Garden walls in Birmingham & the West Midlands

A low brick wall is the traditional front boundary for a lot of West Midlands houses, from Victorian terraces to 1930s semis. It lasts far longer than a fence, keeps its looks, and can carry railings, piers or gates. Built badly, on a shallow footing or with the wrong mortar, it cracks and leans within a few winters.

We don't build walls ourselves. You tell us the length and what's there now, send photos, and we show an indicative range for walls under 1m. We then pass your enquiry to one local specialist who covers your postcode, and they confirm a fixed price.

What's included

Walls under 1 metre high are priced online. That covers:

• Low front boundary walls, single or double skin brick.
• Dwarf walls with piers, ready for railings or a fence on top.
• Garden walls around raised beds or along a path, where they are not holding back soil.
• Rebuilding a short run of low wall that has cracked or leaned.

Walls 1 metre or higher, and retaining walls of any height, need a free site visit. They need a designed footing, and retaining walls need drainage behind them and sometimes an engineer. These are passed to a groundworks specialist rather than priced online.

What it costs

Walls under 1m are £150–£250 per metre, supply and build, with footings and waste included. The figures are indicative for the West Midlands.

Anything likely to go over £8,000 gets a free site visit rather than an online range. For a comparison with fencing the same boundary, see the fence cost per metre guide. A 1.2m featheredge fence, for example, runs at £76–£108 per metre.

What affects the price

• Brick choice. Matching old Staffordshire or Victorian reds costs more than a standard facing brick. Reclaimed bricks can be hard to source in quantity.
• Wall thickness. A single-skin wall (one brick thick) needs piers to stay stable. A double-skin wall is stronger and looks more solid, but uses twice the bricks.
• Footings. Every wall needs a concrete footing below frost depth. Clay soil, which is common across Birmingham, and roots nearby may need a deeper footing.
• Coping and piers. Brick-on-edge, stone or concrete copings, and piers for gates or railings, all add.
• Taking down the old wall. Breaking out and removing an old wall and its footing is extra.
• Access. Bricks, sand and cement all have to reach the job. A long carry adds 15–20%.

Conservation areas and front boundaries

Low front walls are a defining feature of many conservation areas. Demolishing or altering a front boundary wall in a conservation area can need planning permission, and some parts of Birmingham and Solihull have Article 4 directions that remove permitted development rights for front boundaries. Listed buildings need listed building consent for work to walls within their curtilage.

Outside those areas, a wall up to 1 metre next to a road or its footpath, or 2 metres elsewhere, does not normally need planning permission. See the 1m rule next to a road.

If you are removing a front wall to make a driveway, the drive, the dropped kerb and the surface all have rules of their own. See do I need planning permission for a driveway?

Walls on the boundary

A masonry wall that stands on the line between two properties can be a party fence wall under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996. Building a new wall astride the boundary, or doing certain work to an existing party wall, means serving notice on your neighbour first. The Act covers masonry walls, not timber fences. If the wall is entirely on your land, notice may still be needed where the footing is close to the boundary. See who owns the fence for how to check the boundary line.

Where we cover

We pass wall enquiries to specialists in Sutton Coldfield, North Birmingham, Solihull, South Birmingham, Edgbaston and Harborne, Lichfield and Tamworth, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Dudley and Stourbridge and Coventry. For gates between new piers, see driveway gates. For groundwork behind a retaining wall, see turfing and groundworks.