Solar planning in Liverpool: panels, conservation areas and permission
Solar panels in Liverpool: the planning rules, the council's conservation areas and how to check an address.
Liverpool City Council is the planning authority for Liverpool among the towns we cover. Whether panels on a house there need the council’s permission comes down to two things: the national rules for England, and whether the house sits in one of the council’s conservation areas or is listed.
Solar planning in Liverpool: the rules that apply
In England, panels on a house are normally permitted development under Part 14, Class A of the General Permitted Development Order 2015, as amended on 27 August 2026. On a pitched roof they may stand no more than 0.2 metres proud and no higher than the roof’s highest point; on a flat roof the array may rise no more than 0.6 metres above it; on a wall, 0.2 metres where it abuts a highway and 0.4 metres elsewhere. A listed house has no such rights, and in a conservation area nothing may go on a wall, balcony or roof enclosure that fronts a highway; a flat-roof array on that land needs the council’s prior approval of its appearance first.
Conservation areas in Liverpool
Liverpool has 36 conservation areas covering 9% of the city area and protecting 19,000 properties. If you live in a conservation area, works to your property may be subject to an Article 4 direction.
The areas the council lists are:
- Albert Dock
- Canning Street
- Castle Street
- Childwall Abbey
- Derwent Square
- Duke Street
- Edge Hill
- Fulwood Park
- Gatacre Village
- Grassendale and Cressington Parks
- Grove Park
- Hartley’s Village
- Hunts Cross Avenue
- Kensington Fields
- Knotty Ash
- Lark Lane
- Mossley Hill
- Mount Pleasant
- Muirhead Avenue
- Newenham Crescent
- Newsham Park
- Ogden Close
- Princes Park
- Princes Road
- Rodney Street
- Sefton Park
- Shaw Street
- Stanley Dock
- St Michaels Hamlet
- Toxteth Park Avenues
- Walton on the Hill
- Wavertree Garden Suburb
- Wavertree Village
- West Derby
- William Brown Street
- Woolton Village
Checking an address: The council’s map shows whether a property is inside a conservation area, and the boundaries are currently under review. Read it on Liverpool City Council’s conservation-area page.
Each town we cover in Liverpool has its own pages for solar panels in Liverpool, with that town’s own PVGIS figures, network and conservation areas.
The network side
Planning is one form; the network operator is another. The towns here are on SP Manweb, and every system is notified to the operator under G98 or, for larger systems, G99. Our guide to the G99 application covers it, the Merseyside and the Wirral page sets out the networks town by town, and the UK-wide rules are in our guide to whether solar panels need planning permission.
A car charger has planning rules of its own, which change in England on 21 October 2026: EV charging in Liverpool sets them out with the council’s plug-in car and public charger figures.
If your house is listed, in a conservation area, or has a flat roof, tell us on the first call. It changes the design and sometimes the order things happen in, but rarely whether solar works.