Fences, gates and garden walls

You will need to apply for planning permission if you wish to erect or add to a fence, wall or gate and:

• it would be over 1 metre high and next to a highway used by vehicles (or the footpath of such a highway); or over 2 metres high elsewhere; or
• your right to put up or alter fences, walls and gates is removed by an article 4 direction or a planning condition; or
• your house is a listed building or in the curtilage of a listed building.
• the fence, wall or gate, or any other boundary involved, forms a boundary with a neighbouring listed building or its curtilage.

You will not need to apply for planning permission to take down a fence, wall,or gate. You will also not need to apply for planning permission to alter or improve an existing fence, wall or gate as long as it meets the criteria above. In a conservation area, however, you might need conservation area consent to take down a fence, wall or gate.

You do not need planning permission for hedges as such, though if a planning condition or a covenant restricts planting (for example, on "open plan" estates, or where a driver's sight line could be blocked) you may need planning permission and/or other consent.