RAMS & CPP for Landscaping
What compliance documents you need for driveways, patios, retaining walls, and hard landscaping — and how The Site Book handles it for you.
Written by Nicola Dobbie, Founder, The Site BookLast reviewed
TL;DR
- CPP: Required — CDM 2015 applies to every construction project, including hard landscaping.
- RAMS: Recommended — always required by commercial clients and local authorities.
- Key hazards: Excavation collapse, striking underground services, and silica dust from cutting stone and block paving.
What compliance do you need?
Hard landscaping involves real construction risks — excavation, plant machinery, heavy materials, and underground services. Whether you're laying a driveway, building a retaining wall, or installing drainage, CDM 2015 applies. Many landscapers don't realise this, but the regulations cover all construction work including groundworks and external works.
Do you need a CPP?
Yes. A Construction Phase Plan is required for all construction projects. For landscaping, your CPP should cover excavation procedures, how you'll identify and avoid underground services, plant and machinery management, and traffic management if you're working near roads.
Do you need RAMS?
RAMS are recommended for all hard landscaping work. They're essential when using plant machinery, excavating near services, or cutting stone and concrete (silica dust). Commercial clients and local authorities will always require RAMS.
Common hazards
- Excavation collapse when digging for foundations and drainage
- Underground services — gas, electric, water, telecoms
- Plant and machinery — mini diggers, dumpers, compactors
- Manual handling of heavy materials (slabs, kerbs, aggregates)
- Silica dust from cutting concrete, stone, and block paving
- Cement burns from wet concrete and mortar
- Noise and vibration from cutting equipment and compactors
- Vehicles and pedestrians near work areas
How The Site Book handles it
Describe your job — "block paving driveway, semi-detached house" — and The Site Book creates your RAMS and CPP automatically. It identifies landscaping-specific hazards including excavation safety, underground services, silica dust from cutting, and plant machinery use.
Frequently asked questions
- Do landscapers need RAMS?
- RAMS are recommended for hard landscaping work, especially when it involves excavation, use of plant machinery, working near underground services, or construction of retaining walls. Commercial clients and local authorities will typically require RAMS before work starts. Even for domestic driveways and patios, RAMS are good practice.
- Does CDM 2015 apply to landscaping work?
- Yes. CDM 2015 applies to all construction work, which includes hard landscaping such as driveways, patios, retaining walls, and drainage work. Soft landscaping (planting, turfing) on its own may not count as construction work, but it often forms part of a larger project that does.
- Do I need a CPP for a driveway or patio job?
- Yes. A Construction Phase Plan is required for all construction projects under CDM 2015. For landscaping, your CPP should cover excavation safety, plant and machinery use, underground services identification, and manual handling of heavy materials like paving slabs and kerbs.
What's included at each tier
Starter
£0- Risk Assessments (RAMS)
- Construction Phase Plans (CPP)
- Site inductions
- Worker document signing (no per-signature charge)
Pro
£39/mo or £360/yr- Risk Assessments (RAMS)
- Construction Phase Plans (CPP)
- Site inductions
- COSHH assessments (standalone doc, SDS upload, site-specific register)
- Worker cert tracking and expiry alerts
- Right-to-work evidence records
- Subcontractor tracking
- Toolbox talks
- Worker document signing (no per-signature charge)
- Integrations (Drive, Xero, Zapier)
Business
£199/mo- Risk Assessments (RAMS)
- Construction Phase Plans (CPP)
- Site inductions
- COSHH assessments (standalone doc, SDS upload, site-specific register)
- Worker cert tracking and expiry alerts
- Right-to-work evidence records
- Subcontractor tracking
- Toolbox talks
- Worker document signing (no per-signature charge)
- Integrations (Drive, Xero, Zapier)
- Up to 10 internal team logins
- Site Supervisor: a field-only login for whoever runs the site
- Up to 50 active site portal users
- Site attendance check-in/check-out
- Multilingual worker inductions (9 languages)
- Optional 4-digit PIN for shared-link document sign-off
- Slack Site Ready readiness checks
Site Control
£675/site/mo- Risk Assessments (RAMS)
- Construction Phase Plans (CPP)
- Site inductions
- COSHH assessments (standalone doc, SDS upload, site-specific register)
- Worker cert tracking and expiry alerts
- Right-to-work evidence records
- Subcontractor tracking
- Toolbox talks
- Worker document signing (no per-signature charge)
- Integrations (Drive, Xero, Zapier)
- Up to 10 internal team logins
- Site Supervisor: a field-only login for whoever runs the site
- Up to 50 active site portal users
- Site attendance check-in/check-out
- Multilingual worker inductions (9 languages)
- Optional 4-digit PIN for shared-link document sign-off
- Slack Site Ready readiness checks
- Permanent entrance QR: guest sign-in and contractor self-join
- CSCS credential capture, review and expiry alerts
- Digital induction gating before check-in
- Live people-on-site, attendance and audit-grade exports
- Single sign-on (SSO) with Okta or Microsoft Entra
- Public REST API with scoped account keys
- Signed real-time webhooks into your own systems
Running live sites with subcontractors? Site Control is the per-site enterprise tier above Business — entrance QR sign-in, CSCS checks, induction gating, live attendance and audit-grade exports. From £675/site per month, plus £5,000 setup.
Where it helps and where it doesn't
Pros
- Plant-operation and manual-handling controls pre-filled
- Retaining-wall excavation depth checks baked in
- Public-access control notes for domestic frontages included
- COSHH for herbicides, sealers, and treatments ready to add
Cons
- No tree survey / BS 5837 arboricultural report generation
- No plant-hire ticket tracker per operator (still manual)
- Planning-permission reminders not tied to the council portal
Why The Site Book
- UK construction compliance tool that ships RAMS + CPP + COSHH + inductions (readable and acknowledgeable in 9 worker languages on Business, with the language audit-recorded) + worker sign-off, including optional 4-digit shared-link PIN evidence on Business, plus site attendance, portal users, site files, document reviews, subcontractor evidence and inspections/actions.
- Generate a site-specific RAMS first draft from a natural-language brief in under five minutes, ready for competent-person review - not a template library you hand-fill.
- Controlled document workflow without an enterprise contract: version history and a recorded issue confirmation before a document is shared with a client or downloaded in the app on every plan, re-sign on revision with superseded signatures preserved plus PCPP import, cert tracking and document checking from the £39/month Pro plan - and on Business, optional named-approver routing (a designated approver accepts or rejects each version, with recorded reasons, before it can be issued) plus client approve/reject/request-changes via share links.
- Transparent pricing: Starter £0, Pro £39/month or £360/year, Business £199/month with 10 management logins and 50 active site portal users. Worker document signing has no per-signature charge; project workers count as active portal users while assigned.
- Build RAMS for any trade - add your own work types and method statements alongside the built-in library, reusable across projects, including a ready-made Commercial Solar PV group. Save a finished job as a reusable project template, or clone it, so the next job of the same shape starts from your own setup.
- COSHH goes deep: a standalone COSHH assessment document, upload-a-Safety-Data-Sheet extraction, a site-specific substance register and an expert-reviewed library - plus per-worker RAMS sign-off and a one-click Audit Pack covering documents, sign-offs, worker evidence, attendance, incidents, COSHH, permits and up to the latest 500 live Site Diary entries.
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