Planning Permission, Heights of Fences, and Public Rights of Way

[Ferdinand]

A question which may get nerdy so I have put it here.

It is common for a garden adjoining a road (ie a public highway) to have a minimum public fence height of 1m, unless planning permission exists for a higher fence - or eg a hedge is used.

What is the position with respect to a Public Footpath, a Bridleway etc, which are also public highways in law? And what is the position in civil law wrt fence heights next to RoWs such as public footpaths?

(There are wrinkles around the edge of this, such as new paths created on estates or otherwise by Councils not being initially dedicated as RoWs, and so being permissive paths of various types, but I'm interested in anything that anyone knows or thinks.)

The piccie below is an example of a "squeeze" between housing and countryside. The underlying issue here imo is the rural landowner being an antisocial twunt - the width of these are not often specified, and he has taken for himself everything he thinks he can get away with, turning the experience of the public into a miserable one.



This is the "success" to which it is compared. 



This is the source doc from the Open Spaces Society, the people who deal with Village Greens and Common Land, and PRoWs, which started my train of thought:

https://www.oss.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Getting-decent-widths-in-path-diversion-orders.pdf

Thanks

Ferdinand

 

[SteamyTea]

I am sure you have seen this, about the width.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/public-rights-of-way-landowner-responsibilities

 

No idea about height on the boundary, some buildings are the boundary, and after quite tall.

 

Took this yesterday.

Not much more than a metre wide in places.

 

Edited Sunday at 15:03 by SteamyTea

[ProDave]

If you are a regular hill or mountain walker you will know there is no such thing as a minimum width for a public footpath.

 

What is your "failure" footpath used for?  I doubt it if for the home owners to get access to their back gardens.  More likely for walkers to gain access to / from somewhere in the countryside.

 

The only "complaint" you might have is if the actual right of way shown on the definitive map is further to the left in that picture, then he won't have just made it narrower, he will have diverted it to a different location.  That they could take action against.

[Temp]

4 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

What is the position with respect to a Public Footpath, a Bridleway etc, which are also public highways in law? And what is the position in civil law wrt fence heights next to RoWs such as public footpaths?

 

I was told they all count as highways so fences over 1m need planning permission.

 

I think that was the problem with this story last week...

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14801729/We-bought-land-homes-erected-6ft-fence-yobs-snobby-neighbours-complained-council.html

 

 

Edited Sunday at 17:28 by Temp

[Ferdinand]

On 06/07/2025 at 18:25, Temp said:

 

I was told they all count as highways so fences over 1m need planning permission.

 

I think that was the problem with this story last week...

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14801729/We-bought-land-homes-erected-6ft-fence-yobs-snobby-neighbours-complained-council.html

 

 

That's interesting - although the highway there is a road, and the neighbours on that road were understandably annoyed.

In that case I'd say they just did not do their homework and walked into a lamp post of ignorance. They did not even know that a fence over 1m adjacent to a road requires planning permission - which is one of the absolute basics. They also trusted what Wimpy told them, without a 3rd party check. I think the Duty Planner or the free Planning Aid service from the Town Planners would have answered that with one email.

It's not clear where responsibility lay for verge maintenance - if they are leasehold then there should be comeback. Otherwise they should have gone for the LHA on maintenance of the overgrown footpath itself - assuming it is adopted.

IMO it's more likely they tried to pull a fast one for their own gain, and are cross that they got caught. These are £500k-700k houses.

For what they have done, they need PP for both the toytown fence, and the change of use from (I assume) amenity land to private garden.

As it is they may have a civil case against Wimpy, but 10 householders there are well able to absorb £60k between them, so I'd recommend moving the fences back and gifting the land to the Council - they are in the article complaining about "what happens if somebody breaks their leg on my land if I remove my unlawful fence" .

[Ferdinand]

On 06/07/2025 at 15:58, SteamyTea said:

I am sure you have seen this, about the width.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/public-rights-of-way-landowner-responsibilities

 

No idea about height on the boundary, some buildings are the boundary, and after quite tall.

 

Took this yesterday.

Not much more than a metre wide in places.

 

That's partly a difference between rural and urban.

I think that those flowerpots are probably obstructions that could be required to be removed if it is a Public Footpath, unless the "stoned" area is in the boundary marked on the deeds, and there are no supervening rights held by a public body (eg Local Highways Authority).

This is one near me that is around 90cm between 2 houses. It is a Public Footpath I think it has been like that since the early 1970s when I lived in the area and the house on one side is 1930s. It has a horrible anti-wheelchair barrier on it at the other end, but that one is not a priority as the path is essentially unusable for mobility aids.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/qJZQShbbtemaLh2Q7

[Ferdinand]

On 06/07/2025 at 17:14, ProDave said:

If you are a regular hill or mountain walker you will know there is no such thing as a minimum width for a public footpath.

 

What is your "failure" footpath used for?  I doubt it if for the home owners to get access to their back gardens.  More likely for walkers to gain access to / from somewhere in the countryside.

 

The only "complaint" you might have is if the actual right of way shown on the definitive map is further to the left in that picture, then he won't have just made it narrower, he will have diverted it to a different location.  That they could take action against.

That's a bundle of useful questions 🙂.

