Do we need planning permission?

[Barbeasty]

We want to get the steps from the pavement to our front door rebuilt, because they're falling down the grass bank, and one builder suggested making them wider.

I can't work out from the online planning portal whether we would need planning permission for that.

Our house is lower than the road. We have a grass bank which runs along the side and then across almost half the front of the house. We have 3 steps which come down in front of the front door. There is then a slab path which runs from 1 slab the grass bank side of the door to the drive, which runs along the other side of the house and is 2 cars long. We have a narrow flower bed between the path and house, then a larger bed between the path and curve from the drive to the road.

We would effectively be adding 3 slabs (the standard 50-60cm square patio type) to the front garden, which would run off either into the bank or the flower bed.

Everything online is about needing permission for a driveway, and no help for this.

If it makes any difference to the fact the wider steps would be coming down from the pavement, it's a private road and we have no wall or fence onto our boundary.

[IShouldBeSoLurky]

Maybe give your planning department a call and ask? Mine were really helpful.

[Herrerarerra]

I'll also suggest calling the planning department. We had quite a large kitchen extension built at our old house and were surprised that we didn't need planning permission for that but someone from the planning department came out at various stages of the build to ensure it was complying with building regulations.