Driveway and patio repairs in Hastings
Have it done before the neighbours put their lights up. It'll be the first thing your guests and family see this Christmas. Book now and it could be finished before they arrive — leave it, and you might be waiting until spring.
Sunken blocks, a dip in the wheel tracks, an edge that has given way, slabs that rock underfoot, pointing that has cracked out, water standing against the garage door. Most of it is fixable, and the fix is far cheaper than starting again. Some of it isn't worth fixing, and we'll tell you that too.
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What we repair
Sunken block paving
A dip that holds water, or a drop against a threshold or manhole. We lift the affected area, find out why it moved, correct the sub-base and relay to the right falls.
Lift and relay
Blocks or slabs taken up, cleaned, the bed re-made and the surface relaid to level. The right answer when the paving is fine and the layer under it isn't.
Rocking and hollow-sounding slabs
Laid on five spot-blobs of mortar instead of a full bed, so there are voids under them. Lifted, cleaned off, and re-bedded on a full mortar bed.
Sunken slabs
No sub-base, or one too thin to carry anything. The base is rebuilt before anything is re-laid — putting the same slabs back on the same ground just resets the clock.
Pointing cracked out
Raked out to depth and properly refilled, not smeared over the top. Smeared pointing has nothing to key into and cracks out within a year.
Rocking and loose blocks
Almost always lost jointing sand. Re-sanding restores the interlock that makes block paving behave as one surface rather than a few hundred separate lumps of concrete.
Edge restraint failure
The edge course has spread, tipped or lost its haunching, so the whole field of paving is creeping outwards. We cut it out and re-lay it haunched in concrete.
Drainage retrofits
Linear channel across a threshold or along the low edge, connected properly, so water stops running to the road or standing on the surface.
Re-sanding and joint repair
Kiln-dried or jointing sand replaced across the drive. Cheap, quick, and the single best preventative job on a block drive.
Resurfacing
Where the base is genuinely sound, a new surface over it — a fresh wearing course, or new blocks over a prepared base — rather than a full rebuild.
Potholes and tarmac repair
Cut out square to a sound edge, base repaired, reinstated and compacted. Cold-lay bagged tarmac shovelled into a hole is not a repair; it's a delay.
What repairs cost
Driveway repair / lift and relay
from £100 / m²
Blocks lifted, the layer underneath put right, and the surface relaid to the correct falls.
Lift and re-bed slabs
from £115 / m²
Slabs off spot-blobs, backs cleaned, re-bedded on a full mortar bed.
Re-pointing
from £45 / m²
Raked out to depth and refilled — not smeared over the top of the old mortar.
A visit with a written assessment is £150, and it is credited against the work if you go ahead. Our minimum for repair work is £450 — below that the travel and setup cost more than the job.
See how a price is built up → · Why we're not the cheapest quote you'll get
When a repair is worth doing — and when it isn't
When it's the right choice
- The failure is localised: one dip, one settled patch, one section of edge, one area around a cover.
- The rest of the surface is flat, tight and draining, and the blocks or slabs are in good condition.
- The cause is identifiable and correctable — a washed-out area under a downpipe, a missing edge, lost joints.
- The surface is a material that can be lifted and relaid at all: block paving, setts, flags.
When it isn't — say so and pick something else
- More than roughly a third of the area has moved. At that point you are paying twice to relay the same ground.
- The sub-base is thin or was never there — scalpings straight onto clay. Relaying over that just resets the clock.
- Ruts have formed in the wheel tracks across the whole drive: that's a structural failure, not a surface one.
- It's imprinted concrete that has cracked over a failing base. That's rebuild territory rather than repair.
- The surface is at the end of its life anyway and you're planning to change it within a couple of years.
We will say when a rebuild is the honest answer. Relaying a driveway that is going to move again is easy money and bad work, and it costs you the repair as well as the rebuild.
How we put a sunken drive right
Every photograph on this site is our own completed work. We don't name streets.
Lift the affected area and keep the blocks. Dig out the laying course and expose the sub-base, then find out what actually happened: depth, compaction, water, or an edge that let go. Correct that layer — usually additional MOT Type 1 compacted in 75mm layers, sometimes a full re-dig to formation with a membrane down.
Re-screed a sharp sand laying course to the finished levels, allowing a fall of about 1:60 to somewhere deliberate. Relay the blocks, cut in, haunch any new edge in concrete, then compact and sand the joints. Where the water was the cause, the drainage goes in before anything is relaid — otherwise the same repair comes back.
Before anybody digs: three things to check
Planning permission, the kerb crossing and where the water goes. We work these out with you at quote stage — these pages explain the rules so you can check them yourself.
- Where the water is supposed to go →Retrofitting drainage changes where the water goes, so it's worth reading before you commit to a repair.
- Do you need planning permission? The 5m² rule →
- Dropped kerbs in East Sussex — who approves it and the order it goes in →
East Sussex Highways: dropped kerb (vehicle crossing) applications (opens in a new tab)The highway authority's own page, with its current fees, criteria and approved-contractor process.
