Choosing a surface, sinking drives, potholes and cracks, drainage and flooding, planning permission and dropped kerbs, what things cost — and the questions people ask about us before they let anybody near the front of the house. Each one has its own page, answered properly, with no invented urgency.
Answers
51 answers, sorted by the thing you're actually trying to work out. If yours isn't here, describe it on the quote form and your contractor will talk it through with you.
Choose the surface last, not first. Four questions decide it: how does it fail, can it be repaired invisibly, does it drain, and what will it need doing to it in ten years. Every surface on the market is a good driveway on a properly built base and a bad one on a poor base, so the money is better spent below ground than on the finish.
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Repair if the failures are local and the rest of the drive is solid, quiet underfoot and draining. Replace if it keeps failing somewhere new each year, if cracking runs across most of it in a map pattern, or if whole areas rock. The test is whether the base is still doing its job — patching a base that has gone is spending the money twice.
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Granite setts and properly jointed concrete last longest — decades and, for setts on a mortar bed, effectively a lifetime. Block paving follows at twenty-five years and more, tarmac and resin bound at fifteen to twenty. But build quality beats material comfortably: a well-built tarmac drive outlives a badly built stone one every time.
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Three to seven days for most domestic drives, from first dig to finished surface, depending on size, surface and access. Resin bound and imprinted concrete both need a dry window and a cure period on top of that. A dropped kerb runs on its own timetable and should be started weeks earlier, not at the same time.
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Spring to early autumn, for genuine technical reasons rather than convenience — tarmac needs warmth to compact, resin needs a dry base and a minimum temperature, and concrete and mortar can be permanently damaged by frost before they gain strength. Block paving and gravel are the most weather-tolerant and can be laid year-round.
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Block paving if you might ever need to dig the drive up, because it is the only surface that repairs invisibly. Resin bound if you want a smooth, joint-free, weed-free finish and already have a sound tarmac or concrete base — it is an overlay, so with no suitable base it becomes a two-stage job and a bigger price.
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Fifteen to twenty years from a properly built one, and longer if it gets a new wearing course part-way through. What shortens it is almost always thin layers, no edge restraint, poor compaction or standing water — the surface rarely wears out before the base gives up.
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Twenty-five years and more on a proper base with a concrete-haunched edge, and the blocks themselves outlast that comfortably. What fails is almost never the blocks — it is the edge restraint, the jointing sand or the base, and all three can be put right without replacing the drive.
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Fifteen to twenty years from a properly mixed mat on a sound base — and the base's condition usually decides it rather than the resin. What shortens it is laying in wet or cold weather, a wrong resin-to-aggregate ratio, a non-UV-stable resin, or a base that was never fit to be overlaid.
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A coloured concrete slab stamped with a texture mat while it is still green, then sealed — giving the look of setts, slate or flagstones with no joints and no weeds. It is hard-wearing, and it carries two honest costs: it is completely impermeable, and it cannot be repaired invisibly.
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Because something beneath it has lost volume. Usually an old service trench that was backfilled loosely and has finally consolidated, or a sub-base that was never properly compacted. Occasionally a cracked drain washing soil away — and that one is worth ruling out, because it keeps getting worse rather than settling to a level.
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Read the pattern, because it tells you the cause. A network of interlinked cracks means the base has failed under load. Cracks parallel to the edge mean the perimeter is unsupported. A single straight crack is usually a joint or an old trench below. Water gets into all of them, freezes, and levers them wider.
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Because it has lost its interlock. Block paving is held together by kiln-dried sand packed tight in every joint, pressing against a restrained edge. Empty the joints — usually with a pressure washer — or let the edge course move, and the blocks start working independently. Both are fixable without replacing the drive.
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Cut it back square to sound material, dig out anything soft or wet underneath, fill with clean stone and compact it in layers, then reinstate the surface — properly compacted, in a dry spell. Tipping cold material into a wet hole is the repair that always comes back, because the softened base that caused it is still there.
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They are not growing up from underneath. Seeds blow in and germinate in the silt and organic matter that collects in the joints or the surface texture. That is good news — the answer is full, well-compacted joints and regular sweeping, not anything structural.
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One of four things: the levels are wrong, the drainage is blocked, the drainage is too small for the area draining to it, or the receiving ground is saturated. Check the cheapest first — silted channels and blocked gullies account for a large share of flooded drives and cost almost nothing to clear.
