South London, Surrey and Sussex
Licensed removal of excavated spoil, clay, rubble and hardcore by grab lorry from our Croydon depot.
Muck away is the removal and licensed disposal of excavated spoil from a construction site. Prime Waste Services Ltd loads soil, clay, stones, rubble and hardcore by grab lorry, carrying up to 20 cubic yards and 16 tonnes per job, under waste carrier registration CBDU480663 and operator licence OK2066087.
Send the site postcode, what is on the ground and when you need it moved. We will come back with a written quotation. There is no charge for a quote and no obligation to book.
Lines are answered by the people who run the lorries, not a call centre. Same-day collection is often possible but always subject to availability.
The trade term covers taking excavated material off a site and disposing of it lawfully. It takes in the arisings from foundations, basements, swimming pools, drainage runs, driveway dig-outs and levelling work: topsoil, subsoil, clay, chalk, flint, stones, broken concrete, rubble and hardcore. The job is not simply a lorry turning up. It is a chain of decisions about how much material there is, what it legally counts as, where it can be taken and what paperwork has to travel with it.
Groundworkers usually move to muck away rather than skips once a dig passes the point where swapping skips becomes the bottleneck. A single foundation trench for a modest extension produces more loose material than most people expect, and a run of skips ties up the driveway for days. A grab lorry loads itself, takes the material away in bulk and comes back for the next load, which keeps the excavator working instead of waiting.
The practical constraints are weight and reach rather than willingness. Our grab lorries carry 20 cubic yards and up to 16 tonnes per job, subject to loading and road restrictions, and the regularly inspected Epsilon crane reaches up to 7.5 metres from the side of the vehicle, depending on the vehicle and site conditions. Wet clay reaches the weight limit long before it fills the body, so a heavy dig is planned by tonnage rather than by volume.
We work out of Pear Tree Farm, Featherbed Lane, Croydon, CR0 9AA, which sits on the southern edge of Greater London where the CR postcodes meet the Surrey boundary. From there the working area takes in South London, the whole of north and east Surrey, the Kent border around Bromley, Orpington and Sevenoaks, and the northern part of West Sussex.
In Greater London that means the CR district across Croydon, South Croydon, Thornton Heath, Purley, Coulsdon and Kenley, the SM district through Sutton, Cheam, Carshalton and Wallington, and the BR district covering Bromley, Beckenham, Penge and Orpington. The inner South London SE and SW districts bring in Lewisham, Catford, Sydenham, Streatham, Norbury, Mitcham and Wimbledon, and the KT district carries us west into Kingston upon Thames, Surbiton, Epsom and Ewell.
South of the M25 the RH districts cover Redhill, Reigate, Merstham, Horley, Oxted and Godstone in Surrey, while RH10 and RH11 take us into Crawley and the estates around Gatwick in West Sussex. The motorway is the spine of that half of the patch: junction 6 at Godstone for the A22, junction 7 for the M23 towards Merstham and Redhill, and junction 8 at Reigate for the A217. Northbound work runs on the A23 Purley Way, the A232 across Croydon and Sutton, and the A205 South Circular for SE and SW sites.
Two counties and one London boundary shape how a load is planned. Surrey and West Sussex sites often sit on chalk or Weald clay, reached by narrow lanes with weight-restricted bridges, while the SE and SW districts bring red routes, controlled parking zones and school-hour restrictions. It is better to talk the access through before booking than to send an eight-wheeler down a road it cannot turn in.
Start with the hole, not the heap. Measure the excavation in metres, multiply length by width by depth to get the in-situ volume, then allow for bulking. Ground that has been consolidated for thousands of years does not stay consolidated once a bucket has been through it, so excavated soil occupies noticeably more volume loose than it did in the ground.
How much more depends on the material. Sand and gravel bulk least, because the grains resettle quickly once they are dropped. Cohesive clay bulks a great deal more, because the bucket breaks it into lumps with air trapped between them, and both London Clay and Weald clay behave that way. Broken rock, flint and chalk sit somewhere between, and anything containing root mass or made ground bulks unpredictably.
Volume is only half the sum. A grab lorry is limited by weight as well as by body capacity, and 20 cubic yards of dry sandy soil weighs far less than the same volume of saturated clay. After a wet week the water alone can bring a load to the 16 tonne limit with the body visibly short of full, which is why a driver may leave with what looks like a part load. Sheeting stockpiles and giving a dig a day to drain before collection genuinely reduces the number of trips.
The honest way to quote a muck away job is to describe the excavation rather than guess at the tonnage. Give the plan dimensions and the depth, say what the ground is, and say whether the material is fresh out of the ground or has been sitting in a heap through rain. That produces a far more reliable answer than a figure estimated by eye.
