Most people in Greater Manchester who ask this question do not need planning permission, and a fair number of the ones who go ahead without asking do. The rules changed in October 2008 and have not moved much since. Before then you could pave a front garden however you liked. Since then, any new or replacement front-garden surface over five square metres has to be either permeable or drained to your own land, or it needs an application. The reason was flooding. The Environment Agency estimated at the time that front gardens across England were being paved at a rate that added the equivalent of a small town of hard surface every year, and Greater Manchester, with around 850mm of rain a year in the city and over 1,100mm on the Pennine edge at Rochdale and Oldham, was one of the areas the rule was written for. Here is what it means for a driveway in Middleton, Rochdale, Oldham, Bury or north Manchester.
The five-square-metre rule and what counts as permeable
The national rule is set out by the Planning Portal’s guidance on paving a front garden. You can lay any size of hard surface between the house and the road without permission as long as the water does not run off it onto the highway. There are three ways to meet that. The surface itself lets water through, as resin bound stone and permeable block paving do. Or the surface is solid but falls towards a lawn or planted border that soaks it up. Or the surface is solid and drains to a soakaway, a gravel trench or a rainwater harvesting tank inside your boundary.
What does not meet it is a solid surface that falls to the pavement, which is how most pre-2008 drives were built and why so many streets in Moston and Chadderton run like rivers in heavy rain. If you are replacing one of those with another solid surface and no drainage, you technically need an application, and the council can refuse it.
The five square metres is not a loophole worth chasing. A single parking space is about twelve.
Which council you are dealing with
This trips people up more than the rule itself, because the postcode and the council do not line up the way you would expect. Middleton, Heywood, Castleton and Norden are Rochdale Borough Council, even though the postcode says Manchester. Chadderton, Royton, Failsworth and Shaw are Oldham Council. Prestwich, Whitefield, Radcliffe and Ramsbottom are Bury Council. Blackley, Moston, Harpurhey, Crumpsall and Cheetham Hill are Manchester City Council. Each one runs its own planning portal, its own conservation area list and, the bit that matters for driveways, its own dropped kerb scheme with its own fees.
The government’s guidance on permeable surfacing of front gardens applies to all of them equally. Where they differ is on conservation areas and Article 4 directions, which is the next bit.
Conservation areas, listed buildings and Article 4
If your house is listed, the rules above do not apply and almost any change to the front needs consent. If it is in a conservation area, the general rule usually still applies, but some councils have removed the permitted development right for hard surfaces with what is called an Article 4 direction, which means you need an application even for a permeable drive. Rochdale has conservation areas around the town centre, Milnrow, Littleborough and, in Middleton, the Edgar Wood buildings around Long Street. Bury has Prestwich Village, St Mary’s and Stand in Whitefield among others. Oldham has a long list across Saddleworth. Manchester has dozens.
The practical answer is to check your address on the council’s conservation area map before you get quotes. A good installer will do it for you on the site visit. What the council typically cares about in those areas is materials, so a clay block or natural stone drive is far more likely to go through than bright concrete block or tarmac.
The dropped kerb is a separate permission, every time
Even when the drive itself needs nothing, driving over the pavement to reach it does. A dropped kerb, or vehicle crossing, is permission from the highways authority to lower the kerb and strengthen the footway, and every council in Greater Manchester treats it as a separate application with a fee. Rochdale, Oldham, Bury and Manchester all require the work to be done either by their own contractor or by an approved one, and they will inspect the drive to make sure it is big enough to get a car fully off the road before they approve it.
Driving over a kerb that has not been dropped is an offence under the Highways Act and it damages the footway, and councils do enforce it, particularly on the terraced streets around Failsworth and Harpurhey where parking pressure is high. Allow six to ten weeks for the application. We time the driveway build to land at the same point so you are not staring at a finished drive you cannot legally use.
What a compliant driveway actually looks like
In practice, meeting the rules is not hard and it does not add much to the cost, because the same things that keep you compliant are the things that make the drive last. On a block paving driveway it means either permeable blocks with wide joints over an open-graded base, or standard blocks with a fall to a linear channel at the low edge feeding a soakaway. On tarmac and printed concrete, which are solid, it means the channel and the soakaway. On resin bound it is built in, because the surface drains through itself.
A soakaway is a buried crate or gravel-filled pit at least five metres from the house that takes the water and lets it into the ground. On the clay across Middleton and Blackley it needs to be sized generously because the ground drains slowly, and on the very lowest plots near the Irk and the Irwell it does not work at all, in which case the surface water drain is the fallback and the council’s building control team may want to know. That is a conversation to have on the site visit, not after the drive is down.
Back gardens, patios and the 300mm rule
Patios are simpler. A patio at ground level in a back garden needs no permission anywhere in Greater Manchester, and the permeable rule does not apply behind the house. The exception is height. If the patio is raised more than 300mm above the surrounding ground, it counts as a structure and can need an application, particularly where it overlooks a neighbour. Retaining walls over a metre next to a highway, or two metres elsewhere, also need one. Most sloping-garden patios in Prestwich and Royton come in under that with a low wall and a couple of steps, and we design them that way on purpose.
If you are doing a drive and a patio together, which is common, the drive is the one to check. We covered how to compare the quotes for that job in our post on choosing a driveway company in Manchester.
The short version
You almost certainly do not need planning permission for a driveway in Greater Manchester if it is permeable or drains to your own land, which every drive we build does. You always need highways permission for a dropped kerb. You need to check the conservation area map if your house is old or your street is pretty. And if anyone tells you the rules do not apply to them, that is a reason to pick someone else.
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Frequently asked questions
Do I need planning permission to pave my front garden in Middleton?
Not if the surface is permeable, or the rainwater drains to a lawn, border or soakaway inside your own boundary. That covers permeable block paving, resin bound stone, and tarmac or concrete with a drainage channel. Rochdale Borough Council only needs an application if the house is listed, in a conservation area with an Article 4 direction, or the new surface is over five square metres and drains to the road.
Does a dropped kerb need planning permission?
A dropped kerb is a highways matter rather than a planning one, and it always needs the council's permission. Rochdale, Oldham, Bury and Manchester each run their own vehicle crossing application, charge their own fee and require the work to be done by an approved contractor. It can take six to ten weeks.
What happens if I pave my drive without permission when I needed it?
The council can serve an enforcement notice requiring you to remove it or add drainage, and it will come up on a search when you sell the house. It is rare for a normal front drive because the permeable rules are easy to meet, but it does happen with listed houses and conservation areas.