We are thinking about doing an extension to our house that would involve knocking some the existing house down and making an open plan kitchen / family room. If we did this, the new room would be overlooked by our neighbour's little lean-too conservatory.
At the moment, our properties are divided by a retaining wall and our garden and house is a couple of feet lower down than their garden. So, from our side, the wall is about 5 feet high, but from their side, it's probably only 2 1/2 feet, so sort of waist height for them. This is why their conservatory feels so intrustive. Because of the existing configuration of our buildlings, it's not a problem now and so we haven't felt the need to do anything about it previously. It's only if we went for the extension that this would becomes andissue. They would have a perfect view into our house. Additionally, their garden is small and they rarely go in it, but when they do, because they are so high up, we have absolutely no privacy in our garden.
So, it occurred to me that maybe I could add a higher fence above the wall on our side of the boundary to give us some privacy.
I understand there are regulations about the height of fences between properties, but would the height be counted from the ground on our side, or on their side? I would feel a bit mean becasue inevitably it would block light into their conservatory, but presumably, if you build a conservatory right up to the boundary, that's the risk you take. Or would planning people take a different view? Do planning people even get involved in fences? I'd be open to putting up a trellis with climbing plants so it would be nice from both sides and wouldn't block out so much light - we just need something to provide a bit of screening.