How much does fencing cost?

Fencing is priced per linear metre once installed, because a metre of fence is a fixed bundle of parts: a share of a post, a share of a gravel board, the panel or boards, a bag of postcrete and the labour to set it. MyBuilder's installed table puts lap panel fencing at £70 to £100 per metre, closeboard at £90 to £130 and composite at £130 to £200. Our closeboard range sits exactly on that national figure at £90 to £130 per metre excluding VAT.

Whole job figures are the easier sanity check. MyBuilder puts a typical 15 metre garden boundary at £1,000 to £2,500 fully installed, and gives £1,000 to £1,500 for a straightforward 15 metre run of eight panels. Checkatrade's own totals for 6ft fencing run from £700 at 36ft to £3,700 at 200ft, with an average of £2,200, though their table is headed "Cost + VAT" and they publish nothing saying whether VAT sits inside those numbers or on top of them. Ours exclude VAT, always.

Three things move the price more than the panel does. Difficult ground, where MyBuilder's own figure rises to £150 to £180 per metre. Old concrete post footings, which cost £50 to £100 per post to break out and take away. And disposal, priced at £20 to £30 for take down and clear away by Checkatrade and around £35 per panel by MyJobQuote, with skip or tip charges on top of either. A quote that says "all in" without naming those three lines is an incomplete quote.

Small jobs cost more per metre, and honest installers say so. Checkatrade warns that supplying and installing three composite panels may be charged at more than their £130 per metre figure because labour is billed at a minimum day rate. MyBuilder notes a typical minimum call out of one to two hours regardless of how fast the work goes. If you only need two bays doing, expect the per metre rate to look worse than the headline, and consider grouping the work with anything else the garden needs.

Measure the run in metres, count the posts, then photograph both ends and any change in ground level. Send that with your postcode and we will price it against the guide ranges. Ask every quote you get to itemise six things: panel or board type, post material, gravel board material, whether removal and tipping of the old fence is included, the minimum charge, and the VAT basis. MyBuilder found a 20% to 30% spread between installers on identical specifications, so itemised quotes are the only way to compare like with like.

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