Thanks guys.

I had 3 quotes for the tree, all were about the same... 3 guys for a full day they reckoned plus carting it all away... was estimated at between 3 and 4 tons of wood...

The access is only 720mm wide...can get a microdigger in there, just about.. can just about get a 6cu ft (0.6cu m) powered barrow through there - hiring those two is nearly £600 for 2 days

The ground needs levelling and then digging out to at least 400mm deep for 150mm at the edges or so i have been advised by 2 different builders because of the tree roots, only 300mm in the centre (100mm ballast, 50mm blinding sand, DPC, 50mm insulation, 100mm concrete). Thats around 15 cubic meters, or 22tons of spoil to be shifted. Even a microdigger's 0.022cu m bucket will take 2 - 3 days digging. Then I need to barrow in 3.6 ton (2.6cu m) of ballast and 2 ton (1.3cu m) of sand and finally pour around 3.7cu m of concrete... while a digger+powered barrow will make it easier, I will need to do this over the course of a few weekends/evenings because I have no holiday left til Jan. Even if I took the time off work unpaid i couldnt keep both bits of machinery effectively utilised on my own. So its all going to have to be done by hand... the ballast and sand gets delivered in those 1 ton bags and if i take the spoil out the same way i wont need to hire 2 x 6yard skips for a week, I can get a grab truck to come and lift them away, which is only 25% of the price of skips. so its how to lift those bags... else its use a standard 85kg (0.05cu m) barrow... thats 300 trips out and 78 back lol but at least i can take one out and one back in the same journey