Fencing in the Inner West: Fitting a New Fence to an Older Sydney Street

The Inner West is one of the few parts of Sydney where the fence out the front is genuinely part of the streetscape. Rows of Victorian terraces in Newtown and Stanmore, Federation bungalows in Haberfield and Summer Hill, and workers' cottages in Balmain and Leichhardt were all built with a front boundary treatment in mind, and in a lot of streets the original iron, timber or masonry is still there. That makes replacing a fence here less about picking a product and more about fitting in.

Check whether your street is in a heritage conservation area

Large parts of the Inner West sit inside heritage conservation areas, and Haberfield is one of the best known intact early twentieth century garden suburbs in the country. If your property is in a conservation area, or is individually listed, the height, material and style of a front fence is usually controlled by your council's development control plan rather than left to preference. That does not mean you cannot change anything. It means the design needs to be sympathetic, and some work that would be exempt elsewhere needs approval here.

The practical step is to check your property's status with your local council before you commit to a design or accept a quote. It is a free check, it takes a phone call or a look at the planning portal, and it settles most of the design questions for you.

The front fence and the back fence are two different projects

On most Inner West blocks the front boundary is short, visible and detailed, while the side and rear boundaries are long, hidden and purely functional. Spending the budget evenly across both is usually a mistake.

Out the front, a steel or aluminium palisade that echoes original ironwork, a painted timber picket, or a low masonry base with metal above will sit comfortably in almost any older street. Out the back, a timber paling fence or Colorbond does the job at a fraction of the cost per metre. Colorbond on a rear boundary is uncontroversial. Colorbond as a front fence on a terrace street rarely looks right, and in a conservation area it may not be permitted at all.

Access is the hidden cost

Inner West blocks are narrow, and plenty of them have no side access at all. If a fencer cannot get a barrow, let alone a mini excavator, down the side of the house, every post hole is dug by hand and every panel, post and bag of concrete comes through the house.

Where there is a rear lane, as there is through much of Balmain, Rozelle, Erskineville and parts of Newtown, that usually solves the problem and brings the price down. Where there is not, it is worth raising up front. A quote built on the assumption of machine access and then re-costed on site is how fencing jobs turn into arguments. Narrow one way streets and resident parking schemes matter more here than in most of Sydney too: a crew that cannot park within reach of the job loses time every day of the install.

Old masonry boundaries are not always fences

A good number of Inner West boundaries are not fences at all. They are rendered brick or sandstone walls, some of them a century old, and some of them quietly holding back a difference in ground level between two properties. If yours is cracked, bowed or shedding render, the first question is not which fence to replace it with. It is whether the wall is doing structural work.

A wall holding back soil is a retaining wall, and it is a different job with different rules. Replacing it with a paling fence without dealing with the level change simply moves the problem along. Our guide to retaining walls in Sydney covers what to look for and when engineering and approval come into it.

Shared boundaries, close neighbours and the Dividing Fences Act

Terraces and semis share more than a boundary. They often share a wall, and the courtyards either side can be only a few metres wide. That has two consequences.

The first is legal. In NSW the Dividing Fences Act 1991 generally treats a dividing fence as a shared responsibility, with the cost of a fence of a standard sufficient for the two properties split between the owners. A conversation with the neighbour before you order anything is worth more than any clause in a contract. This is general information rather than legal advice, so get advice on your own situation if there is a dispute.

The second is practical. In a tight courtyard the fencer is often working with no room on either side of the boundary, which can mean needing access from your neighbour's side to build your fence. That is a favour rather than a right, and it is far easier to arrange in advance than on the morning the crew arrives.

Privacy in a small courtyard

A common Inner West request is not a longer fence but a taller one, usually because a neighbouring second storey or a new development looks straight down into a courtyard. It is worth being realistic about what a fence can do here. It will screen sightlines at ground level and it will do nothing at all about an upstairs window.

Height limits for exempt fencing work vary by council and by whether you are in a conservation area, and lattice or trellis extensions are often counted as part of the overall height rather than treated as an add-on. Screening planting, a pergola or a shade structure frequently solves an overlooking problem that a taller fence cannot.

Levels, sandstone and stepped fences

Parts of Annandale, Balmain, Lilyfield and Rozelle fall away noticeably toward the water, and shale and sandstone sit close to the surface across much of the area. Two things follow. On a sloping boundary the fence either steps down panel by panel or is raked to follow the ground, and stepping almost always looks better against older housing. And where there is rock, post holes take longer and sometimes need to be drilled rather than augered, which is much better flagged before quotes than after.

Inner West suburbs we cover

• Newtown, Enmore, Erskineville and Camperdown

• Stanmore, Petersham, Lewisham and Summer Hill

• Ashfield, Haberfield and Croydon

• Dulwich Hill, Marrickville, Sydenham, St Peters and Tempe

• Leichhardt, Lilyfield and Annandale

• Balmain, Balmain East, Rozelle and Birchgrove

Getting an Inner West fence quoted properly

A Cut Above Landscaping & Carpentry is based in Miranda and works across the Inner West alongside our other Sydney service areas. We hold NSW Contractor Licence 484384C in structural landscaping, which covers the retaining and structural work that older Inner West boundaries often turn out to need.

If you would like a fence quoted with the access, level and heritage questions above actually accounted for, have a look at our fencing services or get in touch to arrange a site visit.

Also worth reading: Front Fence Ideas for Sydney Homes and How to Choose the Right Fence for Your Sydney Property.