Most of us where I live have fences or hedges, but they are not for security. They are too low! There's a law that fences at the front of a garden (fronting a road) must not be more than one metre high. Really high fences might obstruct the view of a driver on a corner, or might annoy the neighbours! Who wants to look at nothing but fence!

So fences are decorative, or to delineate the boundary, or to keep pets and children safe.

Planning permission is needed from the council to install high fences. It is sometimes granted, but you have to pay a fee to apply, so most people stick with low fences... or plant a hedge! Hedges do not need permission - though if they grow too high you may get complaints from the neighbours.

At the sides and back of the house you can put high fences without permission.

And some people like the open-plan look so their front garden is not fenced at all. Some housing estates have rules that prevent you putting a fence up - the estate was designed to have that open-plan look.

I have high fences on 3 sides, but at the front the regulation one metre high fence, with a wooden gate. I would hate to live in an open-plan area. I like my privacy, my boudaries clearly marked, and nobody walking on my grass!

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'<em>Why</em> do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

     from "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost

I don't have fences and I don't know much people who do. I never felt insecure about it ^^.

We have fences and walls everywhere in the UK because we're a lot of people crammed into a fairly small space. They're not particulary high or sturdy, so they don't offer any protection. They're more for delineation rather than security, so that you know where one property ends and the next begins. And even in the more spacious residential areas, there are always walls and fences. An Englishman's home..?

@allen we also have steel bars and I don't like it.. I feel like I am a prisoner though the design is good xD