Commercial Scaffolding Gloucester

Commercial scaffolding in Gloucester

Gloucester is the busiest commercial market in the county and the one where most of our Gloucestershire enquiries land. It is three different jobs under one name: a medieval city centre being rebuilt around the new Kings Quarter, a Victorian dock estate full of listed warehouses beside a working canal, and the M5 corridor at Quedgeley, Hucclecote and Brockworth, where the buildings are big steel sheds with very little to tie into. We price each of them for what it is.

A city that is rebuilding its centre

For a city its size, Gloucester has more live regeneration than almost anywhere we work. Kings Quarter, next to the bus and rail stations, has replaced the old Kings Walk shopping centre with The Forum — Grade A offices, a hotel, shops, apartments and new public space — and the streets around it are now attracting the follow-on work: refits, façade improvements and upper floors brought back into use. Further south the Docks and Llanthony continue to change, and the four Gates streets — Northgate, Southgate, Eastgate and Westgate — carry a constant run of shopfront, roof and upper-floor work behind trading frontages.

That shapes the scaffold more than the buildings do. City-centre commercial work in Gloucester is almost always on or over a public footway, almost always alongside a business that has to keep trading, and frequently next to a construction site with its own logistics plan. The scaffold has to fit all three.

• In the centre the question is the footway. The Gates are narrow, pedestrianised in places and busy all day. A frontage scaffold usually needs a licence, a protection fan or a boarded gantry, and an erection window that suits the shop rather than us.
• At the Docks the question is the building and the water. The Victorian warehouses are tall, heavy brick and mostly listed; several sit on the quayside, where the base, the edge and the canal operator all come into it.
• On the M5 corridor the question is the tie. Portal frames and cladding give a scaffold very little to hold on to, so the design goes freestanding, buttressed or kentledged and is priced that way from the start.
• Around the cathedral the question is consent. College Green, the precinct and the medieval streets around it are listed and in conservation areas, and fixings are agreed before anything is drilled.

Gloucester Docks: listed warehouses beside a working canal

The Docks are the most interesting scaffolding in the city and the easiest to get wrong. The warehouses are tall — five, six and seven storeys — built in heavy brick with small window openings, and most are listed. Several stand directly on the quay edge of the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, which is a working waterway managed by the Canal & River Trust.

• Height means design. Above the scope of TG20 a warehouse elevation needs an engineer’s design with calculated tie loads and foundations, and that design is in the price, not an afterthought.
• Ties go where the conservation officer will accept them. On listed brick that usually means joints rather than faces and through the window openings where we can, with the making-good agreed before the first anchor goes in.
• The quay is not ordinary ground. Where a scaffold stands on or near the quayside or overhangs the water, the Canal & River Trust expects to be told in advance under its code of practice for works affecting its waterways, and the edge needs protecting for anyone working at the base.
• The public walks through the Docks. The quaysides are open to the public and busy at weekends, so protection at ground level matters as much as on a city street.

The M5 corridor: big sheds with nothing to tie into

Quedgeley, Waterwells, Hucclecote, Barnwood and Gloucester Business Park at Brockworth are a different market altogether. The buildings are portal-framed sheds and modern offices, and the work is cladding replacement, roofline and gutter repairs, rooflight changes, signage and solar. The ground is usually good. The problem is the opposite of the Docks: a clad steel frame gives a scaffold almost nothing to tie into without drilling through the very cladding being worked on.

So the design goes freestanding — buttressed, kentledged or tied back to the frame at agreed points — and that is a bigger scaffold for the same elevation. We would rather price it properly at the start than discover it on site. On a live distribution site we also work to the site’s own rules: inductions, vehicle routes, permits to work and exclusion zones around loading bays.

Approvals: who does what in Gloucester

Gloucester is simple on licensing and slightly less simple on planning, because the city boundary does not include all of what people call Gloucester.

• Gloucestershire County Council is the highway authority for the whole county, including the city. A scaffold on a public footway or road needs its licence under section 169 of the Highways Act 1980, and a hoarding needs one under section 172. The city council does not issue either.
• Gloucester City Council handles planning, listed building and conservation matters for the city itself — the centre, the Docks, Quedgeley, Hucclecote and Barnwood.
• Brockworth, and Gloucester Business Park with it, sit in Tewkesbury Borough, not the city, so planning and conservation questions there go to Tewkesbury Borough Council. Highways is still the county.
• Listed buildings. Scaffolding itself rarely needs consent, but fixings into a listed building and the work the scaffold is there to serve often do, and the conservation conversation is usually the slower one.
• Canal & River Trust — consulted where a scaffold stands on, or over, the canal side at the Docks.

We apply for the highway licence as the scaffolding contractor. The county charges by duration and footway, so any figure we give before the application goes in is a budget figure, not a fixed one.

