Fence heights when your land is higher than your neighbours?

[Harrypottershairyarse]

I own the boundary fence, it's built off my back wall. Our road slopes downhill. The land of my back garden is about somewhere between 3 & 4ft higher than my neighbours. I'm thinking about replacing the old. fence with new 6ft panels which will need to stand on a supporting wall to hold the soil back. If the brick base is built to my soil level and then the fence put on top it'll potentially be 9ft high on their side. I don't want to piss them off but I also want privacy. It's doesn't feel nice wandering around my garden in the summer looking down into theirs. They are also about to build a large extension. I've lived here with the boundary as it is over 20yrs and they moved in a year ago. Anyone know the rules on this?

I should add, if we measure the new 6ft height from their land it'll only be knee/thigh height on my side.

I used to have this in an old house we had a six foot fence, which was there when we moved in, and our back neighbours had a wall and then our fence on top. Our garden was south facing and theirs north so it made little/ no difference to the amount of light they got in their garden though.

The measurement is taken from the garden level.

We had this at a previous house years ago, the road sloped down so basically as you looked out into the garden the right hand fence was a 6ft tall and the left hand fence was 4ft tall.

So my 4ft fence was to my left hand neighbour, a 6ft fence. We wanted to increase the height of the 4ft fence because like you we could see into next door's garden easily, and our fence was built on top of our patio. From the lower neighbour's side, they had a wall (retaining our garden) then the fence on top. Totalling 6ft.

We were told we could make the fence part 6ft tall but to tick all the boxes to contact planning permission for them to see that we were not going over the 6ft 6 inch fence height we were allowed, but it would mean our neighbour would suffer. As we weren't planning to stay we left it and just moved

Another neighbour just planted a hedge, so from our side you could see a wall at the bottom, then a fence then the hedge showing above the fence.

How badly would it affect your neighbour's sunlight?

I had this in my last house. My left hand fence was originally 3ft wall and 3ft fence, so 6ft total on my side but only 3ft on the left neighbour's side. We eventually got a 6ft fence panel put in on top of the wall, so 9ft total for me and 6ft for the neighbour. It may have contravened planning restrictions, but no-one complained and in fact everyone seemed to approve it as it gave everyone the privacy we and they wanted. When we sold 10 years later the tall fence was still in situ without any issues.

Have you talked to them? We've just done very similar, DH (who put it in) was a bit concerned that they might think it a bit high, even though they had chatted about it before hand. He finished it last weekend and they're absolutely delighted with it - so much better than what was there before and very excited about replanting around their side!

Ground level is defined in the planning legislation as:
the level of the surface of the ground immediately adjacent to the building (or fence), or where the level of the surface of the ground is not uniform, the level of the highest part of the surface of the ground adjacent to it.
So measured from the surface of the highest piece of land adjacent to the fence line you can erect a fence of up to 2m in height (or 1m if adjacent to a highway used by vehicles).
The restrictions relate to fences, walls (including trellises), gates but not hedges.