Electric and automated gates in Canterbury, Whitstable and Faversham

This stretch of Kent asks for a wide spread of gate work. There are driveways on the larger houses and farms in the villages between Faversham and Canterbury, where a long drive and a field gate are often the first thing worth automating. There are tighter frontages in the older streets of Whitstable, Faversham and Herne Bay, where there may only be room for a sliding gate. And there are yards and commercial entrances on the industrial estates, where the gate has to cope with lorries and constant use.

Each one leads to a different answer. A swing gate needs room to open inwards over the drive, and a slope across the opening can rule it out. A sliding gate needs a clear run beside the opening for the leaf to travel into. Our electric gates page covers the choice between them in more detail, and the survey is where it gets settled for your site.

Close to the coast at Whitstable, Seasalter and Herne Bay, salt carried on the wind is hard on anything metal left outside. It gets into hinges, motor housings, exposed fixings and the electrics at the gate post, and it shortens the life of finishes that would last for years inland.

The practical answers are not exotic. Galvanised steel under a powder coat, or aluminium, for the gate itself. Stainless fixings. Motors and control boxes with good weather sealing, mounted where spray and standing water cannot reach them. Then servicing that actually happens, because a seized hinge or a corroded contact is far cheaper to deal with early than once the motor has been straining against it for a winter.

Most gates do not need planning permission, but the height limits are lower than people expect. The Planning Portal sets them at one metre next to a road used by vehicles and two metres elsewhere, measured from the ground. Above that, or where the property is listed or sits within the grounds of a listed building, you need to apply.

Canterbury, Faversham and Whitstable all have conservation areas in their older parts, where removing an existing gate or wall can need permission too. Automating gates you already have does not change their height, but new gates, new posts or a new opening is worth checking with the council before anything is ordered.

A powered gate is a machine, and the standard for it, EN 12453, sets the minimum for keeping people from being crushed or struck. That means safety edges or force limiting at every point where the gate can trap somebody, not only the leading edge, with photocells as an extra rather than the only protection.

The forces are measured with a meter when the gate is commissioned and checked again at each service, and a new system comes with a Declaration of Conformity and the test records. If you are taking on a gate somebody else installed and none of that paperwork exists, a service visit is the place to start.

We work from Aylesford, around forty five minutes from Whitstable and Canterbury along the M2, and less to Faversham and Teynham. That is close enough to come back for servicing, which matters more with a gate than with most systems, and our Canterbury and Sittingbourne pages cover the rest of what we do locally.