Driveways in Southbourne

A Southbourne front garden can become a drive. The lawn, the beds and the topsoil all come out, down to a formation that will take a load. A geotextile membrane goes over anything soft, then a crushed stone sub-base compacted in layers to a depth set by what is going to park on it.

Most Southbourne frontages sit behind a low front wall, so opening one up for a car is its own line on the quote, with the new piers built to match the old brick where the wall stays.

Block paving. Laid on a screeded bed of sharp sand, cut to the edges, vibrated in and the joints filled with kiln dried sand. It copes with cars turning, it can be lifted and relaid over a drain, and a permeable version built to the BS 7533 permeable paving guide lets rain soak through into the base instead of running off.

Resin bound. A good finish on a straight drive, and free draining if it goes over a permeable base. It is only as good as what is under it, so we will not lay it over cracked concrete, and we would steer you away from it on a forecourt where several cars turn on the same spot.

Tarmac. The practical answer for a long shared forecourt or a drive down the side of a detached house, laid hot over a proper base and edged so it cannot spread.

Breaking out old concrete. The concrete drives laid in front of the inter-war houses and bungalows of Southbourne have usually cracked along their bays and sunk where the ground was made up. It all comes out and leaves by grab lorry or skip, and the new base is built from scratch. Laying a new surface over a failed slab just copies the cracks.

Shared forecourts. Outside a Southbourne house split into flats the parking area takes far more use than a private drive, so it wants a deeper dig, a heavier sub-base and edge restraints haunched in concrete. We phase it so half the spaces stay usable while the other half is built.

Drainage and levels. The finished surface falls away from the house and stays below the damp proof course, with a channel drain at the gate or a threshold drain at the door where the levels are tight. Rain goes to a soakaway, a planted border or a permeable build, never into the road.

Repairs. A sunken bay, rutting in the wheel tracks, a lifted edge or blocks stained black by oil and leaves can often be put right without starting again, and we will tell you when that is the sensible answer.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: excavation, muck away, the sub base, edgings, the surface itself and the drainage on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

A front drive on a house stays permitted development if the rain soaks away within your own boundary. More than five square metres of hard surface draining onto the road needs planning permission, as Planning Portal guidance on paving a front garden explains, which is why the drainage is designed rather than assumed. Flats have no permitted development rights, so a forecourt outside a converted house can need planning whatever its size, and the freeholder has to agree first. Near Southbourne Grove, check the conservation area boundary too: the council keeps the list.

Ring rather than use the form. A lifted slab, a sunken bay by a doorway or a gully that has stopped taking water are the ones that will not wait, because somebody falls or water ends up against the house.

The first visit is about making it safe and getting the water going somewhere, and we quote the permanent work once the ground can be opened up. On a forecourt shared by several flats, tell the freeholder or managing agent as well, because the permanent repair will come through them. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

If you are turning a front garden into parking, the kerb is the one part you do not control. BCP Council is the highway authority for Southbourne as well as the planning authority, and a car may only cross the pavement where the council has approved a vehicle crossing under section 184 of the Highways Act.

That is a separate application from anything we do inside your boundary, with its own fee and its own timetable, and the council weighs things like how close the junction is, sight lines along the road, and whether a street tree, a lamp column or a gully sits where the crossing would go. Planning Portal's dropped kerb guidance is the place to start.

So get that answer before you pay for a drive. A lot of Southbourne houses sit behind a front garden and a low wall, and a drive laid in hope and then refused a crossing is a paved garden nobody can drive onto. Where the crossing is approved, we set the levels of the drive to meet it, so the fall runs back into your own drainage rather than out across the new kerb. Where it is refused, the same garden can still take a better path, a bin store and planting on a permeable base, which is a much smaller job.

Nearby places we also cover for driveways, with straight-line distances from Southbourne, and the other trades we offer in Southbourne itself.

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