Scaffolding Benson

Scaffolding in Benson

Benson is about thirty-five minutes from our yard at Enslow, down towards Wallingford. It is a Thames-side village with an active RAF station on its doorstep, and that second fact introduces a consideration almost nowhere else we work has: how tall the thing you are putting up is allowed to be.

Working next to an operational airfield

RAF Benson is a working station. Aerodromes have safeguarding arrangements around them — a set of protected surfaces in the airspace on the approaches, intended to keep obstacles out of the way of aircraft. Tall structures within those areas are a planning and aviation consideration, not just a construction one.

For most ordinary scaffolding this never comes up. A two-storey domestic scaffold in Benson village is not going to trouble anybody’s approach path. Where it does start to matter is:

• Anything unusually tall — a tall building, a chimney or spire scaffold, or a scaffold with a mast or tower on top of it.
• Cranes and hoists, which is the common one. A crane is far taller than the scaffold it is serving, and crane operation near an aerodrome routinely requires consultation with the aerodrome operator before it goes up. If your job needs a crane to land a temporary roof or lift materials to height, that is a conversation to have early.
• Work on the station itself or on MoD property, which brings access control, security clearance and site induction on top of the ordinary requirements.

We are not aviation consultants and we would not pretend otherwise. What we will do is flag it at quotation stage if your job looks like it might engage any of that, rather than discovering it when the crane is booked. On a straightforward house in the village it simply will not apply.

The Thames, and the base

Benson sits on the river, and the ground near it behaves accordingly. Alluvial river soil holds water and stays soft well after rain, which means a standard sole board may not spread the load adequately on a riverside plot.

The fix is unglamorous and effective: more spread. Longer or doubled sole boards, or proper spreaders, so the pressure under each standard comes down. Combined with the seven-day inspections that the Work at Height Regulations require, that is what stops a slow settlement turning into a scaffold out of plumb.

Approvals: two councils

• Oxfordshire County Council is the highway authority. A scaffold on a public footway or road needs a licence under section 169 of the Highways Act 1980.
• South Oxfordshire District Council handles planning, conservation area and listed building matters — and is the authority that would consider aerodrome safeguarding on a planning application.

As everywhere in Oxfordshire, the county bills the licence weekly rather than as one flat permission, and does not accept applications from the public — the contractor applies. We handle it, but we need lead time, and the licence frequently sets the start date rather than our diary.

Any licence fee we quote is indicative, taken from published council schedules. Fees change and vary with footway width and duration, so treat it as a budget figure until the application goes in.

What we put up in Benson

• Re-roofs and chimney work — the staple, across the village stock and the modern estates.
• Repeat housing programmes — where the same house type recurs we design the scaffold once and reuse it across the run, which takes real cost out.
• Temporary roofs — weather protection on winter work. Note that landing one often needs a crane, which is the thing to check early here.
• Flint and brick repair — on the older village stock, where ties go into brick dressings rather than into flint.
• Commercial — shops, pubs and offices, trading underneath while we work, with the public route protected.
• Domestic — extensions, loft conversions, rendering, replacement windows and solar.

The standards we work to

• TG20:21 — NASC technical guidance for tube-and-fitting scaffolds. Inside its scope the scaffold comes with a TG20 compliance sheet. Non-standard geometry, an unusual tie pattern or a temporary roof puts you outside it and into a bespoke design from a scaffold engineer. If a quotation does not say which you are getting, ask.
• SG4 — NASC guidance on preventing falls while the scaffold is erected, altered or struck. It governs how our people work, not the finished structure.
• BS EN 12811-1 — the duty classes. A class 2 inspection scaffold and a class 4 masonry scaffold look alike from the pavement and are not the same thing. It is the commonest reason two quotations differ sharply.
• Work at Height Regulations 2005 — a scaffold in use is inspected at intervals not exceeding seven days, and again after anything likely to have affected its stability.
• CDM 2015 — applies to domestic projects too, with the duties passing to the contractor.

CISRS-qualified and CITB-trained scaffolders, Advanced CHAS accredited, RAMS and a job-specific toolbox talk before anyone starts. More on our scaffolding questions page.

How we price it

There is no honest per-metre rate. On a Benson job the number moves on:

• How much scaffold and how high.
• Duty class — what the work actually loads the platform with.
• Ground — riverside plots need a bigger spread under the standards.
• Lifting — if the job needs a crane, that is a cost and, near the airfield, potentially an approval.
• Repetition — several identical houses is cheaper per unit than one in isolation, and we price it that way.
• Hire period — on a highway licence the fee is weekly.
• Access control — work on MoD property carries induction and clearance time that affects the programme.

The quotation states the duty class, the hire period, what is included and what is not.

Questions we get asked here

Around Benson

We cover the surrounding villages too — Ewelme, Berrick Salome, Roke, Shillingford and Warborough. Nearby we have pages for Wallingford, Didcot, Thame and scaffolding in Oxford, or see the whole of Oxfordshire.