Paving your Front Garden or driveway.
Planning permission
From 1 October 2008 new rules apply for householders wanting to pave over
their front gardens.
You will NOT need planning permission if a new driveway uses permeable (or porous) surfacing which allows water to drain through, such as loose gravel, permeable concrete block paving or porous asphalt, or if the rainwater is directed to a lawn or border to drain naturally.
If the surface to be covered is more than five square metres planning permission will be needed for laying traditional, impermeable driveways that do not control rainwater running off onto roads.This applies to old concrete or tarmac driveways that you are covering or replacing with new concrete, patterned imprinted concrete, tarmac top coats, stone chipping overlays etc. Be careful if you are sold a stone overlay system as this product is merely covering an existing surface and does not demonstrate sustainable drainage and may have to be removed and replaced correctly to comply with the new regulations.
This legislation has been brought in to control surface water run-off and reduce flooding. Traditionally when we lay a driveway or pave a front garden we set the 'falls' or levels to take the surface water to existing gullies or out on to the road way, this can no longer be the case and a client or contractor must control run-off in a more sustsinable manner.
We can provide a solutions package to domestic and commercial specifications to control and attenuate surface water run-off. We can supply detailed schematics if planning permission is required.We also supply the required products and schematics for domestic and trade clients to control surface water run-off naturally, fully complying with the new planning regulations without the need to specify permeable paving blocks.
Another service that we offer is to prepare driveways
and gardens for sustainable drainage, allowing you to allocate the traditional
work to any suitable contractor.
for detailed information
http://www.planningportal.gov.uk
