Permits & Rules
Do I need a permit to replace an existing fence?
Usually yes. A small number of municipalities in Chester, Delaware and Montgomery County treat a like-for-like replacement — same height, same material, same line, same post locations — as maintenance rather than new construction, but most do not, and the exemption is not something to assume. Any change resets it: a taller fence, a different material, a shifted line or an added gate reads as new construction. The governing rule comes from your specific township or borough code office, and we file the application either way.
Most municipalities in this territory do not distinguish between a new fence and a replacement at all. The ordinance regulates the fence, not the act of building it, so the application goes in either way. Where an exemption does exist it is usually written narrowly — the replacement has to be in the same location, at the same height, in the same material, and often in the original post holes. Read it as a maintenance allowance rather than a blanket pass. One phone call to the code office tells you which of the two your municipality is, and that answer is specific to your township or borough.
The consideration that catches people is nonconformity. Fences built decades ago frequently sit closer to the road, or stand taller, than the current ordinance would allow. That older fence is often permitted to remain as a legal nonconforming structure, but tearing it out and building new can end that status, and the replacement may have to meet today's rule instead. Along the older Main Line streets and in the West Chester and Kennett Square boroughs this is common enough to be worth asking directly: does my existing fence conform, and if not, what happens when I replace it?
Any change resets the question. Going from four feet to six, from pressure-treated pine to vinyl, from a spaced picket to a solid privacy panel, adding a gate, or moving the line a foot to clear a tree or a drainage swale all read as new construction rather than maintenance. So does changing post spacing enough that the footings land in new ground. If you are already replacing a fence, this is the right moment to make those changes — but make them with the permit in hand rather than after the crew has started digging.
Replacement is also the moment the property line gets re-examined. Old fences in the denser Delaware County townships routinely stand a foot or more inside the true boundary — ground given up years ago to a hedge, a bank or a quiet disagreement, and never taken back. Rebuilding to the old line perpetuates that. Moving out to the surveyed line is a change of location, and it is a conversation to have with the neighbour before the posts go in rather than after. Where the boundary is genuinely unclear, a survey settles it and nothing else does.
We prepare and file the municipal application on a replacement exactly as we do on new construction, along with the HOA architectural submission where a community requires one, and we confirm the governing height and setback with your municipality before anything is ordered. If your township treats like-for-like as exempt, that is a shorter process and we will tell you so — but the confirmation comes from the code office rather than from an assumption.
