Solar planning in Wirral: panels, conservation areas and permission
Solar panels in Wirral: the permitted development rules, Wirral Council's conservation areas and how to check yours, and the towns we cover there.
Wirral Council is the planning authority for Bebington, Heswall, Birkenhead, Wallasey, West Kirby and Hoylake 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 Wirral: 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 Wirral
There are 26 conservation areas in Wirral, including Port Sunlight and Hamilton Square, which are of national importance.
The areas the council lists, including those named after the towns we cover, are:
- West Kirby
- Heswall Lower Village
- Lower Bebington Conservation Area
- Birkenhead Park
- Barnston
- Bidston Village
- Bromborough Pool
- Bromborough Village
- Caldy
- Clifton Park
- Eastham Village
- Flaybrick Cemetery
- Frankby Village
- Gayton
- Hamilton Square
- Meols Drive
- Mountwood
- Oxton Village
- Port Sunlight Village
- Rock Park
- Saughall Massie
- The King’s Gap
- The Magazines
- Thornton Hough
- Thurstaston
- Wellington Road
Checking an address: The council publishes an interactive map of its conservation areas and the boundaries as open data. Read it on Wirral Council’s conservation-area page.
Each town we cover in Wirral has its own pages for solar panels in Bebington and the rest, listed below the article, 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 Wirral 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.