Skip to content
John the Gate Man, gate automation specialist in Leyland, Lancashire
Get a quote
White painted ornate iron driveway gates closed between red brick pillars on a gravel driveway

Gate Automation, Installation and Repair across Lancashire and the South Lakes

Automatic gates fitted, serviced and repaired across Lancashire and the South Lakes. Based in Leyland, covering everything from a single motor to a full driveway gate installation.

Call 07768 314082Get a quote

Based in Leyland · Covering Lancashire and the South Lakes · Residential and commercial

Driveway gates, from the posts up to the control board

John the Gate Man is a gate specialist working across Lancashire and the South Lakes, covering four things: automating gates you already own, supplying and fitting new ones, servicing automatic gates so they keep working safely, and repairing them when they stop. Domestic driveways and commercial entrances both, on any make of drive.

Most enquiries start in one of two places. Either the gates are already there and you want them to open without getting out of the car, or something has failed: a gate has dropped and is catching on the ground, a motor has given up, or the gate opens fine and then refuses to close. Both are everyday work, and both usually cost less to put right than people expect, because the gates, the posts and the buried cabling are the expensive parts and they are rarely what has failed.

What we do

All services
An electric motor arm fitted to a white painted iron driveway gate at a red brick pillar, with cabling clipped neatly in conduit

Gate Automation

Motorise the gates you already have, with the safety equipment the law requires.

Newly fitted brown composite board driveway gates with a black steel frame, with fresh gravel laid at the threshold

Gate Installation

New gates supplied and fitted, from the posts up, manual or automated.

A gate hinge and rubber safety edge being inspected, with a spanner and grease tin on the ground beside the gate leaf

Gate Servicing

Planned maintenance and safety checks that keep an automatic gate legal and working.

An older wrought iron gate with flaking paint and a sagging leaf lifted off its hinge and propped during repair

Gate Repair

Gates that have stopped working, dropped, or been damaged, put right.

What you get from a gate specialist

01

Gates are the job, not a sideline

Driveway gates sit awkwardly between trades. Fencers hang them but do not wire them, electricians wire them but do not hang them, and general builders do neither well. A gate that fails early nearly always fails at the join between those two halves: a post set for a light manual gate that cannot carry a motor, or a drive fitted to leaves that were never hung level in the first place. Treating the gate, the posts and the automation as one system is what stops that happening.

02

One point of contact for the whole life of the gate

Installation, automation, servicing and repair are all covered, so the same person who knows how your gate was set up is the one adjusting it two years later. That matters more than it sounds, because a gate is not finished at handover. Hinges bed in, posts settle, gates gain weight with rust and repainting, and the motor settings that were right on day one drift. Being able to pick the phone up to whoever set the limits saves a lot of guesswork.

03

The safety side taken seriously, because it is the law

A powered gate is legally machinery, not fencing. It has to be risk assessed, fitted with appropriate safety devices, and force tested against BS EN 12453 so it cannot trap or crush, and it has to stay that way for its whole working life. A great many gates on driveways today were fitted before anyone treated that seriously, or have had photocells fail quietly since. It is worth knowing where your gate stands.

Gate safety

What the law actually requires of a powered gate

An automatic gate is classed in law as machinery, in the same category as industrial equipment rather than as a piece of garden fencing. That means whoever installs a powered gate is responsible for assessing the risks it creates, fitting safety devices appropriate to those risks, force testing it and issuing a declaration of conformity. Force testing is a measurement, not an opinion: BS EN 12453 sets limits on how hard a gate leaf may push when it meets an obstruction and for how long, and those figures are read off a force tester on site. Photocells and pressure sensitive safety edges are the two usual ways of providing that protection, and which combination a given gate needs depends on its weight, its speed, its location and who can reach it.

The part that catches owners out is that the duty does not end at handover. Once a gate is in use, the responsibility for keeping it safe sits with the owner or occupier of the property, and on commercial sites and blocks of flats with the business, landlord or managing agent. Gates change as they age: hinges stiffen, leaves gain weight through rust and repainting, control boards get adjusted, and photocells drift out of alignment or fill with water and cobwebs. None of that announces itself. A gate with dead safety equipment carries on opening and closing exactly as it always did, which is precisely why it needs checking deliberately rather than being judged by whether it still works.

Service area across Lancashire and the South LakesLeylandPrestonChorleySouthportOrmskirkWiganBlackburnBurnleyAccringtonLancasterMorecambeKendalUlverstonBarrow-in-FurnessWindermereAmblesideGarstangLongridgeClitheroeSkelmersdale
Boundary data: Office for National Statistics, Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data (c) Crown copyright and database right 2025.

Covering Lancashire and the South Lakes

20 towns across Lancashire and the South Lakes, worked from a base at House Farm in Leyland. Pick your town for local detail on planning, access and the gates that suit the area.

