The cheapest driveway in Hastings — and what cheap actually costs
The straight answer
Gravel, from £85 per square metre installed. Tarmac next, from £120. Imprinted concrete from £105 and block paving from £185. Those are the starting numbers; there is no version of this page where they turn out to be lower.
Gravel — cheapest
from £85 / m²
Fully permeable. Cheapest per square metre by a clear margin.
Tarmac — next
from £120 / m²
Cheapest way to cover a large area with a solid surface.
Imprinted concrete
from £105 / m²
One continuous slab; cheaper than blocks, far harder to repair.
Block paving
from £185 / m²
Most expensive of the four, and the only one that lifts and relays.
Installed prices including the ground work, not material costs. They are starting figures because access, what has to come out and where the water goes move the number more than the surface does.
A cheap driveway built properly is a real thing
Gravel over compacted Type 1 with a membrane, held in a grid and edged properly, is a good driveway. It carries cars, it drains through, it doesn't need planning permission, and if you dig it up for a cable you can put it back invisibly. We lay them, and we lay them to the same base spec as everything else.
Being cheap to build is not the same as being badly built. What gives gravel a bad name is stone tipped straight onto soil with nothing restraining the edge — that isn't a cheap driveway, it's an absence of one. The same goes for tarmac: a tarmac drive on a correct base outlasts a block paved drive on a bad one, comfortably.
What a low quote actually removes
A price well below the market on the same surface has to come from somewhere. It comes from the parts of the job that are invisible on handover day. This is the same list as on how we build, because it doesn't change.
Cut 1
No membrane
A few pounds a square metre saved. Without it the sub-base slowly migrates into the subsoil and the subsoil pumps up into the sub-base. The drive loses its structure from below and there is no way to fix it except taking it all up.
Cut 2
75mm of sub-base instead of 150mm
Half the stone, half the lorry movements, half the compaction time. It holds up under foot traffic and under a car for a year or two, then it starts to dish where the wheels sit.
Cut 3
Edges bedded on sand instead of haunched in concrete
The edge is what holds the whole field of blocks in compression. On sand it creeps outwards, the joints open, and the drive spreads from the perimeter inwards.
Cut 4
Building sand instead of sharp sand for the laying course
Building sand is soft and holds water. Under load it consolidates unevenly, so the blocks rock and the surface goes wavy.
Cut 5
One thick layer of Type 1 instead of compacted 75mm layers
A whacker plate only compacts the top 75mm or so. Tip 150mm in one go and the bottom half is loose stone under a hard crust. It looks identical on handover day.
Every one of those is invisible the day the job finishes. That is precisely why they are the things that get cut.
We're not a budget contractor
Our prices start at £185/m² for block paving and there are firms who will quote you half that. Some of them do good work.
If price is the deciding factor, use them — you'll get a better outcome with a cheap firm you chose deliberately than with an expensive one you talked into a discount. A discounted price comes out of the specification, not out of the profit, and you will never see which part left.
What the extra money buys
Not a lower lifetime cost — we're not going to claim building properly works out cheaper, because on the numbers it usually doesn't beat a cheap drive that never happens to fail. A properly built drive costs more up front and lasts longer. That's the whole trade.
Up front
from £9,250
A 50m² block paved drive built to our specification, fixed before we start.
A cheap build
≈ £4,500
The same 50m² at around £90/m². Genuinely less money. Sometimes it holds up.
If it fails
from £5,000
Lift and relay at from £100/m², plus a second week of your front garden being a building site.
Who we're the right choice for
- OnceSomeone who wants the drive done once and not thought about again.
- FixedSomeone who wants the price settled before anybody digs, with us carrying the risk if we measured wrong.
- EvidenceSomeone who wants to see what went underneath — the depths, the membrane, the compacted base — photographed and handed over.
If none of those are what you're buying, the cheaper firms are a better fit and we'd rather you used one.
Common questions
What is the cheapest driveway option in the UK?
Gravel, from roughly £85 per square metre installed over a properly compacted sub-base. Tarmac is next, from £120. Both are real driveways when they're built correctly; the price difference is the material on top, not the structure underneath.
Is cheap block paving worth it?
Cheap blocks are fine. A cheap build-up under them is not. If a block paving quote is well below £185 per square metre, the saving has almost certainly come out of the excavation depth, the membrane, the sub-base or the edge haunching — the parts you can't inspect once it's finished.
Are The Vale Company cheap?
No. Our block paving starts at £185 per square metre and there are firms quoting half that. We build to one specification, price it fixed and photograph the build, and that costs what it costs. If price is the deciding factor, we are not the right firm.
What is the cheapest driveway you will build?
A gravel drive over a compacted sub-base and a membrane, with the edges restrained. That is genuine budget work and we lay it properly. What we won't do is build block paving to a budget by thinning the base.
Two ways from here
For genuine budget work, gravel is the honest answer and we build it properly. For everything else, read what we actually put in the ground before you compare quotes.
Worth reading
- Why driveways sink, and whose fault it is
Four causes, and how to tell which one you've got from the shape of the failure — plus when a lift and relay fixes it and when the whole drive has to come up.
Includes: how to lift one block and check your own sub-base depth