Laws on driving over the pavement

[littlecoli]

We wish to drop the kerb in the front of our house to enable us to drive easily onto the front. However, we have 2 BT manholes on the pavement. Would we be allowed to get permission to drop the kerb if it entails driving over these?

[voltr4m4x]

You will need to get in touch with your local highways authority and also with BT. In my experience, local authorities are not sympathetic to such requests but there is no harm in trying. I suppose it depends largely on where you live... not all local authorities react in the same way.

Do not attempt to drop the kerb however without first obtaining permission.

[AliFlump]

I got in touch with my local authority to drop my kerb, they said they do not do it anymore and have to find my own Company to do it then pay the council �45 when it was done to check it was done properly,

They also gave me a list of companies to contact e.g. BT, Water Company etc (about 11 in total). They check their plans and then let you know if they have a problem with it.

As long as they have access to them and you dont damage them i cant see why not, people drive over man holes in the road all the time.

[AliFlump]

also meant to say that when i applied for mine i said that driving up the kerb was damaging my car so i wanted to drop it (hoping they would sympatise) and they said its illegal to mount the kerb and cross the public pavement to access your own property without a dropped kerb and if i damaged the pavement doing it, they would charge me! Oops!

[buildersmate]

I think that you will find that BT, if they get to find out, will deny you the opportunity to do this. The reason is that those concrete manhole covers are designed for paved areas and not areas subject to passage by vehicles. I think (but I am not sure) that they are typically rated at 2 tonnes.
The problem that BT will have is that they can't control what then goes over the manhole cover - a 15 tonne lorry?

The way I would try and do it (assuming that driving in / out doesn't have to involve passing over the cover itself) is to make the application to the local council but remain stuum. If they say it is necessary to contact the long list as above of utilities, you might just as well stop there.
If they don't, you may well find no-one realises.
In the later event that a cover got broken I suspect (but again not sure) that it couldn't really be down to you. Afterall, you were given permission.