Edgware sits on the line between two London boroughs, which means two houses facing each other across the same road can be looking at different fees, different waiting times and different application systems for what looks like exactly the same skip. Here is what to settle before the lorry turns up.
Search for skip hire Edgware and you will find plenty of prices quoted by the yard. What you will not find is an answer to the question that decides how the week actually goes: whose road is it?
Edgware town centre straddles the boundary between the London Borough of Barnet and the London Borough of Harrow, and the A5 Edgware Road has long been the dividing line along that stretch. Most of HA8 falls in Barnet. Move west towards Canons Park and Stanmore and you are in Harrow. Two councils, two fee schedules, two online systems, two sets of lead times, and no way to work out which one applies from the postcode alone. Postcodes were drawn up for the Royal Mail, not for highways departments.
So start there. Put the full address into the council finder at gov.uk/find-local-council before you do anything else. It takes two minutes and it determines everything below.
Driveway or road? One question decides whether you need a licence at all
If the skip sits entirely on your own driveway, forecourt or hardstanding, you need nobody’s permission. That is the cheap, fast route and it is why driveway jobs can often be delivered the same day while road jobs cannot.
Two things still catch people out. The first is the surface. A loaded 12 yard skip weighs several tonnes concentrated on four small bearing points, and block paving, resin-bound gravel and older tarmac drives do not always survive it. Ask for timber bearers. The second is access: a skip lorry is roughly three metres wide and seven metres long, and it needs clear overhead space to swing the arms, so low branches, a carport roof or a telephone line across the drive can rule out a spot that looks perfectly fine at ground level.
The moment any part of the skip rests on land the council maintains, including the footway and the grass verge, you need a licence. That is section 139 of the Highways Act 1980, and it applies to skip bags on public land just as it applies to a steel builders skip.
Which council, and how long it will take
The application goes in to the highways or licensing team at whichever borough your street belongs to, and the licence is issued to the skip company rather than to you. That last point surprises people. You are not the applicant. The operator is, and in most London boroughs the operator has to be registered with that council before it can apply at all. It is the single biggest reason two firms give you completely different answers to “can you have it there by Thursday”.
Lead times vary more than fees do. Barnet is at the quicker end of the London range and can turn a straightforward application round in about a working day. Harrow, like most boroughs, wants several working days, and no council will backdate a licence to cover a skip that is already sitting on the road. Published skip licence fees across London average somewhere around £100, with a national spread running from under £20 to well over £200, so treat any figure you read on a blog, including this one, as indicative and ask for the current number in writing.
If your street is in a controlled parking zone or the skip needs to occupy a permit holder bay, there is a separate parking bay suspension charge on top, and in some boroughs the suspension costs more than the licence. It is also billed per day, so a fortnight of indecision is expensive.
This is the part of the job worth handing over. An operator like B&K Environmental Services, which applies for licences across both Barnet and Harrow as routine work, already knows which system each borough uses and what each one currently charges, and its booking app shows live permit prices and waiting times for the borough you are in before you commit to a delivery date.
Where it can and cannot sit
Assuming the licence is in hand, placement is still constrained:
- Not on a junction, a bend or anywhere it blocks sightlines for drivers pulling out.
- Not across a dropped kerb, including your neighbour’s. This is the most common cause of a complaint that escalates into a council visit.
- Enough carriageway left for traffic to pass safely, and enough footway left for a wheelchair or a double buggy. “Enough room to squeeze past” is not the test the council applies.
- Lit and marked after dark, with reflective boards, cones and lights, and the owner’s name and telephone number clearly displayed on the skip. Failing on this is a criminal offence under section 139 and carries a fine of up to £1,000. It is the operator’s duty rather than yours, but it is worth a glance on the first evening.
Sizing it in bin bags rather than yards
Nobody thinks in cubic yards. Translated into something useful: an 8 yard skip is roughly six cubic metres, or somewhere around 60 to 80 filled bin bags, which covers a bathroom strip-out or a serious garage clearance. A 12 yard is about nine cubic metres and suits a kitchen refit or a house clearance. A 16 yard, around twelve cubic metres, is renovation and light demolition territory.
Then the rule that feels backwards. Heavy waste goes in a smaller skip. Soil, rubble, concrete, tiles and hardcore hit the vehicle’s plated weight limit long before they fill the container, so an 8 yard skip half full of rubble is a legal load while a 16 yard skip full of it is not going anywhere. If your job is mostly muck and masonry, say so when you book, because the answer may be a smaller skip, a grab lorry or a wait and load service where the vehicle stays while you fill it and leaves within the hour. That last option needs no highway licence at all, which is occasionally the neatest way out of a permit problem entirely.
What cannot go in
Asbestos, in any form, including old cement sheeting and Artex. Plasterboard, which has to be kept separate because gypsum cannot be landfilled with biodegradable waste. Fridges and freezers, tyres, car batteries, gas canisters, liquid paint, and upholstered sofas and armchairs, which are treated as containing persistent organic pollutants and have to be handled separately from mixed waste.
Put any of these in and the whole load can be rejected at the transfer station, which means a return trip, a surcharge and a delay. Asbestos in particular needs a licensed removal service, not a skip and a pair of gloves.
Being the neighbour nobody complains about
Tell the houses either side before the delivery date, not after. If a bay is being suspended, the notices go up in advance and the people who normally park there will read them, so a heads-up costs nothing and saves a fortnight of frost. Keep the load level with the top rail, because an overfilled skip cannot legally be sheeted and lifted, and light material blows across the street overnight. And accept that once it is on your permit, everything in it is yours, including whatever a passer-by adds at two in the morning. A skip left open on a Friday night in a busy part of Edgware will collect other people’s mattresses.
Questions people in Edgware ask most
Do I need a permit for a skip on my own driveway?
No, provided the whole skip is on private land you control and no part of it overhangs the pavement.
How long does a skip licence last?
Most London boroughs issue them for a set period, commonly a fortnight, with extensions charged separately and only available before the original expires.
What happens if the skip goes on the road without a licence?
The council can require its removal and prosecute, with fines running to four figures, and the liability sits with the operator and with you jointly.
Can I get a skip delivered the same day?
On a driveway, often yes if you book early. On the highway, no, because the council has to process the licence first.
Before you phone or open the app, have four things ready: the full address, the exact spot the skip is going and whether it is on private land or the highway, the dates you need it, and a rough description of the waste including anything heavy. Those four answers are what turn a twenty minute phone call into a five minute one.
