Hi - anyone know about planning regs re gardens and parking?

[Bev Bruce]

Hi all - I’m new to the forum and in the planning stages (nightmare). I have looked at the space and parking standards and can’t figure out if 2 car parking spaces is included in the total area required for a garden or is a supplementary requirement. Can anyone help me with this please???

Bev

[Jeremy Harris]

Welcome.

 

There will usually be a planning policy that stipulates the parking arrangements that are required.  In our case it stipulated that we needed two off-road parking spaces (of set dimensions) with both designed such that cars could always enter and leave through the entrance in forward gear.  This meant including a hammerhead turning space in the drive, so cars could always turn around.  One of the parking spaces was in the garage (officially) which made things easier, but it was still tricky to get enough space to meet all the requirements (although we also had the added problem of a gradient that exceeded the maximum allowable for a drive).

 

Worth having a look at your local authority planning policies, which should be online somewhere, and seeing what they say.  I found that the easiest way to find the relevant policy was to look at recent planning applications for our area and see what had been written in to the decision notices.  Trying to find the specific policy that applied without doing this was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

[Bev Bruce]

Thanks for replying so quickly. We ran up against the turning requirements already although it seems a bit harsh given all the new builds on the large estates don’t have this! My main worry is the size of the garden remaining. We know it has to be 10m x the width of the house and we are tight on space so I was wondering if this takes the huge amount of garden that the car park takes up! The car parking would be behind the house and the garden offset from this. I can’t find anywhere in the space standards that mentions this. 

[Ferdinand]

1 hour ago, Bev Bruce said:

Hi all - I’m new to the forum and in the planning stages (nightmare). I have looked at the space and parking standards and can’t figure out if 2 car parking spaces is included in the total area required for a garden or is a supplementary requirement. Can anyone help me with this please???

Bev

 

Usually it will be about "Parking" and "(Private) Amenity Space" in sqm.

 

The latter will exclude the former, and a lot of other things like area open to view, bin space, access paths etc.

 

F

[Bev Bruce]

Thanks Ferdinand

Do you know if the open to view area includes the front garden which is not enclosed and a strip along a shared drive?

[Ferdinand]

Check with your council.

[Conor]

2 hours ago, Bev Bruce said:

Thanks for replying so quickly. We ran up against the turning requirements already although it seems a bit harsh given all the new builds on the large estates don’t have this! My main worry is the size of the garden remaining. We know it has to be 10m x the width of the house and we are tight on space so I was wondering if this takes the huge amount of garden that the car park takes up! The car parking would be behind the house and the garden offset from this. I can’t find anywhere in the space standards that mentions this. 

Second the comments referring you to local policy. In my case, we are going to use "grasscrete" which is a honeycomb concrete paving material that you fill with soil and sow grass. Gives you a hard area suitable for driving or parkin on, but is a green area that blends in with your garden. Using it on or site where it slopes to the read garden.. will be good to use for extra parking when we've visitors and also solid access to the large rear garden if we ever need to drive round to the back of the house.

[Bev Bruce]

That’s a really good idea! I will look into that