Driveways in Bashley
Relaid block paving, rural entrances put right, new drives and rebuilt patios around Bashley. Free site visit and a written itemised quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Most Bashley drives now needing work are the block paved ones that went down with the housing in the nineties. Thirty years on it is the sub-base and the edge restraints that have gone, not the blocks, and that decides whether you relay or rebuild.
A Bashley drive is due for attention once the blocks sink, the gravel wanders or the patio tips back at the house. The block paving has dropped into two tracks where the cars sit and the edges have started to spread. The gravel at the entrance keeps ending up on the lane, and the lane keeps sending its water back down the drive. Or the patio has settled towards the house and the slabs rock when you cross them.
We come and survey it instead of quoting off a photograph. That means levels, a look at where water runs in heavy rain, and a small trial hole so you can see what your drive is actually built on. Then you get a written price with the dig, the base, the edges, the drainage and the surface each on their own line, and a straight answer about whether a relay would do.
The work
Nineties block paving, rural entrances and heavy vehicles
Block paving thirty years on. A lot of Bashley was built or rebuilt through the late eighties and nineties, and block paving was what went on the drive.
That first generation is reaching the end of it, and the pattern is always the same: rutting in the two wheel tracks while the rest stays flat, jointing sand gone, weed through the joints, and the concrete edge restraint leaning outward because it was bedded rather than haunched. If the sub-base is still sound we lift, re-screed on sharp sand, reset and properly haunch the edgings and re-sand with kiln dried sand, which is three days, not a fortnight. If the formation has softened, relaying buys a couple of years and we will say so on the visit.
Rural entrances are their own job. With no kerb to stop it, loose stone walks out onto the lane and the lane's water walks back in, so the top of the drive potholes and the bottom ponds. The fix is a cross fall and a channel drain across the entrance, a gully or silt trap at the low point, and a bound or blocked apron for the first few metres so there is nothing loose left to migrate. Where the ground will not soak, that water needs a positive outfall to a ditch, never the highway.
Built for what you actually park. A drive designed for two cars is not a drive designed for a caravan, a horsebox, a works van or a delivery lorry turning on it. Concentrated loads punch through a thin build up, and the damage shows as a dished area or a cracked slab, not as general wear. If something heavy lives on your drive, say so at the survey, because it changes the excavation depth, the sub-base, and whether we would put block paving, reinforced concrete or tarmac in that spot.
Permeable block, resin bound gravel over a bound base, tarmac and concrete all have their place, and what is under the drive usually decides between them. Loose gravel and hoggin still suit a plot off a lane so long as they go on a membrane and a compacted sub-base with a haunched edge to hold them. Nineties patios were bedded on dabs and rock once they settle. The rebuild goes on a full mortar bed, falling away from the house and below the damp proof course, and patios in Bashley covers that side of the work.
How it runs
Building a drive on a large plot down a lane
Thomas measures the area, watches where the water runs now, and marks manholes, meters and tree roots. On the quote, excavation and spoil, sub base, edgings, surface, drainage and making good are priced one by one.
A lot of Bashley homes have long drives or turning areas, so there is room for a digger and a skip, but a narrow lane can mean smaller loads and careful timing so neighbours can get in and out. We keep a route to your door open, fence or cover any open trench overnight, and sweep the lane each evening. If the dig finds soft ground, an old soakaway or a broken drain, we stop, show you, and give you a price before going on.
The Park boundary runs through Bashley. Inside it, planning goes to the National Park Authority, so the National Park Authority's interactive property map shows which side you are on. Paving the front is still permitted development inside the Park, as long as anything over five square metres is permeable or drains to a soakaway or border, not the road, and the front garden rules are set out on the Planning Portal. A new opening onto the road needs a dropped kerb through the highway authority. For one of the five listed entries, start with the Authority's heritage and conservation guidance.
Cost
Sub base, clay and what you park: the drive price
A drive in Bashley has no rate per square metre. What is below the surface costs more than the surface itself.
Getting to it. A nineties detached house with a turning area, a bungalow behind a hedge with a narrow opening, and a place halfway down an unmade lane are different jobs before any stone is ordered.
What you park on it. A car is one thing. A horsebox or a works van wants a deeper build up where it stands and turns.
The ground. Bashley has clay that shrinks and swells. The sub base must go deeper and be properly compacted, which means more spoil to take away. Clay drains slowly, so a soakaway may fail a percolation test, and the drainage may need to run to a permeable border or a channel instead.
Edges and surface. Block paving needs haunched edgings so it does not spread. Gravel needs a grid or a firm edge to stay put. Resin bound needs a solid, porous base under it.
Length. A long drive to a house set back from the lane uses more material and more hours, simply because there is more of it.