What we put up in Gloucester

• Commercial scaffolding — occupied shops, offices, hotels and schools, with the footway protected and the programme worked around trading.
• Industrial scaffolding — portal-frame units, cladding and roofline work, freestanding or kentledged where there is nothing to tie into.
• Temporary roofs — weather protection over a re-roof or a strip-out on a building that stays in use.
• Pedestrian protection — fans, boarded gantries and lit walkways where the public passes beneath.
• Scaffold inspections — our own scaffolds at every statutory interval, and reports on scaffolds erected by others.

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; a six-storey warehouse, a pedestrian gantry over the Gates or a freestanding scaffold on a portal-framed shed puts you outside it and into an engineer’s design.
• SG4 — NASC guidance on preventing falls while the scaffold is erected, altered or struck.
• BS EN 12811-1 — the duty classes. A class 2 inspection scaffold and a class 4 masonry scaffold look the same from the street and are not the same thing, and it is the commonest reason two commercial prices differ.
• 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 — we work to the principal contractor’s construction phase plan, provide RAMS and design calculations for the file, and hand over with the inspection record.

CISRS-qualified and CITB-trained scaffolders, Advanced CHAS accredited, £10 million public liability, RAMS and a job-specific toolbox talk before anyone starts. Oxfordshire Prestige Awards Scaffold Company of the Year since 2020.

How we price commercial work in Gloucester

There is no honest per-metre rate for commercial scaffolding, and anyone giving you one before seeing the elevations is guessing. On a Gloucester job the number moves on:

• Area and height — a Southgate shopfront and a dockside warehouse are not the same scaffold.
• Duty class — what the trade working off it actually loads the platform with. Masonry and cladding are heavier duties than painting or inspection.
• Design — anything outside TG20 carries an engineer’s design; at the Docks and on the sheds that is most jobs.
• Tie strategy — ties into listed brick, or kentledge and buttresses on a clad frame, both cost more than drilled anchors in a modern block wall.
• Highway licence and protection — licence duration, fans, gantries, lighting and any traffic management the county requires.
• Working hours — out-of-hours erection and strike in the centre, or working around a distribution site’s shift pattern.
• Hire period — written into the quotation with an extension rate stated, so a programme that slips costs a known amount.

The quotation states the duty class, the design basis, the hire period, what is included and what is not. Travel from Enslow is a small part of a commercial contract and we say plainly when it would not be.

Questions we get asked about Gloucester

Commercial scaffolders in Gloucester, and what hiring us involves

Gloucester is about an hour and a quarter from our yard at Enslow, near Kidlington, along the A40 and the M5. We run it with Cheltenham and Stroud, so a Gloucester contract is part of a regular county run rather than a one-off trip. Commercial scaffolding hire here is a designed, licensed and inspected scaffold for a stated hire period, with erection, strike and the inspection record included.

• Gloucestershire County Council is the highway authority. We apply for the footway licence as part of the job.
• Free site visit and written quotation. On the Docks, in the cathedral precinct or on a live distribution site we come and look.
• Design included where it is needed, with calculations for your CDM file.
• Seven-day inspections, scafftags and a handover record.

Where in and around Gloucester we work

• The city centre and the Gates. Northgate, Southgate, Eastgate and Westgate; Kings Quarter and the streets around The Forum; occupied shops and offices on licensed footways.
• The cathedral precinct and College Green. Medieval and Georgian, listed, with tight access and fixings agreed in advance.
• Gloucester Docks, Llanthony and Gloucester Quays. Listed warehouses, quayside bases, the outlet centre and the newer residential blocks.
• Quedgeley, Waterwells and Kingsway. Business park offices, distribution and the newer estates to the south.
• Barnwood, Hucclecote and Brockworth. Office parks, Gloucester Business Park and the M5 junction 11a sheds.
• The Forest of Dean. Cinderford, Lydney, Coleford and Newent — see below.

The Forest of Dean

West of the Severn, the Forest of Dean is the furthest part of the county from us, and we are straight about it. For commercial and industrial work of any length — the industrial estates at Lydney and Cinderford, schools, care homes, the works sites along the river — we quote it and run it out of a Gloucester programme. Planning there is Forest of Dean District Council; highways is still the county. For a short domestic job in the Forest a local firm will usually be the better answer, and we will tell you so.

Around Gloucester

We also cover Quedgeley, Hardwicke, Hucclecote, Barnwood, Brockworth, Churchdown, Longlevens, Tuffley, Newent, Lydney and Cinderford. Elsewhere in the county we have pages for commercial scaffolding Cheltenham, commercial scaffolding Cirencester, commercial scaffolding Stroud, and the county page for commercial scaffolding in Gloucestershire.