Scaffolding Eynsham

Scaffolding in Eynsham

Eynsham is about twenty minutes from our yard at Enslow, out along the A40. It is a village with a medieval core, a square, and lanes that were laid out for carts — and it has a great deal of new housing arriving on its edges. Those two halves need completely different scaffolds, and the old half is where the cost comes from.

Why a village job can cost more than the same job in a town

People are often surprised that scaffolding a cottage in a village lane prices higher than an identical elevation on a town street. The scaffold is the same. The getting-it-there is not.

In the older parts of Eynsham — around the Square, Mill Street, Acre End Street and the lanes off them — the practical constraints are:

• Nowhere to stand the lorry. Single-track lanes with no passing place and no legal loading space mean we either unload fast and move, or unload at distance and carry. Carrying tube and boards any real distance is simply slower, and it is labour.
• No rear access. A town terrace usually has a back alley. A village cottage often has a garden you can only reach through the house, which is not an option, so everything goes over or around.
• Overhead obstructions. Mature trees, telephone drops and low eaves in lanes that were never designed for vehicles.
• Neighbours close enough to matter. On a tight lane the scaffold frequently needs to oversail or stand partly on someone else’s ground, which is a conversation to have before the day, not on it.

None of that is a reason to be quoted a vague number. It is the reason we would rather walk a village lane before pricing than work off an address, because the difference between an easy Eynsham job and an awkward one is about access, not about the building.

A note on the neighbour’s land

It comes up more in villages than anywhere else. If a scaffold needs to stand on, or oversail, adjoining land, you need the neighbour’s agreement. Where that cannot be obtained, the Access to Neighbouring Land Act 1992 provides a route to apply to the court for access to carry out works that are necessary for the preservation of your property — but it is slow, and it is far better to have the conversation early and informally.

We will tell you at survey stage if we think your job needs the neighbour’s cooperation. It is one of the most common causes of a start date slipping, and it is entirely avoidable with notice.

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 — and in a narrow lane, a scaffold that encroaches on the carriageway is a more involved application than a footway one.
• West Oxfordshire District Council handles planning, conservation area and listed building matters.

As across Oxfordshire, the county bills the licence weekly rather than issuing one flat permission, and does not take applications from the public — the contractor applies. We handle it, but we need lead time, and in a village lane the licence is very often what sets the start date.

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 Eynsham

• Re-roofs and chimney work — the staple, on stone cottages and modern estates alike.
• Stone and lime repair — coursed rubble limestone has no regular bed joints to work with, so ties go into brick dressings and openings, or the load goes to the ground.
• Temporary roofs — worth their cost on a stone cottage, where a wet fortnight with the roof off does lasting damage.
• New-build access — the development on the edges of the village, where repeat house types let us price a programme rather than individual plots.
• 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 an Eynsham job the number moves on:

• Access — the dominant factor in the old village. Whether we can get a lorry alongside changes the labour more than the elevation does.
• How much scaffold and how high.
• Duty class — what the work actually loads the platform with.
• Tying — rubble stone offers no regular joints, so expect ties into openings or raking support.
• Ground — riverside and new-build plots both need a bigger spread under the standards, for different reasons.
• Neighbour agreement — not a cost, but the commonest cause of a delayed start.
• Hire period — on a highway licence the fee is weekly.

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

Questions we get asked here

Around Eynsham

We cover the surrounding villages too — Cassington, Yarnton, Stanton Harcourt, South Leigh, Freeland and Long Hanborough. Nearby we have pages for Witney, Woodstock, Carterton and scaffolding in Oxford, or see the whole of Oxfordshire.