Dropped Kerb Application Drawings for London and Essex Homes

What are dropped kerb application drawings?

Dropped kerb application drawings show a highway authority exactly what you want to do to a piece of public highway: the footway and the kerb outside your property. The crossing itself never becomes yours. Under section 184 of the Highways Act 1980, nobody but the highway authority has any obligation to maintain a vehicle crossing once it is built, which is a fair reflection of what it actually is: a modification to their asset, made at your request and your expense.

A hand-drawn sketch gets accepted by some councils and rejected by others. A few authorities, including Essex Highways, will take a measured sketch plan showing the frontage, the kerb and dimensions, whatever the road. Others want a proper scaled drawing before they will even look at the application. On a classified road or a Transport for London red route the difference is not the sketch itself: you also need planning drawings alongside it, and the highway authority may still ask for more than a sketch once it sees them. If your council asks for "a detailed drawing" rather than "a sketch plan," the distinction usually tracks how much the engineer has to check against their own policy.

The same plan frequently does a second job. If the road is classified, or your frontage is designated, or the hardstanding behind the crossing crosses a threshold, the drawing also has to satisfy a planning officer, drawn once to the standard both readers need.

Who grants a dropped kerb, and who grants the planning permission?

These are genuinely separate decisions, made under separate law, and in London they are often made by different organisations entirely.

The crossing itself is governed by section 184 of the Highways Act 1980. Any person may request the highway authority to carry out the works, and the authority may approve the request, approve it with modifications, propose an alternative, or reject it outright. In deciding, the authority has to have regard to preventing damage to the footway or verge, to ensuring safe access to and from the property so far as practicable, and to the passage of traffic on the highway. Once it approves, it quotes a cost and you deposit that amount before it carries out or authorises the work.

Who that authority is depends on where the road sits. On an ordinary borough road in London, it is the borough itself. On a Transport for London red route, it is TfL, not the borough, even though the borough is your planning authority for everything else. In Essex, Essex County Council is the highway authority across the twelve districts of the administrative county, so the crossing decision is made in the same place whichever of those districts you are in, while the planning decision, where one is needed, still sits with your own district council; Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock sit outside this entirely, since each runs its own crossover scheme as a unitary authority.

The order in which you approach the two authorities is not fixed. Some councils want the planning question settled first, so a crossing application does not go through only to be undone by a refused planning consent. Others, particularly for crossings that clearly do not need planning permission, are happy to take the highways application on its own. Essex Highways is explicit that where the road is classified, you need planning permission in hand before you apply to them. Check the order your authority sets rather than assuming it.

When does a dropped kerb need planning permission?

There are two separate planning questions, not one, and a dropped kerb can trigger either, both, or neither.

The first is about the access itself: the opening you are forming from your drive onto the highway. Forming a means of access to a highway is development in planning law. It is covered by permitted development rights under Part 2 Class B of the General Permitted Development Order, but that right is conditional, not automatic. It only applies where the road is not a trunk or classified road, and where the access is required in connection with other permitted development, typically the hardstanding you are forming behind it. Form the access on its own, without that connection, and you are outside permitted development even on an unclassified road. And "classified road" covers more than most people assume: it means any A, B or C road, not just the ones with a letter and number painted on the map in people's heads.

The second question is about the hardstanding itself. Permitted development under Class F lets you lay a hard surface within your curtilage without planning permission, but if that surface sits between the principal elevation of your house and the highway and exceeds a small threshold, it has to be either porous or arranged so surface water drains to a permeable area within your own garden rather than running off onto the highway. Get that wrong and the hardstanding needs consent on its own account, regardless of what is happening with the access.

Beyond those two, several things narrow or remove the rights above. Being in a conservation area, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty or similar designated land doesn't itself remove Class F or the access right; what does is an article 4 direction, which a council can apply street by street, and taking down a front boundary wall in a conservation area usually needs consent in its own right regardless of Class F or Class B. A listed building may need listed building consent for a new opening in its boundary. A flat or maisonette has no Class F hardstanding right and, with it, no access right either. Councils sometimes add their own extra triggers too, such as demolishing a front wall above a certain height, which the drawings need to reflect once you know the authority's own policy.

