Kerb lowering on busy road

[Mamakata]

Hi
We are looking at buying a house, it's a big Edwardian semi on a main road into town. Not bothered about the road as house is set back, has secondary glazing, and as the house is tall it buffers the noise in the garden. (And we couldn't afford a house like this on a quiet road!)

The issue with it is parking - it has a small garden and tandem garage at the back, and a garden at the front with a stone wall. If we change the front garden into a drive we could knock down the garage at the back and have a decent garden.

Obv we would need to submit a planning application but trying to work out how likely it would be to succeed. Issues are:

A busy road (but not a junction, 30m an hour)
An old attractive house (though not listed bad others on the road have drives)
A wide pavement
A tree on the verge (though still plenty of room to have car access)
Front garden big enough to have two cars

Does anyone have any experience of similar, and did you get or not get planning?

Thanks

Oh and if I wasn't clear, we would need the kerb lowering!

I would imagine if other similar houses on the road have had it done it shouldn't be a problem as a precedent has been set. You could call the planning dept and ask them for a guideline.

Does the road currently have on street parking? What sort of impact would you creating a drive have on that?

Good luck!

Might be worth trying to find out how recently the others got permission. A neighbour recently had planning knocked back on our busy-ish road even though other houses have drives because the houses on each side have on-road parking and so the council argued that it could be unsafe because visibility would be poor.

How close is the house to the nearest junction? I think you are likely to be refused if it is less than 10 metres.

It's double yellow lines, no parking on the road. It's on the approach to a roundabout but def more than 10m away. Good idea about finding out when others were done, I'll get googling....

Hmm. They may say they will only grant it if there enough room in the front area for a car to do a 3 point turn so you can both enter and leave the drive without reversing into or out of the road. Could that work?

I think there would be but will check dimensions. Thank you

You may have to demonstrate that you have enough space to turn the car and emerge forwards.

I'm pretty sure we could do that with only one car parked on it but not with two....?

We have a planning application in at the moment . Our plot was originally given planning for a house but denied direct access to the road as visibility wasn't enough for the speed of the road - which was supposed to be 30mph but speed limit ignored.

I went to a consultation on traffic calming measures at local hall a few years ago and mentioned in passing to the guy there that we didn't have direct access and he said to try once calming measures were in as visibility distances reduce with lower traffic speed.

Architect did plans for us and said it will be harder to get drive access through than an extension on back and they will definitely want us to be able to turn on the drive rather than reverse out.

A guy from Highways came out before we put the plans in to have a look and take measurements - might be an idea to see if you could get them to do that and give you an idea as to how likely it would be?

Are you sure you actually require planning permission? It would only be required if you are on a principle or classified road (i.e. one with an A or B road status).

We're on a busy 40mph road but didn't require planning and no trouble getting the council to install a dropped kerb. We have parking for two cars but no turning area. Virtually all the houses along this road have this setup.