Upminster, RM14 - covering Hornchurch, Romford and the whole of Havering
Romford is four miles west of our yard on Corbets Tey Road, so it is where a good part of our week goes. The town is bigger and more mixed than anywhere else we cover: Victorian terraces off Oldchurch Road and Waterloo Road, 1930s semis fanning out towards Rush Green and Mawneys, newer blocks round the station. The ground changes too. The centre sits on a gravel terrace about fifty feet up; head north past Rise Park and you are on London Clay at three times that height. We price every drive after a site visit for that reason, not from a postcode. Guide prices start at £45 per square metre for gravel and run to £120 for resin bound, with excavation, sub-base and edging included.
We reply the same working day, usually within the hour.
Romford has had a market since 1247 and a railway since 1839, and the housing shows both. The streets nearest the old Market Place and South Street have the oldest fronts, mostly Victorian terraces that spread along Oldchurch Road, Waterloo Road and the lanes behind the station from the 1840s on. Those plots are short, often shared with a neighbour, and the original paths were brick or quarry tile. The interwar ring is where most of our Romford work is: three-bed semis in Rush Green, Mawneys, Heath Park, Rise Park and Marshalls Park, with front gardens of 25 to 40 square metres laid out for a privet hedge rather than a car. Squirrels Heath and Ardleigh Green are much the same. Beyond those, the post-war estates and the newer flats round the town centre have their own quirks, mostly to do with shared access and who actually owns the frontage.
The ground matters more here than in most of Havering because it is not one thing. Romford town centre sits about 50 feet up on a gravel terrace, which drains well and takes a permeable surface without fuss. North of the A12 the land climbs onto London Clay, reaching around 150 feet, and clay holds water, shrinks in a dry summer and heaves in a wet winter. A sub-base that is fine on gravel will let a surface crack on clay within a couple of years. The River Rom runs under the town centre in culverts, and Havering lists the Rom and Beam catchment as its top-priority critical drainage area, with Gallows Corner, Rise Park and Heath Park also on the list. So we check where your run-off goes before we specify anything. Planning is Havering Council; the Market Place core has been a conservation area since 1968, but it holds very few houses with front gardens.
Local
Upminster Based
Hornchurch, Upminster and across Havering
6
Surface Types
Resin to gravel, one crew for all of it
Free
Site Visits & Quotes
Written, itemised and fixed
Written
Guarantee
Handed over on paper at the final walk-round
From £80/m²
Smooth, porous resin and stone over a properly built base. The surface most Emerson Park and Upminster enquiries ask about first.
Learn more about Resin Bound Driveways
From £75/m²
Clay or concrete pavers in herringbone, stretcher or basketweave, machine-cut to the edges and held in a concrete haunch.
Learn more about Block Paving Driveways
From £55/m²
Two-course hot-rolled tarmac with a proper binder underneath, framed in block or kerb. The best value on a long drive.
Learn more about Tarmac Driveways
From £45/m²
Stabilised gravel on a honeycomb grid so it stays put, drains freely and suits the bigger plots around Emerson Park and Cranham.
Learn more about Gravel Driveways
From £90/m²
Porcelain, sandstone and limestone patios on a full mortar bed with falls, drainage, steps and walls designed in from the start.
Learn more about Patios & Paving
From £250
Sunken block relaid, tarmac patched or resurfaced, edges rebuilt and drainage sorted when a full replacement is not needed.
Learn more about Driveway Repairs
"Roughly one in three Romford quotes north of the A12 turns up clay within the first spade depth, and that changes the sub-base spec before we have priced anything."
Based on enquiries and jobs handled by Hornchurch & Upminster Driveways.
Most guarantees in this trade cover the surface, because the surface is the easy bit. Ours is written around the structure underneath, which is where a driveway on Havering's London clay either holds or does not. We put the excavation depth, the compacted MOT Type 1 thickness, the concrete haunch behind every edge and the drainage route on the quote, and we guarantee that build. If the surface sinks, spreads or ponds because any of that was not done right, we come back and fix it at our cost.
In
Writing, before we start
The guarantee terms go on the quote, not on a leaflet after the job
0
Overlays on a bad base
We will not lay a new surface over a base that has already failed, however cheap it would make the quote
Steps three, four and five are the ones nobody photographs and the ones that decide whether the drive is still level in fifteen years.
We come out, measure, and look at what is under the existing surface. On the clay that sits beneath most of Romford that is where the decisions get made, not on the phone.
Dig depth, sub-base thickness, edge detail, drainage and the surface, each with its own line and a fixed total. The figure on the quote is the figure on the invoice.
