A new driveway in Poole costs most people between £3,000 and £7,500, depending on the surface. Two cars parked side by side need about 5.2 metres of width, and a lot of Poole frontages do not have it. Measure across your frontage before you ring anyone, so you find that out now rather than after the drive is laid.

What a driveway costs in Poole

These are UK figures from independent cost guides updated in 2026. Work out your own area in square metres and read across.

Scroll this table across on a phone.

Excavating the old surface and taking it away is charged separately, at £30 to £50 a square metre. Access is the other thing that moves a price. A lorry that can pull up outside the house is a different job from one that has to park two streets away, and every load then comes in by barrow.

The guides disagree on concrete. One puts a plain concrete drive at £85 to £125 a square metre installed, the other at £70 to £110. They also split on how long it lasts, giving 20 to 30 years and 25 to 50 years. Concrete depends more on the ground under it and on the jointing than on the concrete itself, which is why two quotes for the same slab can be twenty years apart on lifespan.

Will two cars actually fit?

BCP Council publishes the sizes it expects a parking space to be. They are worth knowing before you pay for a drive that turns out to be too small for the second car.

• A parking space is 2.6m by 4.8m. That is the minimum BCP works to for a standard car space.
• Two cars side by side need about 5.2m of width. Measure your frontage wall to wall. Where that width is not there, the choice is two cars nose to tail, or a wider entrance if the boundary allows one.
• A garage only counts as a space at 7m by 3.3m inside. That is larger than most single garages, so a garage on the deeds does not always count as parking.
• Leave 5.3m in front of a garage. BCP asks for at least that, or 6m if you want the car to stand clear of the footway when the garage door is shut.

Resin bound and resin bonded are different things

Resin comes in two forms and they are sold under similar names. They behave differently, they cost differently, and only one of them is permeable.

• Resin bound is mixed before it is laid. The stone and the resin are mixed in a forced action mixer and trowelled out as one layer. The finish is smooth and the stone is held on all sides.
• Resin bonded is scattered on top. Resin goes down first and dry stone is broadcast over it. The finish is rougher, closer to the grip surface on a road, and loose stone comes away over time.
• Only the bound version lets water through. That matters for the 5m² rule on front gardens, which is set out in full on our Bournemouth driveways page. A permeable drive of any size stays inside permitted development, unless your street has had those rights withdrawn.
• Resin needs a sound base under it. It is a surface course of about 15mm to 18mm, laid over tarmac or concrete. If the base underneath moves, the resin cracks along the same line. The full base specification, and the two different builds sold as permeable, are on our resin driveways in Poole page.
• Ask for a sample and the guarantee in writing. Ask how many years, and what the guarantee actually covers, because colour and cracking are not always both included.

When a drive needs repairing rather than replacing

Plenty of Poole drives are twenty or thirty years old and still sound underneath. A repair is often the smaller job.

• Block paving. Individual blocks lift out and go back. A sunken patch usually means the sub-base beneath it failed, so the area is taken up, the base made good, and the same blocks relaid. Keep spares if you have them.
• Tarmac. The edges break up first, because there is nothing holding them in. Crumbling edges can be cut out and patched, and a worn but stable tarmac drive makes a good base for resin laid over the top.
• Concrete. Fine surface cracking can be left alone. Cracks that step, where one side sits higher than the other, mean movement underneath and patching will not hold.
• Resin. Small damaged areas can be cut out and refilled, though an exact colour match on a weathered drive is difficult. Ask to see a repair the company has done before, not a new install.
• Gravel. Topping up is straightforward. Gravel that keeps escaping onto the pavement is usually an edging problem.

What the drives are like across Poole

Poole was built in stages, and the stage your street belongs to decides most of what a driveway job involves.

