The Niagara Escarpment Commission does not join the city on every Burlington tree removal. For most ordinary removals (hazard trees, dead or storm-damaged wood, a homeowner cutting a tree for personal use, routine pruning), Ontario’s own escarpment regulation exempts the work from the NEC permit. Burlington’s Private Tree By-law 40-2022 is then the only permit you need. Inside the NEC Area of Development Control, you need two permits when the removal is tied to a new build, an addition, grading or a pool.
Burlington’s Private Tree By-law Covers Almost Every Removal on Its Own
By-law 40-2022 protects any tree with a trunk diameter of 20 cm or more, measured at 1.37 metres above ground, inside the Urban Planning Area, excluding Halton woodland. For a tree with multiple stems, the bylaw uses the square root of the sum of the squares, so a two-stem tree at 15 cm and 12 cm works out closer to 19 cm than to 27 cm.
The bylaw applies to private property within the city’s Urban Planning Area Boundary, set out on Official Plan Schedule B. That boundary covers most of developed Burlington, generally south of Dundas Street and Highway 407 (Kilbride, Mount Nemo, and North Aldershot sit in the rural area, outside it). It does not apply to woodland regulated under Halton Region’s own Tree By-law 121-05.
Trees at 75 cm DBH or larger are classified as significant trees and carry the highest replanting ratio in the bylaw’s tiered scale, covered below.
If your tree meets the threshold and sits within the Urban Planning Area, outside Halton woodland, you need a permit from the city, and for most homeowners that is the entire process. Measure the tree before applying, or have us do it as part of the arborist report the application requires. Our Burlington tree permit guide walks through the application steps in full.
Why the Niagara Escarpment Commission Skips Most Ordinary Removals
Ontario Regulation 826/90 sets the boundaries of the escarpment’s Area of Development Control, the zone where a Development Permit is required before land is altered or a tree comes down. That boundary is narrower than the full Niagara Escarpment Plan area, and parts of Burlington sit inside it. It was amended in May 2026 through O.Reg 198/26, so check the NEC’s live jurisdiction map rather than an older PDF.
Falling inside the Area of Development Control does not automatically mean you need a Development Permit for a tree. Ontario Regulation 828/90 exempts tree cutting, removal, and pruning from the NEC permit requirement for a list of reasons, and several cover most homeowner situations directly: the tree is a safety hazard, it is dead or diseased or was damaged by natural causes rather than human activity, the removal is for the owner’s personal use with no sale of the wood, or the work is routine pruning done by the owner. The exemption covers only work that is a permitted use under the Niagara Escarpment Plan’s land-use policies and does not conflict with an existing development permit. A separate part of the same exemption also covers tree work done under good forestry practices where a municipal tree bylaw is already in effect, which Burlington’s is.
Being exempt from the NEC’s Development Permit never exempts you from the municipal rules that apply to the property, and the two regimes run independently. Where a property under development control also falls within the Urban Planning Area, a hazard tree removal still needs the city permit under By-law 40-2022, but not the NEC’s sign-off. Check your parcel against both maps before cutting: the Urban Planning Area Boundary on Official Plan Schedule B and the NEC’s Area of Development Control map.
When You Need Both Permits
The two-authority case arrives when tree removal is not the standalone project. Land alteration under the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act (new construction, an addition, site grading or a pool) falls outside the O.Reg 828/90 exemptions. If your property sits in the Area of Development Control and the removal is part of that kind of project, you need a Development Permit from the NEC on top of whatever municipal permits the project requires, including a By-law 40-2022 tree permit where the property is within the Urban Planning Area.
NEC guidance says municipal building approvals and other permits issue only after the Development Permit is granted. There is no published NEC processing timeline: straightforward applications can be approved at the staff level, while more complex ones go to the Commission’s monthly meeting. Call the NEC at 905-877-5191 or email nec@ontario.ca early, before committing to a construction schedule that assumes a particular turnaround.
What Burlington’s Permit Costs, and How Replanting Scales
Burlington’s 2026 fee structure has several components. The processing fee is $54.00 plus HST, paid when you apply. The issuance fee for an approved permit is $351.50 plus HST per application covering one to three trees. A fourth tree adds $243.50 plus HST, and each tree from the fifth onward adds $135.50 plus HST. A permit to injure a tree, rather than remove it, runs $81.50 plus HST per tree. Confirm with Burlington for the fee to extend, transfer, or alter an existing permit. A compliance inspection after a contravention has its own fee schedule (confirm the amounts with Burlington).
Replanting is tiered to the size of the tree removed, not a flat multiplier: 20 to 35 cm owes two replacement trees for every one removed, 36 to 74 cm climbs to three to one, and 75 cm or larger, matching the significant tree threshold, reaches four to one. Where the property cannot accommodate the replacement trees, cash-in-lieu runs $257.50 per tree, with no HST added.
Exemptions, Fee Waivers, and Emergency Work Are Three Different Things
Permit exemptions include routine pruning, nurseries and orchards, invasive species, work by municipal or local board staff, licensed Crown Forest Sustainability Act operators, cadastral surveyors, removal required as a condition under the Planning Act or a development permit, utility construction and maintenance, licensed pits and quarries, and trees on land owned or controlled by the Royal Botanical Gardens or Conservation Halton.
Dead, dying, or high-risk trees are not on that exemption list. They are exempt from the fee, not the permit: an application and supporting documentation are still required, but the city waives what you would otherwise pay. The bylaw defines a high-risk tree as one where failure is not yet imminent, which separates a fee-waived high-risk removal from an emergency.
Emergency tree work is the one case exempt from the permit requirement itself, and it comes with its own condition: written notice to the city within 72 hours, with documentation of what made the work an emergency. Cutting first and explaining later without that notice puts the work back under the standard permit and penalty rules.
Penalties Scale With How Long a Violation Continues
Removing a protected tree without a permit is a per-day offence, not a flat fine. For an individual, a first offence runs $500 to $100,000, and each day the situation continues counts separately. A subsequent offence starts at $1,000 with the same $100,000 ceiling. Corporations face $1,000 to $100,000 for a first offence and $5,000 to $100,000 for any subsequent one. Multiple offences in the same matter can each draw an additional $1,000 to $10,000 with no stated aggregate cap, and the bylaw allows a special fine above $100,000 to strip out the economic advantage of the violation. Separate from that, Burlington also runs an administrative monetary penalty track under its own AMPS by-law.
File Both Applications in Parallel
Most Burlington removals only need to clear the city’s Private Tree By-law. When a removal is tied to construction, an addition, grading, or a pool inside the Area of Development Control, the NEC’s Development Permit applies alongside whatever the city requires for the property, and there is no reason to file the applications one after the other. The Arborist Group prepares both applications so they can move through review in parallel, with one arborist report written to satisfy both authorities. Contact us with your property location and what is planned, and we will tell you which permits your project needs.