Driveways in Spetisbury
Roadside parking, worn out drives and patios that hold water, priced in writing after a free visit.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
How you get on and off the carriageway shapes a Spetisbury drive as much as the surface does, because the village is strung out along a main road. We lay drives, parking and patios here and through the DT11 villages along the Stour.
Spetisbury drive and patio work comes down to parking, worn surfaces and settled terraces. Somewhere to pull off the road at a house that has only ever had a verge or a strip of gravel. An old surface that has broken up along the wheel tracks and now throws loose material out onto the tarmac. Or a garden terrace that has settled, holds water in one corner and has gone slippery in the shade.
Before anything is priced we dig a trial hole, take levels off the house, and stand at the exit to see what you can actually see when you pull out. Then you get one written quote with the dig, the muck away, the base, the edgings, the surface and the drainage on separate lines.
The work
Pull-ins off the road, old boundary walls and turning space
Making a place to park at the roadside. Plenty of houses along the village have no frontage worth the name, so parking means taking in part of a garden or firming up a worn verge. The paving is the easy half.
Forming the crossing sets the date, because it is a highway application, the edge detail belongs to the highway authority, and the first metre or two of your drive has to hold a car without spilling stone back onto the road. That first stretch gets a bound surface and a haunched kerb line every time.
Openings through an old wall. There is a good deal of old brick and flint boundary walling about the village and a number of listed buildings along it. Cutting a gap through a wall like that is bricklaying, not paving: the reveal has to be rebuilt into proper piers, tied and capped, or the wall each side leans within a couple of winters. If the wall belongs to a listed building it is a consent question first, and walls and gates next to a highway are worth reading where a new gate is going in near the carriageway.
Half the housing in Spetisbury went up between the 1940s and the early 1980s, and those drives are bay concrete or a thin tarmac skim laid on the subsoil. They crack along the wheel tracks and break up at the garage threshold. Sound concrete takes resin bound straight over it with no dig. Anything that rocks comes out and the sub-base is rebuilt in compacted layers before the surface goes back.
On its own we will also do the small work: a sunken bay, a rocking slab, pointing washed out of a terrace, a re-sand in kiln dried sand, or a silted gully given a proper outfall, with the finished level always clear of the damp proof course. For a garden terrace, see patios in Spetisbury.
How it runs
Laying a new drive in Spetisbury, from dig to finish
Thomas measures up, checks the levels against the house and the road, and looks at where rain runs now. The quote he writes lists excavation, muck away, the sub-base, edgings, the surface, drainage and any dropped kerb as separate items. One company covers the whole job.
The semis and bungalows on the closes usually have an open front where a small digger and a grab lorry can work. A cottage fronting the A350 is tighter: deliveries and the skip have to be planned around the traffic, and some frontages sit below the road, so the drainage is settled first. The sub-base is compacted in layers, the edgings are set before the surface goes down, and the road and footway are swept each evening. If the dig turns up an old soakaway, a buried drain or soft ground, we stop, photograph it and price it, and you decide.
A front drive is permitted development if the water stays on your land, through a permeable surface or a soakaway. Five square metres or more of sealed surface draining to the road needs permission, as the front garden rules set out. A vehicle crossing over the verge is a separate application to Dorset Council and takes longest, so we start it first. On a listed house, check listed building consent before the frontage is altered.
Cost
Most of a drive's cost is under the surface
We do not quote a rate per square metre, because most of the money goes into what you never see.
The dig and the muck away. Breaking out an old concrete drive and carting it off is heavier work than lifting turf. The depth of the dig and the number of lorry loads are real costs.
The ground. Soft or wet ground needs a deeper sub-base, or a geotextile under it. Ground lower down towards the river can be softer than on the higher closes, so Thomas digs a trial hole instead of guessing.
Where the water goes. The water has to stay on your property. That can mean permeable block, a gravel strip, a channel drain to a soakaway, or regrading a frontage that falls towards the house.
Access and the kerb. A wide open front is quicker than a narrow one where every barrow goes round a parked car. A new dropped kerb has its own council fees and process.
The surface. Block paving, tarmac, resin and gravel each want a different base and edging, and a different amount of time.
Ask other firms how deep they dig, what sub-base they lay, where the water goes, and whether taking the spoil away is in their price.
If it is urgent
A sunken drive or a block that has lifted
Driveway trouble is rarely an emergency, but some of it should not wait. A block or slab that has lifted by a door is a trip hazard, and a drive that sends rainwater at the house can soak the wall below the damp course.