Both take excavated material off site, but they load in completely different ways.
| Consideration | Grab lorry | Tipper |
|---|---|---|
| Loading | Loads itself using a crane and grab bucket | Needs an excavator or loading shovel on site |
| Reach | Up to 7.5 metres from the side of the vehicle, depending on vehicle and site conditions | Must be positioned where the machine can reach the body |
| Access needed | Can work from the kerb or verge without entering the site | Usually has to come onto the working area |
| Suits | Confined urban plots, driveways, and gardens behind walls or fences | Open sites with a machine already working and a firm haul route |
| Disruption | One vehicle and one operator, with no plant tied up | Ties up the excavator every time a lorry is loaded |
| Capacity | 20 cubic yards, up to 16 tonnes per job | Varies by vehicle and axle configuration |
Both are subject to loading and road restrictions, and both need somewhere safe and legal to stand.
Every load that leaves a site has to be classified before it moves, and that duty sits with the producer of the waste rather than with the haulier. Excavated soil and stones normally fall under List of Waste code 17 05 04, soil and stones other than those mentioned in 17 05 03. Where the soil contains hazardous substances it becomes the mirror entry 17 05 03 star, which is hazardous waste and cannot travel on a standard booking.
Most garden and greenfield digs across Surrey and South London are straightforward: clean natural soil, no history of industrial use, no odour, no staining and no unexpected fill. The picture changes on brownfield plots, former filling stations, old workshops, filled ponds and the made ground behind Victorian terraces, where soil can carry hydrocarbons, asbestos fibres, ash or metals from a use nobody wrote down.
Testing is the answer wherever there is doubt. A basic contamination screen, and waste acceptance criteria analysis where the material is going to landfill, tells you which facility can take the material and on what terms. A receiving site is entitled to refuse a load that does not match its description, and a refused load still has to go somewhere, so skipping the analysis rarely saves anything.
Ask about characterisation before the excavator starts. It is far easier to arrange testing while the ground is still in the ground than to find a home for a stockpile of suspect material already sitting on a driveway.
Under the duty of care set out in section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, everyone in the chain has to keep waste safe, make sure it is dealt with responsibly and pass it only to a business authorised to take it. In practice that means a written description of the waste and a transfer note covering each movement. If material from your site is later fly-tipped, the paperwork is what shows you took reasonable steps.
A transfer note has to record enough for anyone reading it afterwards to know exactly what moved, when, and who handled it.
Transfer notes should be kept for at least two years, and hazardous waste consignment notes for at least three. We are registered as a waste carrier under CBDU480663 and hold operator licence OK2066087, with four vehicles authorised at the Croydon operating centre, and documentation goes with every job as a matter of course. One concrete thing any site manager can do today is ask a haulier for their carrier registration number and check it on the public register before they load.
We remove soil, stones, muck, concrete, rubble, hardcore, demolition waste and green waste. That covers the great majority of what a dig produces, including mixed spoil from a strip-out where soil and broken slab arrive in the same bucket.
Some items are not accepted on standard bookings, either because they need a separate licensed route or because they cannot lawfully travel mixed with inert material: asbestos, gas bottles, batteries, railway sleepers, mattresses, tyres, fridges, freezers, paint, chemicals and liquids. Sleepers catch people out most often on garden clearances, because older ones are usually treated with creosote.
Sorting on site pays for itself. Clean soil and clean hardcore each have their own outlets, while a load that mixes soil with plasterboard offcuts and packaging becomes a general waste load with a different destination. Keeping excavated material out of the general site skip is a small habit that changes what happens at the other end. Same-day collection is often possible but always subject to availability, and every job is quoted on a project basis with no published price list.
It means removing excavated material from a site and disposing of it lawfully at a permitted facility. The term covers soil, clay, chalk, stones, rubble and hardcore produced by foundations, basements, drainage runs and driveway dig-outs. The term takes in the haulage, the disposal and the duty of care paperwork that has to travel with each load.
One load is 20 cubic yards and up to 16 tonnes, subject to loading and road restrictions. Which limit you reach first depends on the material. Dry sandy soil fills the body before it reaches the weight limit, while saturated clay reaches the weight limit with the body only part filled, so wet digs usually need more trips than the volume alone suggests.
Often, yes. The crane reaches up to 7.5 metres from the side of the vehicle, depending on the vehicle and site conditions, which is enough to lift material over a wall, hedge or fence from the road on many terraced and semi-detached plots. What decides it is where the lorry can legally and safely stand, and whether overhead cables or trees sit in the swing.
Not always, but sometimes. Clean natural soil from a garden or greenfield plot with no history of industrial use normally moves as non-hazardous soil and stones. Where a site is brownfield, contains made ground, or has a past use involving fuel, solvents or ash, the receiving facility will usually want analysis first, and hazardous material needs a specialist route rather than a standard booking.
A waste transfer note covering each movement. It records a description of the waste and its List of Waste code, the quantity, the date and address of transfer, the details of both parties, and the carrier registration number, which for us is CBDU480663. Keep transfer notes for at least two years, because the duty of care rests with you as the producer as well as with us.
Yes, where the timing works. We deliver MOT Type 1, crushed concrete, ballast, sharp sand, building sand, topsoil and shingle, so a lorry can arrive loaded with sub-base and leave with the arisings from the dig. Combining the trips reduces vehicle movements, which helps on narrow roads and single-access sites. Same-day collection is often possible but always subject to availability.
Sources and further reading
Call 07778 541120 or the office on 020 7167 8474 with the dimensions of your dig and we will quote the job.
