Driveways in Broadstone
Drives, patios and paths across Broadstone and BH18, from a cracked concrete frontage to a full relay with the drainage sorted out.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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On most Broadstone drives the concrete is the original, poured when the house went up. The honest answer is usually that it has to come out, not be covered over. Once it is up, the sub-base underneath decides everything else, including the price.
Signs that Broadstone paving needs attention: The concrete drive has cracked into slabs that rock and hold puddles. The patio has sunk towards the house and water now sits along the back wall. Or a step or a lip has become a problem for somebody in the house, and the whole approach needs to be flat and even, not patched again.
We come and look at all of it in one visit: the frontage, the fall of the garden, the gate and side access, and what the ground does when it rains. Then you get a written quote with the dig, the sub-base, the edgings, the surface and the drainage on separate lines, so you can see what you are paying for and hold anybody else's price against it.
The work
Broadstone drives, and what is usually under them
The original concrete has to be broken out. Two thirds of Broadstone went up between 1945 and 1982, a quarter of the whole town in the late fifties and early sixties, and the standard frontage of that period was poured concrete, often two strips with grass down the middle.
Sixty years on it has cracked, tilted and lost its surface. It has to be broken out with a machine and carted away by grab lorry, so the muck away is a real line on the quote, not an afterthought, and what we find underneath is normally thin, which is why the depth of the new dig is judged in the hole and not promised in advance. The new build goes over a geotextile membrane at formation, with the sub-base compacted in layers and the edgings haunched in concrete.
The garage run and the side access. Two houses in five here are bungalows, and nearly every one of them has a garage at the side or the end. The strip beside the house is where drives fail first, because it takes all the turning and all the barrow traffic from any other work on the property. We build that section to the same depth as the parking area rather than a thinner one, and set the levels so water leaves the strip instead of standing between the house and the boundary.
The ground here holds water and the surface water risk across Broadstone is high, so where the rain ends up is a design decision from the start. Permeable block paving is usually the sensible pick on these wide shallow frontages, because the water then stays on your land instead of running to the kerb. Resin bound suits somebody who wants a flat, quiet surface with no jointing to empty and nothing to re-sand, and tarmac still earns its place on a long shared drive. A soakaway gets a percolation test first, and on some plots the answer is a positive outfall instead.
Rear patios go on a full mortar bed with a fall away from the building, the finished level kept down off the damp proof course, or a channel drain cut along the threshold where there is no room for that. For the back garden, see patios in Broadstone. These estates were built around mature trees, and roots lift slabs and crack tarmac in a way no surface repair will settle: sometimes the fix is a flexible surface that can be relaid, sometimes a root barrier and a rebuilt base. We also do the smaller work, a sunken bay that ponds relaid, a re-sand where the joints have emptied and weed has taken hold, rutting in a wheel track dug out and rebuilt, green staining washed off a shaded path, a gully cleared, an outfall found for a downpipe currently discharging onto the drive.
How it runs
Digging out and relaying a wide bungalow frontage
Many Broadstone bungalows sit on wide plots with an open front garden, so a new drive is often a big area with plenty of room to work. Thomas comes out to measure it, looks at the levels against the house, and checks where the water goes now: onto the road, into a gully, or into the lawn.
The quote itemises excavation, muck away, sub base, edgings, surface and drainage. A mini digger and a grab lorry do most of the moving on an open frontage. You keep a way into the house every evening, the road is swept, and the spoil goes off in the lorry. If the dig hits an old soakaway or a buried service, we stop, photograph it and give you a figure to agree.
The rule that bites here is water. Paving more than five square metres of front garden in an impermeable surface that drains onto the road needs planning permission, while permeable paving or a soakaway on your own land stays permitted development, and the Planning Portal sets out where that line falls. If you live inside one of the two conservation areas close to the village centre, the look of the drive carries weight as well. BCP Council is also the highway authority, so a dropped kerb is the same council, and the Planning Portal explains what a dropped kerb involves.
Cost
Where the rainwater goes matters more than the blocks
We do not price a drive per square metre. What goes under the surface decides more of the price than what goes on top.
Depth and spoil. A drive needs a proper depth of sub base, and every barrow of soil dug out to make room for it has to go off site. On clay that is heavy, wet and sticky, and it is paid for by the load.
Where the water goes. Broadstone has a high surface water flood rating, and clay drains slowly. A soakaway dug into it may fail a percolation test, so permeable block paving laid to BS 7533-103, or a channel to a proper outfall, may be the only way to keep water off the house and the road. It is part of the design from the start.
Getting to it. A wide bungalow frontage with room for a lorry, a semi where every barrow goes through a side gate, and a house on a shared private drive each need their own approach, whatever the area.
