I'm not sure what your argument is, but as far as I'm aware this tree didn't have specific, out of the ordinary, protection. I believe it may have even been on private land so the offense is exactly the same as cutting down a neighbors tree. It also happened to damage a protected heritage site, but those are hardly unique in the UK...
it had no specific protection. it was just a tree in law. but they have a silly way of 'working out' how much it was valued and that is apparently almost a quarter of a million pounds!
