Turning front garden into driveway

[Strawberry56]

Hello,

We live in a middle terrace with no parking and are looking to turn our front garden into a driveway.

The front garden is raised quite high so would need quite abit of digging out before tarmac and work would need to be done on the neighbours supporting walls

I have contacted a few places to provide quotes but wondered if anyone had done similar recently and what the cost was?

Will you need to apply for a dropped kerb and has anyone else done that in your street to give an idea of likely chances of success.

If you are going to use tarmac or any impermeable surface you will probably need to get planning permission before proceeding.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/permeable-surfacing-of-front-gardens-guidance/guidance-on-the-permeable-surfacing-of-front-gardens

Yeah I would check with local authority as to what the regulations are (if any)

Have a check of your surface water flooding map as well; if you're at risk, the current front garden will be a big help to prevent it, and paving over it will be a nightmare.

Sorry I didn't answer your question.

That’s why you need to put drainage channnels / soak away in place when converting a garden to driveway. You’re not allowed to have rain water running off the drive onto the public highway.

Yes our drop was about 2 ft and we were quoted £12K for permeable resin. Midlands. We didn’t go ahead!

Thanks everyone. Yes we would need to apply for planning I believe and a dropped kerb.

12k seems high, I was hoping for 6-8k max!

Do you live on a main road? We had a disabled grant for this but were refused planning permission due to it being a main road.

Someone round our way has done something similar recently, not sure how much digging our needs doing, but in this case it looked like the amount of soil dug out could de-stabilise the house 😣

Our son had to pay 3k for the dropped kerb. Put in drainage channels. The drive was on a downward slope so they had to build up away from the front door and encourage it into the channels. I don't know the final total I'm afraid.

I got a parking space created earlier this year on my front lawn. I had a dropped kerb already. Only permeable surfaces allowed. I wanted brick paving. Others would get gravel which is much cheaper.

No planning permission required for me BUT council said that had to replace some of the pedestrian asphalt before I could drive over it (£1.7k). I needed a platform to be built to park on my drive (£7k was cost for parking space itself).

My son paid about £35k to get the side of his house turned into a concrete driveway earlier this year, result looks like concrete drive with brick linings/divisions. This work replaced a narrower and uneven concrete drive. The driveway creators also had to move/rebuild/strengthen a wall protecting neighbour's property and I think they may have demolished old shed & built a larger new shed for son, too.

We got quotes about 2 years ago for a monoblock drive with about 2/2.5ft of excavation. One quote was £8k the other £10k. The £10k one included new stairs but no ironwork. Neither included the additional drop kerb which both contractors said would cost about £2k through our local authority. As yet we've not done it, but parking is becoming more and more difficult.