Part dropped kerb

[Myhouse173]

First world problem coming up...
We’ve got a 2 car drive, old house in suburbs of small city.

One half of the drive has a dropped kerb (it’s flat to the road) the other side sort of doesn’t.
The kerb all along our road is so low and old that it’s only a couple of cm higher than our dropped bit.
We’ve been parking and driving over it for 5yrs and previous owners too for years.

New houses are to be built in our road in some old gardens/wasteland. Parking is tight on the new development.

Would it be a good idea to get in now with a new whole drive dropped kerb, before any potential problems with increase in cars?
Or as it’s already so low (and other neighbours haven’t) not to bother?

If things are the same as they used to be then you contact your local council about it then they will quote you for having it done to spec to be driven over. This will be expensive for sure. If you get it done without permission it is unlikely anything will be done about it, unlikely but not impossible.

Ask around to see if you can find out what the policy of the council is to dropped kerbs done without permission, things could be much stricter now than a couple of decades ago when I worked for a local council.

Our drive is the same but the non dropped bit is higher. We have to pay the council a few hundred quid to establish whether they will grant permission or not. So we could be paying £400 for a no, you can't do it. As a result we haven't bothered...

This may be rubbish but years ago we got our house valued and we had a similar set up-half dropped kerb and the previous owners had built a drive. When the estate agent came round he said if we did go on the market we wouldn't be able to market it with off street parking because it wasn't a proper dropped kerb and we technically breaking the rules.

Luckily for us the council dug up the road a few years later and ended up replacing it with a proper dropped kerb.

Again it may have just been estate agent talk but worth considering.

What I don’t want to happen is the road get busier with parking, people to start (legally) parking over half my drive and then being refused to have it dropped.
Will have to look into the costs.
Annoyingly they resurfaced the pavement about 18months ago, without telling us beforehand - would have done it then had we known before it was done!

Basically the position is simple as you know, no lowered kerb = you are not allowed to cross the pavement and anyone can park there.

About 4 years ago the council resurfaced our road and pavement and advised all residents to ensure they had correct access because crossing the pavement where there was no lowered kerb would have consequences.

Many people sorted out the kerbs as you are contemplating.

Basically the council put large metal bollards in the new pavement blocking all drives that did not have a lowered kerb. Some people were bollarded in, some were bollarded out and just to demonstrate a sense of humour those like you who had half a lowered kerb compared to the house were partially bollarded.

Most people subsequently paid the ransom for the additional lowered kerbs and the bollards were removed when the kerbs were changed.