The NSW 10/50 rule: clearing trees near your home for bushfire protection

What the 10/50 rule lets you do

The 10/50 Vegetation Clearing Scheme was introduced by the NSW Rural Fire Service after the 2013 bushfires. If your parcel of land sits inside a designated 10/50 Vegetation Clearing Entitlement Area, it allows you to:

• Clear trees on your own property within 10 metres of a home, without seeking approval.
• Clear underlying vegetation such as shrubs, but not trees, within 50 metres of a home, without seeking approval.

That is where the name comes from: 10 metres for trees, 50 metres for the stuff underneath. The scheme applies to both native and introduced vegetation. It allows clearing, it does not require it, and it only works inside the mapped area.

Step one: check the online tool, on the day

The entitlement area is mapped, and the only reliable way to know whether your land is in it is the NSW RFS 10/50 online tool. Two things people miss:

• Check every lot. If your property is made up of more than one parcel, check each one. Near the boundary of the entitlement area, one lot can be in and the next can be out.
• Check on the day you clear, and keep the result. The RFS advises re-confirming eligibility on the day, because the entitlement area, the excluded matters or the rules may have changed, and you must follow the rules in force at the time you clear. Save or print the search output as your evidence.

The tool also tells you whether any environmental or cultural exclusions apply to your land, which is the part that most often turns a yes into a no.

What counts as a “tree”

The Code has a specific definition, and it matters, because anything that is not a tree can be cleared out to 50 metres rather than 10. Under the 10/50 Code a tree is a perennial woody plant 3 or more metres tall with one or more self-supporting trunks, at least one of which has a circumference of more than 30 centimetres measured 1.3 metres above the ground. Shrubs (small, low, multi-stemmed woody plants) and vines are not trees.

There is also a measurement rule that decides borderline cases: you may only remove a tree if part of a trunk measuring more than 30 centimetres in circumference at 1.3 metres above ground is within 10 metres of the external wall of the building. Since the 2015 amendments the definition of a tree also includes multi-stemmed trees, so those can no longer be removed beyond 10 metres.

Which buildings you can measure from

The 10 and 50 metres are measured from the external walls of a building, not from your fence or your boundary. The building has to qualify:

• A building containing habitable rooms: a home, tourist or visitor accommodation, a caravan in a caravan park, or a manufactured home in a manufactured home estate.
• Certain high risk facilities: child care centres, hospitals and schools, but not universities, colleges or TAFEs.
• Farm sheds as defined in the Code (added in the 2015 changes). Farm sheds do not need habitable rooms.

The building must have been lawfully approved and lawfully occupiable. If it was built without consent, the Code does not apply. You also cannot clear for a house that is approved but not yet built, or built but without lawful authority for occupancy (an interim occupation certificate does not count).

Measuring from the wall includes permanently attached structures such as decks, verandahs, pergolas and attached garages. It excludes detached garages, sheds, water tanks, and paving or concrete. It also excludes decks built as exempt development under the State Environmental Planning Policy (Exempt and Complying Development Codes) 2008, so a new deck cannot be used to push the 10 metre line further out.

It beats a TPO, but not everything else

This is the part that surprises people. If you clear in accordance with the 10/50 Code, you may remove trees that a council Tree Preservation Order would otherwise protect, and you are not required to tell the council. That is a genuinely powerful exemption.

But the 10/50 Code does not override:

• Development consent conditions. If your consent requires you to retain specified trees, you cannot remove them under 10/50.
• Section 88B covenants and other restrictions under the Conveyancing Act 1919.
• Court orders, including Land and Environment Court orders.
• Stop work orders, interim protection orders and remediation directions under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974.
• Land management agreements, such as conservation agreements, Biodiversity Conservation Act agreements, property vegetation plans and biobanking agreements.
• Commonwealth law. Clearing under the Code is not an approval under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, and the RFS tool does not advise on it.

The exclusions that stop you

Even inside the entitlement area, the online tool may flag your land as carrying an exclusion or condition. These include critical habitat, critically endangered plants and a specific list of critically endangered ecological communities (Cumberland Plain Woodland and Blue Gum High Forest among them), National Parks estate land, Aboriginal Places and culturally modified (scarred) trees, State and local heritage, listed wetlands and littoral rainforest, World Heritage and Ramsar sites, land within 100 metres of the coastline or an estuary, and Lord Howe Island.

Two conditions are not mapped, so you have to work them out yourself:

• Slope. You cannot clear trees on slopes greater than 18 degrees except in accordance with a Geotechnical Engineer Assessment Report. On such slopes, pruning is only allowed if at least 75% of the canopy is retained, again unless a geotechnical report says otherwise.
• Mangroves, coastal saltmarsh and riparian areas. Mangroves and coastal saltmarsh cannot be cleared under the Code, and riparian buffers along rivers and lakes apply as defined in the Code.

Neighbours, consent and shared trees

• You may not clear any neighbouring land. Full stop. You can ask, but they can only clear if their parcel is also in the entitlement area, and nothing obliges them to.
• Relying on their building needs written consent. If the tree on your land is more than 10 metres from your own house but within 10 metres of a neighbour's house, you can only remove it with that neighbour's written consent, and consent from every adjoining owner whose building is being used to authorise the clearing.
• A trunk across a boundary needs everyone. If a trunk sits across two or more properties, all landowners must approve removal.
• Overhanging branches. You may prune branches within 10 metres of your building that overhang your land, but pruning must comply with AS 4373 Pruning of amenity trees. If balancing the tree properly means pruning on their side, you need their consent first. See our guide to a neighbour's overhanging tree.

How you are allowed to clear

• No soil disturbance. You cannot use graders, ploughs, dozers or other heavy machinery designed to break the soil surface, such as excavators. Vegetation must not be removed below the soil surface, protective ground cover must stay, and all topsoil must remain in place.
• No burning. The Code is not an exemption from, or an approval for, burning vegetation. Illegal dumping of the green waste is also an offence.
• Pruning to the Australian Standard. Pruning must follow AS 4373 Pruning of amenity trees.
• Wildlife duty of care. Clearing under the Code does not exempt you from the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 for harm to protected fauna, or from the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1979. Have hollows checked and look for nests and tree-dwelling animals first.
• Erosion and landslip are still your liability. The RFS is explicit that landowners clearing under the Code are not exempt from liability if, for example, a landslip on your land damages someone else's.

10/50 is not the same as boundary clearing

NSW also has a separate Rural Boundary Clearing Code, which lets landholders in identified rural, bushfire prone areas clear vegetation along their property boundary to slow fire spread. It has its own Boundary Clearing Tool, its own eligible areas and its own environmental protections, and the RFS warns that heavy penalties apply if the requirements are not followed. If you are on a rural block, check both tools rather than assuming one covers you.

If you are outside the entitlement area

Then 10/50 simply does not apply, and your normal council rules decide whether you need approval. Run your address through our permit checker for a location-specific starting point, read the NSW tree removal laws page, and speak to your council or Local Land Services office. If the tree is genuinely dead or dangerous, a different exemption may apply: see removing a dead or dangerous tree.

Quick reference

• 10 metres: trees, measured from the external wall of a qualifying building.
• 50 metres: underlying vegetation such as shrubs, not trees.
• Only inside the mapped entitlement area. Check every lot, on the day, and keep the result.
• A tree: 3m or taller, trunk over 30cm circumference at 1.3m.
• Overrides a TPO, but not development consents, covenants, court orders or Commonwealth law.
• Hard stops: slopes over 18 degrees, mapped environmental and heritage exclusions, neighbouring land.
• No heavy machinery, no soil disturbance, no burning.