Solar Panel Installation in Solihull | MCS Certified Experts

Planning Permission and Conservation Areas: Fitting Solar on Solihull's Protected Streets

Your planning authority in Solihull is Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, and for most homes in the borough solar PV is classed as permitted development — no planning application needed, provided the panels sit within the standard limits (below the highest point of the roof and projecting no more than 20cm from the roof slope).

Solihull is different from many of the areas we cover, though, because the borough has 20 designated conservation areas — and several of them are residential streets where we regularly survey. If you live in the Olton, Knowle, Station Approach Dorridge, Grove Avenue, Ashleigh Road, Warwick Road or Solihull town centre conservation areas — or the village ones at Hampton-in-Arden, Berkswell, Barston or Castle Bromwich — extra rules apply:

• No wall-mounted panels fronting the highway. In conservation areas, permitted development does not cover panels installed on a wall fronting a highway — wall-mounted installations facing the road need planning permission. Roof-mounted panels, even on a roof slope facing the highway, generally remain permitted development provided they sit below the highest part of the roof, project no more than 20cm and no Article 4 direction applies — though in Solihull's 20 conservation areas it is still wise to check with the council before installing on a prominent street-facing elevation. On the Edwardian villas around Olton and the cottages off Knowle High Street, a rear-slope design can still be the natural choice — many rear slopes there face south or west anyway.
• Article 4 directions can remove permitted development rights entirely. Solihull Council applies these in some conservation areas, which means a full planning application even for work that would normally be automatic. We check the property's status with the council's planning maps before we quote, not after.
• Listed buildings always need consent — and the curtilage of a listed building can be caught too, which matters in villages like Hampton-in-Arden and Berkswell with their medieval church cores.

None of this rules solar out. It usually just shapes where the panels go and occasionally means an all-black, low-profile specification to keep the conservation officer happy. Because we've been installing since 2009, we'd rather flag a planning wrinkle at the survey stage than have you find out mid-install. Book a free survey and we'll confirm your street's status as part of it.

Solihull Roof Stock, Suburb by Suburb: What Our Surveyors Find

Solihull's housing didn't go up all at once, and the differences between suburbs genuinely change how we design a system:

• Shirley and Olton grew fastest between the wars, so the dominant stock is the classic 1930s semi with a hipped, plain-tile roof. Hipped roofs split the available space across smaller individual slopes, so we'll often design across two faces of the roof and use panel-level optimisation rather than force everything onto one slope. Worth knowing: the A34 Stratford Road runs broadly north-west to south-east through Shirley, so a lot of the residential streets off it leave homes with south-west/north-east roof aspects — and a south-west slope earns its keep by generating into the late afternoon, when a household actually uses power.
• Knowle, Dorridge and Bentley Heath mix Victorian and Edwardian properties near Knowle High Street with substantial 1930s family homes on larger plots. Bigger roofs mean more usable slope, but this is also where the Knowle and Station Approach Dorridge conservation areas sit, so we check each property's conservation-area and Article 4 status before designing here.
• North Solihull — Chelmsley Wood, Castle Bromwich and Marston Green — is a different era again. Chelmsley Wood was built in one push between 1965 and 1970 as a Birmingham overspill development of roughly 15,590 homes, one of the largest single housing schemes in Europe at the time. The upside for solar: the low-rise housing generally has simple, regular roof shapes and modern truss construction, which makes for some of the most straightforward installs we do in the borough.

One more local practicality: grid connections in Solihull go through National Grid Electricity Distribution, the network operator for the West Midlands. Anything above 3.68kW per phase — which covers most modern panel-plus-battery systems — needs a G99 application to them before commissioning. We prepare and submit that paperwork for every Solihull job as standard.

Solihull Is Backing Solar — and We're 17.9 Miles Up the M42

If you're weighing up panels in Solihull, you're moving with the borough rather than against it. Solihull Council recognised the climate emergency in October 2019 and has set a target for the whole borough to reach net zero by 2041 — nine years ahead of the national target and in line with the West Midlands Combined Authority — backed by a Net Zero Action Plan of over 200 actions. The council even runs its own group-buying scheme, Switch Together Solar, with the Dutch auction specialist iChoosr: registration is free, and it's a perfectly reasonable route if you're happy to be allocated whichever installer wins the auction. The honest difference with us is that you choose a named firm — established 2009, MCS certified, RECC member, NICEIC approved, Tesla Powerwall Premium Installer and Approved — and the same team handles your survey, install and aftercare.

The most visible proof that solar performs in this exact climate is inside the borough itself. Birmingham Airport, between Marston Green and Bickenhill, fitted 12,804 panels (6.8MW) along its 1.5km 'Alpha Bund' embankment between September 2023 and May 2024 — an investment of around £10 million that supplies at least 20% of the airport's electricity, and during sunny spells in April 2025 the airport reported running on 100% solar power at peak daytime. On a bigger scale still, TotalEnergies has submitted plans to Solihull Council for the proposed 49.9MW Castle Hills Solar Farm with battery storage near the airport. If solar stacks up commercially on Solihull's own skyline, it stacks up on a Shirley semi.

And the practical bit: our base in Tamworth (B77) is 17.9 miles from Solihull — essentially one road, the M42, from junction 10 down to junction 5. That's roughly half an hour door to door, which is why we can usually survey Solihull homes within days rather than weeks, return quickly if anything needs adjusting after install, and provide genuine long-term aftercare instead of a call centre. Book your free survey or get in touch and we'll take a look at your roof this week.