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Bricklayer Pay Rates in the UK: Hourly, Daily and Per 1,000 Bricks

Bricklayer laying bricks on a plain wall

A bricklayer in the UK typically earns £200 to £300 a day nationally and £300 to £380 in London and the South East, according to Best Builders’ Q3 2026 figures. Employed bricklayers sit at roughly £25,000 to £45,000 a year. Self-employed rates run higher because they have to cover insurance, tools and downtime. This guide shows what each figure means, how pay changes by region and status, and what you must add on top if you are the one paying.

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TL;DR

  • Day rate: a national average of £200 to £300, rising to £300 to £380 in London and the South East (Q3 2026).
  • Hourly: one 2026 benchmark puts a labour-only day at £260, which works out at £37.14 an hour on its assumed working day.
  • Per 1,000 bricks: labour alone costs £400 to £700, and a skilled bricklayer lays around 400 to 600 bricks a day.
  • Employer costs: employing someone adds National Insurance, pension, holiday and sick pay. Business.gov.uk says these can add 10% to 30% to employment costs.
  • Hiring direct: on LabourBase you pay a flat £1 per hour per worker and agree the worker’s rate with them directly.

Table of Contents

What bricklayers earn per hour, day and year

There is no single bricklayer rate. The same person can be quoted by the hour, by the day, by the thousand bricks or as an annual salary, and each figure answers a different question. The numbers below come from several 2026 guides. Treat them as a range to negotiate within, not a price list.

Basis Typical UK figure Source
Day rate, national average £200 to £300 Best Builders, Q3 2026
Day rate, London and South East £300 to £380 Best Builders, Q3 2026
Benchmark day rate, before materials and VAT £260 (£37.14 an hour on the guide’s working day) TheDayRate
Employed salary £25,000 to £45,000 a year TheDayRate, citing National Careers Service guidance
Labour only, 1,000 bricks £400 to £700 Best Builders

The gap between day rate and hourly rate is mostly about the length of the working day. A £260 day is £37.14 an hour only if you assume a seven-hour day. On a nine-hour site day, the same £260 is closer to £29 an hour. When you compare quotes, always ask how many hours the rate covers.

Why the hourly figure on salary sites looks lower

Some salary aggregators show London bricklayers at around £18 to £20 an hour. Those are averages across employees, apprentices and newly qualified staff, and they exclude the overheads a self-employed bricklayer builds into a quote. A guide to self-employed rates for 2026 gives an indicative national average of about £42 an hour or £320 a day for labour-only work. So the same trade can legitimately show £18 an hour in one place and £42 in another, depending on who is counted and who pays the overheads.

How pay varies by region

Location moves the number more than almost anything except experience. The same 2026 guide of self-employed, labour-only rates gives these indicative hourly ranges:

Region Indicative hourly range
London £45 to £72
South East £40 to £63
South West £35 to £55
Midlands and East Anglia £33 to £52
North West, Yorkshire and Scotland £32 to £50
North East, Wales and Northern Ireland £30 to £47

These figures are from the Sleepless Tradesman guide, which says they are indicative and that rates including materials will be higher. Treat the top of each range as the price for complex, urgent or heritage-style work and the bottom as plain facing brickwork with good access.

If you are staffing a site in a particular area, the local picture matters. We run pages for construction labour in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and other cities, and workers set their own rates, so what you pay follows the local market rather than a fixed agency card.

Employed or self-employed: the same trade, different maths

A bricklayer on a payroll and a bricklayer billing by the day are not paid the same way, and comparing the headline figures directly misleads.

Employed (PAYE). The bricklayer receives a wage and the employer carries the on-costs. A National Careers Service range of £25,000 to £45,000 a year is the usual reference point. Experience bands matter: a newly qualified bricklayer sits at the bottom of that range and a seasoned one with a Level 3 qualification near the top.

