Site clearance, muck away, excavation, drainage and foundations for architects, developers, main contractors and homeowners across west Cornwall. Set out and dug to the engineer's drawing by the director who prices the job and operates the machine.
Groundworks is everything that happens on a site between clearing it and building on it: site clearance and strip out, excavation to formation, muck away, drainage runs, foundations, and the setting out that fixes every level above them.
It is the stage that decides whether the rest of the programme runs. Ground is the one part of a project nobody can see until it is opened up, and what comes out, rock, made ground, an unrecorded service or standing water, changes the sequence.
That is why architects, developers and main contractors treat their choice of groundwork contractors as a programme decision. Homeowners building an extension buy the same thing on a smaller footprint.
Vegetation, hardstanding, redundant slabs, old foundations and abandoned services taken out, and the plot brought back to workable ground. Where a structure comes down first, it runs under the same contract as demolition and structural strip outs.
Arisings loaded, hauled and tipped, with waste segregated for recycling, or kept and reused on site where levels allow. On the St Ives wall the arisings stayed on site, which took wagons off a tight lane.
Bulk dig, reduced level dig, trenches and pits taken to bearing strata. Excavation contractors earn their keep at formation, and west Cornwall gives up granite and Blue Elvan shallow, so rock is priced at the dig, not found at the pour.
Setting out to the architect's and engineer's drawing, strip and trench fill foundations, pads, ground beams and pile caps, with reinforcement fixed to schedule so loads reach the ground safely, as Building Regulations Part A requires.
Foul and surface water runs, land drains, soakaways and attenuation tanks installed inside the package rather than cut in afterwards. See drainage solutions.
Blinding, membranes, oversite, reinforced slabs and in situ structures, poured to the engineer's design. See concrete services.
Stepped plots, single track lanes and frontages with nowhere to stand a machine. Smaller machines, a one ton dumper where a wagon cannot reach, hand digging where that is the honest answer, and muck away staged so the lane keeps moving.
Your programme holds its datesClearance, dig, drainage and concrete are sequenced by one contractor, so the next trade walks onto a site at the right level on the promised day.
The ground is proved before anything is built on itRock, soft spots, made ground and buried services are dealt with at excavation stage, when they cost a day, not after a slab is down.
Water is designed for from the first digFalls, land drains, soakaways and attenuation are set out with the foundations, so surface water has somewhere to go before the first winter.
Sign off is straightforwardLevels, depths, formation and reinforcement are ready for building control and your engineer to inspect, with no work reopened.
The risk in a groundworks package sits in the excavation itself. Under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, an excavation where anyone is working must be inspected by a competent person at the start of every shift, and after any event likely to have affected its stability. That discipline applies on a footing trench as surely as on a cliff site.
Most public liability policies exclude demolition outright. This one does not.
Matt prices the job, runs the site and operates the machine, with 23 years in construction behind him.
Clearance, demolition, groundworks, drainage and concrete under one contract, with no handover gap for the programme to fall into.
Setting out, reinforcement, cover and concrete grade to the design, including work delivered under external structural engineers' direction.
Matt Richards owns and runs Cornwall Civils & Construction from Newlyn. Mason by trade, then working foreman, then site manager across groundworks and demolition. He led the 45 metre reinforced concrete retaining wall at St Ives as director and machine operator, assisted on Jubilee Pool, and carried out a cliffside restoration on 65 piles.
Tight site? Restricted access? Bring it on. A lot of the ground here is on a slope, up a lane a wagon cannot turn in, or hard against a neighbour's wall. Getting in and out of a site cleanly is a skill in itself.Matt Richards, director
23 years in construction, since the age of 17
Mason by trade, then working foreman, then site manager
Director on site, and machine operator on his own contracts
A specialist partner network built over 15 years
We work from Newlyn, so most of our groundworks sits across the Penwith peninsula and the towns around Mount's Bay. The 45 metre retaining wall was at St Ives, and our address is in Newlyn. We work as far east as Falmouth. We are on sites in Penzance, Hayle, Marazion, St Just, Camborne, Redruth and Helston regularly. Groundworks companies are usually one link in a chain; we carry the demolition before it and the build after it.
Recent work includes the dig for the 45 metre reinforced concrete retaining wall at St Ives, cut into a stepped hillside where Blue Elvan hard rock came up at base level and was packed out before installation. Also a cliffside restoration on 65 piles, and 26 metres of soakaway installed in stages.
We do not publish rates, because groundworks is priced against the ground in front of it: what comes out, where it goes, and what is built back. You get a written quote after a site visit, setting out:
The visit and the quote are free. If the scope changes on site, you get that in writing before the work starts.
Our Google reviews are public, and they carry more weight than anything we could write here.
Based on 5 Google reviews
Great company to work with. Professional, reliable and well organised from start to finish. Communication is always clear, sites are well run & the team are a pleasure to deal with. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them and look forward to working together again!
Read more on GoogleCornwall Civils have been working on a complex external works package for our project in St Ives. Their works have included an extensive concrete retaining wall, in-situ concrete stairs and an in-ground modular drainage system.
Read more on GoogleCornwall Civils handled a tricky concrete shuttering, steel work, and pour for us on an emergency job. They stepped in at very short notice and worked through nights and weekends to get it done. The quality of their work was excellent, and their commitment was outstanding.
Read more on GoogleI recently had the pleasure of working with Matry at Cornwall Civils and Construction, and I couldn’t be more impressed with the service provided.
Read more on GoogleOne further five-star rating was left on Google without a written review.
Send the drawings, the postcode and the stage the site is at, and Matt will come and look at it. Clearance, dig, drainage and foundations under one contract, with the scope and the sequence in writing.
Call Matt Richards on 07958 102538 · Get a free quote online
14 The Strand, Newlyn, Penzance, TR18 5HN
Phone: 07958 102538
Email: info@cornwallcivilsandconstruction.co.uk
Hours: Mon to Fri 07:00 to 17:00 · Sat 08:00 to 12:00
Sunday: emergency call out only
Last updated: 22 September 2026
