Royal Sun and Alliance Insurance Limited has won the right to recover its legal costs from a London council after a tree-root subsidence dispute.
The Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) ruled on May 26, 2026 in Royal Sun and Alliance Insurance Limited v London Borough of Harrow that the London Borough of Harrow must pay the insurer's costs, ending a fight over who footed the legal bill in a compensation claim tied to a damaged property at 41 Brookhill Avenue in Harrow.
The trouble started when the council refused permission to fell two trees. With the trees left in place, the claimant's case was that their roots dried out the soil and triggered clay-shrinkage subsidence. To head off further damage, the claimant installed a root barrier.
RSA, as claimant, pursued statutory compensation from Harrow under the Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation) (England) Regulations 2012. On January 26, 2026, the parties settled by consent, with the council agreeing to pay £30,000 in compensation. RSA then applied, on February 5, 2026, for an award of its costs.
That is where the real argument began. Harrow accepted it owed the compensation but insisted the Tribunal had no power to make it pay the insurer's costs on top. Everything turned on a single phrase: whether a tree-root compensation claim amounts to "proceedings for injurious affection of land" under the Tribunal's rules. If it did, costs could follow. If it did not, RSA would carry its own bill.
Harrow argued the claim simply did not fit. It noted that the leading cases on the meaning of injurious affection had nothing to do with tree preservation, and it cast the claim as one for the price of a root barrier rather than for damage to property. It went further still, contending that an earlier decision on near-identical facts - Burge v South Gloucestershire Council - had been wrongly decided.
Tribunal member Mark Higgin was not persuaded. He found the council's refusal to allow the felling was what caused the damage, and that the cracking and subsidence carried the hallmarks of injurious affection: damage to land that would have been wrongful but for the council's statutory powers. The root barrier, he said, was a consequence of that damage, not a substitute for it. He held that Burge correctly stated the position and that nothing since had changed it.
The result: Harrow must bear RSA's costs, subject to detailed assessment by the Registrar.
For insurers and claims teams, the practical point is clear. Where a council's refusal to permit tree felling leads to subsidence, a compensation claim of this kind can deliver a costs recovery as well - not just the payout itself. The £30,000 figure is modest, but the principle confirmed here is the part worth filing away.