(Aside: Does the concept of Public Footpath exist in Scotland? And if there is something analogous has it been affected by the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 which created the Right to Roam?)

In EW, there is no universal rule for minimum width, but there may be binding notes on the Statement part of the "Definitive Map and Statement", which is the authoritative definition and maintained by law. These definitive maps exist everywhere in EW except in Inner London Boroughs - excluded from the defining legislation in 1949 (God knows why - probably Lord Bufton-Tufton intervened).

The paper I linked (worth a read) also notes that there may be policies by Local Highways Authorities which may distinguish between 'path surface width', and 'path surroundings width', and that sometimes an inspector making a decision may mention a path surface width which the landowner latches onto because it lets them make it smaller and keep the public away by making them endure a miserable experience:

Leicester County used to have, and may still have, a 1.8 metre (6 foot) path policy but they actually had the firm surface width in mind and normally required another  three metres of grass on either side. So the effective recommended path width is 7.8 metres, nearly 25 feet. If their 1.8 metres were made the legal width then, as with any path, it could be fenced in by the owners of the underlying land with two metre  high security fences to that width without any permission being needed. This would be quite horrid so when considering widths of paths the overall width not the hardened width should always be thought of. And fencing-in should be imagined.
https://www.oss.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Getting-decent-widths-in-path-diversion-orders.pdf

I prefer not to have a universal definition because organisation such as the NFU and the Country Landowners Association might start telling their members to fence pathways in PDQ to that minimum. A measure of ambiguity is more beneficial.

As a distant analogy of the tendency to "Working to the utter legal minimum we can get away with, and sod the consequences or the other people" consider bus companies and wheelchair spaces. Around 2021 research came out for the Government which showed that the current "reference wheelchair", defined in the 1990s, is smaller than around 20-25% of wheelchairs in use around 2020. Bus companies work to the absolute minimum wheelchair space size they can get away with - which is based on the reference wheelchair, and will do nothing for accessibility. With the steely resolution we are used to from our last several Governments, the Govt sat resolutely on their bottom, and failed to review the size of the reference wheelchair before launching a headlong rush to have electric buses everywhere. So the continued exclusion of a big chunk of wheelchair users from buses which will kneel and deploy ramps has been hard-wired in for another 25 years.

I'm not sure that the purpose of the failure footpath is *that* relevant, however in 2025imo footpaths should be for far more than just to pass and repass. I think there is case law to that effect (would need to look it up), and imo a footpath against the countryside should be for viewing and birdwatching and enhancing physical and mental health and many other things. 

I'd make the same argument in towns, where exercise space etc near to homes is even more important. The most interesting argument for urban areas I think is that public footpaths should also be linear nature corridors linking the whole area. We have a network; let's use it - so make it at least 3m width for the path, and 3-5m either side. Done like this, fences matter less as there is space for a row of nature-rich bushes to hide them.

These are a couple of excellent public footpaths on the estate close to where I live. This is 1990s and they respected the existing network, which has created a beautiful environment for walking/wheeling and cycling separated from the road network. Except, of course, that some bugger has put anti-access barriers all over it, which need to go which in the spirit of Krikkit "have to go", and it falls off the edges of the world where the estate stops.

(There's some off topic there, but it's an area I am trying to think through.)

 

[ProDave]

37 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

(Aside: Does the concept of Public Footpath exist in Scotland? And if there is something analogous has it been affected by the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 which created the Right to Roam?)

There are some public rights of way in Scotland, but nowhere near as many as you would expect.  As you rightly say the Right to Roam covers the vast majority of paths in open countryside and the paths have evolved where people want to go, not where they are allowed to go.

 

When we go back to England or Wales is seems so restrictive that I can't just walk across a field, or over open moorland, unless there is a little green sign or a red dotted line on a map to say I can.

 

Talking of maps, an OS map is of less use in Scotland as it fails to show most of the commonly used paths.  Open Street map viewed on an app like Trekarta makes up for that, showing just about every path that exists. 

[ProDave]

On 06/07/2025 at 18:25, Temp said:

I think that was the problem with this story last week...

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14801729/We-bought-land-homes-erected-6ft-fence-yobs-snobby-neighbours-complained-council.html

 

The first house I bought was like that. The rear fence stopped about 5 feed from the roadside footpath and some rough shrubs had been planted.  But in our case the house deeds clearly showed that the land we owned went right to the path edge including the bit beyond the fence. So collectively we submitted a planning application to move the fence which was granted so we moved it.   When your garden is only 30ft long and extra 5ft is a lot, some of the houses only had a 25ft garden so even more useful to them.

[SteamyTea]

5 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

That's partly a difference between rural and urban.

With Cornwall being different again. It is Mousehole, so as long as a small child can roll a barrel of pilchards down it, then there is room for a campervan.

[Ferdinand]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

With Cornwall being different again. It is Mousehole, so as long as a small child can roll a barrel of pilchards down it, then there is room for a campervan.

Wot no barrels of burning tar ?

[SteamyTea]

40 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Wot no barrels of burning tar ?

Think that is a heathen thing.

We feed our children, Tom Bawcock fed the whole village.

Should have got Tesco to deliver, it is only 3 miles away.