Walk down most residential streets in the first week of September and you'll spot the tell: fence panels leaning a few degrees off vertical, gravel boards gone soft and grey at the base, gaps at the top where the wind has already started working a nail loose. A summer of dry ground does something quietly damaging to timber fencing — the soil shrinks away from post bases, joints that were snug in April rattle by August, and none of it looks urgent until the first proper autumn low-pressure system rolls in off the Atlantic and tests every weak point at once. Most of the calls fencing contractors get in October are for jobs that were visibly failing in August, and the gap between those two dates is exactly the window this article is about. Insurers notice the pattern too — a fence panel that comes down onto a neighbour's car or greenhouse during a named storm is one of the more common autumn claims, and it's rarely the panel itself that failed first. If your fence survived last winter on luck rather than sound fixings, this is the window to sort it, and the honest answer to "can I do this myself" depends less on confidence with a spirit level and more on which parts of the job you're willing to get wrong on the first attempt. Get the posts right and almost anyone can hang a panel competently; get the posts wrong and no amount of care with the panels will save the fence past the first proper gale.
Repair or Replace? The Signs Worth Trusting
Not every leaning panel needs pulling out. Press a hand flat against the mid-rail of each panel and push — if the whole thing flexes like a trampoline, the featheredge boards or waney-lap slats have lost their grip on the rails and a panel swap is coming regardless of what the posts look like. Posts are the part that actually decides whether you're repairing or rebuilding: concrete posts crack visibly and are easy to judge, but timber posts rot from the inside out at ground level, so the section that looks solid above soil can be sponge two inches below it. Push each post sideways at shoulder height. Movement of more than an inch or two at the top, with no corresponding flex lower down, usually means the base has gone and no amount of extra screws in the panel will fix that. A cheap moisture meter, the £15 pin type sold at Screwfix for damp-checking timber, will confirm it in seconds if you're not sure — anything reading soft and wet a few inches below grade on a post that looks fine above it has already started rotting from the inside. Don't trust a visual check alone on posts older than eight years, even ones that still look square.
Concrete spurs — short concrete posts bolted to the sound part of a rotten timber post — are a legitimate £15–£25-per-post fix if only the bottom foot or so has failed and the rest of the run is straight. Jewson and Travis Perkins both stock them as a trade staple for exactly this repair. Where three or more consecutive posts have gone, or where the whole fence line has developed a visible lean along its length rather than at isolated points, you're not looking at a repair job any more — you're looking at a rebuild, and pretending otherwise just means doing the same job twice within two winters.
Timber or Concrete Posts — the Decision That Outlasts Everything Else
This is the one choice on the whole job that determines whether you're back out here in five years or twenty. Pressure-treated timber posts (typically 100mm x 100mm) run £12–£20 each at Wickes and B&B — sorry, B&Q — and look completely acceptable set in concrete, but even "treated to 20-year guarantee" timber posts fail at ground level well before that if drainage around the base is poor. Reinforced concrete posts cost more upfront, generally £18–£35 depending on height and slot configuration, and they simply don't rot. Go concrete on any run where post replacement in ten years' time would mean disturbing a patio, decking, or planting you've since put in. That's not a hedge — it's the one recommendation on this list worth following even if it costs an extra £150 across a 20-metre run.
Concreting In vs Post Spikes and Metal Shoes
Post spikes (also called post supports or metal shoes) let you drive a galvanised sleeve into firm ground and drop a timber post into it — no digging, no concrete, no 24-hour cure time. They're genuinely good for soft landscaping fences on decent soil and cost £12–£25 per spike from Screwfix. They are the wrong choice for anything load-bearing or exposed to wind loading over about 1.5 metres, and they are a poor choice on clay soil that moves seasonally, because the spike will work loose exactly where you need it not to. Concreting in — a hole roughly 450–600mm deep, post set plumb, postcrete poured dry and watered in — is slower and messier but is what every fencing contractor will quote by default for a boundary fence over 1.2 metres, and for good reason.
Panel Types and What They Actually Cost Right Now
Standard waney-lap or larkswood panels — the ones with overlapping curved-edge slats — are the cheapest option at roughly £25–£45 for a 6x6ft panel from B&Q or Wickes, and they'll do the job on a budget fence with a five-to-eight-year realistic lifespan before the slats start splitting. Featheredge panels, built from tapered boards fixed vertically to horizontal rails, cost more at £45–£90 per panel but shed water far better and typically last 12–15 years if the rails are tanalised. Closeboard fencing — built on site from featheredge boards, arris rails and posts rather than bought as pre-made panels — is the most durable and the most expensive route, with materials alone running £70–£110 per bay before you've bought a single fixing, but it's also the only one of the three you can repair board-by-board decades from now without replacing an entire section.