What the highway engineer measures on your plan

Every criterion a council publishes for a crossing, whichever borough or however far into Essex, comes back to the same duties under section 184 covered above: preventing damage to the footway, safe access and egress, and the passage of traffic. It helps to read the checklist that way rather than as an arbitrary list of numbers.

The plan needs two separate visibility splays: a pedestrian splay measured from the back of the footway, and a carriageway splay measured back from the kerb line, each kept clear of anything above a low obstruction height, because a driver reversing out and a pedestrian on the pavement need to see each other in good time. Distance from junctions, roundabouts, signal approaches, pedestrian crossings, school keep-clear markings and bus stops all matter for the same reason: a crossing too close to any of them interferes with how traffic and pedestrians move through that stretch of road. The plan has to show the hardstanding at a depth and width that keeps every part of a parked vehicle off the footway, with a dimensioned parking bay rather than a vague outline, because an overhanging car is exactly the damage and obstruction the Act is written to prevent. Where the road carries faster traffic, some authorities also want to see that a vehicle can turn and leave in forward gear rather than reversing onto a busier road.

Trees on the highway get plotted by their stem position, with a protection zone calculated from the tree's size, because roots and construction do not mix and several authorities presume against removing a mature highway tree altogether. Street furniture, lamp columns, signs, gullies, utility covers and on-street parking bays all get marked and measured, since any of them might need relocating at your cost if the crossing lands on top of one. A low wall or fence is often required right at the edge of the new crossing specifically to stop a car overriding the footway when it is parked. And the drawing carries a drainage note showing that surface water from the hardstanding is kept off the highway, not just off your own drive. Every authority sets its own exact minimums for these, so we check your council's or Essex Highways' current published figures for your specific address rather than quoting a number that might belong to a different borough entirely.

What a set of dropped kerb application drawings contains

A location plan on an Ordnance Survey base, at the scale your authority asks for, starts the set and orients the application to your address. The existing and proposed site plan is the core sheet: it shows the frontage, the current kerb line, the footway width, the proposed crossing's position and width with its tapers, the hardstanding outline with a dimensioned vehicle bay, the share of the frontage kept as soft landscaping, and the boundary treatment including any new low wall or gate. A visibility diagram plots both splays against the site so the engineer can check them at a glance rather than working them out from a written description.

Drainage gets its own annotation: the surface material, the fall of the ground, and where a soakaway or a permeable border within the curtilage picks up run-off. A schedule of nearby street furniture and trees, each with its distance from the proposed crossing, backs up the plan itself, and photographs keyed to the drawing help the engineer picture the site without a visit. Where planning permission is also needed, the set adds an elevation of the front boundary and a short written statement setting the proposal against Class F, Part 2 Class B or the relevant conservation area guidance, so the planning officer can see exactly which rule the drawing is answering.

A single Ordnance Survey extract sold on its own, without any of the above, is a location plan only, one sheet out of the set, and no authority's published requirements are satisfied by a map alone.

What happens if the kerb is used without a crossing?

Section 184 gives the highway authority a power it can use: where an occupier habitually drives across a kerbed footway or verge without an authorised crossing, the authority can serve notice proposing to construct one, or imposing conditions on how the footway is used, and it can recover the cost from the owner or occupier. Knowingly using the footway or verge as a crossing in contravention of a condition set under that notice is itself an offence.

Several London boroughs also point out that using an unstrengthened footway as a crossing damages an asset that was not built to carry a vehicle's weight, which is exactly the harm section 184(5) exists to prevent, and some issue penalty notices where a parked car regularly overhangs the flat section of a crossing.

The fact that your neighbour already has a dropped kerb proves nothing about your own application. Crossover policies get revised, and at least one London authority states outright that no previous policy takes precedence over the one currently in force. A drawing prepared against the current rules, and an application made properly, is the way to turn what might otherwise be an unauthorised habit into an approved and lawful crossing.