Resin Driveways in Skegness: Coastal Ground, Blown Sand and What It Costs

Skegness driveways get asked to do something driveways in Lincoln never do. They sit twelve miles out on a defended coastal plain, with an easterly coming off the North Sea most of the winter, sand blowing in off the dunes, and a water table that in places is barely a metre below the front garden. None of that stops a resin bound driveway working here - resin is arguably better suited to the coast than anything else you can lay - but it does change the job. Prices still land in the same £40 to £70 per square metre band you would pay inland, and a properly built drive still gives you fifteen to twenty five years. What changes is the groundwork underneath, and that is where the money either gets spent well or gets saved in the wrong place.

Two different towns, two different quotes

There is a version of Skegness that runs from Roman Bank down to the front, full of Edwardian guest houses and converted terraces off Drummond Road and Scarbrough Avenue, with tight frontages, dropped kerbs onto busy roads and a lot of shared access. Then there is the other Skegness, out along Burgh Road and Wainfleet Road and up through Winthorpe, which is bungalows and postwar semis and newer estate housing with proper off-street parking.

They price differently and they fail differently. The seafront properties are usually small areas with awkward access and old, patched bases that have been resurfaced two or three times since the war. The estate properties are bigger, simpler and often sitting on developer hardcore that was never intended to carry much. If you want the full picture of how the layer is actually built up, our resin bound driveways page goes through the construction from formation level upwards. The short version is that on this coast the surface is the easy part.

Blown sand: the local variable inland firms do not plan for

Anyone who has parked near Gibraltar Point on a windy March afternoon knows what sand does when it gets moving. It piles into every corner, it drifts against kerb lines, and on a hard surface with joints it works its way down into them and stays.

This is the single strongest practical argument for resin bound over block paving in Skegness, and it rarely gets made. Block paving is a jointed system. The joints need kiln dried sand, and blown sand is the wrong grade, holds moisture, and gives weed seed somewhere to sit. Within a few seasons you are re-sanding, weeding and sometimes lifting blocks that have rocked. Resin bound has no joints at all. Sand lands on it, gets brushed or rained off, and that is the end of it.

The one habit worth forming is to sweep while the wind is still blowing, because sand left to be ground in under tyres will very gradually dull the aggregate faces. Two minutes with a stiff broom.

Salt is hard on the ironmongery, not the resin

People assume sea air attacks the surface. It does not. The polyurethane resins used in a bound system are unaffected by chloride, which is exactly why the same systems get specified for promenades and seafront schemes along this coast.

Where salt does its work is on everything around the driveway. Galvanised steel edge restraints corrode faster within a mile of the sea than they do in Lincoln. Cheap gully gratings rust into their frames. Fixings on gates and bollards seize. So on coastal jobs the specification changes: aluminium edging or a block paving perimeter rather than steel, and any drainage channel chosen for its material rather than its price. It is a small line on a quote and it is the difference between a drive that still looks right in year twelve and one with a rusted border framing it.

Made ground, marsh clay and a water table close to the surface

Under Skegness you are broadly dealing with blown sand deposits near the dunes, tidal flat and marsh alluvium behind them, and a great deal of made ground where the town has been filled and levelled over a century and a half of expansion. Silty clay and soft alluvium do not behave like the limestone and boulder clay we work on around Lincoln.

Two consequences follow. First, sub-base depth usually goes up. Where 150mm of compacted permeable stone is fine on a firm inland base, a soft coastal formation often wants 200mm or more, sometimes over a geotextile separation layer to stop the stone punching down into the soft material below. Second, drainage design gets thought about properly. A permeable driveway relies on water passing through the surface and away through the stone underneath. If the water table sits close enough that the stone is periodically saturated, the sub-base stops working as a reservoir and needs a positive outfall instead - a linear channel to a soakaway on higher ground, or a connection that has been agreed rather than assumed.

Much of the coastal strip here also sits behind sea defences on land the Environment Agency maps as tidal flood risk, which is worth knowing before you design anything. You can check any address on the government’s flood risk service for England. The technical guidance on getting permeable construction right in difficult ground is set out well by Susdrain, the sustainable drainage community.

What it costs in Skegness in 2026

Installed rates sit at £40 to £70 per square metre, the same as everywhere else we work. The spread within that band is almost entirely about what happens below the surface.

A typical two car frontage of around 40 square metres comes out at roughly £1,700 to £3,000 where an existing concrete or tarmac base is sound and can be overlaid, and £2,400 to £4,200 where the ground has to be dug out and a new permeable sub-base built. A larger drive of 60 to 70 square metres, common on the Winthorpe and Burgh Road estates, tends to land between £2,800 and £5,000.