Download the “Before anybody digs” checklist (PDF)Two pages you can print and take round the drive — planning, kerb, drainage, and the questions to ask before accepting anyone's quote.
A fixed price before anyone starts digging
We measure, agree the build-up in writing and give you one price. It doesn't move. Not for hard ground, old concrete, rubble, roots or a soft spot — that's our risk and it's already in the number.
Zero deposit option for jobs that qualify — we confirm the terms with your fixed price.
Everyone else quotes "subject to survey" because they haven't checked the job properly. We do the survey first — measuring properly, checking levels and where the water goes, what planning rules apply, what has to come out, manholes, ducts, and access for digger and skip. So by the time we write the number down, we know what the job needs. That's why the price doesn't move, and why we can put it in writing before we start. If we ever do hit something, we stop, show you, and agree in writing what happens before we carry on. Ask your other quotes what they checked before they priced.
Written guarantee on every repair
Where we take an area back to a sound formation and rebuild it, the base we lay carries ten years and the surface over it ten. Where you ask us to relay over ground we haven't opened up, the ten-year sub-base term covers bases we build, not bases we inherit — so we tell you in writing what we can and can't stand behind before we start.
Common questions about repairs
How much does it cost to lift and relay a sunken driveway?
Lift and relay runs from £100/m². The lower end is a localised area where the blocks come up clean, the sub-base underneath is sound and only the laying course has to be re-screeded. A full lift with sub-base correction, new edge restraints and re-sanding across the whole drive costs more. Our minimum for repair work is £450.
Why do my patio slabs rock and sound hollow?
Almost always because they were laid on five spot-blobs of mortar rather than a full bed. The blobs hold the corners and leave voids underneath, the voids fill with water, and the slab starts to move and eventually cracks. The fix is to lift them, clean the backs off and re-bed them on a full mortar bed — from £115/m².
My patio has sunk in one corner. Can it be re-laid?
Yes, but only after the base is put right. A patio sinks because there is no sub-base under it, or one too thin to carry anything. Re-laying the same slabs onto the same ground buys a season. We rebuild the base first, then re-lay.
How much does re-pointing a patio cost?
Raked out to depth and properly refilled, from £45/m². Plainly: the going rate for "re-pointing" usually buys mortar smeared over the top of what's already there. It looks right for a few months and cracks out within a year, because it has nothing to key into. Raking the joints out to depth and refilling them is a slower, dirtier and more expensive job, and it is the only version that lasts.
Can you reuse my existing blocks or slabs?
Usually, yes. Concrete blocks lift and relay well and clay pavers even better; sound slabs come up fine if they were bedded rather than glued down. Expect to lose some to breakage and cutting, so a batch of matching spares is worth having — colours weather, and a new pack rarely blends invisibly into a ten-year-old surface.
Why does one patch keep sinking again after it's been repaired?
Because the repair replaced the surface and not the reason. If the sub-base underneath is too thin, was never compacted in layers, or is being washed out by water with nowhere to go, relaying the blocks buys a season or two. The fix has to reach the cause, which sometimes means taking that section back to formation.
My blocks rock when I drive over them. Is that serious?
It's the early stage of the same failure. Rocking usually means the jointing sand has gone, so the blocks no longer interlock and each one is carrying load on its own. Left alone, edges chip, water gets into the laying course and the area starts to dip. Re-sanding early is cheap; relaying later is not.
Can you add drainage to a driveway that's already built?
Yes. A linear channel across the threshold or along the low edge, connected to a soakaway or an appropriate outfall, can be retrofitted by cutting a strip out of the existing surface and rebuilding it. It's the single most common retrofit we do, and it's the one that stops the rest of the drive failing.
Do I need permission to repair a driveway?
Repairing like for like doesn't change the planning position. Changing the surface, enlarging the drive or altering where the water goes can, and a new or widened kerb crossing is always a separate council application. The planning and drainage pages set out where the lines are.
Will a repair carry the same guarantee as a new drive?
Where we take an area back to a sound formation and rebuild it, yes — ten years on the sub-base we lay and ten years on the surface over it. The ten-year sub-base term covers bases we build, not bases we inherit, so where you ask us to relay over ground we haven't opened up we'll say plainly in writing what we can and can't stand behind before we start.
Towns we cover
We cover Hastings and a 25-mile radius.
- Hastings
- St Leonards-on-Sea
- Bexhill-on-Sea
- Battle
- Rye
- Eastbourne
- Hailsham
- Robertsbridge
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
- The rocking slab: what's underneath a patio that moves
A slab that rocks, a slab that cracked under nothing much, and dark patches that appear after rain and never quite dry are all the same fault. You can diagnose it with your knuckles in about two minutes.
Includes: the tap test, and how to lift and re-bed a slab properly on a full mortar bed