The Mayor of London is asking Londoners to dig up their paved-over front gardens, arguing it would ease flooding, cool hot streets and bring back space for wildlife.
More than half of London’s front gardens have already gone under paving, mostly for parking, according to the Royal Horticultural Society.
The case is concrete. A paved garden sheds rain instead of soaking it up, adding to the strain on drains nearby. Greening a street can cut its surface temperature by 10 to 12 degrees and the air around it by 5 to 8 degrees, according to Trees for Cities figures cited by the Wimbledon Society. And given the past few weeks of weather we’ve had, that can only be a good thing. A slab of concrete also gives nothing back to insects or birds.
The fix costs little. Swap a hard driveway for gravel or permeable paving that lets rain through, add a border or a raised bed, or start with a pot by the door. Nationally, none of it needs planning permission: permeable paving of any size is exempt, and so is up to five square metres of ordinary paving, under a rule brought in back in 2008 specifically to stop front gardens making flooding worse.
The Wandsworth catch
In three conservation areas in Putney and Roehampton, though, that exemption does not apply. Wandsworth Council has removed the normal right to do this work without permission, through what is called an Article 4 Direction. The council’s own wording covers laying out hard surfaced areas within the front and some side gardens of houses, with no exemption for permeable material.
That means anyone on Commondale in Putney Lower Common, on Medfield Street or at Hambro House in Roehampton Village, or anywhere within the Dover House Estate, needs planning permission before laying new hard surfacing at the front of their home, whatever it is made of. That includes the gravel or permeable paving the campaign itself recommends as the fix. It is the same conservation-area rules that put one Putney side extension in the paper this year.
That said, the two rules were never designed with each other in mind. Permission is not usually refused for this kind of work, it is simply required first.
Which Putney conservation areas does this affect?
Most of Putney sits inside a conservation area. Wandsworth has 46 of them across the borough, and they cover large parts of the neighbourhood, from West Putney to Putney Embankment. Conservation area status on its own does not touch garden paving. It mainly controls demolition and protects a street’s overall character.
Only three of those areas carry the extra rule, through an Article 4 Direction. Each direction restricts hard surfacing in near-identical terms:
- Putney Lower Common (15 to 36 Commondale): “Laying out hard surfaced areas; for example, for car parking within the front and some side garden areas of houses.”
- Roehampton Village (15 to 85 Medfield Street and Hambro House, Treville Street): “Laying out hard surfaced areas, e.g. for car parking within the front and some side garden areas of houses.”
- Dover House Estate: “Laying out hard surfaced areas, for example for car parking within the front and some side garden areas of houses.”
Outside these three, the national rule applies as normal.
How to check before you start
The quickest way to find out whether a property sits inside one of these areas is Wandsworth’s interactive conservation-area map. Anyone still unsure can email the planning team direct, at planning@wandsworth.gov.uk.
The campaign’s own advice starts small: a window box, a pot, a patch of gravel instead of concrete, most of which needs no permission anywhere in the borough. It comes as a hosepipe ban, already in force across the borough, sharpens the case for gardens that hold water rather than shed it. The Putney Society already runs its own garden competition each year, and this is the kind of change that would count toward it.