The honest caveat for this coast: the overlay bracket applies less often here. Loose sand and soft alluvium simply do not leave you with much worth keeping, and a firm that quotes an overlay price without lifting a slab or digging a trial hole is quoting the ground it hopes to find. Expect a coastal quote to sit toward the upper half of the range, and read a suspiciously cheap one as a warning about what has been left out of it. It is the same principle we set out for inland customers in our guide to resin driveways in Boston, where fen ground creates a similar problem.

Holiday lets, static pitches and shared frontages

A large share of the property along this coast earns its keep between Easter and October. That changes what a driveway is for. A let frontage takes a different car every week, gets reversed on by people who do not know the space, and is expected to look presentable to someone who has just paid for a week.

Gravel is the usual incumbent and it is the wrong surface for the job, because it migrates under turning wheels and ends up in the road, the lawn and the guest’s suitcase. Block paving needs annual attention that nobody does on a property they visit twice a year. Resin bound is genuinely low input, which is most of the argument for it here.

A couple of things need saying up front. If touring caravans or motorhomes will use the drive, the base needs specifying for point load rather than family car weight, and we go into the detail of that in our guide to parking a caravan or motorhome on a resin driveway. And if the frontage is shared, as many of the older seafront properties are, settle who owns which strip before anyone digs, not after.

Colour behaves differently in flat coastal light

Skegness light is not Lincoln light. It is flat, bright and reflective for much of the year, and east Lincolnshire is one of the drier corners of the country - annual rainfall around 600mm against a UK average closer to 1,150mm - so surfaces here are dry, dusty and sunlit far more often than they are wet.

That has a practical effect on colour choice. Very pale golds and creams that look warm on a shaded Lincoln street can glare on an open coastal frontage and show every mark of blown sand and dried salt. Mid tone blends with a bit of grey or brown in them cope better, hide the inevitable dusting, and hold their look through the season. Darker greys and anthracites read well against white rendered and pebbledashed seaside frontages, which is most of what you see out along the front. Ask to see samples outdoors on the plot itself, in the light the drive will actually live in.

Councils, kerbs and who to ask

There are two authorities involved here and they do different jobs. Skegness falls under East Lindsey District Council for planning, so anything to do with listed status, conservation areas or a planning condition on a newer estate goes to them. Lincolnshire County Council is the highway authority, so a new or widened dropped kerb is their application, not the district’s. If you are unsure which body covers a specific address, particularly out toward Ingoldmells and Chapel St Leonards, the gov.uk local council lookup settles it in a few seconds.

For the great majority of resin bound jobs neither authority is involved at all. Permeable front driveways sit inside permitted development however large they are, and the only common trigger is a kerb that needs dropping to get a vehicle across the footway.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a resin driveway cost in Skegness?

Budget £40 to £70 per square metre installed. On a two car frontage of roughly 40 square metres that puts most Skegness jobs between £1,700 and £3,000 if the existing base is sound enough to overlay, and between £2,400 and £4,200 where the ground has to come out and a new permeable sub-base goes in. Coastal plots more often fall into the second bracket than inland ones do, because loose sand and soft alluvium rarely give you a base worth keeping.

Will blown sand ruin a resin driveway?

No. Sand sits on the surface rather than working into it, because a resin bound driveway has no joints for it to lodge in. That is the practical advantage over block paving on this coast, where sand in the joints holds moisture and feeds weed growth. What sand does do is scour the surface slightly if it is left to be ground underfoot and under tyres, so a stiff brush every couple of weeks through a windy spell is worth the five minutes.

Does sea air damage resin bound surfaces?

Salt spray does not attack the resin itself. UV stable polyurethane resins are unaffected by chloride, which is why the same systems get specified for seafront schemes. What salt goes after is everything around the driveway: galvanised fixings, untreated steel edgings and cheap ironmongery on gullies and gratings. Aluminium or block edge restraints are the sensible coastal choice.

Do I need planning permission for a resin driveway in Skegness?

Usually not. Resin bound laid over an open graded permeable base drains through the surface, and permeable front driveways fall within permitted development regardless of area. It only becomes a planning matter if you make a frontage over five square metres impermeable with nowhere for the water to go. Skegness sits in the East Lindsey District Council area, so that is the authority to ask if your property is listed, in a conservation area, or subject to a condition on a newer estate.

Can you lay resin on a caravan pitch or holiday let frontage?

Yes, and it suits both. Resin bound handles the turning and manoeuvring that goes on around a static pitch better than gravel, which migrates, and it does not need the annual re-sanding that block paving does on a let nobody is living in full time. The thing to get right is depth and base, because a touring caravan or a loaded 4x4 puts far more point load through a surface than a family hatchback. Say what will be parked on it before the quote is written.

If you are weighing up a drive anywhere between Wainfleet and Chapel St Leonards, send us the address and a couple of photographs and we will tell you honestly whether the existing base is worth keeping. Get a free quote in Lincoln and across Lincolnshire.