Whatever is there now is broken out and taken away in full. We excavate to the depth the ground needs, lay a geotextile on soft clay and compact MOT Type 1 in two layers with a plate or roller.
Kerbs, block soldier courses or aluminium trims are bedded on concrete and haunched behind before anything else is laid, so the finished surface has something to push against.
Linear channels, gullies and soakaways go in now, with the falls set so rain leaves the surface and stays inside your boundary as the permitted development rules require.
Screeded sand and machine-cut block, hot-rolled tarmac, hand-trowelled resin or compacted gravel in its grid, laid by the same crew that built the base.
We walk the job with you, sand in or seal as the surface needs, take every scrap of waste away and hand over the written guarantee before the van leaves.
Not sure which surface suits the house? The cost guide compares all six side by side, and the site visit is free either way.
Resin needs a day before you walk on it and three before you park on it, so here are three good reasons to be out of the house.
01
Trading since 1247 and still open on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays in the Market Place. Fewer stalls than in its heyday, but it is the reason the town centre is laid out the way it is.
Learn more about Romford Market on Google Maps02
Lake, 1904 bandstand and a lakeside cafe on the Gidea Park side of town. A flat loop round the water takes twenty minutes and it is the best of Romford's parks on a wet afternoon.
Learn more about Raphael Park on Google Maps03
Local history museum in part of the former Ind Coope brewery, covering Romford and the wider borough from its Essex market-town days to the present. Small, cheap and run by people who know the area.
Learn more about Havering Museum on Google MapsWe are on Corbets Tey Road in Upminster, so Romford is a short drive for a site visit. Visits are free and usually within a few days of your call.
We would rather show you a driveway than a star rating.
Customer reviews are being collected and will appear here as they come in. In the meantime, when we come out to quote in Romford, ask to see photos of recent jobs on houses like yours - and ask the other firms quoting the same question. A finished drive two streets away tells you more than a testimonial ever will.
Romford prices depend first on what is under the lawn. On the gravel ground near the centre we often dig out 200 mm and build back on 150 mm of compacted Type 1; on clay streets in Rise Park or Mawneys we go deeper and add a geotextile, which adds a day and some cost. Skip access on a terrace with no side gate is the other big factor. As a guide, gravel runs £45-70 per square metre, tarmac £55-80, block paving £75-115 and resin bound £80-120, all including excavation, sub-base, edging and the finished surface.
What moves the price up or down →| Surface | Guide price |
|---|---|
| Resin Bound Driveways | £80 to £120 per m² |
| Block Paving Driveways | £75 to £115 per m² |
| Tarmac Driveways | £55 to £80 per m² |
| Gravel Driveways | £45 to £70 per m² |
| Patios & Paving | £90 to £150 per m² |
| Driveway Repairs | £250 to £2,500 per job |
Usually not. Since 1 October 2008 the national rule has been that a front-garden hard surface over five square metres is permitted development only if it is permeable or drains to a lawn or border, and Havering Council applies that rule across Romford. Resin bound, permeable block paving and gravel all pass. A sealed tarmac or concrete drive that sheds water onto the pavement needs an application. If you live in the Romford conservation area around the Market Place, or in a flat, tell us and we will check with Havering before quoting.
The application goes to Havering Council, not to us. There is a £261 fee that is not refunded if the crossover is refused, and after a site inspection the council quotes for the construction. Only the council or its approved contractors are allowed to build the kerb itself; anyone else doing it is breaking the law and the council will remove it at your cost. If your house is on one of Havering's listed classified roads, Mawney Road or Hornchurch Road for example, the crossover needs planning permission as well. We time the drive so it is finished when the kerb goes in.
Depends which side of town you are on. The centre and the streets south towards Hornchurch sit on free-draining Thames gravel, where permeable paving and soakaways work as designed. North of the A12, through Rise Park, Marshalls Park and up towards Havering-atte-Bower, you are on London Clay. Water sits on clay, so a soakaway can fill and stay full. There we prefer a permeable surface over a deeper stone sub-base that stores water, or a linear drain to a lawn, and we tell you which on the site visit.
Yes, and we do plenty of them along Oldchurch Road and the streets behind South Street. Everything comes through the front, so we use a mini digger or hand dig, and a skip on the road needs a Havering permit which we arrange. The front is small, often under 20 square metres, so the job takes two or three days rather than a week. We also settle the party boundary with the neighbour on paper before we start, because a shared edge is the usual sticking point on these fronts.
Tell us the street and we will tell you whether you are on gravel or clay before we even turn up. Free site visit and written quote from a firm four miles down the road in Upminster.