National benchmark
£225
A modelled benchmark, published beside the guide spread rather than derived from it.
Our benchmark for a drainage engineer is £225 a day.
Published UK price guides put drainage engineers between £215 and £460, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: Checkatrade, HaMuch and MyJobQuote.
Drainage Engineer rates across 30 towns
Ranked by modelled drainage engineer day rate, built the way the method band below sets out. The modelled range beside each town is drawn to one shared scale, so two drainage engineer towns can be read straight off against each other.
Showing all 30 towns.
No town on this page matches that. All 30 are in the table, and the town index explains which towns are not modelled and why.
| # | Town | Rate | vs £225 | Modelled range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GuildfordSouth East£199 to £345 | £265 | £40 above | |
| 2 | OxfordSouth East£194 to £335 | £258 | £33 above | |
| 3 | CambridgeEast of England£191 to £330 | £254 | £29 above | |
| 4 | BrightonSouth East£185 to £321 | £247 | £22 above | |
| 5 | BathSouth West£179 to £311 | £239 | £14 above | |
| 6 | ReadingSouth East£178 to £308 | £237 | £12 above | |
| 7 | BristolSouth West£173 to £300 | £231 | £6 above | |
| 8 | Milton KeynesSouth East£173 to £300 | £231 | £6 above | |
| 9 | CheltenhamSouth West£171 to £296 | £228 | £3 above | |
| 10 | EdinburghScotland£170 to £295 | £227 | £2 above | |
| 11 | YorkYorkshire£165 to £286 | £220 | £5 below | |
| 12 | ExeterSouth West£164 to £285 | £219 | £6 below | |
| 13 | PortsmouthSouth East£164 to £283 | £218 | £7 below | |
| 14 | NorthamptonEast Midlands£162 to £281 | £216 | £9 below | |
| 15 | SouthamptonSouth East£161 to £280 | £215 | £10 below | |
| 16 | CardiffWales£159 to £276 | £212 | £13 below | |
| 17 | NorwichEast of England£159 to £276 | £212 | £13 below | |
| 18 | ManchesterNorth West£158 to £274 | £211 | £14 below | |
| 19 | BirminghamWest Midlands£157 to £272 | £209 | £16 below | |
| 20 | LeedsYorkshire£156 to £270 | £208 | £17 below | |
| 21 | LeicesterEast Midlands£153 to £265 | £204 | £21 below | |
| 22 | CoventryWest Midlands£153 to £265 | £204 | £21 below | |
| 23 | GlasgowScotland£152 to £264 | £203 | £22 below | |
| 24 | SheffieldYorkshire£152 to £263 | £202 | £23 below | |
| 25 | DerbyEast Midlands£149 to £257 | £198 | £27 below | |
| 26 | LiverpoolNorth West£148 to £256 | £197 | £28 below | |
| 27 | NewcastleNorth East£146 to £254 | £195 | £30 below | |
| 28 | NottinghamEast Midlands£146 to £254 | £195 | £30 below | |
| 29 | Stoke-on-TrentWest Midlands£142 to £246 | £189 | £36 below | |
| 30 | SunderlandNorth East£135 to £234 | £180 | £45 below |
Read the rangeEvery range spans the same fraction of its own town rate, 0.75 to 1.30, so a higher priced town shows a wider one.That extra width is arithmetic and not evidence, because the range is a fixed rule rather than a measurement.
- Scale every bar drawn on £130 to £350
- Range the modelled range, the rate x 0.75 and x 1.30
Your next step
You have the £225 drainage engineer benchmark, so the next step is a drainage engineer rate that covers your own costs.
Put in the take home you want, your van and your insurance, and the Rate Sorted calculator turns them into your own drainage engineer day rate, ready to price a job with.
Highest town
£265
Guildford, the biggest premium over the benchmark in the 30.
Cheapest town
£180
Sunderland, £45 under the benchmark and the floor of the table.
Published guide spread
£215 to £460
What 3 named guides publish for drainage engineers, checked 30 September 2026.
Hiring a drainage engineer?
A drainage engineer quote between £215 and £460 a day is inside what the UK guides publish, and £225 is the benchmark this site models from.
Quoting as a drainage engineer?
£225 puts drainage engineers joint 10 of 17 on this site, between £140 for general labourer work and £280 for electrician.
How the 30 towns spread out
Every town on one axis, marked against £225. It shows where the weight of the drainage engineer table sits, and how far each end has travelled from that benchmark.