• The Old Town and the streets behind the quay. Terraces built right up to the pavement, with no front garden to convert. Off street parking here usually means a rear courtyard or a plot at the side rather than a drive at the front.
• Parkstone and Ashley Cross. Victorian and Edwardian villas mixed in with 1930s semis. Frontages are often deep enough for one car but not two, so the question is whether the entrance can be widened rather than whether the drive can be lengthened.
• Branksome Park and Canford Cliffs. Large detached plots with long drives, mature pines and wide entrances. Tree work and the front boundary wall can add as much to the job as the surface does.
• Sandbanks and Evening Hill. Tight plots at the end of a single road in and out. Deliveries have to be timed, because there is nowhere to leave a lorry standing and no second route around.
• Broadstone and Ridgeway. Interwar and post-war housing on wider plots, generally the easiest drives to work on. Slopes are the common complication, because a steep drive has to be set out so the water runs away from the house rather than towards it.
• Canford Heath and Creekmoor. Later estate housing with short standard drives and integral garages. These are the plots where the garage measurement above tends to decide whether a second car has anywhere to go.
• Hamworthy and Upton. Mixed ages and generally more room at the front. Access is usually straightforward, which keeps the barrowing down.

Why two quotes for the same drive come out different

Most of the money in a driveway is spent below the surface, where you cannot check it afterwards. Two prices for the same frontage usually differ for one of these reasons.

• How deep the dig goes. A shallower excavation is quicker and cheaper on the day. It is also a common reason a drive settles into ruts a few winters later.
• Where the water is being sent. A drive that drains onto a border costs less than one needing a soakaway or a connection, and on Poole clay the soakaway is not always an option.
• Whether the old surface is coming out. Laying over the top is cheaper. It only works if what is underneath is sound and the finished level still clears the damp course and the front door.
• Access. If the lorry has to sit on the road and the material comes in by barrow, that is hours of labour on a job measured in days.

Sixteen conservation areas in Poole

BCP Council has 48 conservation areas across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. Sixteen of them are in Poole, including several of the districts with the longest drives.

Ashington, Ashley Cross, Branksome Park and Chine Gardens, Brunstead Road, Canford Cliffs Village, Canford Magna, Chester Road, Evening Hill, Heckford Park, Oakley Lane, Poole Park, Ridgeway and Broadstone Park, Sandbanks, The Avenue, Town Centre Heritage, and Tudor Road and Golf Links Road.

• Check whether your address is inside one. Conservation area boundaries follow lines that are not obvious from the street, and one side of a road can be in while the other is out.
• Permitted development can be restricted. Councils can withdraw the rights that normally let you pave a front garden or put up gates and walls. Ask BCP about your specific address rather than assuming the national rules apply.
• Boundary walls and gates are part of the job. Widening an entrance often means taking down a length of front wall, and in a conservation area that wall may be the thing the designation is protecting.
• Trees get automatic protection. The rule and the six weeks notice BCP requires are covered on our Bournemouth driveways page.

BCP publishes the full list and the maps on its conservation areas page.

The ground under Poole

Poole sits on layered clay and sand, and clay holds water where sand lets it through. Over in Christchurch the ground is river gravel again, so the drainage answer there is different. That decides where the rainwater from your drive can go, and it is set out in detail on our block paving in Poole page.

The dropped kerb

Without a crossing over the pavement, a new drive is not something you can legally get a car onto. That crossing is highway work, it is applied for separately, and BCP charges £130 to assess it before any construction cost. We have set the whole process out on the Bournemouth driveways page, and it runs the same way in Poole.

Getting quotes in Poole

Send the postcode and the two measurements if you took them. Say what is in the way as well. A wall that has to come down, a slope, overhanging branches and a shared access all change what the work costs.

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Where we cover

All of BH12 to BH17. Parkstone, Branksome, Canford Cliffs, Sandbanks, Lilliput, Broadstone, Creekmoor, Oakdale, Alderney, Canford Heath, Hamworthy and Upton.

• BournemouthClick to see Bournemouth
• PooleYou are here already
• ChristchurchClick to see Christchurch

If block paving is the surface you have settled on, the costs, the clay and what a proper job looks like underneath are set out on our block paving in Poole page.