Driveways and patios in Solihull

Solihull is a borough of front drives. Shirley and Olton were built out in the 1920s and 1930s with semis that already had room for a car, Knowle and Dorridge have detached houses on long plots with gravel sweeps and five-bar gates, and Monkspath, Cheswick Green and Dickens Heath are newer estates where the builder put the parking in from day one. That changes the typical job: fewer first-time conversions than in inner Birmingham, more replacements of tired 1980s block paving, resin over old tarmac, and new gates and fences on bigger boundaries.

Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council is the highway and planning authority for almost the whole patch. The Birmingham side of B37 (Tile Cross and Glebe Farm) and a small part of B92 near Sheldon are Birmingham City Council, which has a different kerb process.

Ground and Gate passes each enquiry to one local specialist who works across Solihull. They visit, measure and agree the price with you; we never carry out work ourselves.

Solihull's dropped kerb process and fees

Solihull runs one of the tighter kerb schemes in the region. Only the council's own highways contractor is allowed to build a vehicle crossing in the borough, so no private firm, including the specialist who lays your drive, can lower the kerb itself.

The steps are:

1. Read the council's guidance notes, which change each April.
2. Pay a non-refundable administration fee of £210 (the rate for applications up to 31 March 2027), online or by phone, and keep the receipt number.
3. Fill in the online application with that number.
4. If the council accepts the site, pay the balance quoted in the council's letter. Construction is charged per square metre, with a minimum of £874.35, plus the cost of moving any lamp column or sign.
5. The council's contractor builds the crossing.

The council says help with fees may be available for disabled applicants.

Because the kerb and the drive are built by different people, the order matters. Your specialist lays the hardstanding and edging up to the back of the footway; the council's crew lowers the kerb and makes good the pavement. Our dropped kerb guide covers the timing, and the dropped kerb cost guide compares councils. In Tile Cross and Glebe Farm, Birmingham's scheme applies instead: a £125 inspection fee, a £375 administration charge and a council-built crossing.

Conservation areas and Article 4 directions

Solihull has 20 conservation areas, and most of those that contain homes are in this patch: Solihull town centre, Malvern Hall and Brueton Avenue, Malvern Park Farm, Ashleigh Road, Grove Avenue, Granville Road, Warwick Road, White House Way, Olton, Knowle, Station Approach Dorridge, Hampton-in-Arden, Walsall End, Barston, Temple Balsall and Bickenhill. The council's online Conservation, Heritage and Enforcement map shows the boundaries.

The council says three areas in the borough carry Article 4 Directions. White House Way is one; its direction brings doors, windows and exterior painting under control. Where a direction covers front boundaries or hard surfaces, a new wall, gate or driveway that would normally need no application will need one.

Even without an Article 4 Direction, demolishing a front wall or railing over 1 metre in a conservation area needs consent. Ashleigh Road, Grove Avenue and the Malvern Park streets have Edwardian and interwar houses behind low walls and planted fronts, and a planning officer will want to see those kept where possible.

House types and what they mean for the work

Shirley, Olton and Elmdon: 1930s semis with a side drive running to a garage, often shared with next door for the first few metres. Front gardens are 7 to 9 metres deep, so a two-car frontage is realistic once the lawn goes.

Knowle, Dorridge, Bentley Heath and Hockley Heath: detached houses on large, often irregular plots backing onto fields. Drives of 80m² or more are common, as are long post-and-rail and featheredge boundaries against farmland.

Monkspath, Cheswick Green, Dickens Heath and Blythe Valley fringes: 1980s to 2010s estates. Many were given planning conditions or deed covenants to keep front gardens open-plan, which can stop you putting up a front fence or gate even though planning law would otherwise allow it.

Chelmsley Wood, Kingshurst and Smith's Wood: 1960s and 1970s estates with open-plan fronts, rear parking courts and footpaths between blocks. Some houses have no vehicle access to the front at all.

Heavy clay, the River Blythe and drainage

Solihull sits almost entirely on Mercia Mudstone, a clay that drains slowly and shrinks and swells with the seasons. Two consequences for paving. First, sub-bases need to be dug deeper and compacted well, because clay softens when wet and a shallow base on it will rut. Second, soakaways often perform poorly: a percolation test to BRE Digest 365 is the only way to know, and on some plots the answer is a longer channel drain to a planted area or a permeable surface that stores water in the sub-base rather than a single pit.

The River Blythe crosses the south and east of the borough, the River Cole runs past Kingshurst and Chelmsley Wood, and smaller brooks, including Hatchford Brook near Elmdon and the Cuttle Brook near Knowle, carry run-off from the estates. Some streets near them sit in mapped flood-risk areas. Solihull, as lead local flood authority, expects new hard surfaces to manage their own water, and permeable finishes are the simplest way. Any front driveway over 5m² needs one, or drainage to a permeable area, to avoid a planning application: see the 5m² rule guide and drainage and soakaways.

Driveways and patios in Solihull

Tired block paving from the 1980s and 1990s is the most common thing we are asked to replace in Shirley and Monkspath. Where the base is sound, a resin overlay on existing tarmac at £55–£80 per m² can be cheaper than a full dig-out, but resin cannot go straight onto block paving, and a failed base under old paving means starting again. New block paving costs £90–£140 per m², and taking up old blocks adds £15–£25 per m². See resin driveways and the block paving vs resin cost guide.

Large gravel drives in Knowle and Dorridge work well on clay if they are laid on a proper sub-base with edging and a stabilising grid; loose stone on bare clay turns to mud. Gravel costs £35–£60 per m². Drives over 100m² get a site visit.

Solihull back gardens are generous, so patios tend to be bigger than average: porcelain at £140–£210 per m² is popular, and anything over 80m² is priced after a visit. See patios and the patio cost guide, or the Solihull driveways and patios page.