Driveway guides for Twickenham homeowners
Written to answer the question rather than to sell you a driveway. If reading one of these means you decide you do not need us yet, it has done its job.
Most driveway advice online is written for the wrong reason
Search for anything about driveways and you get a lot of pages that answer the question in two sentences and then spend nine paragraphs explaining why you should get a quote.
These are not that. They contain the numbers, the actual council requirements for Richmond upon Thames, the build depths, and the cases where the honest answer is that you do not need to spend the money at all. We would rather you arrived at a quote already knowing what you are looking at, because those conversations are better for everybody.
If something here is out of date or you think we have got it wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
If you have landed here first and want the overview instead, start with block paving driveways in Twickenham.
- What a block paved driveway costs in Twickenham
Honest ranges, what moves the price up and down, and the extras that catch people out.
- Do you need planning permission?
The 5m² rule, permeable surfacing, and the conservation areas that change the answer.
- Dropped kerbs in Richmond upon Thames
The charges, the stages, the conditions, and the order you have to do things in.
- How a block paved driveway is built
What goes underneath, why each layer is there, and what to ask any installer about it.
- Why block paving sinks
How to read what your driveway is telling you, and whether it needs a repair or a re-lay.
- Block paving vs resin, tarmac and gravel
An honest comparison, including the cases where block paving is the wrong answer.
- Looking after block paving
Jointing sand, weeds, cleaning without wrecking the blocks, and whether sealing is worth it.
Which one you need depends on where you are
You have no driveway yet
Start with the dropped kerb guide, because the council process is the long pole and the sequence catches people out. Then check whether your frontage is deep enough for a car to park entirely off the footway, because that single measurement decides whether a crossover application is worth making at all.
You have a driveway and it has gone uneven
Read why block paving sinks first. Where a driveway fails tells you why it failed, and why decides whether you are looking at a day's repair or a full lift and re-lay. Both cost a fraction of a new driveway, and quite often people arrive expecting the worst and leave with the cheapest of the three.
You are collecting quotes
Read the cost guide and the build guide together. The first tells you what the ranges actually are in this part of London and which council charges nobody mentions. The second gives you six questions to ask every installer, which will tell you more about a quote than the number at the bottom of it.
You have not decided on a surface
Read the comparison. We only lay block paving, so we have tried to be explicit about the frontages where resin, tarmac or gravel is the better answer, including the accessibility case where we would talk you out of block entirely.
Six things worth knowing anyway
- A permeable driveway needs no planning permission whatever its size. An impermeable one over 5m² draining to the road does.
- Richmond upon Thames asks for permeable surfacing and at least 10% soft landscaping with a new crossover.
- The hard standing has to be finished before the council will build the crossover.
- Driveway blocks are 50mm. 40mm blocks are for patios and will crack under a car.
- Herringbone in the trafficked area. It interlocks in two directions; stretcher bond creeps.
- Keep the joints full of sand. It is most of what maintenance is, and empty joints are how good driveways start to fail.
Council charges and requirements are as published by Richmond upon Thames and correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of writing. Always confirm current figures with the council before you budget, and check what designations apply to your own address rather than to your street.
Thinking about your driveway?
Tell us about your driveway and your plans. We’ll come and look at it, talk you through the options and put a written quote in front of you. Free, and no obligation.
We normally reply within 24 hours.