Scaffolding Bedford

Scaffolding in Bedford

Bedford is about an hour from our yard at Enslow, straight across the A421, and it is the biggest town we work in that is not Milton Keynes or Oxford. It is a Victorian county town on the Great Ouse, built in its own soft yellow brick, with a conservation area of over two hundred hectares at the heart of it and new estates growing on every side. Most of the scaffolding decisions here are about the brick, the height and the borough’s licence.

Yellow brick, tall villas, and a river that floods

Bedford is a gault-brick town. The clay under south Bedfordshire made the Fletton and gault bricks that built half of London, and Bedford itself is faced in the pale yellow version almost everywhere from the Embankment and De Parys Avenue to the terraces of Queens Park and Castle Road. It is a handsome material and a soft one: it spalls if it is drilled carelessly, and a Victorian villa with three storeys, bays, string courses and ornate eaves is not a standard two-storey lift.

The town also sits on the Great Ouse, and the Embankment, Batchelor’s and the lower streets around the river flood in a bad winter. That changes the base of the scaffold before it changes anything else.

• On the Victorian streets the question is the tie. Joints, not faces; through openings where the owner or the conservation officer would rather we did not touch the brick at all; and a design for the height, because the Embankment villas are tall.
• In the town centre the question is the licence. Bedford Borough Council asks for ten working days, charges by the month, and wants 1.2 metres of clear footway left for pedestrians. Anything within 450 millimetres of the kerb brings a site meeting about traffic management. We build all of that into the programme rather than discover it on the day.
• By the river the question is the ground. Sole boards sized for wet ground, and a winter job near the Ouse planned around water.
• On the estates the question is access. Brickhill, Putnoe, Goldington, Wixams, Shortstown: post-war and modern cavity walls, repeated house types, shared drives and parking courts.

Approvals: Bedford Borough Council, and what its licence actually requires

Bedford is one of the better-documented councils we deal with, which is useful because the requirements are specific.

• Bedford Borough Council is the highway authority for Bedford, Kempston, Biddenham, Bromham, Clapham, Elstow, Cardington, Wootton and Great Barford. It is a unitary authority, so it is also the planning and conservation authority. Biggleswade, Sandy, Shefford, Ampthill and Flitwick are Central Bedfordshire; Luton is Luton Borough.
• A scaffold on the public highway needs a licence under section 169 of the Highways Act 1980, applied for through the borough’s streetworks team. Allow ten working days. The application wants a site plan of the highway to be occupied, the erector’s accreditation and the public liability certificate.
• The fee is charged per month, invoiced once the application is approved, so a scaffold that drifts past its planned strike date costs more in licence as well as in hire.
• 1.2 metres of unobstructed footway must be left for pedestrians, and a scaffold closer than 450 millimetres to the carriageway edge brings a site meeting to agree traffic management.
• The Bedford conservation area was designated in 1969, covers over two hundred hectares and more than a hundred listed buildings, and takes in the Embankment, De Parys, the town centre and the river. Scaffolding itself rarely needs consent; fixings into a listed front and the work the scaffold serves often do.

Any licence figure we quote is indicative, taken from published council schedules. Fees change, so treat it as a budget figure until the application actually goes in.

What we put up in Bedford

• Re-roofs and chimney work — the staple, from Victorian slate to the estates.
• Repointing and facade repair — lime work on gault 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 — the town centre shops and offices trading underneath, the Harpur Trust schools, Castle Quay, and the business parks.
• Industrial — Priory Business Park, Elms Farm, the Kempston and Cardington units, and the sheds along the A421 where there is nothing to tie into.
• Temporary roofs — weather protection on a winter re-roof, particularly on a listed villa that stays occupied.
• 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 tall villa frontage, a pedestrian tunnel or a temporary roof 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 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 stability. Those are the scaffold inspections Bedford Borough expects to see recorded.
• CDM 2015 — applies to domestic projects too, with the 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. More on our scaffolding questions page.

How we price it

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

• How much scaffold and how high — a three-storey Embankment villa is a different scaffold from a Brickhill semi.
• Duty class — what the work actually loads the platform with.
• How it is tied — joints and openings on gault brick cost more care than drilled anchors in a modern cavity wall, and we say so.
• Highway licence — charged by the month in Bedford, so the hire period and the licence period are planned together.
• Pedestrian protection and traffic management — the 1.2 metre footway rule and the 450 millimetre kerb rule decide whether a frontage needs a fan, a tunnel or a site meeting.
• Access — a long Victorian front garden, a shared drive on the estates, or a village lane.
• 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 Bedford, and what hiring us involves

Bedford is about an hour from Enslow, and we run it with Biggleswade, Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard as one Bedfordshire run. Scaffolding hire in Bedford is a hire period with erection and strike included and an honest extension cost if the job runs on.

• Bedford Borough Council is the highway authority. A scaffold on the footway needs their licence; we apply and allow the ten working days.
• Free quotation and site visit. Photographs are usually enough on the estates; on the Embankment, De Parys or anywhere 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 scaffold inspections.

Commercial and industrial scaffolding in Bedford

Commercial work here is the town centre — occupied shops and offices on the High Street, Midland Road and around the Harpur Centre, the schools, and Castle Quay by the river — worked around trading hours with the footway protected to the borough’s rules. Industrial work is Priory Business Park, Elms Farm, Kempston, Cardington and the A421 sheds: portal frames, cladding, freestanding or kentledged designs, inductions and the site’s own permits. See commercial scaffolding and industrial scaffolding.

Where in Bedford we work

• The Embankment, De Parys Avenue, Castle Road and the conservation area. Tall Victorian gault-brick villas, listed fronts, long front gardens.
• The town centre, Midland Road and Castle Quay. Occupied shops, offices and riverside apartments; licence and pedestrian protection on every frontage.
• Queens Park, Black Tom and the terraces. Victorian yellow brick, rear access through the alleys.
• Brickhill, Putnoe, Goldington and the post-war estates. Cavity walls, repeated house types, shared drives.
• Kempston, Elstow, Cardington and Shortstown. Conservation areas in the old villages, modern estates alongside, and the airship sheds on the skyline.
• Wixams, Wootton and Biddenham. New-build estates and the older villages on the west side.
• Bromham, Clapham, Oakley, Great Barford and Willington. Villages along the Ouse, older stone and brick, single-track lanes to some.

Around Bedford

We cover the villages too — Kempston, Elstow, Cardington, Shortstown, Wixams, Wootton, Biddenham, Bromham, Clapham, Oakley, Great Barford and Willington. Nearby we have pages for Biggleswade, Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard, Milton Keynes and the county page for Bedfordshire.