Why don't you need planning permission to create a driveway and drop the kerb?

[GladysLeap]

We've been in our current house for 15 months. It's a 1930s semi on a road with parking both sides. Several houses have knocked out the front garden to create a drive. Since we've been here 3 more have done it.

• Firstly each drive removes on-road parking for 2 cars, to provide off-road for just one
• visitors, and in some cases the residents, of those houses with drives choose instead to park in front of the houses with no drives, so you've got a huge scramble for parking (and nothing at all you can do about it )
• the actual construction of the drive causes about a week's worth of drilling and banging, lots of dirt, and this time the builders literally blocked the road in front of our house for 3 hours. Nobody further down the road could get to their homes.

-today we were woken up at 8am by banging and drilling. It is Sunday. The Considerate Contractor scheme, which they clearly haven't read, says no such work should be done on a Sunday, nor after 1pm on Saturday (they finished at 5.30pm).

• Our council has no out of hours noise service, and of course by the time they've looked into your complaint the work has all finished.

If people had to have planning permission at least you'd get some warning of it, and a chance to object.

Presumably there will be more driveways to come. Is there anything we can do about it before the next one?

I thought you did need permission from the council as they are responsible for the highways?

I thought you did too to drop the kerb?

You do need planning permission to drop the kerb...in Scotland at least you do

We had to get council permission to drop the kerb, took 4 attempts over 4 years, then pay them to drop it.

Sounds like a nightmare. Used to drive me mad at my children's primary school - being a considerate person, I would never park across a dropped kerb, but the proliferation of these cut down on the available on-street parking. My understanding from a conversation with the traffic officer about the parking problems at the school is that planning permission is required to do this but people usually don't bother on the basis that enforcement action is not likely to take place. There is also the issue of gardens being removed and replaced with surfaces that don't allow water to drain away and, again, i thought there was a planning/environmental issue here. In your position, therefore, I would be ringing the local planning department to clarify whether planning permission is required and if so, what you need to do to get action taken against those who already have done this without permission. May seem mean to dob people in but the problem is that if enforcement action is not taken after the event, people will carry on doing it. Good luck and let us know what happens!

You do need building consent for most types of drive round here and there are very strict rules about ensuring you have adequate drainage (apparently lots of people are paving over their front gardens to create driveways and this can have an adverse effect on the water table which can ultimately lead to more flooding.)

Round here you are also not allowed to put in a dropped curb either. If the council approve a dropped curb then you have to choose one of their contractors to carry it out.

Not sure your argument for on road parking is a valid one- unless there is a residential parking permit in operation- anyone is entitled to park on the road even outside your house so longt as they don@t cause an obstruction.

Thanks for these replies. You have to pay the council to drop the kerb but when I looked up the "do you need planning permission" page it said you didn't for drives. I might ring the council and ask though,because it would make sense.

Brigit I know anyone can park anywhere but it is really frustrating to get home and see a neighbour's car stuck in front of your house, nowhere else to park and their drive empty. It seems to happen a lot.