Ask any other quote what dig depth they allow, what goes into the sub base, where the water is sent, whether the edgings are haunched, and who removes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A washed out entrance or water heading for the house
A flag that has lifted across a path, an entrance washed out by rain, or a gully that has stopped taking water and is sending it towards the house are all reasons to ring rather than use the form.
Put a bucket or a cone over the trip so nobody catches a foot, and pull the leaves off the gully grate if it is safe to reach. Our first visit makes the area safe and gets the water running away, and the permanent repair is priced once we can dig. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If you cannot get through, keep your phone close, because missed calls are returned as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Being in a National Park changes who you are dealing with
Bashley sits on the edge of the New Forest, and for a good many addresses here the National Park Authority is the planning authority rather than the district council. That does not make a new drive harder to get, because paving in front of the house is permitted development inside the Park on the same terms as anywhere else.
What it changes is where any application goes, who looks at it, and what they are looking for, which is whether the work sits comfortably in a landscape the Authority is there to protect. The boundary does not follow anything obvious on the ground, so it is worth checking your own address on the property map before you assume either way.
In practice, that shapes the edge of your plot and the surface seen from the lane. The first is the edge: a soft verge, a gravel margin or a hedge line reads better than a hard kerb and a bright white edging, and it is also cheaper. The second is the surface where the drive is visible from the lane. A muted resin bound gravel, hoggin or graded stone disappears into the setting in a way that a large black macadam apron does not. None of that is a rule anyone will enforce on a straightforward drive.
It is simply the difference between work that nobody looks twice at and work that invites a conversation. Where the ground will not take a soakaway, Approved Document H sets out the drainage order to follow, and on a plot with room a SuDS approach that lets the water spread and soak on your own land is nearly always easier here than trying to send it anywhere else.
Who you are dealing with
Drives in Bashley, from a firm based in Boscombe
We come out to Bashley from our base in Boscombe, Bournemouth, a distance of about eight and a half miles. We lay drives and turning areas across Bashley, Wootton, Tiptoe and Sway Road, and into New Milton. Planning goes to the National Park Authority or New Forest District Council, depending on which side of the Park boundary you are.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 15471719, is Thomas Hannen's business, and he measures up and prices each drive himself. A verified Checkatrade customer rated the firm 10 out of 10. The survey and the line by line written quote are free. Before you book a visit in Bashley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Bashley?
Most repairs in Bashley need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.
| Question | In Bashley |
|---|---|
| Who decides | The National Park boundary splits Bashley, so the planning authority is either the New Forest National Park Authority or New Forest District Council, and the Authority's property map shows which. New Forest National Park Authority's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Bashley, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Bashley. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Partly inside the New Forest National Park, where design is looked at more closely and permitted development rights are narrower. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Bashley
Bashley straddles the Park edge. Who decides on a drive?
It depends on your address, because the Park boundary splits Bashley: the New Forest National Park Authority or New Forest District Council, and the Authority's property map shows which. Most front hardstanding stays within permitted development where the surface is permeable or the water is directed to a soft area on your own land, but the Park looks harder at anything visible from a lane or a green. We build the drainage to keep it permitted rather than gambling on an application.
Our drive was laid in the nineties. Worth relaying it?
Usually the blocks are worth keeping and the base is not. Bashley is largely newer stock, 39.3% of it built between 1983 and 2008, and drives of that generation went down on a thin sub base that suited one light car and does not suit what sits on them now. Blocks that lift clean can be washed and relaid. The saving comes from reusing them, not from skimping on what goes underneath.
Does the wet ground here rule out a permeable drive?
No, it rules out assuming one will work unaided. Bashley ground is naturally wet, so permeable block over a full depth of clean stone can still fill faster than it empties. We measure how quickly water actually drains before choosing, and where it is slow the stone layer is built as a tank with a controlled outlet instead of relying on it soaking away. That combination keeps the drive permitted and keeps water off the road.
What does Thomas actually check on the visit here?
The levels first, then the ground. At a Bashley property that means where water currently goes in a downpour, how far the finished surface will sit below the threshold, whether the National Park will have a view on what is visible from the road, and what comes out of a trial hole in wet ground. He measures, photographs and writes it up as an itemised quote. The visit and the quote both cost nothing.
How many days is the drive out of use?
On an ordinary Bashley frontage it runs three to five working days from breaking out to jointing, and the drive is unusable for most of that. Where there is width we phase it, doing one half at a time so a car can still stand on the plot. Wet ground adds a day, because the dig has to be matted or pumped before stone goes in. You get told the split before we start.
Nearby, and next door
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Get a price for your Bashley drive or patio
Tell us what has sunk, washed out or started rocking, and we will come out, dig a trial hole where it matters and put a written price in front of you.