Fitting and outdoor sockets
An electrician for the socket, not for the panel.
More on thisThe rules changed on 27 August 2026
These panels have been legal in Great Britain since 27 August 2026. That same day the planning rules for solar equipment on houses and on blocks of flats were rewritten, and the new wording mentions plug-in panels by name. What holds for your house today is not what a rooftop installer would have told you twelve months ago.
There is then a year of overlap, ending 27 August 2027. Through that year either set of rules can be used, the old wording or the new.
Timber: boards, cladding and balconies
The wording as rewritten excludes these panels from a wooden wall, from a balcony and from timber cladding. It appears twice, once under houses and once under blocks of flats. Essex and Suffolk have a lot of weatherboarded houses, so this comes up here more than it does in most of the country.
If that is your house, the next question is whether a planning application is worth making. Often it is not. The government's assessment expects the fee and the administration to come to a lot beside the value of the panel.
Conservation areas, listed houses and monuments
Three separate situations, and this region has plenty of all three.
- A wall that fronts the highway is out where the house is in a conservation area or a World Heritage Site.
- Where the house sits in the grounds of a listed building, or on a scheduled monument, there is no right to lean on.
- A listed house takes two things, planning permission and listed building consent. Open that conversation with the council early.
Measurements you can take yourself
Most of this you can settle with a tape measure before you speak to anybody.
- Where the surface runs alongside a road, nothing may stand more than 200 mm proud of it. Everywhere else the allowance is 400 mm.
- A sloping roof keeps the panel under the ridge line, standing proud by 200 mm at most.
- On a flat roof the equipment may stand 600 mm above the roof surface and no higher.
What we can and cannot promise about permission
Nobody can write "no planning permission needed" and mean it. The right comes with conditions attached. A house that meets them needs no application, and a house that does not needs one. We work out which of those two is true at your address.
What we send you
An email naming the rule that covers your surface, the projection limits at your house, and the figure your position would realistically reach in a year. Where the answer is no, we say no and we give the reason.
Not sure it applies to your house?
Give us the postcode and say what the wall or the roof is made of. We will tell you which way it falls.
