Block paving driveway, planning permission needed?

durham05

Do you need to check for planning permission if we are wanting to block pave the fronts to make a drive.

agent_orange_2

This info may help.

http://www.marshalls.co.uk/transform/products/drivewayguidance.aspx

planning_officer

If it is located between your house and a road and exceeds 5 sqm in area and is an impermeable surface or does not slope to a permeable surface within your curtilage, then yes - you need planning permission. This applies to new and replacement drives.

Conversly, if it is a permeable surface, then no - you don't need planning permission.

SplanK

whaa - this might put the brakes slightly on my future plans...

tarmac drive needs redoing - so i would have to go through the planning process before i can replace it with the same stuff - that sucks!

Kiran

SplanK wrote: »

whaa - this might put the brakes slightly on my future plans...

tarmac drive needs redoing - so i would have to go through the planning process before i can replace it with the same stuff - that sucks!

Affraid so, in October 08 after we had a series of floods these rules were put in place. Whilst massive paved areas do cause an issue for drainage networks it did seem like a bit of a chocolate tea pot solution as the reason for all the flooding was the poor state of the drains and the fact that they were incorrectly maintained!

Block paving is usually defined as permiable paving as the water can drain between the joints (if you look on the planning portal website the info is on there). If you do want to lay tarmac then you have a couple of options

1) surface the drive with a fall onto your own land and create a soakaway

2) Surface using permiable tarmac, this will allow water to drain through it. The critics will say that it is easily damaged by cold weather, this however is based on a period where it was used on highways which suffed damage in the cold caused by multiple and heavy vehicles driving over it whilst the surface was frozen. The traffic on a drive will be nowhere near as severe.

musicmaker29

if you do need permission you may want to write to your local Council asking if you are likely to get permission before shelling out money on applying. If they put in writing that you are likely/unlikely to get permission then this should make the decision easier to make and you will have spent nothing.

Also worth noting that a Council isn't likely to enforce against something that is likely to get permission - it just doesn't meet the criteria for enforcement <---no bit of paper for when you sell the house though!