Scaffolding Wantage

Scaffolding in Wantage

Wantage is the market town at the foot of the Berkshire Downs, about forty minutes from our yard at Enslow, and it is growing fast. King Alfred was born here and stands in the Market Place; around the old centre, Crab Hill and Grove Airfield are adding thousands of new homes. We scaffold both: the listed brick and stone of the town centre, and the new estates that now surround it.

An old market town with a new town around it

The Market Place has been the centre of Wantage’s trade since the thirteenth century. Its centrepiece is the statue of Alfred the Great, unveiled in 1877, and around it are the Georgian and Victorian frontages, coaching inns and shops that make up the town centre conservation area — designated in 1970 and containing close to a hundred listed buildings. The streets off it, Newbury Street, Mill Street, Wallingford Street, Grove Street and Church Street down to St Peter and St Paul, are mostly brick, some of it over older cores, with clay tile and slate roofs.

The growth is on the edges. Crab Hill (Kingsgrove), north-east of the town, has been building out since 2018 towards around 1,500 homes, and Grove Airfield, between Wantage and Grove, has outline permission for up to 2,500 more. That brings a steady stream of work on new houses — extensions, loft conversions, solar — alongside the repair and maintenance of the old town.

• In the Market Place the question is the footway and the public. Busy pavements, market days and shops trading underneath: licence, fan and timing.
• On the Victorian streets the question is the tie and the height. Tall brick terraces and villas, soft brick, ties into joints.
• On the estates the question is access. Shared drives, close-set houses, new gardens and parking courts.
• Under the Downs the question is the lane and the material. Chalk, clunch and sarsen in the old villages, thatch, and narrow lanes.

The old town: brick, height and the conservation area

Wantage is predominantly a brick town, and much of the brick is soft, handmade and lime-mortared. The older houses on the streets off the Market Place are frequently three storeys, with cellars, bay windows and tall chimneys, and the commercial buildings around the square are taller again. On those buildings the scaffold is tied into joints and through openings, not into faces that spall when drilled carelessly, and a tall front gets designed for its height rather than treated as a standard two-lift job. Chimney work on the old town’s tall stacks is common here — see chimney scaffolding.

Inside the conservation area the scaffold itself rarely needs consent, but fixings into a listed front and the work the scaffold serves often do. The Market Place is also the subject of the county’s plans to improve the square, so anyone planning a frontage job there should check what else is happening on the street.

The new Wantage and Grove

Crab Hill, Grove Airfield and the newer parts of Grove are modern cavity-wall houses on tight plots: rear extensions, loft conversions, re-renders, replacement windows and solar. The scaffold is simple; the planning is the shared drive, the parking court and the neighbour’s boundary. On estates where the same house type repeats, we standardise the scaffold and price the run.

Wantage also sits close to two of the biggest science and business sites in the country — Harwell Campus and Milton Park — and to the technology park and Williams F1 site at Grove. That is commercial and industrial work: live sites, inductions, permits and portal frames with little to tie into.

Approvals: who you apply to in Wantage

• 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 Wantage town centre conservation area was designated in 1970 and covers the Market Place and the historic streets, with close to a hundred listed buildings.
• Market days and events — a frontage scaffold on the Market Place is programmed around them, not into them.

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 Wantage

• Re-roofs and chimney work — the staple, from the old town’s tall stacks to the estates.
• Repointing and facade repair — lime work on soft brick, longer hires and a monthly licence to plan around.
• Domestic — extensions, loft conversions, rendering, windows, solar and gutters across the estates and villages.
• Commercial and industrial — Market Place shops and offices, schools, Grove and the science parks nearby.
• Temporary roofs — weather protection over a winter re-roof on an occupied 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 tall 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 Wantage job the number moves on:

• How much scaffold and how high — a three-storey town house is a different scaffold from a Crab Hill semi.
• Duty class — what the work loads the platform with.
• How it is tied — joints and openings in soft brick cost more care than anchors in a modern wall.
• Highway licence and protection — a town-centre frontage adds the licence, a fan and working hours around the shops.
• Access — a parking court on the estates, a lane in the villages.
• Repetition — 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 Wantage, and what hiring us involves

Wantage is about forty minutes from Enslow, down the A34, and we run it with Didcot, Abingdon and Faringdon. Scaffolding hire in Wantage 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 Wantage we work

• The Market Place and Newbury Street. Listed shops, inns and offices around the Alfred statue.
• Wallingford Street, Mill Street, Grove Street and Church Street. Georgian and Victorian brick houses and terraces.
• Crab Hill and the north-east of the town. The Kingsgrove estate and newer housing.
• Grove and Grove Airfield. New estates, older Grove housing and the technology park.
• Letcombe Regis, Letcombe Bassett, Childrey and the Challows. Downland villages west of the town.
• East Hendred, Ardington, Steventon and Harwell. Villages towards Didcot and the science campuses.

Around Wantage

We cover Grove, the Letcombes, Childrey, the Challows, the Hendreds, Ardington, Steventon and Harwell. Nearby we have pages for Didcot, Abingdon, Faringdon, Wallingford and the county page for Oxfordshire.