Aluminium slatted fencing, fitted in London.

Roughly double closeboard per metre. The material is more expensive, the posts are engineered rather than sawn, and the run has to be set out precisely because aluminium does not forgive a wandering line the way timber does.

What you get back is time. There is no staining cycle, no cupped board to replace, no post rotting at ground level. A powder-coated finish on marine-grade aluminium is still the same colour after a decade of London weather, which is the whole reason people choose it over a timber slatted run at £220 a metre.

Aluminium posts are either set in concrete like a timber post, or bolted to a base plate and core-drilled into an existing wall, patio or plinth. Core-drilled mounting is slower, needs the substrate checked first, and prices roughly a quarter higher on labour — but it is the only sensible route when there is a retaining wall or slab in the way.

We settle that on the visit rather than guessing from a photo, because getting it wrong is the difference between a fence that stands for twenty years and one that pulls its fixings out in the first real gale.

Standard architectural powder-coat covers almost every garden in London. Duplex — galvanising underneath the powder-coat — adds roughly 12 per cent and is worth it near the coast, on exposed sites, or where the fence sits in constant damp shade.

Any RAL colour is possible, but non-stock colours are made to order and add lead time. Anthracite grey and matt black are stocked and go up fastest.

Stock bays in standard heights are the quick, sensible route and keep the price where the table says it is. Made-to-measure — non-standard heights, raked runs following a slope, curved sections, a specific RAL — is fabricated for your garden and we price it after a survey rather than off a rate card.

Cut ends matter on site. Anywhere a slat or post is cut to length the raw edge gets sealed before it goes in, because an unsealed cut is the one place a powder-coated system can start to fail. We work to BS 1722 for the fixings and section sizes, and in a conservation area or under an Article 4 direction we check what the borough allows on a front boundary before anything is ordered.

If your run needs that, say so on the estimate form. It gets flagged straight away and we look at it properly instead of sending you a number we would have to walk back.