chris singleton

House I'm looking at buying has a driveway but no dropped kerb. I know that you need planning permission but the council say it will be a minimum of £700.00 for them to approve and carry out the work. What a rip off [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img] It's probably 2 hours work!

Who's put in a dropped kerb and how much did you pay? Is there anyway of appealing against their extortionate charges?

Tempted to just do it myself and hope nobody reports it

Advice/Comments welcome

Chris

SJ_Skyline

Have a go at the kerb with a sledge hammer and then complain to the council that your kerb has been vandalised, kindly come round and repair it asap as it is a health and safety hazzard!

Franko

I'm going to be having one done soon. Havn't asked how much they will charge, thought i'd get the drive done first. My mate had his done and paid £300 about 2 years ago. That was expensive but £700

Brendan Hughes

How much to hire a 9" angle grinder with stone cutting disc and take a chamfer off yourself? I'm thinking of doing it at my place.

yoza

Put a 10ft length of 3x2 up against it, like eveybody else.
Stop trying to be posh.

Dazza01

chris,
Don't do it urself m8, it's a defo no no, if a snotty neighbour reports u to the council you can get a big fine + then u have to pay for it to be put right.

Had my kerb dropped in my old house,as i used to drive the car over the smallish kerb to park it on my drive, but a chap down the road who did the same got caught, the council came round took pictures of his car on the driveway to prove their case, then took him to court, cost him £300 fine + he then had to pay out £450 to have it dropped. Soon as he told me i rang the council and asked them "can i u drop my drive pls"

Something to do with the highways & byways act.

ajm

My mate has the same problem.... I offered to lend him one of our company's 18 tonne road rollers. Its not his fault if the kerb sinks while he parks the roller on his own drive

Jen

£700 isn't too bad - more like £1000 + around here.

Thing is, you will get caught as above and then the Highways Agency will claim for damages...might as well do it the right way

flat4

that, or spill some concrete at a nice 45 degree angle

[Edited by flat4 - 1/30/2004 12:06:08 PM]

MJW

Bit of mild steel treadplate bent at 135° or attack it with the Stihl saw !



[Edited by MJW - 1/30/2004 12:13:03 PM]

PG

get it done on a homer and get the council in to approve it.
I looked in to this and I needed to pay a £10 charge for the permit to cross a walk way but not too sure what they were going to be to approve it. Speak to some of the contractors doing the subby work for the council. They are normaly quite accomidating.

tmo

Our council came up with a quote for £657.38!!!
But also provide a list of "suitable" contractors, thing is the company who does do the work must have high insurance cover etc.

If you do it yourself they will basically slaughter you with fines etc. And if you don't do it and persist in driving over the kerb some git with nothing better to do will report you i.e. like my next-door neighbour!! Had some building work done recently and the lorry drove over the kerb on to my large side garden. Lovely bloke next door phoned the council to say I was parking my car on said piece of land. When I showed the council that by car is somewhat smaller, narrower and lighter that an 18-wheeler (pointing from car to tyre marks in the soil) they suddenly got the point!!

LG John

I thought most council transportation deparments were happy for another contractor to do it provided it was done to the specifications the Councils sets? I know that the case here in east lothian so its something like £22 for the permit to do it and however much it costs Joe Builder to drop the kerb

chris singleton

Thanks for the replies, PMSL at YOZA because that was something I'd already thought about

Strange thing is, part of it is already dropped, say 3-4ft but not quite enough to get a car up

Chris

Richard Work

I'm going through this at the moment....

I needed planning permission for the dropped kerb as it is on a classified road - this took 3 or 4 months before approval, and now I have to apply to the county council for permission to lower the curb and cross the pavement, this will take another week or so. Finally I will be able to get someone to drop the curb, council has apparently stopped doing this. I had a quote of about £650 to do the work, although a friend had his done by the council a month or two ago for £200!

So it could be expensive or cheap, but certainly time consuming......

Oh and they wanted to reject the initial application as a driveway on a classified road should have room to do a 3 point turn, but as none of the other driveways on my street can there was precedence so the planning officer was able to push it through !

By the way I wouldn't try DIY - imagine if someone gets hurt ro damages their car on your DIY, Lawsuit comes to mind...........

Freak

They resurfaced the entire pavement on your road...

While they were doing it, we asked if they could drop the kerb outside our second driveway ...

They did it free of charge...

LG John

You were lucky! In my department we enforce the turning head pretty religously as public/road safety is the key consideration irrespective of the amount of 'normal' driveways. Also, just so know you didn't get planning permission to drop the kerb (as such) you go permission for the formation of a vehicular access which is slightly different in that the dropping of the kerb is a consequence of 'forming' an access

Richard Work

Glad I don't live in Scotland...

csm007

counsil where tarmacing the paveing area in our street charged £75 for drop kirb its a joke £700( complain!) chris <area merseyside>

ed_the_duck

£700 sounds about right for london area. theres all sorts of considerations the council have to make before permission to go ahead. , trees/roots, drainage, manholes, street furniture, blind bends, distance from house to pavement meets minimums, location of underground services... etc.. only authorised contractors can do the job, so is not like paying bob a onner for alf a days work.
Its money well spent to do it properley

Ed

imlach

In one of my old houses, the kerb was not dropped, but one day an Irish labourer knocked on the door....they were doing road resurfacing up the road and asked if I wanted the kerb dropped.

Did it for £100 - Edinburgh council were around £700 at the time to do it. Grand job he made of it too (even got curved kerbstones put in for me).

I'm sure they should have been doing some proper work at the time (paid for by my council tax), but turned out well.

He suggested that if the council ever asked about it, just to say that the cable/gas/electricity company dicked around with it when digging up the pavement (there were plenty of road/pavement repairs around to justify this!).

gareth123

Tell them you're having a wheelchair using relative stay with you for an extended period? An Arab, lesbian, drug addict, disabled relative would probably work best

MooseRacer

Am currently doing the same:

I've applied for, and got, planning permission but now need to apply for permission to lower the kerb?

What a great example of local government inefficiency. Could Bob not just hand my application to Dave who's sat at the desk nexst to him? No, we have to faff about with 2 sets of forms going to the same department, in the same building etc etc.

Costs have been estimated at £500 plus VAT - using a decent contractor with full public liabiliy insurance.

[Edited by MooseRacer - 1/31/2004 9:43:30 AM]