Removing a council fence and dropping a pavement for driveway?

[sillyily]

Just bought a new property - large semi near a junction and side road, with a corner shop just past the bottom of the garden. It is fenced with panels all along one side (adjoining the side road - leading to the shop) but outside these panels, are ugly metal council fencing. The house has never been a council house, to our knowledge, and we're not really sure why they are there.
The other side of this fencing is a small plot of land that has just come up for sale, that we are also planning to purchase, to extend the width of our garden, and add a driveway.

So basically, my question is... do we own this metal fence? Can we just pull it down to open up our land into the plot?

Also, how do we go about dropping the curb to create an entrance for our driveway? Any idea roughly on costs? And how far from a junction does this need to be?

Sorry so long, and so many questions :) TIA

For fence ask your solicitor.

For kerb speak to your local authority highways dept. It will depend on how busy the road is and proximity to the junction as to whether permission is automatic or if you might need to.commission a ttansport study.

If you buy and own the plot of land the other side of the fence then you will automatically own the fence. You'll need to talk to your solicitor about whether it might be appropriate to make the two parcels of land officially one parcel as far as the land registry goes.

Dropping a kerb is sometimes not allowed within 10 metres of a junction, it depends how busy the road is. If it's not busy enough to warrant a complete refusal, they may instead specify that they will only give permission if the driveway area is going to be big enough for a car to turn arround off-road so never needing to either reverse into the drive from the road or reverse into the road from the drive.

Ok thanks. I will speak to my solicitor in that case.

So in some instances, two plots of land can't be joined as one?

The proposed driveway would either be at the front (on a main road, less than 10m away) or to the side if we manage to get this land. (quietish road, about 15m away) would probably have an entrance/exit to the drive so we wouldn't be reversing into the road.

I don't know about reasons they wouldn't be allowed to be, I said "might be appropriate" because you'll need your solicitor to advise you on the down-sides as well as the up. e.g. if your current house property is worth below a stamp-duty-band-threshold, adding the extra land could put the whole value above the threshold. I don't know what other things there might be, but it might be that it would be in your best interests to keep it as two parcels of land.

Ok, that makes sense. Thank you
Will ring tomorrow