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Legal rulng, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58911296 (Imo the chap was an idiot)

Hello Everyone! I am in the process of renovating my balcony. I live in a row of 4 terraced houses all houses with matching balconies. The problem I have is that there is a real lack of privacy, we only have a small partition between us and If anyone of us are on the balcony it is impossible to relax. I have tried speaking to the neighbours to fix the issue but they are reluctant to cooperate as they don’t like change. Their main concern is the view being effected even though the view is across our balcony. My question to everyone is how high of a partition can I legally erect without permission? I know at ground level the height is 2m but as it’s up on a balcony I can’t find any information. it’s something we’d really like to sort as we feel uncomfortable sitting out there. any help would be amazing and greatly appreciated :)

In this thread: I mentioned a problem that has just arisen, because the neighbour over the other side of the lane from us has cut down a 30ft high Leylandii hedge, removing a great deal of privacy from the front of our house. At first, I was concerned with the problem of our windows at the front being directly opposite their bedroom windows, but now that the whole hedge is down, it's clear that our garden as well as the front of the house is now overlooked, and we will need to put some form of privacy screen or fence in place. We were planning to fit a low fence along the edge of the lawn, on top of the wall shown in this photo: However, the very tall hedge (at the extreme right in the above photo) has now been cut down so that it is at the level of the roof of my car, and the whole first floor of the house that is behind that hedge now looks directly at our house and garden. As I mentioned in the other thread, we have two fences already, the 800mm high post and rail fence that runs alongside the path at the right side of the drive in the above photo, plus another 1.2m high post and rail fence at the boundary, which is about 1.5m below the drive and between 1.5m and 2.5m away from the fence that is visible above. My question is really about planning law, and what constitutes a fence. We are in an AONB, so even a 2m fence, that would normally be OK as PD, would require planning permission. To provide any privacy at all, given the relative levels, would need a fence that's around 2.5m high, if it were placed along the line of the visible fence in the photo. Eventually, the hedging plants that we've planted behind the lower fence (a mic of hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple, hazel and wild rose) will grow to a height to provide some screening, but that will take several years. I've been working through several ideas, and have read on a few sites that something like a trellis is deemed to be "decorative", rather than a fence, as such. One option that may work for us is to bolt some tall posts to the existing fence posts and then fit a tall trellis of screen above the post and rail fence. If the screen were fixed to the outer face of the posts, that nearest the lane, I could put some decent soil/compost behind the retaining timber at the base of the fence, and plant some climbers up the trellis/screen, probably to a height of around 2.5m above the drive level. I think this could look more attractive than a plain fence, but my real concern is whether such a plant support would need planning permission. Our neighbour to the East (behind the house in the above photo) has a vegetable garden adjacent to the lane, and that has a fruit cage, plus bean sticks etc, that are taller than the 2m allowed for a fence, so I'm guessing that a plant support screen might be considered in the same way under planning rules. Unfortunately, I can't ask the planners without paying them £90, as they no longer speak to the public, so I'm hoping that the collective knowledge here may know the answer!

It seems that Google/Nest are launching an "Internet of Things" full home security system, with an alarm, internet connected video etc: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41336093 Sounds an interesting idea, BUT, and it's a big BUT, would I want to trust Google with all that data about our house? Given their track record for what I believe is abuse of personal data, I'm not at all sure I'd want to trust a our home security to such a system. It's bound to become a prime target for hackers, and as a former IT security colleague was very fond of reminding us at any opportunity, you can never be 100% sure that any internet connected system is secure. The same individual was also fond of reminding us that we spent many times more on our network security, per user, than practically any other organisation, and he still couldn't be 100% sure our systems were secure.

Opposite our house, to the South, there used to be (until today) a 30ft high Leylandii hedge. It was the other side of the lane, and the other side of the stream, and behind it there's a two storey house. Today, the owner of that house had contractors in and they've cut most of the hedge down to just a few feet high. As our house is around 10ft higher than theirs, this means that the windows to the front of our house now look directly into the bedroom windows of the house opposite, which was previously hidden behind the tall hedge. I'm not sorry to see the hedge go, but think it could have been trimmed a lot better than it has been, but that's neither here nor there. One consequence is that we get a great deal more light at the front, and overall that's no bad thing. However, we've always had a slight problem with solar gain from the kitchen window and a small window in the living room, both of which face south. We also had a problem with the big glazed gable, but that was fixed by installing reflective film, which has the added benefit of making that gable into a one-way mirror, so no one can normally look in. Now that the hedge has been cut right down, we need to do something to give some privacy. As I've also been pondering over ways to reduce the solar gain, I'm wondering if I can't do both, by fitting a horizontally slatted brise soleil, with the slats arranged as a sort of projecting canopy of boards on edge, with a slight pitch downwards to provide the required privacy. I've had a look around online, but all the off-the-shelf systems I've been able to find look a bit too contemporary. Our house looks fairly rustic, and anything I fit will need planning approval, so has to be in keeping with the waney edge larch cladding. Has anyone got any good ideas, by any chance?

Is there any wisdom on attaching fence panels to the top of a small wall for extra privacy? I have seem this done by people drilling down through those concrete copers that are everywhere, or by buying (or making) a bracket which is screwed down to the copers, Highly bodgy or somehwat bodgy - asking for ingress of water down the middle of the wall, and require repair in under a decade. In my case it is a 3ft wall with coping bricks which are 45 degrees each side. I think I am inclined to use 3x3 tanalised posts attached to the back of the wall for perhaps the top 18" to 2' attached using concrete screws or concrete screwbolts, using 3 per post section, then attach the 2ft high or whatever panel to the front of the posts. If I can find any I will add brackets to let the panel rest on the wall with no mechanical attachment. Can anyone see any issues or suggest better methods? (I am OK wrt fencing facing the highway and height regulations, because it doesn't). Cheers Ferdinand