Self-employed (usually under the Construction Industry Scheme, CIS). The bricklayer invoices for labour. The rate has to cover public liability insurance, vehicle costs and admin time, plus unpaid days between jobs. That is why a self-employed day rate looks so much higher than an employee’s daily equivalent. Figures reproduced from Checkatrade by Able Skills show the spread: £145.52 a day for a newly qualified bricklayer and £154.24 for an employed one, against £304 for a sole trader and £320 for a limited-company owner, all on an eight-hour day.

Daily bricklayer rates by employment type

Neither figure is better for the bricklayer or for you. They are different packages, and the right one depends on how the work is actually organised.

What 1,000 bricks costs, and how piece rates compare

Per-1,000 pricing is the traditional way to pay for straightforward brickwork. Best Builders puts labour alone at £400 to £700 per 1,000 standard bricks in 2026, and says a skilled bricklayer lays about 400 to 600 bricks a day. At those speeds, 1,000 bricks takes roughly 1.7 to 2 days on a plain wall.

A quick worked check shows how the two methods meet. At 500 bricks a day, 1,000 bricks is two days. At the national average day rate of £200 to £300, that is £400 to £600 of labour, which sits inside the quoted per-1,000 range. The two pricing methods agree when the wall is simple.

They diverge when it is not. Output falls with complex bonds, small or awkward brick types, lots of cutting and detailing, poor access and bad weather, so a day rate protects the bricklayer on fiddly work, while a piece rate rewards speed on long clean runs. In practice:

  • Day or hourly rate suits small jobs, repairs, variable work, and anything where scope may change.
  • Per-1,000 pricing suits larger, repetitive runs such as a long boundary wall or the outer leaf of a housing block, where the quantity is fixed in advance.

Piece rates need a clear definition of what is included: brick type, bond, pointing, scaffold access, and who handles waste. Write it down before work starts.

How qualifications affect the rate

The ranges above widen with skill. For employees, one salary guide for 2026/27 gives indicative bands that step up from NVQ Level 2 bricklayers to Level 3 senior bricklayers and then to foremen and site supervisors, with London and the South East paying more at every level. Heritage and conservation work, which needs lime mortars and specialist repointing, is priced above general brickwork.

For you as the hirer, the practical point is to match the rate to the task. A good general bricklayer does not need to be paid at a heritage rate to build a cavity wall, and a gang leader earns a premium because they also set out and supervise.

On site, qualifications are usually shown through a CSCS card. A Blue Skilled Worker card is typically linked to a Level 2 construction NVQ and a Gold Advanced Craft card to a Level 3, as explained by CAD UK. The card helps you confirm training and health-and-safety knowledge before someone picks up a trowel. On LabourBase, workers are vetted and their qualifications and right-to-work are verified, and their performance metrics and work history are visible before you hire.

What you add on top when you employ a bricklayer

A wage is only part of the cost of putting a bricklayer on your payroll. Business.gov.uk lists employer National Insurance, workplace pension contributions of at least 3% on qualifying earnings, holiday pay, statutory sick pay, parental payments, insurance, recruitment, equipment and training, and says these can add 10% to 30% to employment costs. Employer National Insurance in 2025/26 is 15% above £5,000.

Employers’ liability insurance is a legal requirement too. It must cover at least £5 million, and you can be fined £2,500 for each day you are not properly insured.

A worked example makes the difference concrete. Take an employee on £38,000. If on-costs add anywhere from 10% to 30%, the true annual cost to you runs from about £41,800 to £49,400. Compare that with the headline salary before deciding whether a direct hire or a subcontract arrangement fits the job.

Labour hire, CIS and getting employment status right

Bricklayer labour hire simply means bringing in bricklayers for a defined period or job instead of adding them to permanent staff. Most of the risk sits in how you classify the person, not in the rate.

CIS is designed for self-employed subcontractors, with a 20% deduction at source in the standard case. PAYE is for employees. But CIS does not decide status. Guidance summarised by Heights Accountancy says a genuinely employed worker belongs on PAYE with employer National Insurance, while supervision, fixed hours, no right to send a substitute and employer-supplied equipment can point towards employment.