£225 benchmark
Guildford £265
Sunderland sits at the other end, on £180.
That is a £85 span across the 30 towns for one day of the same work, and because every trade page on this site draws its rail on the identical £130 to £350 scale, drainage engineers can be laid over any other trade here and read tick for tick.
Half the table sits here
17 of the 30 towns fall between £203 and £231. Read that middle £28 band first when a drainage engineer quote needs a quick sanity check against somewhere of a similar size.
Above the benchmark
10 towns clear £225, and 9 of those are in the South East, South West or East of England.
How each town figure is built
Three inputs, in this order, and nothing else goes in.
- 01The trade benchmark, £225Stated and sourced at the top of this page. Nothing on this page works it out again.
- 02A geography multiplier, trade neutralOne multiplier per town, built from earnings data from the ONS and local house prices, applied to every trade the same way.
- 03A modelled range of 0.75 and 1.30Low and high are the town's own modelled rate multiplied by 0.75 and by 1.30, never the benchmark.
Rate estimates blend a national drainage engineer day rate benchmark, checked against dated UK trade price guides, with official ONS regional earnings and local house price data.
Figures are modelled estimates for guidance, not quotes.
Sources: ONS ASHE 2025, UK House Price Index April 2026.
Nothing on this page is a survey of what drainage engineers charged.
The full working behind every drainage engineer figure, with each source dated, is on the methodology page.
Which regions pay the most
The median of the towns we cover in each region, which means a region with one town in it is that one town. London has no modelled town yet, so it does not appear.
South East7 towns covered, £215 to £265£237
East of England2 towns covered, £212 to £254£233
South West4 towns covered, £219 to £239£230
Scotland2 towns covered, £203 to £227£215
Wales1 town covered, £212 to £212£212
Yorkshire3 towns covered, £202 to £220£208
North West2 towns covered, £197 to £211£204
West Midlands3 towns covered, £189 to £209£204
East Midlands4 towns covered, £195 to £216£201
North East2 towns covered, £180 to £195£188
The spread is the story
A Guildford day and a Sunderland day are the same drainage engineer work at a £85 difference.
How the £225 is set, and what checks it
The first card is the spread published according to the named UK price guides. The rest are independent checks that never fed the £225.
What the guides publish
£215 to £460
3 named UK price guides publish a drainage engineer day rate.Between them they run from £215 to £460, and the £225 benchmark sits inside that.It is the figure the benchmark is published beside; the cards after it are the tests.
Checkatrade, HaMuch and MyJobQuote, checked 30 September 2026
Office for National Statistics
£589
The Office for National Statistics brackets the trade between £589 and £831 a week (2025 pay survey).
ONS ASHE 2025 provisional, employee earnings, not a charge out rate · ASHE Table 14
Hudson Contract, what firms pay
£1,021
Hudson Contract does not track drainage on its own, so the best it offers is £1,021 a week across all trades, about £204 a day.
Hudson Contract, subcontractor payroll, England and Wales, three year average, July 2023 to June 2026
This Hudson figure is not a trade figureRead that Hudson number as a whole industry benchmark, not a drainage engineer rate.
How the guides price drainage engineer work
Drainage engineers share a benchmark with decorative plasterers
The £225 drainage benchmark is the same figure decorative plasterers carry here, so the thirty town rates on this drainage page match theirs to the pound.What differs is the evidence: drainage guides file the trade as a drain specialist and price most of its work by the job.
The three drain specialist day figures behind the spread
Checkatrade lists a drain specialist at £250 to £300 a day, £275 on average, in a June 2026 guide it says was generated with AI from past Checkatrade jobs.HaMuch puts the average drain specialist at £249 a day and £41 an hour, rising to £460.MyJobQuote says drain specialists in the north of England set a day rate of up to £215.
Most drainage jobs are priced by the job
The same AI generated Checkatrade guide prices drain jetting at £120 to £250 a job, £185 on average, against £85 on average for rodding.It puts a basic CCTV drain survey at £200 on average, and closer to £300 with a full report.
Relining and call outs have their own prices
Checkatrade and MyBuilder both price drain relining at £85 to £150 a metre.Checkatrade gives an average drainage call out of £60, rising to around £180 in an emergency, while Dyno-Rod and Lanes both advertise no call out charge.
Drainage hourly rates run wide
HaMuch says drain specialist hourly rates range from £23 to £151.MyJobQuote puts standard drain unblocking at £50 to £100 an hour, updated September 2026.
