Lakeland Landscapes


Sustainable Drainage

Planning Permission is not required if the rain water from the paved area does not run onto the public highway or discharge directly into the surface water drainage system.

All paving and surfacing, whether its new work, replacement, or extension is subject to legislation, so even if you’re only replacing your existing surfacing with products from natural paving, the work will have to be installed in accordance with the regulations.

Do you have to use permeable paving?
NO - the surface is permitted to drain to a permeable or porous area located within the grounds of the property.

The easiest and most cost effective solution is to drain all rain water onto gardens or borders if suitable. If the existing paved area currently does so and there are no problems, then carry out a straight forward replacement of the old material.

If proposed area is significantly redesigned then consider draining rain water with falls and/or line drainage to rain gardens or soakaways.

Nb: Soakaways must be 5m from the property. Size of rain garden needs to be 10% of the paved area.

There are design criteria for rain gardens but simply a depression at back of lawn which rain water can collect and percolate through the soil. This can be a flower bed or gravel are if suitable.

This is a guide... for more information the websites listed below will help:

www.paving.org.uk
www.interlay.org.uk
www.pavingexpert.com
www.bali.co.uk