Highways...

[Jeremy Harris]

You can sometimes get lucky with the highways people.  Our plot originally had an entrance on to a very narrow section of single track lane, in a location that made getting the house, drive etc on to the plot challenging.  A local parish councillor mentioned that he knew the highways chap fairly well, and suggested I call him to see what he could suggest.  The highways chap turned out to be really helpful, agreed to meet me on site when he was next in the village looking at something related to speed limits, and spent about ten minutes or so looking at options and making suggestions.  At the end of this short meeting he gave me his email address and told me to email him when we put the application in, with a reminder of what we'd discussed.  The result was, that despite the relatively poor visibility, he raised no objections.  Doesn't make getting out of our drive any easier, but as cars can't really do more than a few miles an hour along the lane it's not really an issue.  The slow speed of traffic along the lane was the thing that I think swung it for us, together with the chap being just one of those "can do" helpful characters that wanted to help us find a solution.

 

 

[Mulberry View]

Furthermore, in this badly MS Paint amended photo, what I have aimed to show is what I deem to be the most practical solution.

 

 

The arrow points to the water meter cover that appears to be set at the height that we'd need to raise the driveway to, in reality it'd swallow up most of the grassy area on both sides. We'd be adding 400mm at that point, tapering it off up the drive. But we'd have to lose the 400mm as it heads back towards the highway and, I guess, without making it horrible to use and without a tricky hump.

 

I wonder if they'd give us a bit of scope with blending it into the highway (as shown) a little more widely to help with this?

Do you think 400mm sounds like a lot to lose over 2.5 ish metres?

 

This work would clearly be a benefit to the existing users of the driveway, probably adding points in our favour from a planning standpoint. We might all be able to share the costs to an extent and get the whole thing resurfaced while we're at it, although this will be secondary for sure.

 

Could the council, at that point, enforce that the owner of the wall agree to not add to the height on that corner, perhaps @Sensus could add his expertise here?

[Ferdinand]

37 minutes ago, christianbeccy said:

I suppose what I'm hoping for here is that if they weren't concerned about it in 1998, when the situation was MUCH worse, why are they now? It shows a lack of consistency, if nothing else, but also scope for a practical discussion.

 

 

You may have trouble arguing that over a 20 year period. Policy changes and tightens.

 

Though pointing out that a busy Antiques Business would generate many times more traffic might help ? .

 

[Jeremy Harris]

34 minutes ago, christianbeccy said:

Furthermore, in this badly MS Paint amended photo, what I have aimed to show is what I deem to be the most practical solution.

 

 

 

The arrow points to the water meter cover that appears to be set at the height that we'd need to raise the driveway to, in reality it'd swallow up most of the grassy area on both sides. We'd be adding 400mm at that point, tapering it off up the drive. But we'd have to lose the 400mm as it heads back towards the highway and, I guess, without making it horrible to use and without a tricky hump.

 

I wonder if they'd give us a bit of scope with blending it into the highway (as shown) a little more widely to help with this?

Do you think 400mm sounds like a lot to lose over 2.5 ish metres?

 

This work would clearly be a benefit to the existing users of the driveway, probably adding points in our favour from a planning standpoint. We might all be able to share the costs to an extent and get the whole thing resurfaced while we're at it, although this will be secondary for sure.

 

Could the council, at that point, enforce that the owner of the wall agree to not add to the height on that corner, perhaps @Sensus could add his expertise here?

 

 

One potential snag with raising the level may be the maximum allowable gradient at the initial part of the access road.  We were initially given a standard condition that the initial gradient of our drive at the approach to the lane would not exceed 1:15 for the first 4.5m back from the lane.  We couldn't achieve this, due to a conflict with the minimum level AOD of the garage and parking area, but our planning officer just allowed the steeper gradient, on the basis that conditions from the EA apparently trump those from highways.  Whether this was just his opinion, or whether it's embedded in policy somewhere, I've no idea, I was just grateful to see common sense being used.

[Jeremy Harris]

1 minute ago, Sensus said:

In fact, these days, Planners with enough guts and gumption to go against any statutory consultee (with the exception of Parish Council, who are universally regarded as a bunch of pompous and irrelevant clowns) with their recommendations are few and far between .

 

 

Good job I'm no longer a Parish Councillor then...

 

FWIW, my reasons for resigning as a councillor were because I got fed up with the PC repeatedly ignoring everything from laws to policies.