Do I need planning permission for a driveway?

The actual rule

There's only one thing that triggers it

Under Class F of the GPDO 2015, a front driveway needs planning permission in one situation, and one only — when all three of these are true:

• It’s on the land between the front wall of your house and a highway (a road or a public footpath).
• The new — or replaced — hard surface is more than 5 square metres.
• It’s an impermeable surface and the water runs off onto the road rather than soaking away on your own land.

Break the chain anywhere — go porous, drain it to a border or soakaway, or keep it under 5m² — and it's permitted development. No application, no fee.

What actually counts as porous?

The government guidance names these: gravel or shingle, reinforced grass and gravel, porous asphalt, porous concrete blocks, and permeable block paving — laid over an open-graded sub-base (not the usual MOT Type 1, which stops water getting through).

Treated as impermeable: ordinary concrete, tarmac and standard block paving.

There's a practical test in the guidance: run a hosepipe on the finished surface for a minute or two — there should be no puddles, and the water shouldn't run across the surface more than about 200–300mm before soaking in.

Where resin fits — honestly

The guidance was written in 2008 and doesn't mention resin at all. Anyone telling you “resin is always exempt” is stating something no official source says. What the law actually asks is a functional question: does water get through, and where does it go?

• Resin-bound (stone mixed through the resin) is porous if it’s laid on a permeable base. Lay the same product over an old sealed concrete slab and the water has nowhere to go — so it fails the test.
• Resin-bonded (resin painted on, stone scattered over the top) is a sealed coating on a solid base — treat it as impermeable.

That bound-vs-bonded distinction is industry practice rather than statute — which is exactly why we build the base to suit. See resin driveways.

Planning permission and a dropped kerb are two different things

This trips people up constantly. They're separate consents, from different departments, and you can need one, both, or neither:

One catch worth knowing: if the driveway itself needs planning permission, the new access can't fall back on permitted development either — so both end up in the same application.

If you'd rather drain it than pave it porous

Directing run-off to a lawn, border, rain garden or soakaway on your own land keeps you permitted development at any size. A few things the guidance is firm about:

• Keep a soakaway at least 3m from building foundations — more if the ground’s poor.
• Heavy clay soil often won’t soak away fast enough; you may need a pipe to the roof drains instead.
• On a drive steeper than about 1 in 20, permeable surfacing may not be suitable — drain it instead.
• Never direct water onto a neighbour’s property.

We design the levels and drainage as part of the job — see driveway drainage.