The practical checklist before you engage someone:

  1. Decide the relationship honestly. Are they running their own business, choosing how the work is done, and bringing their own tools?
  2. Verify the subcontractor with HMRC before paying, so you apply the right deduction. Squote warns that skipping this can mean higher deductions or penalties.
  3. Check qualifications and card status, and right to work.
  4. Agree the rate basis in writing: hourly, daily or per 1,000, hours covered, what counts as materials, and how snagging is handled.
  5. Keep records of hours and attendance, so you can pay accurately and answer any HMRC query.

Getting this wrong is expensive: a misclassified worker can leave you with retrospective liability for PAYE income tax and employer National Insurance. If you run a mix of CIS and PAYE workers, ask your accountant to confirm your set-up.

Our view: pay the bricklayer, not the middleman

Most of the arguments we hear about bricklayer rates are really arguments about who takes the margin. When a bricklayer is placed through a traditional agency, the agency often takes around 20% of what is paid. That is our reading of how the market works, and it is the reason we built LabourBase around a different model.

Our approach is direct hiring. You see a bricklayer’s verified qualifications, attendance record and work history before you commit. You talk to them directly, agree the rate with them and pay them directly, so the full rate goes to the person laying the bricks. We charge a flat £1 per hour per worker, whatever the rate is.

That matters for both sides. A site manager gets cost clarity and a reliable crew. A bricklayer gets paid what was agreed. When pay is transparent, people turn up, work well and come back, and that is what keeps a programme on time.

Harry

Hiring bricklayers directly through LabourBase

If you need bricklayers for a build, repair or extension, you can hire vetted workers directly and keep control of the rate. LabourBase is built for construction companies, site managers and project managers who want a dependable workforce without agency mark-ups. You pay a flat fee of £1 per hour per worker, with the worker’s pay agreed between you.

Mylabourbase

You can see performance metrics before hiring, and manage on-site attendance and hours through the platform, including our timesheet app with QR site sign-in. For London sites, start with vetted bricklayers in London. If you want to understand the self-employed route first, our page on hiring self-employed construction workers covers it, and how to hire vetted construction workers walks through the process.

How to set a fair rate for the job in front of you

A fair offer starts from the local day rate and moves with the job. Use this order:

  1. Start from the region. Use the ranges above for your area and treat them as the middle of the market, not the ceiling.
  2. Adjust for the work. Plain facing brickwork with good access sits low. Intricate bonds, heritage pointing, tight access and winter work sit high.
  3. Choose the basis. Day or hourly for variable work, per 1,000 for long clean runs with a fixed quantity.
  4. Allow for the extras. Materials, scaffold, waste removal and any travel or parking.
  5. Pay on time. Reliable payment is the quickest way to keep a good bricklayer on your next job.

Rates that are too low tend to cost more in the end. Slow starts, patchy attendance and rework eat the saving, and a good bricklayer has plenty of other offers.

FAQ

How much should I pay a bricklayer per day?

Nationally, a day rate of £200 to £300 is typical, rising to £300 to £380 in London and the South East, per Best Builders. Complex, senior or heritage work costs more. Confirm whether the rate includes materials and how many hours the day covers.

How much does it cost to have 1,000 bricks laid?

Labour alone usually costs £400 to £700 per 1,000 standard bricks in 2026, according to Best Builders. Materials, scaffold and waste are on top. Complex bonds and awkward access push the price towards the upper end.

How long does it take to lay 1,000 bricks?

A skilled bricklayer typically lays 400 to 600 bricks a day, so 1,000 bricks takes about 1.7 to 2 days on a plain wall, per Best Builders. Bond type, brick type, detailing, access and weather all change the pace.

Is a self-employed bricklayer more expensive than an employee?

Their rate looks higher because it has to cover their own insurance, vehicle and admin time, as Digital Tradies explains. You avoid employer National Insurance, pension and holiday costs, but only if the person is genuinely self-employed.

What does LabourBase charge to hire a bricklayer?

We charge a flat £1 per hour per worker. The worker’s own rate is agreed directly between you and them, and you pay them directly.

Sources

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