Lancashire

South Lakes

All areas we cover

The kind of work we do

A wide brown composite board gate with a black steel frame closed across a rural lane entrance
Black painted iron double gates standing part open on a block paved driveway
A timber close board sliding gate running on a ground track at a farm entrance
Close detail of an electric gate motor and hinge mounted on a red brick pillar with cabling in conduit

Common questions

What areas do you cover?
Lancashire and the South Lakes, from a base at House Farm in Leyland. That covers Preston, Chorley, Blackburn, Burnley, Accrington, Lancaster and Morecambe across Lancashire, out to Southport, Ormskirk, Wigan and Skelmersdale to the south, and up through Garstang, Longridge and Clitheroe to Kendal, Windermere, Ambleside, Ulverston and Barrow-in-Furness. If your town is not on the list it is still worth a call, because the boundary is not a hard line.
What are your opening hours?
Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, and Saturday 9am to 1pm. Closed Sunday. The quickest way to get an answer on a gate fault is a phone call on 07768 314082 rather than a message, because the diagnosis usually starts with a few questions about what the gate is doing.
Do you work on commercial gates as well as domestic ones?
Yes, both domestic driveways and commercial entrances. The equipment is largely the same, but commercial and shared residential gates tend to run far more cycles per day, so they wear faster and the maintenance duty on the site owner is stricter. Yard gates, sliding gates and shared entrances to flats are all common work.
Can my existing gates be automated?
Most existing gates can be automated, as long as the leaves are sound and straight and the posts or pillars can carry the extra load. The limiting factor is usually the post rather than the gate, because a post set for a light manual gate will not hold a powered drive in alignment for long. Where that is the case the posts can be replaced without changing the gates you already have.
Do you work on gates that someone else installed?
Yes, servicing and repair are not tied to whoever fitted the gate. Any make of drive and control board can be worked on, and gates fitted by companies that have since stopped trading are routine. If you have the original handover paperwork it saves time identifying the equipment, but it is not essential.
Does the safety law apply to a gate on a private driveway?
Yes, a powered gate at a private house is still legally machinery, and it must be safe by design and force tested. The regulations are not limited to commercial premises, because the risk they address is a heavy powered leaf closing on a person, which is the same risk on any driveway. On a workplace or shared residential site the duty is stricter still, since work equipment must also be maintained and inspected under separate regulations.
How do I get a quote?
Call 07768 314082 or send an enquiry through the form on this site with a few details about the gate. Anything beyond the simplest job needs looking at before a figure is put to it, because the gate, the posts, the ground surface and the distance to the nearest power supply all change the work involved. Photographs of the entrance and the existing gates, if there are any, make the first conversation much more useful.
What is the difference between a service and a repair?
A service is planned maintenance on a gate that is still working, and a repair is fixing one that has failed or is failing. A service covers the mechanics, the safety equipment, the electrics and the closing forces, and its purpose is to catch wear before it becomes a breakdown. A repair starts with a diagnosis, because the same symptom can be a five minute adjustment or a failed drive.
Do I need planning permission for driveway gates?
Usually not, since gates, walls and fences up to one metre high beside a highway used by vehicles, or up to two metres elsewhere, normally fall under permitted development in England. Permission is more likely to be needed on a listed building, in a conservation area, or where permitted development rights have been removed by a planning condition. As the rules depend on your specific property, a quick check with your local planning department before ordering is the safe route.
What happens to an automatic gate in a power cut?
Every automatic gate has a manual release that disengages the drive so the gate can be pushed by hand. On most systems that is a keyed lever or a small cover on the motor casing, and on underground drives it is at the pivot box. Anyone who uses the gate regularly should be shown where it is and be able to work it, because a power cut at night is a bad time to be finding out.
Should I have swing gates or a sliding gate?
Swing gates suit most driveways and cost less to install, but they need clear space behind the opening for the leaves to travel into. A sliding gate is the answer where the drive is short and runs straight onto a road, where the ground rises steeply behind the entrance, or where vehicles regularly park close to the gate line. Sliding gates need clear run off space to one side instead, roughly the width of the opening again, so the site tends to decide this rather than preference.
How much do automatic gates cost?
There is no useful standard figure, because the range between a ram arm kit on existing sound gates and a new pair of ornate iron gates on new pillars with underground motors is very wide. The things that move the number most are the drive type, the distance from the nearest power supply, the ground surface the cable has to cross, whether the posts need replacing, and how much access control you want. Getting the gate looked at is the only way to put a real figure to it.

Need a gate automated, serviced or repaired?

Call 07768 314082 and speak to the person who will do the work, or send the details and get a call back.

Call 07768 314082Get a quote
Call nowQuote