Gravel drive - neighbour unhappy

[Nolyty]

We moved into our home last year and inherited a very old, very messy paved front garden. We built an extension on the side of the house where the garage used to be, leaving half the front garden with tarmac.

We managed to scrimp together enough money to get something done at the front. The cheapest option was gravel. We had this done last week and were very happy with ourselves that we'd made our home more presentable.

However...

Our new neighbour spoke with DH today about loose stones going onto the pavement and into the road, potentially damaging cars and the like.
I'm so upset with myself that I didn't think about this before. I just assumed as it was a popular choice for front gardens/drives, we'd be ok.

I don't want to ruin relations with our new neighbour, I certainly don't want to cause a safety issue. I'm really worried we've spent thousands on this project and now we might have to do something different. We're not using it as a drive currently, but had plans to if ever necessary. We'll of course sweep what goes onto the pavement regularly.

I've looked into glue for this kind of thing, but once applied you can't drive over it, so we'd basically not have a drive. It's also very very expensive.

I just don't understand how this has become such a big problem when gravel is so common. I'm not sure whether we stick with it and sweep as best we can, or somehow look to change it (but we have no money to do so...).

Any advice?

To add, we have edging and the gravel sits below the height of the pavement. It's more that gravel spilling out from the buggy, shoes, and the car if we ever drive on it.

Ignore them. Having a gravel drive is perfectly normal and reasonable.

It’s a really normal thing to do, ignore them. It’s also often recommended security wise as it makes a noise to walk over.

Echo 'ignore them' - and if you are hardly ever driving on it, and have edging, very few stones will escape anyway!

What you have there is a 'neighbour doesn't like the way it looks/sounds' problem. Which is not a 'you' problem!

What rubbish . There is no problem . Just make sure you sweep it back up every so often.
Be warned - your new neighbour is one of those really pedantic OCD people

It does depend on the type of gravel you have- resin bound gravel is less likely to move, but if its loose gravel then yes you will probably have to deal with sweeping it away a lot/trying to stop cats from dumping in it! That's your problem though, not your neighbours.

Otherwise I think you can put gravel matting under the gravel, where the gravel 'sits' in the pockets so doesn't move around too much.

So we do have a gravel membrane! It's got little hexagonal pockets and the gravel sits inside. But then you've got a layer on top so as to hide the membrane - which I suspect is exactly how you're meant to install gravel?

Yeah, we used to have gravel and it is a pain. I just kept a brush in the yard and swept back in as needed.

I agree with PPs that it's not at all unreasonable to have a gravel driveway, however, if you wanted to, you could put a matrix down to keep the gravel in place.

Gosh I'm so relieved that it seems to be a neighbour problem, and not an us problem. Although of course, not over the moon that we've got off on a bad footing with new neighbour...

To add, we have edging and the gravel sits below the height of the pavement. It's more that gravel spilling out from the buggy, shoes, and the car if we ever drive on it.
If you have edging then I think you've acted responsibly to mitigate any spillage.
I honestly dont think you should be worrying about this.
Several houses in my busy main road have gravel at the front . Sometimes it spreads a little and they sweep it up .
Maybe your neighbour is anxious because you've not long been there have had building work done and he's on the defensive?
Just nod and smile and reassure that you'll keep an eye on it and sweep it up if necessary.

As long as you regularly sweep it back from the pavement then you're not unreasonable! We had a neighbour with a large gravel drive near us where I used to live, and they never swept it, gravel was quite thickly distributed all over the pavement so pedestrians usually walked in the street.

We have gravel and so do lots of our neighbours. I wouldn't change it. My gravel woke me up when someone walked into my front garden in the night to try to steal from our car, so it has its uses!

Because its gravel its absorbent and wont contribute to flooding

Ignore them and be prepared for other"their" problems.

Has it been compacted? Shouldn't get too much movement if it has.

We have a neighbour with gravel on his steep slope of a drive, This all ends up washing off the drive, down the slope of the road and being a hazard at the junction. It pisses me off that he's such an idiot that he thought this was a good idea (he's not very nice either).
If your drive isn't a slope though then I can't see it being that big a problem. Just make sure you sweep it up if it does spread.

My local council advise 1m of cobbles or similar at front edge of gravel drive to help stop the gravel migrating into the road.

I might talk to Highways, they have a lot of powers to deal with issues on the road

Please don’t minimise ocd by using it like that :(

Gravel is a perfectly normal driveway surface. It sounds like yours is installed correctly. It has the benefit of being a burglary deterrent and is also good for drainage (paved drives are more prone to contributing to surface water flooding). Ignore him and keep it swept and tidy.

We used to have a gravel drive but what drove me insane was the kids dragging their feet through it and ruining their school shoes!

There are rules on having gravel too close to a highway.

Ignore them. Its a perfectly reasonable choice of drive and your neighbour is very unreasonable in sticking their nose in.

I think some local authorities have rules on gravel, like how far from the pavement it has to stop to avoid it getting out, presumably yours doesn't? If yours is escaping, maybe look up ways that other LAs recommend to do it. We plan to change tarmac for gravel, so I;d be interested in any comments on this matter too.