Crawley RH10 and RH11
Screened soil brought in and heavy Weald clay taken out on the same lorry visit.
Topsoil in Crawley is supplied as a loose load rather than in bags, placed on RH10 and RH11 sites by grab crane. Prime Waste Services Ltd runs from a Croydon operating centre with a 20 cubic yard body, carrying up to 16 tonnes per job under waste carrier registration CBDU480663.
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.
It involves one lorry doing two jobs. We are a grab operator and a topsoil supplier on the same vehicle, so the crane places your screened soil where it is wanted and then loads the clay, turf or rubble you have dug out into the body for the journey back. Crawley is our longest regular run, so a second trip to collect spoil is a genuinely expensive way to organise a job.
The load runs loose. Twenty cubic yards in the body, up to 16 tonnes per job subject to loading and road restrictions, and a crane reach of up to 7.5 metres from the side of the vehicle depending on the vehicle and site conditions. On the tighter Crawley neighbourhood layouts that reach usually means the lorry can stay on the carriageway rather than trying to get onto a drive.
Quotations are free and priced by project. Same-day collection is often possible but always subject to availability, and with the distance involved a booking made the day before is far more reliable than one made at eleven in the morning.
Access to Crawley is straightforward until you get inside the ring. M23 junction 10 is the main motorway access for the town, and when the northbound M23 between junctions 10 and 9 is closed, traffic is signed off at junction 10 onto the A2011 and A264. The A2011 Crawley Avenue is the dual-carriageway ring route into town, the A23 London Road runs north past Manor Royal towards Gatwick’s North Terminal roundabout, and the A264 heads east towards Copthorne and the A22 at Felbridge.
The town centre is a live construction site. Crawley Borough Council appointed Landbuild Ltd in January 2026 to deliver phase one of the Station Gateway regeneration scheme, a roughly 24-month programme transforming the Martlets, Haslett Avenue West and Friary Way and rebuilding the bus station, funded through the Crawley Growth Programme and Crawley Towns Fund. Phase one construction brings lane closures at various stages and occasional full road closures on Station Way, the Friary Way junction, the Martlets and Haslett Avenue West, spread over roughly five months. For anything near Station Way, the approach needs checking on the day rather than assumed.
Manor Royal has permanent changes of its own. Under the Crawley Growth Deal, West Sussex County Council upgraded A23 London Road junctions, added a bus lane on Manor Royal itself and put Metcalf Way and County Oak Way under a one-way system to cut congestion in the business district. A lorry that misses its turning on Metcalf Way does not simply turn round. West Sussex County Council has also consulted on remodelling the Hazelwick and Tushmore junctions on the A2011, including signalising Hazelwick as part of the Forge Wood development, though it warns that construction depends on grant and developer funding and could be several years away.
Residential streets are permit controlled across much of the town. Crawley has nine resident permit parking zones, A at West Green, B and J at Northgate, C, F and F2 at Three Bridges, D and E at Southgate and G at Pound Hill, most operating permit holders only from Monday to Saturday, 9am to 5pm. On the northern edge, the Secretary of State for Transport granted the development consent order for the Gatwick Airport Northern Runway Project in September 2025, so construction traffic in that part of RH10 and RH11 is not going to get lighter.
Because of what is underneath them. Crawley sits in the Low Weald, where the Gatwick sub-region Level 1 Strategic Flood Risk Assessment records impermeable Weald Clay bedrock beneath Quaternary clay, silt, sand and gravel, and the British Geological Survey describes the northern part of West Sussex as underlain by Hastings Group clays and Weald Clay.
The consequence on site is predictable. Excavated material here is usually wet, heavy, cohesive clay that will not soak away and has little value as granular fill, so digging out a lawn and raking the same material back gives you a growing layer that puddles all winter and bakes hard in summer. Replacing the top layer with screened soil, over ground that has been properly broken up first, is the difference between turf that establishes and turf that sits there.
It also means the spoil is heavy for its volume. Wet clay loads a body quickly, so tell us at quotation stage what you expect to be digging out and we will size the trip around the weight rather than the visual volume.