Mark the hazard, and keep water moving away from the house with a temporary channel if you can. The first visit finds the cause, usually a failed sub-base or a blocked drain, and makes it safe by lifting and relaying the worst of it. Scheduled work is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For something urgent, phone us, as the form is slower; if the call goes unanswered, we ring back as soon as we can.
The one local thing
Coming out onto the main road, safely and legally
The A350 runs the length of Spetisbury, and that single fact changes more about a drive here than the ground does. Reversing out onto a road that traffic moves along at speed is the thing to design out, so we lay the turning space out on site with the car you own, not a figure from a book, and we would rather lose a parking bay than leave you backing onto the carriageway.
Sight lines matter as much as space: what you can see when you are sitting in the driver's seat, not standing on the verge. Gates get set back far enough that a car can be off the road while they open, and they open inwards. The highway authority will have its own requirements for the crossing itself, which is the part of the application that takes the time and the reason we start it the day you say yes.
It also decides the surface at the road end. Loose gravel is a poor neighbour to a busy road: it gets thrown out under tyres, washes into the gutter and ends up somebody else's problem. Even where the rest of the drive is going to be gravel, we bind the first stretch, usually resin bound or block paving on a haunched edge, so nothing migrates onto the tarmac. Drainage runs the same way.
Water off your drive cannot be sent out to the highway drain, so it goes to a permeable surface, a border or a soakaway inside your boundary, with a channel drain across the entrance if the ground falls that way. Deliveries are handled around the traffic too: smaller loads, nothing tipped in the road, and the spoil away on a grab lorry, never a skip standing on a main road for a week.
Who you are dealing with
Drives and parking across the DT11 villages
Spetisbury is 14.2 miles from our Boscombe base. We lay drives here and in Charlton Marshall, Blandford and Bryanston, and Dorset Council handles planning and highway crossings for every one of them. The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Spetisbury, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
It is owned by Thomas Hannen, who measures up and prices every drive in person. A verified customer's Checkatrade score for us is 10 out of 10. Coming out to look costs you nothing, and the written quote, broken down line by line, is free as well.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Spetisbury?
Most repairs in Spetisbury 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 Spetisbury |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Spetisbury. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Spetisbury, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Spetisbury. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Spetisbury. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Spetisbury
We share the drive with next door. Who authorises the work?
Both of you, in writing, before a spade goes in. Many homes in Spetisbury are semis or terraces, and a lot of the accesses here are shared strips with a right of way rather than a boundary down the middle. If one owner pays and the other objects at the halfway point, the job stops with the ground open. We set each half out on the same quote so the split is obvious from the start.
There are old buildings along the street. Does that limit materials?
Spetisbury has no conservation area, so the material is your choice, but there are a number of listed buildings in the parish and the rules change if one of them is your house or your boundary wall. Outside that, the real limit is levels, not planning. A frontage sitting below the road needs the water sorted before anyone decides between block, gravel and a bound surface, because the surface will not fix a fall that runs the wrong way.
The concrete drive has lifted at the joints. Can it be patched?
Patching concrete rarely holds, because the slab has moved, not worn. Much of Spetisbury was built between the mid forties and the early eighties, most heavily in the late sixties and early seventies, and drives of that vintage are thin unreinforced slabs poured onto whatever happened to be there. Once one bay tips, the neighbouring joints open in turn. Breaking out and rebuilding the ground underneath is what stops the cycle.
Where do the skip and the materials stand during the job?
On your own ground if there is room for them, and on the road with a permit from Dorset if there is not. A skip on the highway needs that permit and needs lighting, and on the through road at Spetisbury it has to be arranged rather than assumed. We would rather use a grab lorry for the dig out, which loads and goes the same day instead of leaving a skip outside for a week.
How many days before we can park on it again?
Block paving can be driven on as soon as it is jointed and compacted, so the drive is out of use during the dig and the laying rather than afterwards. Concrete and resin both need curing time before a car goes near them. Spetisbury is a shade about fourteen miles from our base, so we work full days here, and you get told which day the surface goes down so parking can be arranged.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Spetisbury
Nearby places we also cover for driveways, with straight-line distances from Spetisbury, and the other trades we offer in Spetisbury itself.
Driveways nearby
Our other trades in Spetisbury
Driveways and patios guides
Driveway planning permission and where water goes Sunken or ponding driveway: base or drainage Indian sandstone vs porcelain paving: an honest comparisonEverything we do in Blandford Forum Driveways, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Want a proper price for the drive?
Tell us where you park now and what the ground does after rain. Free visit, free itemised written quote, no salesman.