How soon can a fence be repaired after a storm?

The morning after a gale, safety comes before tidying. Wind often keeps gusting for hours after the peak, so do not work under a leaning panel. Lift panels clear and lay them flat with something heavy on top. Check for lighting cable, sockets or trellis wire fixed to the fence before you pull anything. Watch for nails standing proud of fallen boards. If the boundary is the only thing keeping a dog in, a temporary barrier or a run of stock fencing buys you the time to get the repair done properly.

Photograph before you clear if there is any chance of an insurance claim. A wide shot of the run, a close-up of each broken post at ground level, and the date. Keep the broken stumps and panels until the claim is settled, because the assessor will look at the post base to decide between storm damage and rot. Get an itemised written quote rather than a single figure. Clearing the debris to the tip on the first morning feels productive and can cost you the claim.

Storms hit the whole county in the same hour, which is why the queue forms. You can move up it by sending enough information to be quoted without a site visit. Use the quote form and attach one wide photograph of the whole run, a close-up of each damaged post at ground level, the length of the run in metres and the panel height. That is usually enough to price the work and book a slot. Small repairs get slotted between larger jobs, while a full run needs a day or more set aside.

Ground conditions decide what can be done in the first week. Panel swaps onto sound posts can be done in almost any weather, which is why a like-for-like panel replacement often gets booked first. Post work is different. Postcrete sets in five to ten minutes in a workable hole and panels can be rehung about ten minutes later, but a hole filling with groundwater needs baling or pumping and a stiffer mix. Breaking out an old footing in saturated clay is slower than the £50 to £100 per post the trade budgets for it.

Some storm jobs do not need us at all. A panel that has lifted out of its concrete post slots and blown over is often undamaged, and dropping it back into the slots is a two-person, ten-minute job. A single clip or nail that has pulled out of a timber post is the same. Where the boundary is not doing security work and only one bay is affected, waiting a fortnight for a properly set post beats a rushed patch that has to be redone. Book the permanent fix and make the gap safe in the meantime.

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