There is no honest single price for a driveway in Norwich, and any company that gives you one before seeing your ground is guessing. Two driveways of the same size on the same street can cost very differently, and the reason is almost always underneath rather than on top.
Why nobody can give you a price per square metre
A per-square-metre figure assumes every square metre costs the same to build. On real sites it does not.
Much of the Norwich area sits on boulder clay. Clay holds water. A Norfolk winter freezes that water, and the freeze lifts whatever is sitting above it. A driveway on clay needs a deeper sub-base than the same driveway on a sandy or chalky site, and that depth is the single biggest reason two quotes differ.
You never see the sub-base once the job is finished, which is exactly why it is the easiest place to save money. A quote that is noticeably cheaper is usually cheaper here.
So the useful question is not “what does a driveway cost”. It is “what is this quote actually building, and how does that compare with the other one in front of me”.
The five things that move the price
1. What the ground needs
The depth of sub-base is set by the ground, not by the surface going on top. Clay needs more. A site that has already been built on and compacted may need less. This is decided on site, not from a postcode.
2. What is there now
Lifting and disposing of an old concrete slab costs more than lifting gravel. Breaking out a thick concrete base is a different job again, and the waste has to be carried away and paid for by weight.
3. Drainage
More than five square metres of impermeable surface in a front garden needs either planning permission or somewhere for the water to go. A permeable surface avoids the question entirely. Our guide to planning permission for a driveway in Norfolk sets out the rule in full.
On a low-lying plot, or one with a high water table, a soakaway may not be an option at all, and the drainage design costs more as a result.
4. The surface
Block paving, resin bound and tarmac behave differently and sit at different prices, but the gap between them is usually smaller than the gap created by the groundwork underneath. Our comparison of block paving, resin and tarmac covers how each one performs in a Norfolk winter.
5. Access
A driveway a lorry can reach is cheaper to build than one where everything has to be barrowed through a side gate. Narrow access, a long carry, or nowhere to put a skip all add labour, and labour is most of the bill.
The costs people forget
These sit outside the driveway quote and catch people out.
The dropped kerb
If you are creating a new vehicle access from the road, that is a separate application to Norfolk County Council and a separate cost. Their published 2026 figures are a non-refundable application fee of £193.92, and an average of around £3,050 for the crossing works, which are carried out by the council’s own contractor rather than your driveway installer. The council describes the £3,050 as a guide only. We cover the process in our guide to dropped kerbs in Norwich.
Those two figures are Norfolk County Council’s own published prices, not ours.
Waste removal
Excavated material has to go somewhere, and it is charged by weight. A driveway that comes up as broken concrete costs more to clear than one that comes up as soil.
Planning, if the surface is not permeable
An application costs money and takes time. Choosing a permeable surface usually avoids it, which is one of the reasons permeable surfaces are so common now.
How to compare two quotes properly
Put them side by side and look for these. If a quote does not say, ask.
- The depth of the sub-base, in millimetres, and what it is made of.
- Whether excavation and disposal of the existing surface is included, and to what depth.
- How the water is being dealt with, and whether the surface is permeable.
- Whether edgings are haunched in concrete.
- Whether the dropped kerb, if one is needed, is in the quote or outside it.
- What is guaranteed, for how long, and by whom.
If one quote is much cheaper and gives no sub-base depth, you are not comparing two prices for the same job. You are comparing two different jobs.
What we do
We build the base for the ground we actually find on site, then lay the surface, and the depth goes in the quote in writing so you can hold it against anyone else’s. We cover Norwich and the surrounding Norfolk towns — see areas we cover.