Yes, if any part of the scaffold stands on the footway, verge or carriageway. The licence comes from the highway authority, which is not always the council you expect. In Oxfordshire it is Oxfordshire County Council, not your district council. Oxfordshire charges £180 for set-up plus the first seven days and £70 for each further week, rising to £220 and £80 on a bus route. Buckinghamshire charges £383.60 for 28 days. Gloucestershire is £145 for 28 days. We apply on your behalf — Oxfordshire and West Northamptonshire only accept applications from registered scaffolding companies, so you cannot do it yourself even if you want to. Allow five working days minimum, and considerably longer on a listed frontage.

We are based at Enslow Wharf near Kidlington and cover Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Gloucestershire. Oxford, Bicester, Banbury, Witney, Abingdon, Thame and Kidlington are all within half an hour. We regularly work as far out as Northampton, Milton Keynes, High Wycombe, Leighton Buzzard and Cheltenham. If you are not sure whether you are inside our patch, ring and ask — the answer is usually yes, and the travel is in the price rather than added later.

More than anything else it comes down to four things: how long the scaffold stands, whether we can get a wagon near the building, how much load it has to carry, and whether any of it sits on the public highway. Duration is the single largest factor and the one most often understated — a scaffold priced for four weeks and left up for fourteen becomes an expensive scaffold. Site visits and written quotations are free, and we would always rather come and look than price off a photograph. If one quotation is dramatically cheaper than the others, check whether it covers the same hire period, the same duty class, and the highway licence.

As long as you need. The hire period stated in your quotation is what you are being charged for, so tell us the realistic programme and we will price that rather than quoting a short period and invoicing extensions. If the job overruns, ring us and we will extend it. We would also rather collect a scaffold promptly than leave it standing and charge you for it.

Under the Work at Height Regulations 2005 a scaffold must be inspected by a competent person before it is first used, then at intervals of no more than seven days, and again after anything that could have affected its stability such as high winds, an impact or any alteration. Each inspection has to be recorded. The part most people do not realise is that after handover the duty to arrange those weekly inspections sits with whoever is using the scaffold — your builder, or you — not automatically with the scaffolding company. We carry out the handover inspection and tag the scaffold, and we are happy to do the weekly inspections as part of the hire. Just agree it with us rather than assuming it. A scaffold tag is a supplementary check, not the statutory inspection record.

Yes, they can. You have no automatic right of access onto someone else’s property, and putting a scaffold up anyway is trespass. However, the Access to Neighbouring Land Act 1992 allows you to apply to the County Court for an access order where the work genuinely cannot be carried out otherwise. The important limit is that the Act covers preservation work only — repairing a roof, wall, gutter, drain or dealing with a dangerous tree. It does not cover extensions or improvements. In practice almost every one of these is resolved with a conversation rather than a court: most neighbours agree once they are asked properly, given the dates, and reassured the garden will be protected and put back as it was. We board out, protect planting and leave the ground as we found it. Where there is genuinely no agreement we will design the scaffold to stay inside your boundary if that can be done safely. We are scaffolders rather than solicitors — if a dispute is heading towards court, take proper legal advice.

A scaffold is designed and handed over to a duty class under BS EN 12811-1, which is the load it is permitted to carry per square metre. Class 2 is light duty at 1.5 kN/m² and suits painting or rendering. Class 3 is general purpose at 2.0 kN/m², roughly 200kg per square metre, and covers most trades. Class 4 is heavy duty at 3.0 kN/m² for masonry and stone. The class is recorded on the handover certificate and must not be exceeded. This is usually why two quotations for the same building differ by hundreds of pounds: a Class 2 scaffold uses less material than a Class 4, and it is the wrong scaffold if your roofer is loading salvaged stone slate onto it. Tell us what is going on the boards and we will specify it properly.

Yes, spanning up to 40 metres, either craned in as complete sections or erected on a rolling track so the cover moves along with the work. On a re-roof running through autumn or winter a temporary roof usually costs less than the delays and water damage it prevents. Worth knowing that wind rather than rain governs the design — a sheeted roof acts as a sail, and the uplift and lateral loads are far larger than the weight of the roof itself, so the scaffold beneath has to be designed for it. We will not simply add a roof to an existing scaffold without checking the structure underneath can take it.

Regularly. Across Oxford, Thame, Banbury, Buckingham, Witney, Abingdon and the Cotswolds a large proportion of our work is listed or within a conservation area. Ties go into mortar joints rather than through the face of the stone, and where the fabric will not take a tied design we use a buttressed or independent one instead, which uses more material and takes longer to set out. Note that listed building and conservation area consent comes from your district council, separately from the highway licence, and it almost always takes longer than the scaffold does. Start that consent early and tell us the date you are working to.

Yes. We carry public liability insurance and the scaffold remains our property throughout the hire. Our scaffolders are CISRS qualified and work to TG20:21 for tube and fitting and SG4 for preventing falls during erection and dismantling. RAMS and a job-specific toolbox talk come before anyone climbs. We are Advanced CHAS accredited and have won the Oxfordshire Prestige Awards Scaffold Company of the Year four years running. Do also tell your home insurer the scaffold is there — some policies carry conditions about it, because a scaffold is also a ladder to your first floor. We can fit anti-climb measures and remove or secure the bottom ladder.

On a standard house, half a day to a day once we are on site. The lead time is almost always the paperwork rather than the scaffold — if it stands on the highway, the licence sets the date, and if consent is needed that sets it instead. For Kidlington, Bicester and Oxford we can often come and look the same day, because we are eight to fifteen minutes away.

It should not. We board out over lawns and soft ground to spread the load, protect planting, and avoid running a loaded wagon across block paving where we can. On soft, sloping, made-up or saturated ground we use spreaders or a designed foundation rather than a board and a base plate. Tell us what you are worried about before we arrive rather than afterwards — it is far easier to design around.