Ifield Village became Crawley’s first conservation area in 1981, and the borough now has 13. Some are what most people picture: old village cores with a church and a green. Others are less expected, because Crawley protects parts of its New Town too, including Queens Square, The Broadway and the neighbourhood centres at Southgate and Gossops Green. If you live in or near one and are thinking about panels, a battery or both, this guide sets out what the planning rules actually say.
The headline is reassuring for most homes, with a few precise exceptions. For the battery itself, where it fits and how it connects to UK Power Networks, see our page on battery storage in Crawley.
Thirteen areas, two kinds of place
Crawley was designated a New Town on 9 January 1947, and much of its housing was built in planned neighbourhoods from then on. Its conservation areas reflect both histories. In the old settlements, Ifield Village (designated 1981, extended 2013) and Worth, home to the Grade I listed St Nicholas’ Church with parts dated to between AD 950 and 1050, the buildings are older and the listed ones are where the strictest rules apply. In the New Town precincts, the protection is about the planned townscape rather than old roofs. The rules below are the same in both, but what tends to come up is different.
What the national rule says about panels
The rule is Schedule 2, Part 14, Class A of the General Permitted Development Order 2015, as amended by S.I. 2026/896 and in force from 27 August 2026. Roof-mounted solar on a house is permitted development, so no application, provided the panels protrude no more than 0.2 m from the roof slope, sit no higher than the highest part of the roof excluding chimneys, are sited to minimise the effect on the building’s appearance, and are removed when no longer needed.
In a conservation area, the exclusion applies only to equipment installed on a wall, balcony or roof enclosure which fronts a highway. Roof slopes are not restricted, front ones included. So a house in Ifield Village keeps its roof-slope rights on the ordinary conditions unless it is listed or an Article 4 direction removes them. A flat-roof array in a conservation area is the other exception: the panels must sit no more than 0.6 m above the highest part of the roof, and you need to apply to Crawley Borough Council for a determination on whether prior approval of their appearance is required, before work starts.
Where the battery goes, in planning terms
Nothing in the Part 14 classes we rely on is written for a home battery, and we have not found a battery-specific permitted-development rule in the sources we check, so we will not invent one. What we can say is practical. A battery and its inverter fitted inside a garage, a utility room or under the stairs do not change the outside of the house. In a Crawley terrace, which is 37.4% of the borough’s households, there is often no garage and no side access, so the choice can come down to an inside wall or an outside one.
An outside unit is where planning sense comes in. On a listed building, or on a wall facing the road in one of the 13 conservation areas, ask the council’s planning team before anything is fixed. A unit on a rear or side wall of an ordinary house raises fewer questions, but the question is still the council’s to answer, not ours.
Listed buildings in Crawley
Listed buildings are the firm exception for panels. Class A does not permit solar on a listed house, or on a building within its curtilage, so listed building consent is needed. Worth and Ifield Village are the parts of Crawley most likely to raise it. If your home is listed, the conversation starts with the council, and any battery placement should be part of the same conversation rather than an afterthought.
Flats and the New Town terraces
A quarter of Crawley’s homes, 25.1%, are flats or maisonettes. In a flat, the roof and the outside walls usually belong to the freeholder, so consent comes before planning, and for a battery, so does finding an inside space. With 22.9% of households in social rented homes and 19.8% renting privately, the landlord’s agreement is often the first step. The New Town terraces bring their own constraint: whole streets share the same roof shape and orientation, which makes a panel survey predictable, but a mid-terrace roof holds fewer panels than a semi.
Who to ask in Crawley
Crawley Borough Council’s planning team is the authority for the whole borough, working within the Local Plan 2023–2040, adopted in October 2024. If you are unsure whether your street sits in a conservation area, or whether an Article 4 direction covers it, ask before you order anything. We have not verified any Crawley Article 4 direction that names solar or batteries, and a direction applies only to the land it names, so it is worth reading the direction itself if one exists. The Surrey version of this question, using the same national Order, is in our guide to planning permission for solar panels in Surrey.
The electrical side is separate
Planning is not the only paperwork. Crawley sits in UK Power Networks’ South Eastern Power Networks licence area. A system up to 16 A per phase (3.68 kW) is notified under G98; anything larger needs a G99 application approved before the work starts. The installer handles that. We are a NAPIT member (73495), MCS-certified for solar PV and battery storage through NAPIT, and NAPIT covers the electrical work. For sizing the battery from your own bills, see what size home battery do I need; for the roof side, our page on solar panels in Crawley; and for the county view, our Sussex solar page.
Sources: legislation.gov.uk, Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, Schedule 2 Part 14 Class A, as amended by S.I. 2026/896 (in force 27 August 2026); Crawley Borough Council, conservation areas, planning and Local Plan 2023–2040 pages; ONS Census 2021, TS044 and TS054 (Crawley), via censusdata.uk; UK Power Networks, operating areas; Energy Networks Association, EREC G98 Issue 2 (10 March 2025). Read 12–15 October 2026.