HaMuch prices drainage jobs as well as days
HaMuch prices a drain unblock at £280, a CCTV drain survey at £275 and drain relining at £110 a square metre.Its city table runs from £161 a day for a drain specialist in Crewe to £436 in Rugby, which is a different measurement from its national drainage figures.
Drainage Engineer wages and pay rates
What drainage engineers are paid is a different measurement from the £225 a customer is charged, and both are on this page.
Paid as an employee
£589 to £831 a week
ONS publishes no drainage engineer code, so the trade is bracketed between construction operatives at the bottom and pipe fitters at the top.It is a wage before tax, not a rate anybody quotes a customer.
Paid as a subcontractor
£204 a day
Hudson Contract paid £1,021 a week on its all trades series, which is £204 over five days.ALL trades averaged together, because Hudson publishes no series for this one
What tradespeople earn sets drainage engineers beside the other 16 trades, sourced 5 September 2026.
Pricing a short job rather than a full day, the £225 works out at £32.14 an hour on the working day this site assumes, which is ours rather than a published figure.
What the trades charge an hour sets that against the hourly range the price guides publish for drainage engineers, and names the day it divides by.
Against the decorator benchmark
Decorators benchmark at £200 a day on this site.
Drainage work comes in £25 over that figure.
- Drainage Engineer benchmark
- £225
- Painter and decorator benchmark
- £200
- Gap at the benchmark
- £25 over
MyJobQuote drainage hour, top
£100
MyJobQuote says drainage contractors usually charge £50 to £100 an hour to unblock a drain.Most drainage work is quoted by the hour or the job rather than by the day.
Common questions
The same answers the structured data on this page gives a search engine, word for word.
How much does a drainage engineer charge per day in the UK?
Our benchmark for a drainage engineer is £225 a day.
Published UK price guides put drainage engineers between £215 and £460, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: Checkatrade, HaMuch and MyJobQuote.
Across the 30 modelled towns the figure runs from £180 in Sunderland to £265 in Guildford.
Does the drainage engineer day rate include materials or VAT?
No.
The £225 is one full working day of drainage engineer labour, before materials and VAT.
Why do drainage engineer rates differ between towns?
The £225 benchmark is spread town by town with ONS regional earnings (ASHE 2025) and local house prices (UK House Price Index, April 2026).
That is what puts £265 on Guildford and £180 on Sunderland.
That is a £85 gap across the 30 towns for the same day of drainage engineer work.
What is the drainage engineer pay rate in the UK?
The drainage engineer pay rate depends on who is paying it.
ONS publishes no drainage engineer code, so the trade is bracketed between construction operatives at the bottom and pipe fitters at the top.
That ONS bracket runs £589 to £831 a week for drainage engineers on a payroll.
For drainage engineers paid as subcontractors instead, the nearest Hudson Contract figure is its all trades series at £1,021 a week, which works out at about £204 a day over a five day week.
That is an all trades average, as Hudson has no drainage engineer series.
Neither is the £225 a drainage engineer charges a customer.
Take the data
Every figure on this page is in the file, with the same sources and the same date.
Download · CSVdrainage-engineer-day-rates.csv30 rows, one per town, with the rate, the modelled range and the published spread.
Cite this pageThe Day Rate Report, Drainage Engineer day rates, 30 September 2026, https://thedayrate.co.uk/drainage-engineer-day-rates/
Embed this figure
The drainage engineer card carries the benchmark and the date, and the link goes to this page.
<a href="https://thedayrate.co.uk/drainage-engineer-day-rates/"><img src="https://thedayrate.co.uk/og/drainage-engineer-day-rates.png" alt="Drainage Engineer day rates in 30 UK towns, from The Day Rate Report" width="1200" height="630"></a>
The drainage engineer figures are free to use in an article, a fact check or a quote, and a credit with a link back is all we ask, under CC BY 4.0.
Quoting drainage engineer work yourself?The £225 drainage engineer benchmark beside every other trade on this site, read from the side of the person sending the invoice.What should I chargeWeighing up a drainage engineer quote?A £225 drainage engineer day multiplied by the day count is the sum behind a whole job price.Day rate or price per job
The full guide index carries all 12, including the ones that turn the drainage engineer day rate into a job price.
None of the 30 towns modelled above is London, where this site publishes no drainage engineer rate of its own and prints what the named guides publish instead.