or field.

Tree preservation order dataset

The Tree preservation order dataset contains the following fields:

reference

Enter reference to help people find and link to the data. If you don’t have a reference for this item, you will need to create one that is:

  • unique within your data
  • persistent — it doesn’t change when the data is updated

A good reference is something you already use. Where these aren't unique, you make them unique by appending the year, or even the full date. Great references are short, easy to read, to pronounce and remember.

name

documentation-url

document-url

made-date

confirmed-date

notes

Enter any notes or commentary which helps you or others understand how this data was made, or how it may be interpreted.

organisation

Enter a CURIE value for the organisation from this list.

entry-date

Enter the date this data was created or modified.

start-date

end-date

Tree preservation zone dataset

The Tree preservation zone dataset contains the following fields:

reference

Enter reference to help people find and link to the data. If you don’t have a reference for this item, you will need to create one that is:

  • unique within your data
  • persistent — it doesn’t change when the data is updated

A good reference is something you already use. Where these aren't unique, you make them unique by appending the year, or even the full date. Great references are short, easy to read, to pronounce and remember.

name

tree-preservation-order

tree-preservation-zone-type

geometry

The boundary may be a single polygon, or a multipolygon value. All points should be in the WGS84 coordinate reference system. You may provide data containing points in another coordinate reference system, such as British National Grid, but they will need to be transformed into WGS84 by software such as the Planning Data platform and this transformation may lead to a small loss of accuracy. Geometry data provided in a CSV file should use the well-known text (WKT) representation for the field. If you're providing geometry in a GeoJSON, GML, Geopackage or KML, use the appropriate representation for the file format.

point

notes

Enter any notes or commentary which helps you or others understand how this data was made, or how it may be interpreted.

organisation

Enter a CURIE value for the organisation from this list.

entry-date

Enter the date this data was created or modified.

start-date

end-date

Tree dataset

The Tree dataset contains the following fields:

reference

Enter reference to help people find and link to the data. If you don’t have a reference for this item, you will need to create one that is:

  • unique within your data
  • persistent — it doesn’t change when the data is updated

A good reference is something you already use. Where these aren't unique, you make them unique by appending the year, or even the full date. Great references are short, easy to read, to pronounce and remember.

name

tree-preservation-order

uprn

Although this field doesn't appear in the technical spec or guidance if an LPA provides a species column we can map it to this

address-text

point

geometry

The boundary may be a single polygon, or a multipolygon value. All points should be in the WGS84 coordinate reference system. You may provide data containing points in another coordinate reference system, such as British National Grid, but they will need to be transformed into WGS84 by software such as the Planning Data platform and this transformation may lead to a small loss of accuracy. Geometry data provided in a CSV file should use the well-known text (WKT) representation for the field. If you're providing geometry in a GeoJSON, GML, Geopackage or KML, use the appropriate representation for the file format.

notes

Enter any notes or commentary which helps you or others understand how this data was made, or how it may be interpreted.

organisation

Enter a CURIE value for the organisation from this list.

felled-date

entry-date

Enter the date this data was created or modified.

start-date

end-date

Check your data

Use the check and provide service to review your data before you publish it. The service will show you how the data will appear on planning.data.gov.uk along with feedback on how you might improve your data.

Publish your data

Publishing your data consists of two parts:

  • An endpoint where the data can be downloaded from
  • A source webpage where the information contained in the data is presented on your website

Endpoint

Publish your data at a public endpoint, in a way in which anyone can download and use it.

The endpoint is a URL from which the data can be downloaded. This can be a single file hosted on your website. Or, you can serve your data using an OGC WFS or other API using a third-party service such as GitHub or ArcGIS.

Ensure your endpoint URL is documented and linked to from a public webpage to help people easily find and download the data.

The documentation webpage for your endpoint should include a clear statement that the data is provided as open data under the Open Government Licence.

Source webpage

The source webpage is where a user can see the same information that is shown in the data. This is usually one of your existing planning policy pages on your official .gov.uk website.

It is important that the source webpage links to the endpoint documentation webpage to help users trust the authenticity of the data.

Tell us about your data

Once you have published the data, tell us about it so we can index and quickly make it available nationally on planning.data.gov.uk.

Use the check and provide service to tell us where it is.

You will need to provide for each dataset:

  • the source webpage URL where the information in the data is presented on your website
  • the endpoint URL from which the data can be collected

The service also asks for your name and email address as a point of contact in case of any issues.

Keep your data up-to-date

Continue to improve your data, and act on the feedback from the the service to ensure your data meets the specification.

You also need to update and republish your data whenever there's a change to your Tree preservation orders information.

We look for changes to the data at all of the endpoint URLs we know about every night, so we can quickly update planning.data.gov.uk.

It is simpler if you publish your changes to the same endpoint URL. If you create a new endpoint you need to tell us about your data again.

Contact us

If you need any help at any stage of the process, let us know by emailing digitalland@communities.gov.uk and a member of our team will be in touch.

You can participate in improving the design of this data, and help ensure planning data meets your needs at design.planning.data.gov.uk.

Technical specifications

Tree preservation order technical specification (8 November 2025)

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