Before solar goes on an Aberdeen flat, one question: who owns the roof?

Planning is usually not the obstacle. Class 6HA of the Scottish permitted development rights is drafted "on a dwelling", and the interpretation section of Part 1A defines a dwelling as "a dwellinghouse, a building containing one or more flats or a flat contained within such a building". So permitted development reaches tenement flats. What stops most flat installations is ownership and consent: you need to establish who owns the roof from the title deeds, obtain unanimous written consent from the owners of the common parts, and expect to need a building warrant, because the warrant exemption is written around houses rather than flats.

Not automatically everybody. The Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004 says at section 2(3) that "A top flat extends to and includes the roof over that flat", and at section 2(5) that a close includes the roof over the close. But section 1(1) makes all of that subject to whatever the title deeds say, and in practice most Aberdeen tenement titles put the roof in common ownership. The only way to know is to read the Land Register title sheet, or the Sasine deeds for older property. Nobody can tell you over the phone.

Yes, where the roof is common property and the deeds are silent, and the reason is worth understanding. The Tenement Management Scheme, the default decision making rules, does not cover improvements at all. Rule 1.5 defines maintenance to include "the installation of insulation" but expressly excludes "demolition, alteration or improvement", and the list of scheme decisions in Rule 3.1 does not include improvement. So the majority vote in Rule 2.5 never engages for solar. Scottish Government backed guidance states that "the unanimous consent of all affected owners is required". The asymmetry is striking: insulation on the same roof is a majority decision, solar is not.

The factor administers the decision, it does not make it. Your title deeds set the threshold, and where the deeds are silent that threshold is unanimity among the owners of the common parts. A factor may oversee implementation and your deeds may delegate certain decisions to them, so it is always worth asking what the deeds actually say. What a factor cannot do is override an owner who has not consented.

Unanimity means one refusal stops it. The next steps are to check whether a deed of conditions registered against the block sets a different threshold, and then to take solicitor advice before proceeding, which is what the published guidance recommends. It is also worth asking whether the objection is to solar or to cost, because some blocks have got approval by linking the work to a roof repair that was happening anyway. What you should not do is start work on a common roof without documented consent.

One metre on a dwelling, under Class 6HA. On a building within your curtilage such as a garage, Class 6HB applies, the limit is 500 millimetres, and the building must not be in the front curtilage. Be aware that the 200mm figure quoted on most UK solar websites, including on the strongest ranking Aberdeen solar page we could find, is the England and Wales rule and does not apply here. There is also no ridge height rule in the current Scottish text, and no prior approval notification route for domestic roof solar in Scotland.

Not automatically. A conservation area restricts permitted development by elevation rather than switching it off. Class 6HA is not permitted where the equipment would sit on the principal elevation, or on a side elevation where that elevation fronts a road. Rear elevations and non road facing side elevations keep their rights. Aberdeen has conservation areas covering Union Street, Old Aberdeen, Rosemount and Westburn, Great Western Road, Albyn Place and Rubislaw, Ferryhill, Pitfodels and Footdee among others. On a granite terrace fronting the street, the elevation rule is the real constraint, and it is a question of which slope rather than a refusal.

Not under permitted development. Class 6HA is not permitted where the dwelling is a listed building or is within the curtilage of a listed building, or within a World Heritage Site. That exclusion applies regardless of which elevation you were planning to use. Listed building consent is also a separate requirement in addition to any planning permission. It is not necessarily impossible, but it is a planning project rather than an installation, and it should be resolved before anybody quotes you a start date.

If you live in a house of up to two storeys, usually not, provided the existing roof structure carries the load without strengthening. That exemption comes from Type 1 of Schedule 3 of the Building (Scotland) Regulations 2004, which is disapplied where the work involves structural alteration of the roof. If strengthening is needed, a warrant is required. If you live in a flat, you cannot rely on that exemption at all, because it is written around houses. Solar on a tenement roof should be approached on the basis that a building warrant from Aberdeen City Council Building Standards will be needed.

No. Part P is a section of the Building Regulations for England and Wales. Scotland has Building Standards, administered by the local council, and the mechanism is a building warrant rather than a notification. There is no Building Control body to notify here. Note also that Aberdeen City Council and Aberdeenshire Council are two separate planning authorities: Cults, Kingswells, Peterculter, Bieldside and Milltimber are Aberdeen City, while Westhill, Ellon and Portlethen are Aberdeenshire.

We design and quote to 2,600 kWh a year for a south facing 4kWp array. Modelled at the city centre coordinates, PVGIS gives 3,478 kWh for the same array at a 35 degree pitch, and we quote below that deliberately because the model assumes a clean unshaded array and a typical year. The more useful number is the seasonal spread: around 475 kWh in May against 83 kWh in December, a 5.7 times swing, with roughly three quarters of annual output arriving between March and September.

No. The Home Energy Scotland interest free loan for solar PV and battery storage was withdrawn in June 2024 and has not returned, despite still being advertised as live on several pages ranking for Aberdeen solar searches, in one case at £15,000. ECO4 is a heating and insulation obligation aimed at benefit eligible households and does not fund solar panels for a typical owner occupier. What genuinely exists is 0% VAT on the installation until at least March 2027, and Smart Export Guarantee income on what you export.