Summer 2019, I had a large, unsightly and twisted laurel tree chopped down. It had been left, by the previous owners, to grow laterally along the ground and had split into 3 main branches. I decided to keep one. The men who came to chop down the 2 trunks used their chainsaws to slice 4 gashes into the stumps and told me to pour a bottle of bleach into them and cover it up with a brick or something, to stop rain going in, every week for 6 weeks to prevent the stumps from putting out any new growth. I did as instructed and it worked. Not a sign of any regrowth. Much cheaper than the stuff they sell in garden centres.