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I live at the end of a shared drive for 5 houses, all built in the sixties. The drive is the property of the nearest house but with a right to cross for the other houses i.e. the house nearest the road owns the drive nearest the road. The owners of that house decided last winter to re-align it to make their garden bigger and resurface it.
Unfortunately, it's already starting to break up.
Roughly how much would it cost to properly resurface 25m of drive (it's just wide enough to get a bin lorry down) including redoing the foundations? It may be in the interests of the rest of us to chip in to get it done properly.
Tarmac it? Maybe find out who the council use.
Digging up the broken drive and completely relaying it [in tarmac] is going to be properly expensive.
About 18 years ago we had our 30m driveway plus about 260sqm of parking space surfaced with tarmac. It had a many years old gravel base that was properly compressed so we didn't need to relay that but did have some new edging done either side of the drive.
Luckily the size was big enough for the company to bring in their road laying machines* which actually reduced the price, gave a much better finish and the ability to contour the surface to move surface water where we want it.
Total cost was somewhere between £6-7k but I know prices have gone up massively since then.
Do your deeds say that the shared users need to contribute to the cost? Sounds like it's just down to the owners of that house - do it cheap, do it twice.
* It was a very large company who were starting up a driveway surfacing arm.
Sounds like you'd be paying for something that will still get wrecked by the bin lorry movements, unless you spent £££ to really do it properly.
If it's currently still passable by cars, I'd be arranging with the council to drag the bins 30m to the main road.
Digging up the broken drive and completely relaying it [in tarmac] is going to be properly expensive.
It is. I looked into doing similar about 15 years ago (all the access is joint-owned by all the owners - 18 properties in total). Back then a 'reasonable' job was circa. £30k but to re-do all the drainage and do a proper job was over £100k. We ended up with a whacker plate and whacked in some chippings as a temporary solution and subsequently moved out. It's still in the mess it was in (well considerably worse) as no-one wants to pay what it will cost to do a proper job on it. After what we went through (everyone agreeing to chip in with the cost of the hire and materials), and me and my father-in-law spending several back-breaking days fixing it only to then get several households not even pay up (to be fair, others did make up the shortfall), I would never purchase a house on a shared access again.
Different to above view - I own a shared drive. It has 3 holiday lets and 3 residential houses + mine. We each pay a small amount per month into a fund administered by one of the other owners and I can call on that fund to pay for repairs etc. when needed. It wont pay for a full resurface, but it works ok in order that what needs doing gets done and Im not always reaching in my pocket for it.
Shared drives can be ok.
Shared drives can be ok.
I am sure they can be if there is a properly-administered fund that is legally enforceable (or at least where all parties are in agreement). The problems arise when one (or more) parties decide not to agree to it.