A minute with a tape measure and an honest look at what your balcony is made of will settle more than a month of correspondence.
Search for these devices and you will be sold balcony solar. The phrase is on the packaging, in the product names and across the listings. Then read the right that came into force on 27 August 2026 and you find, for houses and for blocks of flats, a prohibition on wooden wall, balcony or timber-clad installation, annotated as applying to plug-in solar.
We have yet to see a retailer mention it. It does not make the product unlawful and it does not stop you applying to your borough in the ordinary way. What it removes is the assumption that no permission is needed, which is the entire convenience these kits are sold on.
Plenty of London balconies are a steel or concrete frame with a timber-clad face. The cladding is the part the right names. If you are unsure what is behind yours, that is a question for the managing agent rather than a guess, and it is cheaper to ask than to fit.
Both columns are the rules as rewritten. Until 27 August 2027 a transitional period runs, and the Planning Portal says you may "follow the rules as they were immediately prior to 27th August, or the new rules".
| Condition | A house | A block of flats |
|---|---|---|
| Pitched roof | Below the ridge, projecting no more than 200 mm | Below the ridge, projecting no more than 200 mm |
| Flat roof | No more than 600 mm above the roof | No more than 600 mm above the roof |
| Wall abutting a highway | Up to 200 mm projection | Covered by the conservation area and World Heritage Site restriction below |
| Other walls | Up to 400 mm projection | Covered by the same restriction |
| Wooden walls, balconies and timber cladding | Not covered, plug-in solar | Not covered, plug-in solar |
| Conservation area or World Heritage Site | No panels on highway-fronting walls | No panels on highway-fronting walls |
| Listed building grounds, scheduled monuments | Excluded | Excluded |
A listed building itself needs planning permission and listed building consent, and the Planning Portal recommends seeking pre-application advice early.
Working down from the exclusions rather than up from the marketing, four options survive in most blocks, in rough order of how well they perform.
Within one per cent of an ideal roof, fixed to nothing, and the arrangement the right has least to say about. A communal courtyard needs the freeholder, but the planning question largely disappears.
Roughly three quarters of the best case. Brick is not wood, so the timber exclusion does not reach it, though a highway-fronting wall in a conservation area still will.
Permitted up to 600 mm above the roof surface. In a block this is almost always common parts, which moves the decision to the freeholder before it reaches the council.
About half a roof. Worth doing if the alternative is nothing, but go in knowing the figure rather than discovering it on a bill.
The right names wooden walls, balconies and timber cladding. It does not name steel, glass or concrete. We are not going to tell you a steel balustrade is therefore permitted, because that is a reading of the order rather than something the Planning Portal states, and the order itself is one of the items we still have open. Ask your borough, and ask before you buy.