Upminster, RM14 - covering Hornchurch, Romford and the whole of Havering
Barking is the far end of the District line from Upminster, eight stops and roughly half an hour by road from Corbets Tey, and it is the most varied town we work in. The streets around the centre and off Ripple Road are Victorian and Edwardian terraces with front gardens a few metres deep. North and east are the Becontree cottages built in the 1920s. South of the town are post-war estates like Thames View and the new flats and houses going up at Barking Riverside. The question we get asked most in Barking is not what surface to choose. It is whether a car will fit at all, and we answer that honestly on the site visit.
We reply the same working day, usually within the hour.
Barking is an old parish on the River Roding, and its abbey was founded in 666; the Curfew Tower is all that survives of it. The town lived off fishing and farming, then market gardening and Thames-side industry, before the Becontree estate pushed houses north and east in the 1920s. Walk the streets between Ripple Road, London Road and Longbridge Road and you get the earlier layers: late Victorian and Edwardian bay-fronted terraces with a short walled front, a path and a bit of hedge. Upney and the roads towards Becontree are the interwar cottages. Thames View was built by Barking Borough Council between 1954 and 1960, 2,000 homes in one go, and Barking Riverside is adding around 10,000 more on former industrial land along the river.
A terrace front in Barking is a measurement problem before it is a paving one. Barking and Dagenham's own crossover guidance asks for a minimum parking depth of 3.8 metres for an angled bay, will not approve a drive where the car would overhang the public footway, and expects any surface over five square metres to be porous or drained to a soft area. That last point is the national rule in force since October 2008 and the reason we lay permeable resin or open-jointed block paving as standard here. The ground is low and flat between the Roding and the Thames, so there is no slope to help; the fall is built into the sub-base by us. Planning for Barking is handled by Be First on behalf of Barking and Dagenham Council.
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
"In Barking, maybe one enquiry in four is really about whether a car will fit the front at all, and the surface only comes up once we have said yes."
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 Barking 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
The outline of an abbey founded in 666 and dissolved in 1539, laid out as a park in the town centre, with the Curfew Tower the only abbey building left standing.
Learn more about Barking Abbey Ruins and Curfew Tower on Google Maps02
A Grade I Elizabethan manor built between 1560 and 1573 for Clement Sisley, kept by the National Trust and open to the public - a rare survivor among the later streets.
Learn more about Eastbury Manor House on Google Maps03
A Victorian park on Longbridge Road with a boating lake and a miniature railway, and enough paths to use up the three days before you can park on new resin.
Learn more about Barking Park on Google MapsWe are on Corbets Tey Road in Upminster, so Barking 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 Barking, 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.
A Barking terrace front is often 12 to 20 square metres, so the price is driven by access and the kerb more than by area: materials go through the house or over the wall, and skips need a permit on a busy road. Guide prices with excavation, sub-base, edging and surface included: resin bound £80-120 per square metre, block paving £75-115, tarmac £55-80, gravel £45-70, patios £90-150. Repairs from £250. A Becontree cottage or Riverside house with side access is cheaper to work on than a Ripple Road terrace of the same size.
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 |
In most cases, no. Barking is in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, with applications handled by Be First for the council. Under the rule introduced on 1 October 2008, a front drive is permitted development whatever its size as long as the surface is permeable or the rain runs off to a lawn or flower bed. Over five square metres of sealed surface draining to the street needs permission from Barking and Dagenham Council. Converted terraces split into flats do not get permitted development at all, so check your title before planning anything.
Through Barking and Dagenham Council's highways team, online. The application fee is £222.13 and is not refunded if the crossover is refused, and that stage normally takes about five weeks. Refusals come where the parked car would overhang the footway, where a full 3.6 metre crossover already exists, or where a council tenancy has not been cleared with housing. The council or a contractor it approves builds the crossover. We prepare the drive to the line of the new kerb so the two jobs meet cleanly.
Often, yes, but it is marginal and we will not pretend otherwise. The council's guidance wants 3.8 metres of depth for an angled bay, measured from the back of the footway, and a small car parked square-on needs a little more. We measure on the visit, take out the front wall where that gains you space, and lay the parking bay at an angle if that is what makes it work. If it does not work, we say so and suggest a tidy permeable front for bins and bikes instead.
Rarely. Barking sits on flat, low land between the Roding and the Thames, and the water table and the soil both work against a soakaway in most of the town. We build drainage into the surface instead: a permeable resin or block finish over an open-graded sub-base, a fall of about one in sixty built into the base, and a slot drain or a planted border to take the overflow. That satisfies the 2008 rule without digging a pit that fills with silt.
Call 01708 209015 or send the form. We come out from Upminster, measure from footway to bay, and give you a straight answer and a written price the same visit.