Fence height planning permission England: 1 m and 2 m

You are about to raise a boundary, and someone has told you that 2 metres is always allowed. In England that sentence is missing its other half. Fence height and planning permission turn on where the fence stands. Next to a highway used by vehicles, the plain-English limit on the Planning Portal is 1 metre. Elsewhere, including many back gardens, it is 2 metres. A privacy screen that encloses the garden can fall under the same rules as a fence.

This page is England only. It follows the Planning Portal's guide to fences, gates, and garden walls, and Class A in Schedule 2, Part 2 of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 on legislation.gov.uk. GOV.UK's note is that permitted development is conditional. Products Compared is not your planning authority. If you buy through our amazon.co.uk links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Insect mesh is a different product on the Hedges and privacy screens hub.

In short

In England, a new gate, fence, wall, or other means of enclosure is generally limited to 1 metre above ground level when it stands adjacent to a highway used by vehicular traffic, and to 2 metres elsewhere. Listed buildings and Article 4 directions can remove that allowance. A 1.8 metre panel does not answer the highway test. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are outside this Order, and a hedge is outside this paragraph.

The England rule in one paragraph

Class A is the permitted development right householders mean when they talk about fence height. The Planning Portal puts it in buyer's language: 1 metre next to a highway used by vehicular traffic, and 2 metres in other cases. Development is not permitted by that class once the height exceeds those limits. The class also restricts an alteration whose finished height breaks the former height, or the limit that would have applied to a new fence. There is a school exception in the Order. If the boundary belongs to a school, read that exception rather than borrowing the householder sentence.

Means of enclosure is the phrase that pulls a privacy screen into the same conversation as a closeboard fence. If the screen closes the garden off, the name on the invoice matters less than the function. Do not call a trellis decorative when it is doing the job of a fence. A run of panels on posts along the boundary is what Class A is about. The cost of a garden privacy screen is the next read once the height is clear, because a quote for a 2 metre run beside a pavement can be a quote for the wrong height.

Next to a road used by vehicles

The 1 metre limit is the clause people drop. It applies when the enclosure is adjacent to a highway used by vehicular traffic. A front garden on a pavement beside a road is the ordinary case. Your own driveway is not an exemption, and a quiet cul-de-sac can still be a highway used by vehicles. If the fence runs along that frontage, the Planning Portal's figure is 1 metre above ground level, not 2.

Measure the finished object. A 1 metre panel with a 30 centimetre trellis screwed to the top is a 1.3 metre enclosure. A cap rail and a post that stands proud of the panel are part of what a planning officer can see. Sloping ground makes one end higher relative to the soil beside it, so measure where the ground falls away, not only at the high spot.

People reach for 2 metres on a front boundary because the back garden already has it, or because a neighbour's old fence is tall and nobody has complained. That fence is not your permission. It may predate the Order, be unlawful, or sit differently against the highway. A patio screen becomes the same problem when you place it as the boundary. A short screen halfway down a front lawn, clearly not the boundary, can be a different proposal. Ask the council with a sketch that shows heights above ground level.

Elsewhere, including a back boundary

Away from a highway used by vehicles, the Planning Portal's figure is 2 metres. A typical back-garden panel of about 1.8 metres, the height Soil Sisters mentions as common, sits under that 2 metre line. That is why so many English gardens have a 6-foot-style fence, and why the 2 metre rule feels universal. It is universal only in this elsewhere category. The moment the same panel turns a corner onto the road frontage, you are back in the 1 metre clause for that adjacent stretch. Two metres is a ceiling, not a target you must hit.

If you raise an existing 1.5 metre back fence, still being under 2 metres is not the whole test. Paragraph A.1 compares the new height with the former height and with the height allowed for a new fence, and it uses the greater of those as the control. Open that paragraph, or ask the council, before you add a trellis.

A bamboo or reed roll fixed flat to a fence you already have is a covering, not a new wall, while it stays within the height you already have. The height question returns if the roll or a trellis sticks up and raises the enclosure. Ownership is separate. Who owns the fence, and what the deeds allow, does not raise the planning limit, and the planning limit does not settle whose land the posts stand on.

Listed buildings, Article 4, and conditions

Listed buildings are the exception the Planning Portal puts next to the height numbers. Class A does not authorise this kind of enclosure work within the curtilage of a listed building, or to a gate, fence, wall, or other means of enclosure surrounding a listed building. If you live in a listed house, or the fence you want to change is the enclosure around one, stop using the 2 metre anecdote. Conservation staff at the council are the right desk. Listed building consent can be a separate question from planning permission, and this article does not untangle that for a named property.

Article 4 directions are the local switch. A council can withdraw permitted development rights in a defined area. Where a direction covers fences or means of enclosure, the national 1 metre and 2 metre pattern does not save you. A conservation area, on its own, is not a fence ban. A direction that mentions enclosures is the fact that matters, and the council's planning pages for your address are where you see it.

A condition on an earlier permission can also bite. Some newer estates remove ordinary fence rights or require a particular boundary treatment. That condition is in the decision notice, not in the general Order. If the house is on a development from the last couple of decades, check the title pack or the council's planning file before you replace the developer's fence with something taller. The condition can be stricter than Class A.

What this article does not decide

It does not approve your fence. Only the local planning authority can tell you how they will treat a specific drawing, and only they can grant permission where Class A does not. Take them a sketch with the height above ground level, the relationship to any highway, and whether the building is listed.

It does not set a height for a hedge. The Planning Portal page used here is about fences, gates, and garden walls. A hedge is not that means-of-enclosure paragraph. High hedges and neighbour disputes about evergreen screens have their own process. A solid screen erected so that a young hedge can grow behind it is still a screen. The hedge or privacy screen piece keeps that distinction and sends the height question back here.

It does not apply outside England. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland use different statutes. It also does not choose your panels. Once the height is one you are allowed to build, rolls, timber, and composite belong in the cost article. A fly curtain for a patio door is a house product in the tesa fly screen comparison, and it has no bearing on boundary height.