Scaffolding Biggleswade

Scaffolding in Biggleswade

Biggleswade is about an hour and a quarter from our yard at Enslow, across on the A421 and down the A1, and it is the far eastern edge of where we work. It is a market town built of brick around a long oblong Market Square on the River Ivel, with the A1 running past the west side of it and one of the biggest new housing estates in Bedfordshire growing on the east. The scaffolding here splits neatly in two: the old brick town and the new estates.

A brick town with a new town bolted on

The old town is almost uniformly brick — eighteenth-century red fronts and doorways around the Market Square, High Street, Shortmead Street and Hitchin Street, with a handful of older timber-framed buildings behind the brick skins. It is a conservation area, so a good number of those fronts are listed, and the Saturday market and the one-way streets decide where a lorry can stand and when.

East of the railway, Kings Reach is a different world: a two-thousand-home estate built over the last fifteen years, modern cavity walls, repeated house types, parking courts, and a steady run of solar panels, loft conversions and extensions. Out on the A1, Stratton Business Park and the retail park are portal-framed sheds and trade units.

• In the old town the questions are the licence and the fixings. Scaffolding on a Market Square or High Street frontage stands on the footway, so it needs a Central Bedfordshire Council licence and pedestrian protection, and a listed brick front with a Georgian doorcase is not something to drill casually.
• On Kings Reach the questions are access and neighbours. Parking courts, shared drives and narrow side returns: whether material is carried through or craned over, and where the lorry stands without blocking six households.
• By the river the question is the ground. The Ivel valley is flat and the lower streets hold water in a wet winter; sole boards are sized for it.
• On the A1 estates the question is the building. Portal frames with cladding that will not take a tie, so freestanding or kentledged designs, inductions and the site’s hours.

Approvals: Central Bedfordshire Council

• Central Bedfordshire Council is the highway authority for Biggleswade, Sandy, Potton, Shefford, Stotfold, Arlesey and Langford. It is a unitary authority, so it is also the planning and conservation authority: one council for the licence and the listed-building questions. Bedford itself is a different council — Bedford Borough — and so is Luton.
• A scaffold on the public highway — any pavement, path or road — needs a licence under section 169 of the Highways Act 1980. We apply, and the licence runs for as long as the scaffold stands.
• The A1 is a National Highways road, not a council one. Nothing we scaffold stands on it, but access to the business park frontages is planned around it.
• The town centre conservation area covers the Market Square and the streets off it. 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 and vary with duration and footway width, so treat it as a budget figure until the application actually goes in.

What we put up in Biggleswade

• Re-roofs and chimney work — the staple, from Market Square slate to Kings Reach tile.
• Solar panel scaffolding — short hires to eaves with edge protection on every elevation the installer works from; a lot of this on the newer estates.
• Repointing and facade repair — Georgian and Victorian brick in the old town, longer hires and a longer licence.
• Domestic — extensions, loft conversions, rendering, windows and gutters.
• Commercial — shops and offices trading underneath, with the public route protected; the schools; and the retail park.
• Industrial — the portal-framed sheds on Stratton Business Park and along the A1 where there is nothing to tie into.
• Temporary roofs — weather protection on a winter re-roof, particularly on older buildings that stay occupied.

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 heavily loaded 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.
• 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 Biggleswade job the number moves on:

• How much scaffold and how high.
• Duty class — what the work actually loads the platform with.
• Hire length — a solar scaffold up for two days and a re-roof scaffold up for four weeks are priced differently, and we say which is which.
• Highway licence and pedestrian protection — on a Market Square or High Street frontage, part of the price.
• Access — a parking court on Kings Reach, a tight yard behind the High Street, or a single-track lane to a village, decides whether material is carried or craned.
• Distance — Biggleswade is the edge of our area, so we group it with Bedford and the rest of Bedfordshire and price honestly for the travel rather than hiding it.

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

Questions we get asked here

Scaffolders in Biggleswade, and what hiring us involves

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

• Central Bedfordshire Council is the highway authority. A scaffold on the footway needs their licence; we apply.
• Free quotation and site visit. Photographs are usually enough on Kings Reach; in the old town we come and look.
• Hire in weeks — four to eight typically, or a day or two for solar.
• CISRS-qualified scaffolders, £10 million public liability, scafftags and recorded inspections.

Commercial and industrial scaffolding in Biggleswade

Commercial work here is the Market Square and High Street — occupied shops, pubs and offices, market days to work around, the pavement protected — plus the schools and the retail park. Industrial work is Stratton Business Park and the units along the A1: portal frames, cladding, freestanding or kentledged designs, inductions and the site’s own permits. See commercial scaffolding and industrial scaffolding.

Where in Biggleswade we work

• The Market Square, High Street, Shortmead Street and Hitchin Street. Georgian and Victorian brick in the conservation area, listed fronts, one-way streets and market days.
• Kings Reach and the estates east of the railway. Modern cavity walls, repeated house types, parking courts.
• Stratton Business Park, the retail park and the A1 corridor. Distribution, trade and retail units.
• Sandy and Potton. The Greensand ridge towns a few minutes north and east, brick and some older stone.
• Langford, Stotfold, Arlesey and Shefford. South along the Ivel, with Stotfold and Arlesey nearer Letchworth.
• Old Warden, Northill, Broom and Dunton. Villages a few minutes out: thatch, estate cottages and single-track lanes.

Around Biggleswade

We cover the villages too — Sandy, Potton, Langford, Stotfold, Arlesey, Shefford, Old Warden, Northill, Broom and Dunton. Nearby we have pages for Bedford, Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard and the county page for Bedfordshire.