A family firm in Farnborough, on the drains and ground of three counties

Who we are

Farnborough Contracting Services is a family run drainage and groundworks business based in Farnborough. We have been working in this part of Hampshire for over 20 years, for private homeowners, flats, landlords and letting agents, businesses and local councils.

We are small on purpose. The person who answers the phone is the person who prices the job and, on most jobs, the person who does it. That means nothing gets lost between a call handler, a scheduler and a subcontractor, and it means when we say we will be there, we know whether we can be.

How we work, and why

Only about half of homeowners in the UK say they trust the trades they hire, and only around a third get an itemised written quote. Those two numbers are related. We have built the way we work around fixing the second one.

We publish our prices

Almost nobody in this trade does. We have looked at eleven drainage, driveway and groundworks firms working the same towns as us, and exactly one puts a price on its website. Several promise “fixed pricing” and then ask you to fill in a form to find out what it is. Ours are on the site, with VAT in every figure.

We quote before we start, in writing, and we stick to it

If we arrive and the job is not the job you described, we stop, explain and give you a new price to accept or turn down. What we do not do is carry on and put it on the bill.

You pay when it is finished

No deposit on driveways, patios or groundworks. You walk the job with us, we put right anything you are not happy with, and then you pay.

We show you the evidence

Every blockage we clear gets a camera down it afterwards, and you see what caused it. Every survey comes with the footage and the stills. Every repair gets filmed when it is done. You should not have to take a contractor's word for what is underground.

We tell you when it is not your bill

Roughly half the drains we are called out to turn out to be the water company's responsibility rather than the householder's, and they clear those free. We say so and we leave. It costs us the job and it is the reason people ring us again, and recommend us.

What we are registered and insured for

• Public liability insurance, certificate available on request
• Member of the Federation of Small Businesses
• Registered with the Environment Agency as a waste carrier, so anything we take away comes with a compliant waste transfer note, and we keep our copies for the two years the law requires
• £10 million public liability cover and a Section 171 road opening licence for highway works, which is what Hampshire County Council requires before anyone touches a footway

What we do not do

We would rather tell you than waste your time. We do not do asbestos removal, hazardous waste, gas work, or anything needing a structural engineer's design, though we work alongside engineers regularly. We do not sell maintenance plans nobody needs. And we do not take on work so far away that we cannot get back if something needs putting right.