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A driveway built so rain soaks through the surface and into the ground where it falls, rather than running off. It is a whole build-up rather than a top layer — an open-graded clean stone base with no fines in it, under a permeable surface. Done properly it keeps a front garden inside permitted development with no planning application.
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Into the ground first, then a watercourse, then a surface-water sewer with the water company's agreement — that is the hierarchy in Part H of the Building Regulations. It must never go into a foul sewer, and it should not be discharged onto the public highway. In a front garden there is a further planning rule on top.
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Usually the water company. Since 1 October 2011, drains and sewers shared by more than one property transferred to the water company — here United Utilities — so a blockage in a shared run is very often theirs to clear, free. A drain serving only your property, up to the boundary, remains yours.
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Only if you lay more than five square metres of impermeable surface in a front garden AND the water is not directed to a permeable area within your own property. A permeable surface, or a solid one draining to a soakaway, lawn or border, stays permitted development. Rear gardens are not caught by the rule at all.
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Apply to Cheshire East Council for consent under section 184 of the Highways Act 1980. The council decides whether it is acceptable on safety grounds, sets the construction specification, and in most cases requires an approved contractor to do the work. Allow weeks, and considerably longer if utility apparatus has to be moved.
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Yes, in most cases, and without planning permission — provided the surface is permeable, or the water from a solid surface is directed to a permeable area within your own boundary. What you also need, separately, is a dropped kerb, because paving the garden does not give you a legal way to drive onto it.
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Often, yes — and more often than elsewhere in the town. Conservation area status brings extra control over what a frontage looks like, and the Article 4(2) directions at Christ Church and High Street remove permitted development rights outright. Check with Cheshire East planning before anything is ordered.
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Legally, only where the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 applies — which for a driveway means excavating within three metres of a neighbour's building or structure and going deeper than the bottom of its foundations. Then you must serve written notice at least a month before starting. Practically, telling them anyway is worth doing.
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We do not publish a figure, because a number pulled out of the air is worse than no number — the callback has to honour it. What genuinely drives the cost is the groundworks: the depth of the dig, how much comes out, the drainage and the edges. The surface is a smaller share of it than most people expect.
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Far less than most people assume, and we do not publish a figure because it depends entirely on what caused the fault. A pothole or a settled bay is a short job. The same fault caused by a failing drain or a collapsed base is a different job — which is why the diagnosis comes before the price.
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The excavation depth, the sub-base thickness and how it is compacted, the edging detail, the drainage arrangement, what happens to the spoil, and the surface specification with thicknesses. A quote that gives a rate per square metre and none of that is not telling you what you are buying.
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Sometimes, and you can tell which by asking two questions: how deep is the dig, and where does the water go. Most large price gaps between quotes are explained by depth, drainage and edge detail — not by one firm being greedy. A cheap price with the same written specification is a genuine saving; a cheap price with no specification is a different job.
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No. The visit, the look at the site and the written quote are free, and there is no obligation either way. You are not tied in by asking, and nobody will keep ringing you if the answer turns out to be no.
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Once every year or two suits most drives, and a shaded or tree-covered one may want it annually. Sweeping regularly and keeping leaves off does far more good than an aggressive clean every spring — and on block paving, any clean must be followed by re-sanding the joints.
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It depends entirely on the surface. Imprinted concrete needs it — the sealer carries the colour and the protection, and wants recoating every three to five years. Block paving and sandstone benefit from it. Resin bound should not be sealed at all, and gravel cannot be. What matters most is what happens before the sealer goes on.
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It can be, easily. High pressure held close strips the kiln-dried sand out of the joints in seconds — and that sand is what holds a block pavement together. Cleaning is fine at moderate pressure with the lance kept moving, but the joints must be re-sanded and vibrated afterwards, every time.
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Give it time to settle before hard use, sweep it regularly, keep the drainage clear, and deal with spills straight away. The specifics vary by surface — new tarmac needs a few days and no turning on the spot, block paving joints want topping up after the first months, and resin wants keeping clear of silt.
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Deep enough for the ground and the traffic, which for a normal car on reasonable ground usually means the finished level sitting around 200–250mm above formation once sub-base, laying course and surface are counted. Soft clay, a slope or heavier vehicles push that deeper. The number that matters is the one written on your quote.
