Pavement crossovers and the consequent Domino Effect are the single most important driver of front garden hard surfacing.

The London Assembly Environment Committee of the Greater London Authority has recognised this. In its 2005 report 'Crazy Paving: the environmental importance of London's front gardens', it recommended that planning permission should be required for pavement crossovers:

Despite this, the Government's 2008 amendments to the permitted development regulations did not include any change to the status of pavement crossovers (see Legislation page).

So what else can be done?

Local councils could use existing powers

Using powers already available, there is much that local councils could do to prevent a lot of front garden destruction. They could:

·         Use the legal precedent established by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, invoking the Highways Act 1980 to refuse crossover applications on the grounds that they reduce the amount of parking available to the community as a whole. This would halt the Domino Effect and save many front gardens which will otherwise inevitably be turned into car parks in future.

·         Use Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) mechanisms to increase charges for households owning multiple vehicles, as recently proposed by the Royal Borough of Richmond on Thames.

·         Take enforcement measures on illegal front garden parking: councils can take physical steps to stop an unauthorised crossover being used (in Ealing we estimate about 4,800 front gardens are being illegally used for parking, with an illegally constructed crossover or no crossover at all).

·         Write tenancy agreements preventing front garden hard surfacing in properties they own or social housing they have interests in.

·         Use Article 4 Directions to withdraw permitted development status and require planning permission for crossovers in existing conservation areas, and create new conservation areas. However, the withdrawal of permitted development rights by an Article 4 Direction may make the Council liable to claims for compensation for loss or damage resulting from loss of permitted development rights.

Councils and communities could also:

·         Raise awareness of the problems created by hard surfacing front gardens.

·         Provide advice on low maintenance front gardens, run competitions, set up community gardening service and activities to assist people with their front gardens, and offer incentives to reinstate hard surfaced gardens.

See also the What you can do page