Driveways and patios in Blandford Forum
Yards, frontages and drives built to the ground and the access you actually have, with the water dealt with before the surface is chosen.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
In the middle of Blandford Forum the hard part is rarely the paving. It is getting a tonne of stone in and a tonne of spoil out through a passage three feet wide. That is what decides how the job is built and what it costs, so it is the first thing we measure.
Most people ring us here about one of three things. A back yard or courtyard that floods, greens over and has stopped draining anywhere. A shared parking area behind a terrace that has potholed and nobody can agree who deals with it.
Or a frontage where the paving has crept up against an old brick wall and the room behind it has gone damp. We come out and look at all three the same way: what is the fall, where can the water lawfully go, and what can physically get on and off the site. Answer those and the surface almost picks itself.
The work
Town yards, back lanes and the estates on the edge
Courtyards and yards behind the terraces. Half of the old town is long, narrow plots reached through a passage or an archway, and that rules out a machine before we start. The dig comes out by barrow and tonne bag to a grab lorry or a skip on the nearest legal standing, the new stone goes back in the same way, and floors and hallways get boarded and sheeted where the route runs through the house. It is slower, and we price it as slower rather than pretending otherwise. Small units suit these spaces: setts, clay pavers, brick on edge and small format natural stone all turn a corner and take a cut without looking wrong.
Nearly a fifth of the town's housing is pre-1919, and plenty of those houses have no front garden at all, so the job is a threshold, a step and a strip of paving rather than a drive. The critical dimension is the level. Georgian and Victorian brick was built without a damp proof course, and every time somebody has laid a new surface over the old one the ground has climbed nearer the internal floor. We take it back down, keep a fall away from the wall and leave a narrow gravel margin or a slot channel where there is room, so the brickwork can still dry out.
Shared parking areas and back lanes. These fail at the drainage first and the surface second: a gully silted up, a fall flattened out by successive patching, then ponding, then potholes where the standing water has softened the base. The repair that lasts is to reinstate the falls and the outfall, dig out the failed areas to firm formation over a geotextile membrane, rebuild and compact the sub-base and finish in tarmac or heavy duty block paving. Patching over a wet base is money you will spend again. Away from the centre the housing is ordinary post war and later, with concrete and block drives from the 1970s and 1980s now cracking and sunken in the wheel tracks, and those are straightforward jobs with room to work: lift, dig, rebuild the base to a proper depth, relay the good blocks with kiln dried sand in the joints, or take the concrete out and start again in permeable paving or resin.
Gardens that step down want the levels set off the house and the retaining built rather than banked. Porcelain on a primed full mortar bed, sawn stone pointed by hand, or riven paving where you want it to look older than it is. There are over two hundred listed entries in the town, so on a good many addresses consent comes before the work rather than after, and where a boundary wall is involved boundary walls have their own rules, which we would sooner check at the quote than halfway through.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Dorset Council cover both planning and the highway here. Paving at the front stays permitted development while the water stays on your land, through a permeable surface or a fall to a soakaway or a border, and more than five square metres of hard surfacing draining onto the road needs planning permission, which is what Planning Portal guidance on paving a front garden covers. A dropped kerb is a separate application. In the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston Conservation Area the material itself can form part of the decision, so we talk that through before anything is ordered, and in the old town we walk the access at the same visit.
Cost
What decides the price of a driveway
In the old town almost nothing can be reached by lorry, and that is not a detail, it is the job: everything arrives and leaves through a passage by barrow, and the day is longer for it. On the estates at the edge of town a lorry can back onto the drive and the same work costs less. Under it, the depth of the dig, the ground and how much muck goes away are the real variables, along with where the water is allowed to go. Ask any quote for the dig depth, the sub base, the drainage and who takes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A trip hazard, or a drive that floods
In a shared yard, tell us who else uses it when you ring, because the quickest fix is often one gully and one fall rather than the whole surface. A flag lifted in a passage or a bay sunk at a doorway is worth the phone rather than the form. We make it safe and get the water moving first, then price the permanent work once the ground can be opened up.
The one local thing
In the conservation area, what it looks like is a planning matter
Blandford is not an ordinary town to pave in. There is a conservation area covering the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston side of it, and something over two hundred listed entries in and around the town. Where consent is needed, appearance is part of what gets judged. Like for like repair of an existing surface is maintenance and nobody minds.
Changing the material is a different conversation, and a bright resin or a large grey porcelain in front of a Georgian frontage is the sort of thing that draws an objection when a gravel, a sett or a stone would have gone through without one. That is not a matter of taste, it is what the application will be measured against, so it is worth knowing before you order.
Two things catch people out more than the surface does. Listing does not stop at the house: a garden wall, a set of steps, railings or a gate pier can be covered by the listing of the building they belong to, so work in the garden can need listed building consent as well. And trees in a conservation area are protected whether or not anyone has ever put an order on them.
If widening the drive means taking one out or cutting it back hard, you have to give the council notice and wait before touching it. That is weeks, not days, and it is the single most common reason a drive here starts later than the customer expected. Tell us at the visit if a tree is in the way and we will build the wait into the programme instead of finding it on the day.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We work Blandford Forum and DT11, out through Bryanston, Stourpaine, Spetisbury and the Winterborne villages, around sixteen miles from us. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Blandford Forum questions we get asked
Does the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston conservation area cover paving?
Where your property falls inside it, appearance is controlled and that takes in what you lay at the front. The Blandford St Mary and Bryanston Conservation Area treats a like for like repair as maintenance, so renewing a worn stone path in the same material is one thing and swapping it for a modern block is another. Dorset Council look at what is visible from the street. Behind a wall in a back garden the choice widens a long way.
With 209 listed entries in town, does my yard matter?
Only if the listing touches your own building. Blandford Forum carries 209 listed entries, from the Ryves Almshouses on Market Place outwards, and where a house is listed the consent runs to the curtilage as well as the fabric, so a yard surface up against the wall falls in scope. Most households here are not in that position and are dealing with ordinary permitted development. Thomas checks the entry before pricing, not after the ground is open.
How do you reach a walled yard behind a Blandford terrace?
On foot, with everything barrowed through or lifted over where a neighbour will allow it. Terraces make up 31.1% of Blandford Forum and few of those yards have a gate wide enough for a machine, so breaking out is done by hand or with a small breaker and the arisings come out in tonne bags. It is slower and the quote says so, but it is normal work in this town rather than a reason to turn the job down.
Can a walled courtyard drain into a soakaway?
Rarely, because there is nowhere sensible to put one. Ground around Blandford Forum drains well enough in open country, but in a small walled yard the pit would sit a metre or two from old footings, and that is the last place to be introducing water. We normally fall the yard to a channel and connect into the existing surface water system, which means proving the run first. Failing that, a shallow storage layer under the paving is the fallback.
What is priced separately when access is this tight?
The hand work and the muck away, mostly. On a Blandford Forum yard the quote splits out breaking up and carrying the old surface through the house or over the wall, the tonne bags and their collection, the base material, the paving itself and any drainage connection. Seeing those as separate lines lets you keep an existing surface in one area and put the money into the drainage instead. VAT is shown on top.
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Get a written price for the yard, the drive or the patio
A free site visit in Blandford Forum, the access measured properly, and an itemised quote with the dig, the base and the drainage priced separately.