Apply for a residential vehicle crossing

If you need to drive over the pavement or verge to park on your property, you will need to have a vehicle crossing. A vehicle crossing can also be referred to as a motor crossing, cross over, or dropped kerb.

The footways are built to carry pedestrians who don't weigh as much as a motor vehicle and, without a crossing, you may damage the kerbstones or utility services, such as gas or water mains that may be below the surface of the pavement or verge.

A vehicle crossing involves:

• lowering of the kerbs at the edge of the road to allow access to your property/driveway.
• strengthening of the crossing from your property boundary to the edge of the road. 
• where required, moving or protecting of items such as street light columns, railings and bollards and any pipes or cables belonging to public utilities underneath the crossing.  

All residential vehicle crossings are managed and constructed by Newcastle City Council. We ensure the use of appropriate materials and workmanship, the safety of any walking surfaces and the protection of pipes and cables under the footway from damage.

Who can apply

You must be the owner of the property to apply for a vehicle crossing. If you are renting a property, you must have written consent from the landlord or the housing association before you apply.

Some things you need to consider

If you need to build a driveway, it must be completed before you request the vehicle crossing, this is to avoid any wagons driving over the newly constructed crossing. It is important that the finished level of your drive leaves enough fall from the end of your drive to the kerb. A hard standing area must be in place for an estimate to be provided.

If you are building a new driveway or extending driveway by more than 5 square metres, you have to consider the advice given the Guidance for permeable surfacing of front gardens

The construction of a vehicle crossing does not give you as the occupier of the premises any particular rights, except to drive across the footway to gain access to your property with a private or light goods motor car. The vehicle crossing itself is part of the public highway. From the date that the council accepts the completed crossing, we will assume responsibility for its maintenance at no cost to the occupier, apart from any damage caused by illegal use for example by a heavy vehicle. Utility apparatus, such as electricity and phone equipment, within the area of vehicle crossing is maintained by the statutory undertaker (utility company such as BT, Virgin Media, Northern Power Grid, etc).

An off road driveway has to be constructed with a minimum of 4.8 metres between the back of the footway and the building to accommodate a vehicle wholly within the drive.  We are unable to consider applications for a vehicle crossing unless the length of the drive is minimally 4.8 metres. 

Shared access

Where the occupiers of two neighbouring properties share a driveway and wish to build a double width crossing to serve the two sites, one occupier should act for both parties although the application must be signed by both parties.

In order to maintain the safety of pedestrians on the footway and to retain on-street parking provision, the maximum crossing width (lowered kerb height) for a shared access should not be more than 5.4 metres. The shared drive must normally be positioned centrally between both properties. Where one exists, the boundary fence, wall or hedge should be retained for that portion of any frontage not covered by the footway crossing.

Cost

The cost of the works depends on the length and width of the works required to protect all the footway.

There will be additional costs if works are required to move obstructions, such as street lighting columns, utility cabinets or other miscellaneous street furniture.

Costs may vary for different addresses in the same road depending on site-specific factor for each address.

You need to provide full payment in advance of the works being carried out.

What is the process

1. Inspection

Once you have applied for your estimate, we will arrange for the area outside your property to be inspected. You do not need to be home when the inspection takes place if the location of the proposed access is obvious. You can contact us to ask for the inspector to call you before visiting if you have any special requirements that you would like to discuss.

2. Estimate

After the inspection has taken place, we expect to provide you with an estimate within 10 working days. If additional works are required, such as utility apparatus or street furniture need moving, this will increase the time taken to provide your quote.

Once you have received your quote, you have 3 months to accept and pay in full from the date printed on the letter for the work to be scheduled. After this time the quote will no longer be valid and you will need to reapply.

3. Installation

We expect to complete installation of a standard dropped kerb within 6 weeks of receiving full payment of an accepted quote as we need to programme your work into our existing schedules of work around the area. Once we start it should typically take two days – one day to prepare the footway and one day to lay the surfacing material. Sites with complications such as stop-top boxes to adjust and street lighting columns to move will take longer and we will discuss these factors with you before you make a financial commitment. Non-standard works may take longer, and we will advise you of this with the estimate.

Planning permission

Planning Permission will also be required if the motor crossing is to be installed on a classified road. Please see the attached PDF document for a list of all classified roads.

Next steps

To request an estimate for a motor crossing, you will need to call Your Local Services on 0191 278 78 78.

If the motor crossing is to be installed on a classified road outlined in the PDF, please follow the link to the planning portal.