A new driveway in Bournemouth costs most people between £3,000 and £7,500, depending on the surface you choose. BCP Council charges a separate £130 just to assess a dropped kerb, and the kerb work itself is usually around £2,000 on top. Find out whether you need one before you agree a price for the drive.

What a driveway costs

These are UK figures from two independent cost guides, both updated in 2026. A typical double driveway is around 50 square metres.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Two things move those numbers more than anything else. Digging out and carting away the old surface runs to £30 to £50 a square metre on its own. Access matters too, because a lorry that cannot get near the front of the house means barrowing, and barrowing costs hours.

The two guides do not agree exactly on tarmac. One puts a 50 square metre drive at £3,000 to £4,500 and the other works out closer to £5,500. Treat tarmac quotes above £5,000 as worth a second opinion rather than automatically wrong.

The dropped kerb is a separate job and a separate bill

This is the part that catches people out. Your driveway contractor lays the drive. The kerb across the pavement is highway work, and BCP Council controls it.

• £130 to apply. That covers the application and a site inspection. BCP does not refund it if they turn you down, if you decide to use your own contractor, or if you change your mind.
• Around £2,000 for the work. That is BCP’s own guide price for a standard crossover, which is three dropped kerbs and two tapers.
• About four weeks. Once you accept the quote and pay, the work is usually scheduled within four weeks.
• Your deeds have to allow it. Check that your property deeds permit parking a vehicle on the property before you apply. If you rent, you need written permission from your landlord.
• Using your own contractor is allowed, with conditions. They must be street works accredited and hold a Section 171 licence to work on the highway.

Front gardens and the five square metre rule

You can lay a permeable driveway of any size without planning permission. Gravel, permeable block paving and porous asphalt all count, and so does a solid surface that drains onto a lawn or a border instead of onto the road.

Planning permission is only needed when the surface is more than five square metres, does not let water through, and has nowhere for the water to go. That is the whole rule.

• It applies to houses, not flats. Maisonettes, converted houses and flats are outside these rights.
• An Article 4 direction can remove it. Some streets have had permitted development rights withdrawn, so check before assuming.
• The drainage decides it. A block paved drive that runs into a border is fine. The same drive falling towards the pavement needs permission.

The ground here is sand, and that helps

Bournemouth is built on the Branksome Sand Formation, roughly seventy metres of quartz sand laid down around forty five million years ago. Above it sits the Boscombe Sand Formation, which carries the rounded flint pebbles you see in older garden walls. The cliff tops add two or three metres of flint gravel on top.

That matters in three ways when you are laying a driveway.

• Soakaways usually work. Sand takes water away far better than the clay that dominates most English towns. A permeable drive with a soakaway is a realistic option across much of the area.
• Compaction is everything. Loose sand moves. The sub-base has to be dug deep enough and compacted properly, or the drive settles into ruts where the car wheels sit. A quote that comes in well under the others is often low because the digging is shallower.
• It is not sand everywhere. The Poole Formation underneath includes the Parkstone Clay Member, and there are clay beds within the Branksome sand itself. Ground varies street by street, so a contractor who digs a trial hole is doing you a favour.

Trees, and why they matter more in Bournemouth

The town is full of mature pines, and a great many of them are protected. If your property sits in a conservation area, any tree with a stem thicker than 7.5cm measured at 1.5m above the ground is protected automatically.

• Six weeks written notice. You have to tell BCP Council in writing six weeks before any work on a protected tree.
• The council can protect it permanently in that window. If BCP makes a Tree Preservation Order before the six weeks are up, the work stops there.
• Roots count as work. Digging out a driveway inside the root spread affects the tree, so raise it early rather than on the morning the digger arrives.

Read the council’s own guidance on trees in conservation areas before you plan a drive around a mature tree.

Which surface suits which house

Getting quotes in Bournemouth

Give us the postcode, say what you want laying, and add anything that makes the job awkward. Narrow access and a tree in the way both change the price, so it saves everyone a wasted visit.

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Where we cover

Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch, and the postcodes around them. BH1 to BH11 for Bournemouth, BH12 to BH17 for Poole, and BH23 for Christchurch.

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