On clay ground the distinction between these three matters more than it does on free-draining sites.
| Material | Screening | Typical use | Where it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topsoil to BS 3882 | Screened, then sampled and tested against the British Standard for texture, pH, organic matter, nutrients, stones and contaminants | Specified planting and landscape works where the analysis has to be produced | Schemes with a written soil specification or a planning condition naming the standard |
| Screened topsoil | Passed through a mesh to take out stones, roots and oversized lumps, with the soil chemistry unchanged | Lawns, beds, borders and levelling before turf | Domestic and light commercial landscaping where a consistent, workable finish is the aim |
| Subsoil | Normally unscreened, dug from beneath the topsoil horizon and low in organic matter | Bulk fill and building levels up under a growing layer | Regrades and making up depth, never as the final layer under turf |
Screening removes stones. It does not turn heavy clay into free-draining soil, which is the trap on Weald Clay sites.
Topsoil is the upper fertile horizon: it carries the organic matter, the nutrients and the structure that plants root into. Subsoil is the layer below, denser and low in organic matter, useful for bulk filling and building levels up beneath a growing layer but wrong under turf or planting.
Screened topsoil is topsoil that has been through a mesh so that stones, roots and material above the screen size come out. Screening is a mechanical sort and no more than that. It gives an even product that spreads and rakes to a consistent depth, but it does not change pH, fertility or drainage, so a screened clay soil is still a clay soil.
BS 3882, the British Standard specification for topsoil, is the reference that landscape specifications name. It sets out the parameters a soil is judged against, including texture, pH, organic matter, nutrients, stone content and contaminants, and separates multipurpose topsoil from topsoils intended for specific purposes. Compliance is shown by laboratory analysis of a sample, so where a Crawley drawing calls up the standard, ask for the analysis and the sample date before the material is ordered.
Not to the local recycling centre, which surprises a lot of people. Crawley Recycling Centre on Metcalf Way, RH11 7XN, run by West Sussex County Council, requires a booked slot and refuses vehicles over 3.5 tonnes gross or over 2.2 metres high, along with Luton vans, tippers, flatbeds, drop-sides, horseboxes and twin-axle trailers. The vehicles that a groundworks or landscaping job would actually use are the ones it will not admit.
That leaves a licensed carrier as the practical route for anything more than a boot load. We hold upper tier waste carrier registration CBDU480663 and operator licence OK2066087, with four vehicles authorised at the Croydon operating centre. Company number 14793814, trading since April 2023, fully insured, with CPCS compliant and CSCS registered operatives, so the material leaves with a transfer note and your duty of care is documented.
Soil, stones, muck, concrete, rubble, hardcore, demolition waste and green waste are all fine on a standard booking. Asbestos, gas bottles, batteries, railway sleepers, mattresses, tyres, fridges, freezers, paint, chemicals and liquids are not.
Pear Tree Farm, Featherbed Lane, Croydon CR0 9AA to Crawley is about 18.8 miles, roughly an hour for a car down the A23 and the M23 to junction 10, then in on the A2011. A loaded eight-wheeler adds roughly 15 to 20 per cent to a car journey time, and these are typical figures rather than guaranteed ones.
Crawley is in West Sussex, well outside the Greater London boundary, and Transport for London states that the Ultra Low Emission Zone operates only across the London boroughs and the City of London, with the M25 itself not in the zone. Nothing on a Crawley job attracts a ULEZ charge. Loads that run north into London still have to meet Low Emission Zone standards, which is a scheduling question worth raising at quotation stage rather than on the day.
Yes, Crawley is a regular run of about 18.8 miles down the A23 and M23 to junction 10. The distance is the reason we plan delivery and removal as one visit rather than two. A loaded eight-wheeler adds roughly 15 to 20 per cent to the car journey time, so a delivery slot is best agreed a day ahead where possible.
Only in a small vehicle, and often not at all. The Metcalf Way site requires a booked slot and refuses vehicles over 3.5 tonnes gross or over 2.2 metres high, along with Luton vans, tippers, flatbeds, drop-sides and twin-axle trailers. For anything produced by a landscaping or groundworks job, a registered waste carrier is the route that works and the one that leaves you with a transfer note.
On its own, no. Screening removes stones and roots but does not change how a soil drains, and the ground beneath a new layer is still impermeable Weald Clay. Good results come from breaking up the surface below, getting the levels right so water can move, and then spreading screened soil at a consistent depth on top of prepared ground.
Work out the area in square metres, multiply by the finished depth in metres, and allow for settlement once the soil is trodden and watered. Send that volume with your postcode and photographs of the access. Our body holds 20 cubic yards and we carry up to 16 tonnes per job, subject to loading and road restrictions, so most domestic jobs sit comfortably within one load.
Sources and further reading
Call 07778 541120 with your Crawley postcode and what needs to leave the site, and we will quote both directions of the trip.
