If your property is in Springdale, you do not currently need a city permit to install a residential fence. Rogers, Fayetteville and Siloam Springs do not currently require one either. Bella Vista, Bentonville, Prairie Grove, Tontitown, Gentry, Gravette and Lincoln do require a fence permit before installation. Those lists change from time to time, so call your city and confirm before anything goes in the ground. Thomas Fence keeps the current lists and the permit office links on the fence permits page at thomasfencear.com/permits/.
That is the direct answer. The rest of this article covers who pulls the permit, what Thomas Fence does to help, what the Arkansas 811 utility locate covers, and the lines under your yard that 811 will not mark for you.
Who pulls the permit
The homeowner does. Thomas Fence does not pull permits for customers. That is not a way of pushing work back onto you, it is how the permit process is built. The permit is issued to the property owner, tied to the property, and the city expects the owner's name on it.
What Thomas Fence does is help you understand what your city asks for. Thomas Fence has been working inside Northwest Arkansas permit requirements since 1993 and can tell you what a given city usually wants to see and where to send the application. Call and ask, and someone will walk you through it.
Most permit applications ask for a site plan showing where the fence will run and how far it sits from the property line. If you already have a survey, that application gets much easier, because the setback numbers come straight off the survey instead of off a guess. If you do not have a survey and your fence is going near a shared boundary, read the article on the seven year fence law at thomasfencear.com/publications/what-is-the-7-year-fence-law-in-northwest-arkansas/ before you file anything.
Springdale
Springdale does not currently require a fence permit for residential fencing. This is the town people ask about most, and the answer surprises them. It does not mean there are no rules. It means there is no city permit step. If your Springdale property sits in a subdivision with a homeowners association, that association may still have its own approval process, and that process is separate from anything the city does or does not require. Springdale is also where the Thomas Fence yard sits, at 653 Kawneer Dr, so it is the town the crews know best. More at thomasfencear.com/springdale/.
Rogers
Rogers does not currently require a fence permit. The same caution applies. A Rogers homeowners association can have its own rules on fence height, material and color, and an association approval is not a city permit. Check your covenants before you pick a material. More on Rogers work is at thomasfencear.com/rogers/.
Bentonville
Bentonville requires a fence permit. Plan for it. Build the permit step into your timeline rather than treating it as paperwork you can do while the crew is already on the way. A Bentonville application will want to know where the fence goes, so having a site plan ready is worth the effort. Details on Bentonville work are at thomasfencear.com/bentonville/.
Fayetteville
Fayetteville does not currently require a fence permit. Fayetteville also has a lot of older neighborhoods where lots have been subdivided and resold, and where an existing fence may not sit on the survey line. The absence of a permit step makes the survey question more important rather than less, because no city plan review is going to catch a fence line problem for you. See thomasfencear.com/fayetteville/.
Bella Vista
Bella Vista requires a fence permit. Bella Vista is also the town where the property owners association matters most. The POA has its own rules covering fence type and color, and those rules sit on top of the city permit rather than replacing it.
So in Bella Vista, expect two approvals rather than one. Get the POA answer before you order material, because material is the thing the POA is most likely to have an opinion about. A fence type or a color that is fine one street over may not be fine on yours, and finding that out after the material is on the truck is the expensive version of this lesson. The Bella Vista page is at thomasfencear.com/bella-vista/.
Siloam Springs
Siloam Springs does not currently require a fence permit. See thomasfencear.com/siloam-springs/.
The Arkansas 811 utility locate
Before any hole is dug, Thomas Fence calls Arkansas 811. This is not optional and it is not a courtesy. State law requires a locate before excavation, and a fence post hole is excavation.
The part that affects your schedule is the timing. The locate takes two full business days. Not two days, two business days. A request made on a Thursday does not clear until the following week, depending on how the days fall. This is one of the most common reasons a fence install date lands later than expected, and it is worth knowing up front so it reads as a normal step rather than a delay.
During those two days, the utility companies come out and mark the public lines running to your property with paint and flags. Gas, electric, water, telecommunications. Once the marks are down, the crew knows where it cannot dig, and the fence line gets planned around them.
The lines 811 does not mark
This is the part that catches people, and it is worth reading twice. Arkansas 811 marks utility owned lines. It does not mark anything private on your side of the meter. That means 811 will not mark:
- Your septic system, including the tank and the field lines.
- Irrigation lines and sprinkler heads.
- Electric running out to a detached garage, a shop, a barn or a shed.
- Gas running out to a pool heater, an outdoor kitchen or a fire pit.
- Low voltage lines to landscape lighting or an invisible pet fence.
Every one of those is a line a post hole can find. The homeowner is the only person who knows where they run, and often the homeowner does not know either, because a previous owner put them in.
There is one more, and it is the one nobody expects, because it is not a private line at all. If SWEPCO is your electric supplier, know that SWEPCO does not mark its underground lines. That includes a service drop running underground from a meter on a pole to the house. The other utilities come out and mark, and that line stays unmarked. So on a SWEPCO property there is an extra step, which is working out roughly where that buried service runs before anybody digs near it. Anything you can remember about when the service went in, or where the trench was cut, is worth telling the crew.
So before the crew arrives, walk your yard and think about what has been added over the years. If you have a septic field, say so. If irrigation went in, say so. If there is power running out to the shop, say so, and if you know roughly where the trench ran, say that too. A five minute conversation in the driveway is the cheapest insurance in this process. A cut irrigation line is an annoyance. A cut gas line is not.
Homeowners associations are separate from all of this
Whether or not your city requires a permit, a homeowners association can have its own fence approval process. Association rules commonly cover height, material, color, which direction the finished face points, and whether solid privacy fencing is allowed in a front yard at all. A denial that arrives after the fence is built is an expensive problem, and it is entirely avoidable by asking first.
What to do next
Confirm your city's current requirement, because these lists change. Ask your association if you have one. Get a survey if the fence runs near a property line. Then call, and Thomas Fence handles the 811 request and the install.
To talk about a fence in Northwest Arkansas, contact Thomas Fence at thomasfencear.com/contact/ or call (479) 636-4732. Thomas Fence, 653 Kawneer Dr, Springdale, AR 72764.