A new driveway is only useful if you can actually get a car onto it. The last couple of metres between the road and your gate are not yours - that strip is public highway - and lowering the kerb to drive across it needs the county council's consent before anyone lifts a slab. It is the part of the job people leave until last, and it is the part most likely to hold everything else up.
What a dropped kerb actually is
A dropped kerb, also called a vehicle crossing or crossover, is a rebuilt section of kerb and footway designed to carry the weight of a car. It is not just a lowered kerb line. The footway underneath has to be reconstructed to a highway specification, because a pavement built for people walking on it will crack and rut once a car starts crossing it several times a day.
Consent comes under Section 184 of the Highways Act 1980, and in this area the highway authority is Cambridgeshire County Council, not your district or city council. That trips people up regularly, particularly when they have already been dealing with the district over planning.
If you drive over a standing kerb without a crossing, you are the one on the hook for the damage. Councils can, and do, recover the cost of repairing a cracked footway or a broken kerb line from the property owner.
Applying in Cambridgeshire
The application goes in online to the county council's Highway Development Management team. At the time of writing the fee is £414, paid by card, which covers the inspection fees and carries no VAT. If the application is turned down, £314 of that is refunded, so a refusal still costs you £100. The council aims to reach a decision within six weeks.
Fees and timescales do change, so check the current figures on the council's own dropped kerbs page before you budget for it.
Approval is not the end of the paperwork either. Before work starts, a road space booking has to be made, and the crossing has to be built to the council's published specification.
Who is allowed to build it
Some authorities keep a list of approved contractors and insist you pick from it. Cambridgeshire does not. The county council does not maintain an approved provider list, which means the choice of contractor is yours - but the contractor has to be street works accredited to work on the public highway.
That accreditation is not a formality. It means qualified operatives, the right signing and guarding, and construction to the highway spec that the inspector will be checking against. A general landscaper who is happy to lay your block paving may not be set up to touch the footway, and if the crossing fails inspection it is your problem, not theirs.
Why applications get refused
The council is assessing safety, not aesthetics. The usual reasons a crossing gets knocked back are worth knowing before you spend the fee:
- Sight lines. Too close to a junction, a bend, a brow or a crossing, and you cannot pull out safely.
- Street furniture. Lamp columns, gullies, telecoms cabinets, signposts and manholes in the way. Moving any of them is possible but it is a separate job at your cost, and the utility owner sets the price.
- Trees. A highway tree in the crossing line is often a straight refusal.
- Depth on the plot. You need enough space behind the footway to stand a car clear of the pavement. A crossing that leaves the back of the car overhanging the footpath defeats the point.
- Road classification. On a classified road you will need planning permission from the district council as well as highway consent.
Worth checking your own frontage against that list before you commit. It costs nothing to look.
Planning permission and drainage
Highway consent and planning permission are two different things. Most driveways sit inside permitted development, but the drainage rule still applies: if you are laying more than five square metres of hard surface, the water has to be dealt with on your own land rather than running out onto the road. We covered that in more detail in our guide to driveway planning permission.
The two questions tend to have the same answer. Keep the water on your plot with a permeable surface or a soakaway and you generally stay clear of an application.
What the work involves
Once consent is in place, the build itself is straightforward groundworks. The existing kerb line comes out, the footway is excavated to the required depth, a sub-base is laid and compacted to the highway specification, dropped and transition kerbs are set on concrete, and the surface is reinstated to match. The inspector then checks it.
Get the order right. Consent first, then build. Constructing a crossing without approval and hoping nobody notices is a good way to end up digging it back out at your own expense.
Thinking about a new driveway?
We build vehicle crossings and driveways across Newmarket, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, and we are used to working to a highway specification and being inspected on it. If you want a straight answer on whether your frontage is likely to get approved, and what the driveway behind it would take, have a look at our driveways and paving service, then call NSV Groundworks on 07916 033276 or request a free, no-obligation quote.