Planning permission for driveway

[OUB1974]

We've been asked by our buyers about planning permission for our driveway. I'm a bit confused - it's just a driveway and all of the other 100 houses on our street have something similar. Am I missing something here? They also asked about a crossover agreement with the council. We have a dropped kerb, which there is for every pair of houses. Should there be an agreement? I'm very confused!

It's only the council that have the right to drop the kerb legally if I remember correctly. I think it's illegal to drive over a kerb to reach a drive otherwise - like when people put a bit of wood in the gutter to minimise the bump and the kerb isn't dropped.

Might be worth checking with the planning dept of your council for clarification.

Sounds likely to be OK if the kerb is dropped.

How long have you had the driveway ?

This happened to me when I was selling my house. I had a dropped kerb. I had asked the council if I could do it, before work commenced and they said yes to go ahead with the work.

The drive had been in place for about ten years with no problems. My estate agent told me to get retrospective planning permission. I went to the council and they said it was not necessary. My solicitor said it was not necessary. It was a head banging situation.

It turned out in the end that the buyer or their mortgage lender was using it as a time wasting tactic because the mortgage was not in place.

I would imagine it's been there for decades. Some of the houses have out nicer ones in with bricks etc, but ours looks quite old. The houses are around 100 years old so I imagine it's been there ages! There are pairs of houses, and each house shares a dropped kerb with its unattached neighbour. I should think all of the dropped kerbs were put in at the same time when the road was done.

It just seemed like a strange thing to ask. We have a driveway at our new place and it didn't occur to me to ask anything about it as the kerb is dropped as would be normal for a driveway. I wasnt sure if I was missing something!

Dropped kerbs need consent from the highway people for the construction work. They only need PP if onto a classified road (A or B and above I think, not sure about C's).

The driveway may need PP if over a certain size and not made of permeable materials.

On our street a buyer would absolutely want to understand the dropped kerb arrangement. Old drop kerbs now have resident parking bays straddling the drives, a total nightmare situation. I'd imagine they might have experienced similar and want the security of the council agreement.

Thay makes sense, I just hadn't heard of it before. The agreement could be 60 or 70 years old - did they even have them just then? I wonder if he council have record of when they put the path in? And how I would even find out?!

Ask your solicitor about it. I am sure this will have cropped up before

Their solicitor doesn't know that every house on the road has a dropped curb. They're asking the standard question to find out. Just explain in you're reply that it was done before you owned the house and is the same as every house on you're road and that should satisfy the query.

Almost certainly the council put them in when they did the pavements many moons ago. They won’t be new and did not need pp. Often councils or developers put them in when roads are adopted by councils. This means they agree to maintain them and the pavements. Older roads and pavements just got adopted by default. You will be lucky to ever know when this happened. The answer to the question is N/A.