Do you need planning permission to pave a front garden?

It depends entirely on where the water goes, and it is the rule most often missed.

The rule

If you lay more than five square metres of new impermeable surface in a front garden, you need planning permission, unless the water is directed to a permeable area within your own property. Five square metres is small: it is a single parking space several times over.

Why it exists

Front gardens were progressively paved over with sealed surfaces, and the runoff went straight into the drainage system. Enough of it, across enough streets, contributes to surface water flooding. The rule was introduced to slow that down, and it is about water rather than appearance.

How installations stay inside the rules

Permeable block paving lets water through the joints into a stone sub-base that stores and releases it. Gravel is permeable by nature. A conventional impermeable surface can also comply if it is laid to fall towards a border, a soakaway or a drainage channel on your own land, so the water never reaches the highway or the sewer.

What does not work is paving the whole frontage in sealed material falling towards the road.

Worth checking anyway

Conservation areas, listed buildings and Article 4 directions restrict permitted development. Dropping a kerb to create vehicle access is a separate consent from the highway authority regardless of the surface, and it is worth confirming before ordering materials.