None of Hertsmere’s 15 conservation areas carries Borehamwood’s name; Elstree Village, next door, is one of them. For most Borehamwood houses, that makes planning the easy part of fitting panels and a battery. For many homes here, the harder consent question is a freeholder’s or a housing association’s, not the council’s.
This guide takes the panels and the battery in turn, then the local designations, then the consent questions that are not planning at all. For what the battery itself involves, from sizing to the network, see our page on battery storage for Borehamwood homes.
The national rule for the panels
Roof-mounted solar on a house is permitted development under Schedule 2, Part 14, Class A of the General Permitted Development Order 2015, as amended by S.I. 2026/896 from 27 August 2026. On a pitched roof the panels must not protrude more than 0.2 m beyond the slope or sit higher than the highest part of the roof, excluding chimneys. They must be sited to minimise the effect on the building’s appearance and removed when no longer needed. The rule is the same in Borehamwood as anywhere in England, which matters most for the 28.8% of households in terraced houses and 26.8% in semis.
And the battery?
Part 14 has classes for solar equipment, ground and water source heat pumps, air source heat pumps, biomass and combined heat and power flues, and wind turbines. It has none for a home battery. We read it on legislation.gov.uk on 16 October 2026. So there is no battery-specific permitted-development rule to quote, and we will not invent one.
In practice most batteries go indoors. EnSmart, the kit in our own installation photographs, publishes its wall-mounted ELV-W battery as IP50, indoor only, and its SolarAll-H hybrid inverter as IP65, for indoor or outdoor mounting. A battery in a Borehamwood garage, utility space or cupboard leaves the outside of the house unchanged. Where an inverter or floor-standing unit would go on an outside wall, two cases call for a word with Hertsmere first: a wall facing the street in a conservation area, and a listed building.
Elstree Village and Hertsmere’s conservation areas
Under Class A as amended, the conservation-area exclusion covers only solar equipment on a wall, balcony or roof enclosure fronting a highway. Roof slopes, front ones included, keep their rights on the ordinary conditions. A flat-roof array in a conservation area needs an application to the council for a prior-approval determination before work starts.
Elstree Village also carries an Article 4 direction, which brings some otherwise permitted works there under planning control. A direction that covers roof alterations does not automatically remove the separate right to fit solar, but each one has to be read for itself. If you live there, check the wording with Hertsmere before anyone designs the system. Elsewhere in Borehamwood, Hertsmere’s conservation-area list will tell you whether your street is in one.
Green belt is not a solar restriction
Green belt covers 78.9% of Hertsmere, 7,980 of its 10,110 hectares, on the government’s figures for March 2025. It shapes where new homes can be built around Borehamwood. It does not remove a householder’s permitted development rights for roof solar, and it is not one of the designations that changes the Class A conditions.
Listed buildings
A listed house sits outside Class A altogether, so the permitted-development route is closed for panels. Historic England says consent is required for any type of PV installation on a listed building. If your Borehamwood or Elstree home is listed, the conversation starts with the council, and any battery or inverter on the building belongs in that conversation too.
The consent that matters most: flats and housing associations
The ONS figures for the Borehamwood built-up area show 34% of households in flats, maisonettes or apartments. They also show 26.0% renting from a social landlord, well above the 17.3% across Hertsmere as a whole. For those homes, the roof and the outside walls usually belong to someone else. UK Power Networks says the building owner’s permission is needed before solar or storage work begins on a multi-occupied building. So a Borehamwood flat starts with the freeholder or housing association, and only then with planning. Where a shared roof cannot work, a battery on its own may still be an option; our guide to battery storage without solar panels covers when that stacks up.
Network paperwork is separate from planning
Whatever the planning position, the installer also deals with the electricity network. The Borehamwood town-centre point sits in UK Power Networks’ Eastern Power Networks area. A system up to 16 A per phase (3.68 kW) is notified under G98, while anything larger needs a G99 approval before work starts. None of that involves Hertsmere’s planning team.
Once the permissions are clear, sizing comes next, and our guide to what size home battery you need sets out the method. The roof side is on our page on solar panels in Borehamwood, and the rest of the county is on our solar panels in Hertfordshire hub. We do not make planning applications on a customer’s behalf, but we flag any designation at the survey, before a quote is written.
Sources: legislation.gov.uk, Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, Schedule 2 Part 14, as amended by S.I. 2026/896 (read 16 October 2026); Historic England, Consents and Permissions for PV Systems; Hertsmere Borough Council, Conservation areas in Hertsmere and Elstree Village Conservation Area; MHCLG, Local authority green belt statistics for England 2024-25 (9 October 2025); ONS, Towns and cities: characteristics of built-up areas, Census 2021 (Borehamwood); ONS Census 2021 TS054, Hertsmere; UK Power Networks, Solar and storage: cost, time and what’s involved; UK Power Networks Open Data licence boundaries; Energy Networks Association, EREC G98 Issue 2; EnSmart published specifications for SolarAll-H and ELV-W.