Can a Neighbour Block Your Solar Panels? UK Rights Explained

A neighbour's leylandii casting an afternoon shadow across your array, or a two-storey extension going up next door, can cut your solar output far more than most homeowners expect. The instinct is to assume you have some kind of "right to light" for a rooftop full of panels the same way you might for a window. You don't — but the legal picture isn't a flat no either. One route exists for hedges, another opened up in 2019 for extensions, and neither is well understood even by installers. Here's what the law actually says, and what to do about shading that's already cutting into your generation.

Is there a "right to light" for solar panels?

No — not in the way most people assume. The Rights of Light Act 1959 and the older Prescription Act 1832 doctrine it modifies only ever applied to light passing through a defined aperture in a building, typically a window, after 20 years of uninterrupted enjoyment. A roof-mounted solar array sitting in the open air was never within scope of that doctrine, and nothing in UK law has since created an equivalent prescriptive right for sunlight falling on a PV panel. A healthy tree or a legally-built extension that happens to shade your roof does not, on its own, breach any right you hold.

Your neighbour's tree: usually not a legal problem

A tree overshadowing your panels is not automatically an actionable nuisance under English common law — loss of light from vegetation sits outside the private nuisance doctrine that covers things like noise, smell or physical encroachment. You cannot force a neighbour to fell or reduce a healthy tree just because it is cutting your solar generation, however frustrating that is once you've seen the effect string-wired panels suffer from partial shade (see our shading guide for why even a small shadow drags down a whole string).

The one statutory exception is the high hedges regime under Part 8 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003. It applies only to a hedge that is: on someone else's land, formed mostly of evergreen or semi-evergreen trees or shrubs in a line of two or more, over 2 metres tall, and acting as a barrier to light. A single deciduous tree, or a hedge under 2 metres, falls outside the scheme entirely. Where a hedge does qualify, you must first try to resolve things informally with your neighbour; only then can you complain to your local council, which can investigate and, if it agrees the hedge causes a "significant adverse effect" on your enjoyment of light, issue a remedial notice requiring the height to be reduced (never removed outright, and never below 2 metres). Non-compliance can lead to the council doing the work itself and billing the owner, or a fine of up to £1,000.

Your neighbour's extension: a different story since 2019

Extensions and new buildings sit in planning law, not nuisance law, and that's where solar panels got a real, if limited, win. For years, councils treated a shadow cast on a neighbour's solar panels as a purely private matter, irrelevant to whether an extension should get planning permission. That changed with R (McLennan) v Medway Council [2019] EWHC 1738 (Admin), a High Court case heard in the Planning Court before Mr Justice Lane.

A homeowner in Rochester, Kent, had solar panels on the south-facing wall of his house. Medway Council granted his neighbour planning permission for a rear extension that would shade those panels, on the basis that the loss of light to solar panels was an "immaterial" private matter. The judge disagreed, ruling that the council's position was irrational: mitigating climate change is a legitimate planning consideration, and a proposal that would materially reduce a renewable generation system's output cannot simply be waved through without weighing that impact. The permission was quashed.

What the ruling does not do is create a right to sunlight for your panels. It requires a council to treat the impact on your solar generation as a material consideration when it decides a planning application — one factor among many, still capable of being outweighed by other planning merits. A council can still grant permission for an extension that shades your roof; it just can't refuse to consider the effect at all.

What you can actually do

• Object formally, and name the McLennan precedent. If a neighbour applies for planning permission for an extension, submit a written objection during the consultation period citing loss of light to an existing solar PV installation, referencing the 2019 case, and ideally including an estimate of the generation loss.
• Check whether a hedge qualifies under the 2003 Act before spending money on legal advice — height, evergreen status and the two-or-more-plants rule are all checked by the council for free at the informal-resolution stage.
• Talk to your neighbour first, always. Both routes above require or strongly favour evidence that you tried to resolve things directly; a council is entitled to reject a high hedges complaint if you haven't.
• Get a professional shading assessment. An MCS installer or independent surveyor can quantify the kWh/year at stake using a shading tool, which strengthens any planning objection far more than a general complaint about "less sun."

Preventing the dispute in the first place

The cheapest fix is avoiding the argument entirely at the design stage. A competent installer surveys neighbouring trees, boundary hedges and the massing of adjacent buildings before finalising panel placement, and will flag a roof slope that's likely to fall into a neighbour's future shadow, whether from an existing hedge that's still growing or a garden with obvious extension potential. If you're comparing quotes, ask each installer how they assessed long-term shading risk from neighbouring land, not just the shading that exists on survey day — see our guide on what to look for in a solar quote for the other questions worth asking before you sign.