Fitting, and an outdoor socket
We arrange an electrician if you need one.
Read moreWhat changed in August
These devices could not be sold or used here until 27 August 2026, when the amending regulations made in July took effect. On the same day the permitted development right for solar equipment on a house or a block of flats was rewritten, and the new version names plug-in solar directly. So the answer for your house may not be the one a rooftop installer would have given you last year.
A twelve month transitional period runs to 27 August 2027. Until then you can follow the rules as they stood immediately before 27 August, or the new ones.
Wood, balconies and cladding
The rewritten right rules out a plug-in solar installation on a wooden wall, on a balcony, or on timber cladding. That applies to houses and to blocks of flats alike.
If yours is a timber balcony or a timber clad wall, the permitted development right is not what you are relying on. What you then have to weigh up is whether a planning application is worth the trouble, and often it is not. The government's own assessment warns that the fees and the paperwork can outweigh what the kit costs and what it saves.
Conservation areas and listed houses
There are three separate situations here, and the South West has plenty of all of them.
- In a conservation area or a World Heritage Site, panels are out on a wall that fronts a highway.
- You lose the right altogether if the panel would stand in the grounds of a listed building, or on a scheduled monument.
- A listed house is a different process again. You need both permission and consent, and it is worth talking to the authority long before anything is ordered.
Limits you can measure yourself
You can check most of these with a tape measure before you talk to anyone.
- Where the surface abuts a highway, nothing may sit more than 200 mm proud of it. On any other surface you get 400 mm.
- On a pitched roof, keep the equipment below the ridge and within 200 mm of the roof plane.
- On a flat roof, keep it within 600 mm of the roof surface.
Where we stand on planning permission
We cannot write "no planning permission needed" and mean it, because the right is conditional. Where a house meets the conditions there is no application. Where it does not, there is one. Our job is to tell you which of those two applies to you.
What we send you
You get a written answer by email. It names the rule that applies to your surface, tells you what the projection limits allow at your house, and gives the figure your mounting would realistically make in a year. If the right does not cover you, we put that at the top of the email.
Questions about the surface
My wall is pebbledash. Does that count as render?
For the wooden surfaces rule, what matters is what is underneath. If there is masonry behind the pebbledash or the render, you are on masonry. Render on a timber frame outer leaf gives a different answer, and that is one of the things we check rather than assume.
What about the roof of a shed or a garage?
The right covers solar equipment on a building within the curtilage of a house as well as on the house itself, with its own limits. Tell us what the outbuilding is and we will tell you where it lands.
I rent. Can I still do this?
You would need your landlord's agreement, and a leaseholder may need the freeholder's. People who responded to the government consultation raised this as a limit on take up, and the regulations have not resolved it for you. Ask before you buy.
The other things we arrange
On this page
- What changed in August
- Wood, balconies and cladding
- Conservation areas and listed houses
- Limits you can measure yourself
- What we send you
- Questions about the surface
Ask us about your house
Send us your postcode and tell us what the surface is made of. We will reply by email.
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