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Only if it was built for one. A drive designed for a car has a sub-base sized for a car, and a motorhome, horsebox or delivery lorry puts several times that load through a much smaller contact area. Turning heavy vehicles are worse still, because a turning wheel shears the surface rather than just pressing on it.
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Usually yes, with two things to check. The same front-garden planning rule applies to the new impermeable area, so more than five square metres needs permission unless it drains permeably. And if the widening reaches the highway, the dropped kerb has to be extended too — a separate consent from Cheshire East, on its own timetable.
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It has to stay accessible — burying it is not an option. What you can do is fit a recessed tray cover, which takes the surface material inside the lid so the chamber blends into the paving and still lifts out. Whatever is fitted, the cover has to be rated for what will drive over it.
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It is controlled waste, and it has to leave on a vehicle belonging to a carrier registered with the Environment Agency, with a waste transfer note recording where it went. Ask for the carrier registration number and keep the note — it is one of the quickest ways to tell a real contractor from a van.
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It depends enormously on which part of town, and the contrast is sharper here than in most places. The silk-era centre was built before private cars and largely has no frontage to park on at all. The postwar estates are where the driveways are — and those drives are now forty to eighty years old, on thin or non-existent sub-bases.
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Often not at the front, and it is better to know that early. The silk-era terraces in and around the centre are built hard up against the pavement edge, so there is no private frontage to pave and nowhere for a dropped kerb to lead. Where there is a rear yard or a back entry, that is usually where the possibility lies.
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Frost and water, both of which get worse with height. The Met Office records air frost rising from around twenty days a year near the coast to over seventy-five in the higher Pennines — Buxton averages 51.5 against 40.0 at low-lying Woodford — and the ground east of Macclesfield rises fast. More freeze-thaw plus steeper run-off is a harder life for any surface.
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Cumulatively, yes — which is exactly why the planning rule exists. Cheshire East names Macclesfield as the borough's only designated Flood Risk Area, with 47 internal flooding incidents recorded since 2011, and attributes part of that to an ageing network of unmapped culverted watercourses under the town. Every impermeably paved front garden adds to what that system carries.
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If you are in SK10 or SK11, yes. That is Macclesfield and the villages that belong to it — Bollington, Prestbury, Gawsworth, Sutton and Henbury and the rest — and it is deliberately a small patch, which is what makes getting to you quickly a realistic promise rather than a sales line. Put your postcode in the form and you will get a straight answer.
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Never agree to work with somebody who turned up unasked. Beyond that, four questions do most of the work: what is the excavation depth, where does the water go, what is your waste carrier registration number, and can I see your public liability certificate. A real contractor answers all four without hesitation.
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No. Tarmac is bought hot by the tonne against a booked job and is unusable within hours of going cold — there is no spare load being driven round a town looking for a home. It is one of the oldest doorstep approaches there is, and the right response is to close the door.
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Yes. Any contract over £42 agreed away from a business premises carries a 14-day right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, and the trader must give you written notice of that right. If they did not, the cancellation period extends by up to a year — and failing to give the notice is a criminal offence.
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No. Your details go to one local driveway contractor covering your postcode, and to nobody else. This is not a marketplace, a bidding board or a comparison site, and your number is not sold on. One enquiry, one callback, from the people who would do the work.
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The aim is the same day, and the honest position right now is that it is a matter of days rather than hours — the contractor covering the patch is being vetted before any details are passed on. The acknowledgement email you get says exactly where things stand rather than promising a call that is not booked.
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One local driveway contractor covering SK10 and SK11 — the same firm that rings you back, quotes the job and lays the drive. This site is the front door for them rather than a directory, so there is no chain of subcontractors between the enquiry and the people on site.
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New driveways and replacements in every common surface — block paving, tarmac, resin, concrete and imprinted concrete, gravel and natural stone — plus repairs, cleaning and sealing, drainage, dropped kerbs, groundworks, and patios and paths. Sixty-four individual jobs are written up under /services.
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Insurance is checked as part of vetting, and you are entitled to ask to see the certificate before work starts — a genuine contractor will produce it without hesitation. Public liability is the one that matters most to a homeowner, and any firm with employees also needs employers' liability by law.
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Tell us what you need and it goes straight to our Macclesfield driveway contractor — one callback, usually the same day. The quote is free and there's no obligation.