Lowering a Raised Garden to Create a Driveway If you want to know how your DIY projects could be affected by building and planning regulations, click here to post questions and view answers

[perky416]

Evening all.

Moving house soon and one of the first things I want to do is excavate the front garden and block pave it for a driveway, the only problem is the garden is raised as you can see in the picture attached. I was thinking about keeping the wall at the front but dropping the garden to make it level with the current block paving, and building a retaining wall down the middle against my neighbours raised garden.

As you can see the driveway will be sloping, and without taking an accurate measurement I estimate the level difference between the top of the neighbours garden, and the drive at its lowest point, against the wall at the bottom, to be 43cm.

Will this require planning permission? I have read on forums that raising the ground level more than 30cm requires planning permission, however I cant find anything official about this, or anything for that matter about lowering the ground level.

Is anybody able to confirm or point me in the correct direction?

Thanks

[Charlie@AnyJunk]

Morning Perky416,

I don't know if this helps at all but I've found this link online?

https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/2 ... ont_garden

It look like issue could be more that you're paving over and removing the grass, than the change in height.

Best,
Charlie