Upminster, RM14 - covering Hornchurch, Romford and the whole of Havering
Collier Row has no railway station. Never has. You get to Romford or the Central line by bus or, as most households do, by car, which means the front garden here does a job it was never designed for. The place is essentially one big 1930s estate wrapped round a crossroads of shops, with Havering Park and Bedfords Park to the north and the A12 cutting across the bottom. We come up from Upminster, on the far side of Romford, to lay resin bound, block paving, tarmac and gravel drives on those semis, and to put right the ones that were laid badly. Guide prices run from £45 per square metre for gravel to £120 for resin bound, with the excavation, sub-base and edging all in.
We reply the same working day, usually within the hour.
The name comes from the charcoal burners, the colliers, who worked the woods of the manor of Gobions and Uphavering, and there are Roman finds under the fields, but what you see today was almost all built in a single decade. Collier Row is based on a large private housing estate put up in the 1930s as London spread outwards between the wars, with its shops gathered at the crossroads where Collier Row Lane meets Collier Row Road. The houses are the interwar semi everyone recognises: bay window, hipped roof, a front garden of 30 to 45 square metres and a side passage through to the back. Chase Cross to the north-east, Havering Park towards Havering-atte-Bower, Mawneys down towards Romford and the roads off Clockhouse Lane and Lower Bedfords Road are all variations on that theme. Most fronts have been paved at least once since, and a good share of them twice.
Transport explains the driveways. The nearest stations are Romford on the main line and Hainault or Newbury Park on the Central line, all a bus ride away, so Collier Row households own cars and park them at home. That puts pressure on front gardens that were laid out for a lawn and a path. Underneath, this is the northern, higher side of Romford, where the gravel terrace of the town centre gives way to London Clay on the climb towards Havering-atte-Bower at 344 feet. Clay is slow to drain and sensitive to drought, and it is why so many of the area's older concrete drives have cracked in straight lines. Havering Council is the planning authority, and its 2025 flood strategy lists Havering Park among the borough's fifteen critical drainage areas. There is no conservation area and no Article 4 direction in Collier Row, so a permeable drive is permitted development.
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 seven in ten of the Collier Row fronts we measure up are being laid out for two cars, a higher share than anywhere else we cover."
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 Collier Row 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
A hundred and sixty-five acres of woodland and grassland at Havering-atte-Bower, just north of Collier Row, with the second-largest plantation of wellingtonias in the country. Good for dogs and muddy boots.
Learn more about Havering Country Park on Google Maps02
Country park on Broxhill Road with a captive red deer herd, meadows, woodland and an Essex Wildlife Trust visitor centre that looks out over east London. Green Flag since 2007 and a free car park.
Learn more about Bedfords Park on Google Maps03
The local park for the estate itself, close to the shops, with open grass and room for a kickabout. Not a day out, but the right distance for a walk while a resin drive cures.
Learn more about Lawns Park on Google MapsWe are on Corbets Tey Road in Upminster, so Collier Row 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 Collier Row, 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.
Collier Row fronts are on the larger side for Havering, often 35 to 45 square metres once the lawn is included, and most owners want two cars on them, so the surface area moves the price more than anything else. The side passage on a 1930s semi makes machine access straightforward, which helps. The clay adds a membrane and extra stone. Per square metre we quote gravel at £45-70, tarmac £55-80, block paving £75-115 and resin bound £80-120; patios are £90-150 and repairs start from £250, all including the excavation, sub-base, edging and 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 |
For a house, usually not. Collier Row is in the London Borough of Havering and the council applies the national permitted development rule that has been in force since 1 October 2008: a hard surface of more than five square metres at the front of a house is permitted as long as it is permeable or drains to a lawn, border or soakaway within your own garden. Resin bound, loose or resin-bonded gravel and permeable block paving all qualify without any application. A sealed tarmac or concrete drive that discharges to the road needs planning permission from Havering. There is no conservation area and no Article 4 direction in Collier Row, so there is no local restriction on top of that, unlike in Gidea Park a couple of miles away.
Havering Council builds it, or a contractor the council has approved; it is illegal for anyone else to do it and the council will remove an unauthorised crossover at your expense. You apply online through Havering's dropped kerb page and pay a £261 application fee, which is not refunded if the crossover is turned down. After a site inspection the council quotes for the construction itself. Collier Row Road, Collier Row Lane, Chase Cross Road, Lower Bedfords Road, Havering Road and Mawney Road are all on Havering's classified-road list, so a crossover onto any of them needs planning permission as well as the highways application. Side roads off those generally do not.
Because of what is underneath them. Collier Row is on the London Clay that covers the higher ground north of Romford, and clay changes volume with moisture: it swells over a wet winter and shrinks in a dry summer, especially near trees. A concrete slab or a thin tarmac skin laid straight onto it moves with the ground, and the crack appears along the weakest line, usually where the original path was. The fix is not a thicker surface. It is a deeper, properly compacted stone base with a geotextile membrane between the stone and the clay, which spreads the load and stops the base being pushed down into the subgrade. That is how we build every drive on this side of the borough.
Most can. A standard interwar semi front here is 30 to 45 square metres including the lawn, which is enough for two cars side by side if the whole width is used and the boundary with the neighbour is agreed. The constraints are the width of dropped kerb Havering will allow, any street tree, and leaving somewhere for the water to go. We usually keep a planted strip along one side so the drive still drains to a border, and on resin or permeable block the surface itself handles the rest. If the front is too narrow for two abreast we will tell you, rather than squeeze in a layout that leaves one car on the pavement.
A free visit from Upminster, a written price per square metre, and a layout drawn for the cars you have. Call 01708 209015 or fill in the form and we will ring you back.