Scaffolding Faringdon

Scaffolding in Faringdon

Faringdon sits on its hill above the Thames valley, half way between Oxford and Swindon on the A420, about forty-five minutes from our yard at Enslow. It is two towns in one now: a small, old market town of stone and brick around the Market Place, and a ring of large new estates that has grown the town substantially in the last fifteen years. The scaffolding questions in each are completely different, and we price them that way.

A hilltop market town that was in Berkshire until 1974

Faringdon was a Berkshire town until the county boundary moved in 1974, and it still feels more like the Vale than the Cotswolds. The centre is compact: the Market Place, with the Old Town Hall — a seventeenth-century market hall standing on stone columns, Grade II* listed — and the streets running off it, London Street, Gloucester Street, Marlborough Street, Church Street and Coxwell Street, down to All Saints church. On the skyline is Faringdon Folly, the brick tower Lord Berners built on Folly Hill in 1935.

The buildings in the centre are a mix that matters for scaffolding: Georgian and Victorian frontages, often refaced over older timber-framed cores; local limestone and red brick; stone slate and clay tile roofs; and a lot of them listed and inside the conservation area. They are mostly two and three storeys on narrow pavements, with shops trading underneath.

• In the Market Place the question is the pavement. Frontages sit right on the footway, so a front scaffold usually needs a county licence, a protection fan, and an erection time that suits the shop.
• On the old streets the question is the tie. Soft brick and stone, refaced fronts over old frames, and listed buildings mean ties go into joints and through openings, never casually into the face.
• On the new estates the question is access. Shared drives, parking courts, close-set houses and gardens planted last year.
• In the villages the question is the lane. Great Coxwell, Buckland, Longcot and Uffington have narrow lanes, stone walls and thatch.

Old houses in the centre: what we watch for

The older houses around the Market Place reward looking before drilling. A smooth Georgian front can be a skin of brick or render laid over a much older frame, and the wall that looks solid at street level may not take an anchor where a modern wall would. On those buildings we tie through window openings and into sound joints, keep the fixings few and where they can be made good, and design for the height where a three-storey front needs it. Roofs are often stone slate or old clay tile, which crack under point loads, so chimney and roof work is done from a properly boarded platform rather than by walking the slope — see our page on chimney scaffolding.

Listed building consent is rarely needed for the scaffold itself. It is often needed for the work the scaffold is there for, and fixings into a listed front are worth agreeing with the conservation officer before anyone arrives.

The new Faringdon

Much of the scaffolding in Faringdon by volume is on the new estates around the edges of the town. These are modern cavity-wall houses, repeated house types and tight plots: rear extensions, loft conversions, re-renders, replacement windows and solar. The scaffold is straightforward; the planning is about the shared drive, the neighbour’s car, the fence line and the parking court. On a run of identical houses we can standardise the scaffold and price the run, not each house from scratch.

Approvals: who you apply to in Faringdon

• Oxfordshire County Council is the highway authority. A scaffold on a public pavement or road needs its licence under section 169 of the Highways Act 1980. The county’s published schedule lists a scaffold licence at £250 for a month, renewable monthly, and it aims to decide applications within five working days. The application goes in with the scaffolding contractor’s public liability insurance, so we make it.
• Vale of White Horse District Council handles planning, listed building consent and the conservation areas.
• The Faringdon conservation area covers the historic centre around the Market Place, with a large number of listed buildings. Scaffolding rarely needs consent; fixings into a listed front, and the work itself, often do.
• Over the Wiltshire border — Highworth and the villages towards Swindon are in Swindon Borough, which is its own highway authority with its own licence.

Licence figures are taken from the county’s published schedule. Fees change, so treat them as a budget figure until the application goes in.

What we put up in Faringdon

• Re-roofs and chimney work — stone slate and clay tile in the centre, concrete tile on the estates.
• Repointing and facade repair — lime work on the older stone and brick, longer hires and a monthly licence to plan around.
• Domestic — extensions, loft conversions, rendering, windows, solar and gutters across the estates and the villages.
• Commercial — shops, pubs and offices in the Market Place, schools, and the business units on the edge of town.
• Temporary roofs — weather protection on a winter re-roof, particularly on an occupied listed house.
• Scaffold inspections — our own scaffolds at every statutory interval, and reports on scaffolds put up 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 three-storey listed frontage tied only through its openings, a fan over the Market Place footway or a temporary roof takes you outside it and into a bespoke scaffold 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 painting scaffold and a class 4 masonry scaffold look the same from the street and are not the same thing.
• Work at Height Regulations 2005 — a scaffold in use is inspected at intervals not exceeding seven days and after anything likely to affect it. Every scaffold we erect gets those scaffold inspections as part of the hire.
• CDM 2015 — applies to domestic projects too, with the client duties passing to the contractor.

CISRS-qualified and CITB-trained scaffolders, Advanced CHAS accredited, £10 million public liability, RAMS and a job-specific toolbox talk before anyone starts.

How we price it

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

• How much scaffold and how high — a two-storey estate semi is a different scaffold from a three-storey Georgian front.
• Duty class — what the work loads the platform with.
• How it is tied — joints and openings on old stone and brick cost more care than drilled anchors in a modern wall.
• Highway licence and protection — a Market Place frontage adds the licence, a fan and early working hours.
• Access — a parking court on the estates, a narrow lane in the villages.
• Repetition — several identical houses priced as a run.
• Hire period — written into the quotation with an extension rate stated.

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

Questions we get asked here

Scaffolders in Faringdon, and what hiring us involves

Faringdon is about forty-five minutes from Enslow, and we run it with Carterton, Witney and Wantage, so a job here is part of a regular western run. Scaffolding hire in Faringdon is a hire period with erection and strike included and an honest extension cost if the job runs on.

• Oxfordshire County Council is the highway authority. We apply for the licence and allow for the decision time.
• Free quotation and site visit. Photographs are usually enough on the estates; in the conservation area we come and look.
• Hire in weeks — four to eight typically.
• CISRS-qualified scaffolders, £10 million public liability, scafftags and recorded inspections.

Where in and around Faringdon we work

• The Market Place, London Street and Gloucester Street. Listed shops and houses on narrow footways.
• Marlborough Street, Church Street and Coxwell Street. Georgian and Victorian houses in stone and brick.
• The estates on the north and south edges. Modern houses, shared drives and parking courts.
• Great and Little Coxwell, Buckland and Littleworth. Stone villages close to town.
• Longcot, Fernham, Shrivenham and Watchfield. Towards the Wiltshire border.
• Uffington, Stanford in the Vale and Buscot. Under the Downs and down to the Thames.

Around Faringdon

We cover the Coxwells, Buckland, Littleworth, Longcot, Fernham, Shrivenham, Watchfield, Uffington, Stanford in the Vale and Buscot. Nearby we have pages for Wantage, Carterton, Witney, Abingdon and the county page for Oxfordshire.