Fences near you

The permitted development class that matters is the one covering the erection, construction, maintenance, improvement or alteration of a gate, fence, wall or other means of enclosure. The height limits in the order are the same ones the Planning Portal publishes: one metre above ground level where the enclosure is adjacent to a highway used, or designed to be used, by vehicular traffic, and two metres above ground level anywhere else. Maintenance or alteration of an existing enclosure is permitted up to its original height or the applicable limit, whichever is greater, which is why a run that is already too tall cannot lawfully be made taller when it is replaced.

There is one narrow exception in the order, and it is not a domestic one: at a school, two metres is allowed adjacent to a vehicular highway provided any portion above one metre does not obstruct sightlines. For houses the one metre figure stands, and it is measured from ground level rather than from the top of a new raised bed or a bank of imported topsoil.

Three things switch the right off entirely. Listed buildings are the first: the order excludes development within the curtilage of a listed building, and the Planning Portal adds that the right does not apply where the fence, wall, gate or other boundary forms a boundary with a neighbouring listed building. An article four direction or a planning condition is the second, and it is worth a phone call to the local planning authority rather than an assumption. The third is a conservation area, where permission may be needed to take an existing fence, wall or gate down, so the demolition rather than the replacement is what needs checking.

The two metre and one metre figures travel surprisingly well across the United Kingdom, but the conditions attached to them do not. In Scotland the relevant class permits a gate, fence, wall or other means of enclosure that would not exceed two metres in height, reduced to one metre where it fronts a road, with the same bar on exceeding the original height when something is replaced. What is markedly different is the treatment of designated areas: the Scottish class is simply not available in a conservation area, nor within or bounding the curtilage of a listed building. A homeowner in a Scottish conservation area is therefore applying for permission for a fence that a neighbour a few streets outside it could put up freely.

Northern Ireland has its own order, whose minor operations part permits gates, fences, walls and other means of enclosure on the same pattern: not more than one metre above ground level where erected or constructed adjacent to a road used or designed to be used by vehicular traffic, and not more than two metres elsewhere, with alterations limited to the original height or those limits, whichever is greater. It too excludes development within the curtilage of a listed building, and it carves out private streets as designated by the department responsible for regional development.

Because the underlying orders are separate pieces of law, an installer quoting across a border should be asked which order they are working to. The safe habit everywhere is to confirm with the local planning authority before materials are ordered, particularly on a corner plot, a front boundary or anything facing a road.

British homeowners routinely believe the boundary is a settled fact. GOV.UK is candid that it usually is not: most title plans do not show exact boundaries, you do not normally need the exact boundaries recorded anywhere, and there is usually no record of who owns the hedge, wall, tree or fence between two properties. The T-mark folklore, the idea that the posts always face the owner, and the assumption that the left-hand fence is yours are conventions rather than law.

Where it matters, there are two formal routes: a boundary agreement made with your neighbour, or an application for a determined boundary. Government guidance on neighbour disputes is blunt that arguments about the exact line between two properties can be difficult to solve and that you should get legal advice, and it points to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors as a source of guidance on boundary and party wall questions.

One point of relief for fencing specifically: the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 does not reach a timber fence. The explanatory booklet defines a party fence wall as a dividing structure that is not part of a building, stands astride the boundary line between lands of different owners and is used to separate those lands, giving a masonry garden wall as the example, and states that the category does not include such things as wooden fences or hedges. A masonry wall on the line is a different matter and is covered in the retaining wall guide.

Two forces account for most fence failures in this climate. The first is moisture at ground level, where a timber post spends its life in soil that rarely dries out for long; rot begins at the line where air meets wet ground rather than at the buried tip, which is why a post can snap at the surface while the part underground still looks sound. The second is wind. A close boarded fence is a solid sail, and a gale loads every post along the run at once, so the panels that blow out are usually telling you about the posts and the fixings rather than about the boards.

Ground conditions decide how long the repair lasts. Heavy clay holds water against a post and shrinks away from it in a dry summer; made ground and old garden rubble compact unevenly; a fence at the bottom of a slope takes the water from everything above it. A contractor who asks what the ground is like and where the water goes before quoting is doing the part of the job that is invisible afterwards.

What faces the road deserves particular care. Under the Highways Act 1980 a competent authority may serve notice requiring the removal of barbed wire on land adjoining a highway where it is a nuisance, and the Act treats wire with spikes or jagged projections as a nuisance when it is likely to be injurious to persons or animals lawfully using the highway. The notice sets a compliance period of not less than one month nor more than six months, and non-compliance can be taken to the magistrates' court, after which the authority may do what is necessary and recover its expenses. Barbed wire along a garden boundary beside a pavement is therefore not simply a matter of taste.

Fencing is not a licensed trade in the United Kingdom, so the protection comes from the paperwork rather than from a register. Get the specification written down: the height measured from ground level, the position relative to the boundary, post type and how the posts are set, gravel boards, rail counts, fixings, which side the finished face goes and what happens to the old fence and its concrete.

Two questions save most disputes. The first is whether the fence is going on the line by agreement with the neighbour or just inside your own land, because a fence built over the line can have to come out. The second is what the quotation assumes about the ground: a price based on driving posts into soft garden soil is a different price from one that meets a buried slab, an old footing or rubble a foot down.

LokalMatch is where the comparison starts. You describe the fencing job once, including the length of the run, what is there now, whether it faces a road and anything you know about the boundary, and fence contractors covering your postcode get in touch with you directly. The contractors pay for the requests they receive, so posting one costs a homeowner nothing. LokalMatch does not build fences and does not set prices, and it does not vet, rank or recommend anyone, so checking insurance, references and the written specification remains yours to do.