Fencing, gates and driveways in Walsall

Walsall is a borough of old brick streets with no room to park and newer suburbs with plenty. Caldmore, Palfrey and Pleck are Victorian terraces fronting straight onto the pavement, where a driveway is impossible and a rear fence or yard wall is the job. Aldridge, Streetly and Park Hall are interwar and post-war semis with deep front gardens, many already paved and many paved badly. In between sit the council-built estates of Bloxwich, Beechdale and Blakenall, where open fronts are being turned into parking one house at a time.

The WS postcodes do not all belong to Walsall Council. WS1, WS2 and WS4 are Walsall; WS3, WS5, WS8 and WS9 are mostly Walsall with fringes elsewhere, and WS5 touches Sandwell. WS6 (Great Wyrley and Cheslyn Hay) is South Staffordshire, and WS7 (Burntwood and Chasetown) is Lichfield District. In those two, Staffordshire County Council is the highway authority, which changes the dropped-kerb process completely.

Ground and Gate is an introducer, not a contractor. Your enquiry goes to one local specialist for Walsall, and the price you agree is between you and them.

Getting a dropped kerb from Walsall Council

Walsall runs the application as three steps: check the drive is suitable, pay for an assessment, then arrange a contractor and a road opening permit. The assessment fee is £160 and non-refundable. If the house is on a classified road, in a conservation area, or split into flats, planning permission is needed instead and the council waives the assessment fee in favour of the planning fee.

Suitability usually turns on depth. A car parked across the front must not hang over the footway, and Walsall looks for roughly 4.8m of driveway depth and 2.4m of width; many Caldmore and Chuckery terraces fall short and will be refused however the application is written.

Once the council says yes, you either use the council's own term contractor or a private firm accredited for highway work, who then needs a road opening permit from the council. Budget roughly £1,200–£2,500 for the build on top of the council's charges. For more, see dropped kerbs, the dropped kerb cost guide and how to get a dropped kerb.

For WS6 and WS7 the application goes to Staffordshire County Council, which charges its own assessment fee and a separate permit to dig, and leaves the choice of an accredited contractor to you.

Conservation areas and front gardens

Walsall has eighteen conservation areas. The ones where front boundaries matter most are the Arboretum, with its late-Victorian villas; Caldmore Green and Highgate close to the centre; Bloxwich High Street, Bloxwich Park and Elmore Green in WS3; and the village cores of Old Rushall, Pelsall Common and Old Pelsall.

Inside any of them, pulling down a front wall over 1m high needs consent, and a new dropped kerb triggers planning permission rather than the standard assessment. Whether any carry an Article 4 direction removing front-garden permitted development is not published clearly on the council's page, so ask Walsall's conservation officer before paving a front garden in one.

What the housing means for the job

• Victorian terraces in Caldmore, Palfrey, Pleck and Birchills: no front parking, entries between pairs, and rear yards with brick walls on three sides. Rebuilding a leaning yard wall or fitting a timber gate across an entry is typical.
• Arboretum and Lichfield Road villas: deep fronts with original walls and piers, often in poor repair.
• Interwar semis in Park Hall, Aldridge, Streetly and Rushall: shared side drives, deep front gardens, and 1970s concrete or crazy paving ready to come up.
• Council estates in Bloxwich, Beechdale and Blakenall: open-plan fronts, chain-link or low post-and-rail between houses, and demand for a first proper drive.
• Brownhills, Clayhanger, Shelfield and Pelsall: larger plots near the commons, with field-style boundaries.

Old workings under Walsall

Walsall sits on the edge of the South Staffordshire coalfield and on limestone that was mined underground through the nineteenth century. Walsall Arboretum's lakes are flooded limestone workings, and limestone galleries extend under parts of the town. Coal shafts, many unrecorded, are scattered through Pelsall, Brownhills, Walsall Wood and Bloxwich.

For a fence this rarely matters. For a driveway, a soakaway or a retaining wall it can: a Coal Authority mining report costs little, and any specialist digging more than a metre should know the result. If the ground drops or a void opens during excavation, work stops and the Coal Authority is called. The clay itself is typical Black Country: heavy, slow to drain and prone to heaving where roots dry it out.

Flood risk and where the water goes

The River Tame runs through Bescot and along the M6 corridor, and Ford Brook flows south through the town centre to join it. Low-lying streets near Bescot, Pleck and Darlaston Road have mapped flood risk, and surface water ponds on heavy clay across the borough after summer storms.

That makes permeable surfacing sensible beyond the planning rule. Front gardens over 5m² need a permeable surface or drainage to a lawn or soakaway to avoid planning permission; in Walsall a soakaway on clay is often poor, so resin-bound, gravel or permeable block over an open-graded base does the work instead. See the permeable paving guide and drainage and soakaways.

Walls, boundaries and Walsall brick

Walsall was a brick town. Etruria Marl dug around Aldridge and Walsall Wood made hard red and blue bricks, and Staffordshire blue engineering brick still turns up as copings, gate piers and plinths across the borough. Aldridge still has a working brickworks. Matching a Victorian front wall usually means a reclaimed red stock with a blue half-round coping.

Brick walls under 1m cost around £150–£250 per metre; taller walls and anything holding back soil go to a site visit. See garden walls. Where a yard wall is shared between two terraces, it is a party fence wall under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, and notice may be needed before it is rebuilt or raised.

Fencing and gates in Walsall

A rear fence on a Park Hall or Aldridge semi is typically 15 to 25 metres of 1.8m boundary. Lap panels run £60–£90 a metre; featheredge £95–£135; slatted contemporary designs £130–£190. For a 15m featheredge run on concrete posts, old fence removed, expect about £1,700–£2,400. The fence cost per metre guide has the height adjustments.

In the terrace yards the best value is often a single side gate across the entry, £250–£450 in timber, or rebuilding a short run of wall. On the Bloxwich estates, front boundaries between open-plan gardens should stay under 1m next to the pavement: see how high can a garden fence be. Around Pelsall and Brownhills, bigger plots suit decking at £120–£200 per m² in timber.

Concrete posts earn their keep on the clay here, where timber posts rot at ground level within ten years. See new fence or the Walsall fencing page.

Driveways and patios in Walsall

The deep interwar fronts in Streetly and Aldridge often fit three cars. A three-car resin or block drive is priced on the area: block at £90–£140 per m², resin £75–£115, tarmac £50–£80, plus digging out any old concrete at £20–£35 per m². The driveway cost per m² guide covers each surface.

On the Bloxwich and Beechdale estates a first drive is usually two cars on what was lawn: roughly £3,550–£5,730 in block, £1,900–£3,330 in gravel. Add a dropped kerb and the council fees, and allow for the clay. See block paving, resin driveways and the Walsall driveways page.