Over the past year,  a lot of people have made the case for resin driveways as beautiful, long-lasting, hard-wearing and versatile alternative systems compared to stone flags or concrete, but a recent environmental report suggests a potential economic case for them as well.

The London Climate Resilience Review is a rather comprehensive examination of ways that the capital city can become more resilient and prepared for extreme weather phenomena, commissioned after a heatwave where temperatures reached over 40 degrees Celsius.

Of the many different initiatives, one, in particular, would not only help reduce the heat island effect across the country but also make resin drives a sustainable solution for the homes of the future.

Carrot And Stick

Of the 50 recommendations cited in the full report, one of the most interesting is Recommendation 34 (Page 94-95), which suggests a scheme to incentivise the removal of concrete driveways, and their replacement with either gardens or permeable surfaces such as resin-bound paving.

The reasoning for this is that the proportion of permeable surfaces in England’s urban areas dropped dramatically from 63 per cent to just 54 per cent, with disastrous consequences when it comes to potential surface water flooding without adequate drainage to channel water away in a timely fashion.

Part of the reason for this is the cumulative effect of many gardens being paved over to make way for driveways and larger patios, which increase the risk of flooding, surface runoff and the collection of pollutants into the drains, which can in high rainfall conditions end up directly in rivers, streams, lakes and other waterways.

This also forces the drains on the roads and pavements to carry more surface water, causing them to become overloaded, leading to even more dangerous flooding.

With flash floods and extreme weather events an increasingly common occurrence, resilience needs to be built up, and a major part of that is getting rid of solid, impermeable front gardens and driveways.

The big question is about how this should be accomplished, and this is where the most interesting part of the recommendation comes in.

It takes the form of a stick-and-carrot approach, penalising people who install concrete drives and rewarding those who do with incentives, which is a more beneficial approach than simply doing one or the other.

Resin drives become a particularly important piece of the puzzle here, as whilst there are a lot of qualifying solutions, including gravel, shingle or only having a set of wheel tracks, few of them truly resemble a concrete drive in terms of longevity and properties.

Other solutions less relevant to driveways include soakaway systems, installing a rainwater harvester and replacing the concrete with a rain garden.

The solution is a driveway that allows water to soak into the ground where it is, rather than encouraging it to run off into the drains.

Exactly how effective this will be will depend on the nature, level and clarity of the incentives. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme took some adjustments and increased incentives to encourage homeowners to replace their existing boiler with a heat pump, and a similar approach is likely to help people make the switch to resin.