- Waney-lap/larkswood panel (6x6ft): £25–£45, budget option, shorter lifespan
- Featheredge panel (6x6ft): £45–£90, better water shedding, worth it on exposed sites
- Closeboard bay (built in situ): £70–£110 in materials, repairable board-by-board, and the choice most fencing contractors will push if they're pricing a boundary fence rather than a garden divider
- Gravel boards (concrete or timber, per panel width): £12–£20 — skip these and you're guaranteeing rot at the base within two or three winters
Permission, Boundaries and the Rules Nobody Reads Until There's a Dispute
Under the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 2015, you don't normally need planning permission for a fence up to 2 metres high, dropping to 1 metre if it fronts a road used by vehicles — visibility splays at junctions are the reason for that lower limit, not an arbitrary rule. Check your title deeds or the Land Registry plan before you touch anything on a boundary line, though: a "T mark" on the plan indicates which side owns and is responsible for maintaining that fence, and replacing a neighbour's fence without asking, even with good intentions, has started more disputes than it's solved.
Restrictive covenants are the wildcard most people forget. Some newer estates, particularly those built by volume housebuilders in the last fifteen years, carry covenants specifying fence height, style, or even colour on front boundaries — worth a five-minute check of your deeds before you order featheredge panels and find out the estate management company only permits close-board. Conservation areas and listed buildings add another layer entirely, and if either applies to your property, a call to the local planning department costs nothing and saves you from an enforcement notice.
The Real Cost Comparison: DIY vs a Fencing Contractor
For a fairly typical 18-metre boundary run — six panels, seven posts, gravel boards throughout, replacing an existing rotten fence rather than starting from bare ground — the material cost doing it yourself with featheredge panels and concrete posts lands around £550–£750, plus tool hire. Skip hire for the old fence and any excess concrete usually means a 4-yard skip at £180–£240 from a local supplier (check with your council on permit requirements if it's going on the road rather than a drive), and if you don't already own a decent post-hole spade or auger, a one-day hire of a petrol post-hole borer from HSS Hire runs £55–£75, which is worth every penny compared with hand-digging seven holes through clay.
- DIY materials (featheredge, concrete posts, postcrete, gravel boards, fixings): £550–£750
- HSS Hire petrol post-hole borer, one day: £55–£75
- Skip hire (4-yard, weekend): £180–£240
- Total DIY, all-in: roughly £785–£1,065, plus your own labour and a weekend
Hire a fencing contractor for the same run and expect a quote of £1,400–£2,200 fully fitted, including waste removal — most price it per linear metre at somewhere between £75 and £120, or as a day rate of £220–£320 for a two-person team plus materials. That's the number that makes DIY look attractive until you factor in what a botched post job actually costs: a post that isn't plumb, or concreted at the wrong depth, means the whole panel racks within two years, and redoing seven holes properly the second time round wipes out most of the saving you thought you'd made the first time.
How Long It Actually Takes
Budget a full weekend for the 18-metre example above if you're doing it solo — removing the old fence and disposing of it typically eats three to four hours on its own, digging and concreting seven post holes takes a full day once you include letting concrete go off enough to stay plumb overnight, and fitting panels plus gravel boards is a comfortable second-day job with a helper. A two-person fencing crew will usually do the same run in a single long day, which is most of what you're paying the day-rate premium for. Rushing the concrete cure time is the single most common DIY mistake on this job — panels fitted onto posts less than 24 hours after concreting will knock the posts out of true, and you won't notice until the first gale tests it in October.
The Verdict
Do the job yourself if you're comfortable digging to a consistent depth, checking plumb on every post before backfilling, and you've got a weekend and a mate to hold panels steady while the second person fixes them — on those terms, DIY saves genuine money and the finished fence is no less durable than a contractor's, provided you use concrete posts on anything over 1.2 metres and don't cut corners on gravel boards. Call a fencing contractor instead if the run is longer than about 25 metres, if the ground is heavy clay or full of old foundations and rubble that will turn post-hole digging into an all-weekend fight on its own, or if you simply don't have two consecutive dry days free before the weather turns — a contractor with a mini auger and a second pair of hands will get seven posts in the ground in under two hours, which on awkward ground is worth paying for on its own. Either way, get this done in September. A fence that's marginal now won't get better sitting through an autumn of sustained westerlies, and the £150 spent replacing three posts in dry ground beats the £900 spent rebuilding the whole run after it comes down across next door's greenhouse.