The edges. Edgings, steps up to a porch and any kerb work each add hours.
Ask any other quote how deep the dig is, what sub base goes in, and who pays to take the spoil away.
If it is urgent
A lifted block, a sunken bay or a drive that floods
If a block has lifted by the front door or a bay has sunk where the car stands, put something over it so nobody trips, and keep the car off a patch that is still moving. If water is ponding against the house, clear the gully grating if you can reach it.
Then ring. The first visit makes it safe and works out whether the base has failed or the drainage has. Our scheduled days are Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Please call rather than using the form, and if nobody picks up we return the call as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Bungalow floors sit low, so levels at the door decide the job
More than four in ten homes in Broadstone are bungalows, which is unusual, and it changes two things about paving here. The first is the threshold. A bungalow floor tends to sit close to the outside ground, so there is often very little room between the back door and the damp proof course.
Every time somebody lays a new patio over the old one the level creeps up, and after two goes the paving is above the course and the inside wall starts to feel damp in winter. If your skirting has gone patchy on an outside wall with a patio behind it, that is the first thing we would look at.
The second is that a bungalow puts the whole footprint of the house on a single roof, so a lot of rainwater arrives in a small garden. Add a wide front drive and there is more hard surface here per house than on a street of two-storey homes.
That is why we would rather build in a permeable surface, a channel drain across the threshold and somewhere for the water to go than lay a beautiful patio that ponds. It also makes step-free access easy to plan while the ground is open: a gentle fall instead of a step, a firm surface rather than gravel, and no lip at the door. It costs almost nothing to do at the time and a great deal to add afterwards.
Who you are dealing with
A driveway firm working across BH18
Thomas Hannen comes to measure the frontage himself and writes the price. It is his firm: Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. We are based in Boscombe, 7.3 miles from Broadstone, and lay drives across BH18, Merley, Corfe Mullen and Canford Heath. Before you book a visit in Broadstone, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
BCP Council covers planning, building control and the highway here, so one council answers every question on a drive. Our Checkatrade profile has a verified customer rating of 10 out of 10. The site visit and the itemised written quote are both free of charge.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Broadstone?
Most repairs in Broadstone 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 Broadstone |
|---|---|
| Who decides | BCP Council is the planning authority for Broadstone. BCP Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Ridgeway and Broadstone Park Conservation Area and Tudor Road and Golf Links Road Conservation Area. They cover parts of Broadstone, so check whether your street is inside one. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Broadstone. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Broadstone. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Broadstone
Do Broadstone's conservation areas affect a new drive?
For almost every house they do not. There are four listed entries in Broadstone, and the settlement has two conservation areas near its centre, Ridgeway and Broadstone Park, and Tudor Road and Golf Links Road. Outside those, nobody is judging the colour of your blocks.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole is the authority, and what they care about is surface water. The real constraint on this side of the job is where rain off a paved front garden ends up, not what it looks like.
Will a soakaway work under a Broadstone front garden?
Not by assumption: the ground here is naturally wet, and the surface water flood risk across Broadstone sits in the high band, so a hole full of stone can fill and stay full. The nearest watercourse, the Stour, is over three kilometres off, so there is no ditch at the end of the road to send it to. We dig a pit, fill it and time it before anyone specifies infiltration.
Our bungalow threshold is one step up. Can that go?
Usually, and it matters on this patch, because bungalows are 42.0% of what stands in Broadstone. Losing a step means dropping the paving level at the door and then finding the fall away from the wall in whatever distance is left, which is why levels get shot before anything is priced. Where there is not enough fall, a shallow ramp with a channel drain across the threshold does the same job.
Does it matter where new paving sends its water?
More here than in a lot of places. The ground under Broadstone shrinks and swells, so wetting one spot beside a footing all winter and letting it dry out in summer becomes a structural question rather than a damp patch on the wall. Paving is laid falling away from the building and the run finishes somewhere it can spread out well clear of the foundations, instead of being dropped at the corner of the house.
What gets checked on the visit before a price?
Levels first, because so much of the housing here is low and single storey, then a trial hole to see what is under the existing surface and how fast water leaves it. After that it is the run of the fall, the edge against the boundary, and the kerb line at the front. Thomas Hannen comes out and prices it himself. The visit costs nothing and the written quote is itemised so each part is visible.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Broadstone
Nearby places we also cover for driveways, with straight-line distances from Broadstone, and the other trades we offer in Broadstone itself.
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Our other trades in Broadstone
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Get a price for your Broadstone drive or patio
Send us the address and a line about what is wrong. We come out, look at the ground, the access and the fall, and put a written itemised quote in front of you. No charge either way.