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Approved Document K, the 2013 edition, sets guarding heights in Diagram 3.1 by building category. For single family dwellings, stairs, landings, ramps and the edges of internal floors take a minimum of 900mm for all those elements, while external balconies, including Juliette balconies, and the edges of a roof take 1100mm. Glazing at an opening window has its own line at 800mm. Those are minimum heights, measured as the diagram shows, and a handrail may form the top of the guarding where the heights can be matched.

Paragraph 3.1 sets out where guarding is required at all: where it is reasonably necessary for safety to guard the edges of any part of a floor, including the edge below an opening window, a gallery, a balcony, a roof including rooflights and other openings, any other place to which people have access, and any light well, basement or similar sunken area next to a building. In a dwelling, guarding to stairs goes in wherever there is a drop of more than 600mm at the side of a flight or landing.

The gap rule is the one that most often catches a design. In any building that may be used by children under five during normal use, guarding must be constructed so that a 100mm sphere cannot pass through any openings, and so that children cannot readily climb it, which the approved document translates into avoiding horizontal rails. Between them, those two sentences rule out a good deal of what appears in magazines.

Height and gaps are only half of the requirement. Approved Document K also says guarding should resist, as a minimum, the loads given in BS EN 1991-1-1 with its UK National Annex and PD 6688-1-1, and refers designers to BS 6180 for the design of barriers and infill panels. Where glazing forms part of the guarding, Section 5 of the same document applies as well. Those loads are the reason a balustrade is designed rather than assembled.

In practice, failures are almost never about the rail itself. They are about what it is fixed to: a newel post bolted through a thin string with a single fixing, a wall-mounted handrail screwed into plasterboard rather than into a stud or a fixed timber ground, a glass balustrade in a channel bedded into a screed that was never designed to hold it, or an external post set into timber decking whose joists have begun to rot. The load a barrier must take is applied horizontally at the top, which is the most demanding way to load any of those connections.

Two practical checks are worth doing on any existing balustrade. Push firmly at the top of each newel and at the middle of each run and see whether anything moves, and try a 100mm object through the widest gap. Movement at a newel is a reason to stop using the stair until it is fixed properly, not a job for next spring.

Guarding inside a house raises no planning question, but the structure it guards sometimes does. Under Class E of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, development within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse is not permitted if it would include the construction or provision of a verandah, balcony or raised platform, so a usable balcony is a planning application rather than permitted development. A Juliette balcony across an existing opening is a different thing: it is guarding to a door, not a platform to stand on, and it is normally treated as such.

Front railings in a conservation area are a live issue in many British towns, because the loss of original railings is one of the changes that most affects the character of a street. Local planning authorities frequently have policies or design guidance about their reinstatement, pattern and colour, and permitted development rights for boundary treatments can be restricted by an article 4 direction. The local planning authority is the place to ask before ordering anything.

Listed buildings are stricter again, and the requirement applies inside as well as outside. Replacing a listed staircase balustrade, or adding new railings to the front of a listed terrace, is likely to need listed building consent, and repairing what is there is usually preferred to replacing it. Work done without consent to a listed building is a serious matter, so the consent conversation belongs before the design, not after the quotation.

The main cost drivers are the length of the run and the number of individual components, the material and finish, and the fixing conditions. A softwood balustrade with turned balusters onto an existing string is a straightforward day's work; the same run in stainless steel and glass is a fabricated product with a lead time. Add height above ground for external work, whether access equipment is needed, whether existing guarding has to be removed and the fixings made good, whether the substrate can actually take the loads or needs strengthening first, and whether a conservation area or listed building sets the design.

LokalMatch is the introduction and no more. Describe the job once with your postcode, saying where the guarding is, how long the run is and what material you have in mind, and joiners, metalworkers and balustrade specialists working in your area will get in touch. Homeowners use LokalMatch free of charge and the businesses pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not fabricate or fit anything, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone, so asking how each proposal will meet the height, gap and loading requirements is worth doing yourself.