A dropped kerb refusal is rarely about the kerb. It's usually about what's already on the planning record for your property — or what the highway authority found when they looked at the visibility, the road type, and the surface material of your proposed driveway.
The dropped kerb itself requires highway authority consent, not planning permission. The driveway surface depends on the material. Together they\'re two separate approvals most people conflate into one.
Creating a new vehicle access across a pavement requires consent from the highway authority under the Highways Act 1980 — not planning permission. For classified roads (A, B, and C roads), a new vehicle access also requires full planning permission because creating a new access to a classified road is not permitted development. For unclassified roads, highway authority consent only.
Creating or extending a driveway in front of your house is permitted development if the surface is permeable (gravel, permeable block paving, porous asphalt). If the surface is impermeable (standard concrete or tarmac), planning permission is required unless you install drainage directing run-off to a lawn or border rather than the road. This rule has been in place since 2008 and is still widely ignored.
Some properties carry conditions limiting vehicle access points or requiring the retention of front gardens — found in the planning history, not standard searches. The highway authority may also refuse a dropped kerb where visibility from the proposed access is inadequate. This is a highways matter, not planning — but it can kill a project regardless.
Standard searches check the public register. We go further — querying live portals, blocked legacy systems, pre-merger authority databases, committee PDF archives, Land Registry title constraints, and comparable decisions across your postcode cluster. What we retrieve determines what you know before you build, buy, or appeal.