Screened topsoil across Reigate RH2
Loose loads of screened soil placed where you need them, with spoil taken away on the same visit.
Topsoil delivery in Reigate means a loose load of screened soil craned or tipped into place on your RH2 site rather than bagged. Prime Waste Services Ltd runs grab lorries carrying 20 cubic yards and up to 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.
Most Reigate enquiries open with a question about access rather than about soil. Prime Waste Services Ltd works as a grab operator and a topsoil supplier on the same vehicle, so the Epsilon crane that lifts your screened soil over a fence can lift the spoil you have dug out back into the body before the lorry leaves. On a narrow RH2 driveway that turns two separate vehicle visits into one.
Loads run loose rather than in bags. The body holds 20 cubic yards and we carry up to 16 tonnes per job, subject to loading and road restrictions, and the crane reaches up to 7.5 metres from the side of the vehicle depending on the vehicle and the site. That reach is what lets soil land on a back garden or a raised terrace instead of on the pavement outside.
Give us the area you are covering and the finished depth you want and we will size the load from that. Quotations are free and priced by project. Same-day collection is often possible but always subject to availability, so an early call gives the best chance of a slot the same day.
Reigate town centre is a small grid of classified roads carrying more traffic than its width suggests. The A25 runs east to west as Church Street, the High Street and then West Street and Upper West Street towards Buckland and Dorking, while the A217 forms the north to south spine as Bell Street and Bancroft Road. Surrey County Council has proposed dropping five town-centre sections from 30mph to 20mph, including the A25 High Street from Bell Street to just west of Park Lane, the whole of Bancroft Road and the 60 metre access to Morrisons off Bell Street. Its assessment recorded 11 collisions on Bell Street over three years, the highest of the town-centre sections.
The 1823 tunnel on Tunnel Road, listed Grade II on 27 January 1989, is a quirk worth knowing before you plan an approach. It was closed to southbound motor traffic in 1954 and fully pedestrianised in April 1970, so every through movement between the High Street and London Road has to go round on the A217. Coming in from the south, the A25 between Dorking and Reigate has been through Surrey’s Safe System scheme, an 8.4 kilometre programme funded with 1.8 million pounds from the Department for Transport that brought average speed cameras, high containment kerbs at the Reigate bends and near the River Mole bridge, and central hatching to deter overtaking.
The ground itself is the reason imported soil is so common here. Reigate sits on the greensand ridge below the North Downs escarpment, and the borough council’s Strategic Flood Risk Assessment records the central band through Reigate, Redhill and Merstham as underlain by Upper Greensand, Gault, Folkestone Beds, Sandgate Beds, Hythe Beds and Atherfield Clay. Permeability varies considerably and springs break out where permeable layers sit over less permeable ones, so one garden can produce clean sand at the top of the plot and sticky Gault clay at the bottom. Very little of that is worth keeping as a growing layer.
Reigate also has almost no industrial land of its own. Albert Road North Estate is the only industrial estate the borough council lists in the town, a compact site near the town centre with access to the M25, which means most work here is small-scale, town-centre and hemmed in by parked cars and pedestrians.
Topsoil is the upper, biologically active layer of the ground. It holds the organic matter, the nutrients and the structure that plants root into, which is why it is the only one of the three that is a growing medium in its own right.
Screened topsoil is that same material passed through a mesh so that stones, roots and lumps above the screen size are taken out. Screening is a physical process and nothing more. It gives a consistent, rakeable product that spreads evenly, but it does not raise fertility, change pH or improve drainage, and it does not by itself make a soil compliant with a written specification.
Subsoil sits below the topsoil layer. It is denser, low in organic matter and slow to drain, so it is used for bulk filling and for bringing levels up before a topsoil layer goes on top. Putting subsoil where turf or planting is going to sit is one of the more common and more expensive mistakes on a landscaping job.
