Fence panel, do you still have to have the good side to the neighbours?

Alanp

We have to replace four panels that divide ours and our neighbours gardens, I think it used to be that you had to have the good side facing your neighbours garden, is this still the case or doesn’t it matter, they have not contributed in any way to the cost, we’ve had to go with heavy duty, close board panels as we had to get one made longer and they don’t/ can’t do this for one normal panel, 
also, any suggestions as to how to slide one of these panels in between concrete posts.? We did two yesterday and damn nearly killed us both, in fact, one of our other neighbours gave us a hand, otherwise we’d still be there now😀

Bradden

Dropping the panels is is the only way if the posts are there alredy.  Not sure why you had to buy a longer panel?.. they are usually only sold in either 1.8m or 1.83 widths. 

Regarding the side... never been any legal obligation. notmally the "good" side is outwards for security. The  horizotal battens if facing out make it easier for someone to use them to climb over the panel

TELLIT01

The question is asked all the time.  There is no legal requirement to give the 'good' side to your neighbour.  We paid for our fence so the 'good' side is to us.  As Bradden says, it can help security if you border open ground or a footpath.

olgadapolga

Two of our neighbours (our garden abuts three neighbours) replaced panels and they have the "good" side facing their own gardens. I don't have a problem with this as they paid for the panels, so why wouldn't they have the nicer side?

We had a contractor replace the third side as the adjoining neighbour insisted that the previous owner put it up (we weren't arguing as we wanted a decent fence, although the boundary is joint responsibility) and the contractor erected it with the "good" side facing our garden. 

So we can escape our garden via two of the neighbours' gardens. Which is good if we have another fire as the only other ways to get into our garden are via the house or the garage.

Alanp

We had to get a longer panel made as , if I remember rightly, there’s a humongous blob of concrete where the original wooden fence post was when the houses were built back in the sixties and I didn’t or couldn’t dig it out, so I made a fence panel, I don’t think they could make a longer standard panel as it would mean altering their jigs just for one panel, so the only alternative was to use close boarded heavy duty ones which are easily lengthened,..