The three materials people usually mean by soil behave very differently once they are on the ground.
| Material | How it is processed | Typical use | Where it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topsoil to BS 3882 | Tested against the British Standard for texture, pH, organic matter, nutrients, stone content and contaminants | Growing medium for turf, planting beds and specified landscape works | Schemes where a drawing or specification names the standard and analysis has to be produced |
| Screened topsoil | Passed through a mesh to remove stones, roots and lumps above the screen size, with no change to the soil chemistry | General garden beds, levelling before turf, filling raised beds and borders | Domestic gardens and landscaping where an even, rakeable finish matters most |
| Subsoil | Won from below the topsoil layer, denser and low in organic matter | Bulk filling and raising levels beneath a topsoil layer | Making up depth on a regrade before the growing layer goes on |
Screened and BS 3882 are not the same claim. Screening is a physical process; the British Standard is a set of tested parameters.
BS 3882 is the British Standard specification for topsoil. It sets out the parameters a soil is judged against, including texture, pH, organic matter, nutrient levels, stone content and contaminants, and it separates multipurpose topsoil from topsoils specified for a particular purpose such as low-fertility planting.
The practical point is that compliance is demonstrated by laboratory analysis, not by the word on a delivery ticket. If a Reigate specification names the standard, ask the supplier for the test analysis and the date the sample was taken, and ask what screen size the material was passed through. Where no analysis exists, treat what arrives as screened soil and specify accordingly.
Tell us at quotation stage if a landscape architect’s drawing calls up the standard for your RH2 scheme. It changes what needs to be sourced and it is far cheaper to establish before the lorry is loaded than after the soil is spread.
Our operating centre is at Pear Tree Farm, Featherbed Lane, Croydon CR0 9AA, about 10.7 miles from Reigate. A car covers it in roughly 34 minutes using the A23 south and then the A25 Reigate Road, with M25 junction 8 sitting immediately above the town. A loaded eight-wheeler adds roughly 15 to 20 per cent to a car journey time, and these figures are typical rather than guaranteed.
Junction 8 at Reigate Hill is the pinch point on that run. National Highways has been adding a lane to the southbound A217 and rebuilding and realigning the carriageway at Gatton Bottom, a scheme it records as delivering almost 53,000 hours of journey time savings in its first year. Reigate itself lies outside Greater London, so neither the ULEZ nor the Low Emission Zone applies here, though any load run north into London still has to meet LEZ standards.
Because the same visit that brings soil in usually takes waste out, and the moment spoil leaves your site the duty of care applies to you as well as to us. We are registered as an upper tier waste carrier under CBDU480663 and hold operator licence OK2066087 with four vehicles authorised at the Croydon operating centre. Company number 14793814, trading since April 2023, fully insured, and our operatives are CPCS compliant, CSCS registered and screened.
It matters locally as well. Earlswood Community Recycling Centre on Horley Road, the nearest Surrey site to Reigate, is a household facility that does not accept business waste, and Surrey County Council directs businesses to a waste transfer station instead. Vans, pickups and trailers also need a CRC permit that is valid at only nine Surrey sites, so spoil from a Reigate garden or groundworks job is not something you can quietly run down there yourself.
Usually yes, because the grab crane reaches up to 7.5 metres from the side of the vehicle depending on the vehicle and site conditions, so the lorry can stand on the road and place soil over a wall, fence or hedge. Tell us which street you are on when you call, since the A25 and A217 town-centre sections are tight and a short stand is easier to arrange than a long one.
Multiply the area in square metres by the finished depth in metres to get a volume in cubic metres, then allow for the ground settling once it is trodden and watered in. Send us that figure with your postcode and we will tell you what the load should be. Our body holds 20 cubic yards and we carry up to 16 tonnes per job, subject to loading and road restrictions.
Yes, on the same trip wherever the timing works. The crane loads spoil, stones, rubble or hardcore into the body once the new material is off, which halves the number of lorry movements outside the property. We are a registered waste carrier under CBDU480663, so the material leaves with a transfer note rather than disappearing without a record.
Only where a tested and documented material has been sourced for that order, so ask at quotation stage rather than assuming. BS 3882 compliance is proved by laboratory analysis of a sample, not by the description on a ticket. If your Reigate scheme has a specification that names the standard, say so when you call and we will source against it.
No. Quotations are free and priced by project rather than from a published list, because access, volume and what needs to leave the site all move the figure. The information that settles a price is the postcode, the material and volume you want, whether anything is going out on the return leg, and an honest description of where a lorry can stand while it works.
Sources and further reading
Call 07778 541120 with your Reigate postcode, the access and the finished depth, and we will price the load and the muck away together.
