How Much Does a London Construction Company Charge?

General building and construction work cost in London

General building and construction work is usually priced one of two ways: a day rate for smaller, open-ended jobs, or a fixed price once a contractor has scoped the work properly. A skilled tradesperson working alone typically charges £220 to £320 a day for labour, while a general labourer or apprentice assisting on site typically costs £120 to £180 a day. A small repair or maintenance callout, fixing a section of guttering, a loose partition panel, or a minor leak, typically costs £150 to £450 for a half day to a full day's work including materials.

Larger projects are priced differently, by scope rather than by the day. A single room refurbishment, covering minor repairs, replastering and redecoration, typically costs £2,500 to £6,500 depending on room size and condition. A full multi-trade house refurbishment follows the same specification tiers set out in our London-wide house refurbishment cost guide: £800 to £1,200 per square metre for a light refresh, £1,200 to £1,800 per square metre for a mid-range refurbishment with a new kitchen, bathroom and rewire, and £2,000 to £2,800 or more per square metre for a premium refurbishment involving structural work and a full mechanical and electrical replacement. Landlords turning a rental property around between tenants, covering repairs, redecoration and a minor kitchen or bathroom refresh, typically spend £4,000 to £12,000.

How day rates work, and when a project is priced by scope instead

A day rate is the right pricing model for small, open-ended work where the scope genuinely can't be fixed in advance, a leaking gutter that might need a short repair or a full replacement section depending on what's found, or a general maintenance visit covering several unrelated small jobs in one call-out. It gives both sides a clear, hourly-equivalent cost without either party guessing at scope that isn't yet known.

Once a job has a defined scope, a fixed price, agreed after a survey, is the more sensible approach for both the client and the contractor. It removes the incentive for a job to run longer than it needs to, and it gives the client a firm figure to budget against rather than an open-ended day rate multiplied by an estimate of how many days the work might take. Most construction company projects beyond a single small repair are priced this way, day rates included as a reference point within the quote, but the client-facing figure is a fixed sum for defined work.

Multi-trade project costing: how a construction company prices differently to a single trade

A single-trade contractor, a tiler, a plasterer, an electrician, prices their own labour and materials against a defined scope of work in isolation. A construction company managing several trades on the same project has an additional layer of cost and value to account for: sequencing the trades correctly so nobody is working over wet plaster or unfinished first fix, coordinating deliveries and site access across the whole programme rather than a single visit, and taking responsibility for how one trade's work affects the next, plastering that needs to dry before decoration, first-fix electrics that need to be signed off before boarding closes a wall.

This coordination isn't free, and a multi-trade project quote reflects it, but it isn't simply the sum of what each trade would charge individually either. Booking several trades through one contractor on a single continuous programme is usually more cost-effective overall than commissioning the same trades separately, since access, waste disposal, scaffolding and site management costs are shared across the whole project rather than duplicated by each trade turning up independently. The trade-off is that a client working with a construction company gets one point of accountability and one coordinated programme, rather than the flexibility of choosing and timing each trade individually, which suits some projects better than others depending on how much the client wants to manage themselves.

Where the scope crosses into work needing a specific qualification beyond general building, structural calculations for a load-bearing wall removal, or Part P certification for a full rewire, a construction company either holds that qualification directly through its own team or brings in a properly qualified specialist as part of the coordinated programme, rather than the client having to source and manage that specialist separately. Either way, the responsibility for making sure the right qualification is in place for that specific piece of work sits with whoever is managing the project, which is one of the practical differences between hiring a construction company and self-managing several single-trade contractors.

Typical small, medium and large project cost bands

A small multi-trade project, a single room extension, a kitchen or bathroom refit involving several trades, or a rental turnaround spanning repairs, redecoration and minor plumbing or electrical work, typically costs £12,000 to £35,000 depending on scope and specification. This is the band where the coordination value of a construction company is most obvious relative to the project size, since even a modest job usually touches three or four trades that need sequencing correctly.

A medium project, a full house refurbishment at light-to-mid specification, follows the per-square-metre bands set out in our house refurbishment cost guide: £800 to £1,200 per square metre for a light refresh, rising to £1,200 to £1,800 per square metre where a new kitchen, bathroom, full rewire and replastering are included. For a typical 90 to 120 square metre London terrace, that translates to roughly £72,000 to £216,000 depending on where within that specification range the project sits.

A large project, involving structural alteration, a full mechanical and electrical replacement, and a high-specification finish throughout, runs £2,000 to £2,800 or more per square metre, which for the same size property translates to roughly £180,000 to £336,000 or more. Structural work, removing a chimney breast or forming a steel-beam opening, adds engineering and steelwork costs on top of the base refurbishment figure, and is usually priced as a distinct line item within the overall project quote rather than folded into the per-square-metre rate, since structural scope varies too much project to project to average into a blended figure.

What affects a construction company's quote beyond the headline rate

Access is usually the biggest practical variable: a mid-terrace Victorian house with no side return means materials go in through the front door and waste comes out the same way, which slows everything down compared with a property with driveway access. Scaffolding and skip permits add cost on narrow residential streets, where a council permit is often needed just to stand a skip or a scaffold tower on the public highway. The condition of what's already there matters too, since a roof that's had years of patch repairs or solid walls with old lime plaster often need more preparation and different materials than newer, more standard construction, and none of that is visible from the street until a survey opens things up.

Materials sit on top of labour in every one of the figures above, and it's worth budgeting for them separately rather than assuming a day rate or a fixed price already covers everything. General building materials fluctuate with wider UK builders' merchant pricing rather than anything specific to London, so a quote that separates labour from materials gives a clearer picture of where the money is actually going than a single bundled figure.

How long a multi-trade construction project takes

A single room refurbishment typically takes one to two weeks depending on how much drying time the plaster needs before decoration can start. A small multi-trade project generally runs two to six weeks depending on scope. A full house refurbishment runs longer again, often several weeks to a few months depending on specification and whether structural work is involved, and a large, structurally led project can run several months once planning, party wall processes and long-lead materials are factored into the programme.

Wet trades are usually the main constraint on speed regardless of project size, since plaster typically needs close to a week to dry per coat before decoration, and screed can take considerably longer depending on depth and ventilation. A construction company managing several trades builds this drying time into the overall programme from the outset, sequencing wet trades together and scheduling joinery, decorating and second-fix electrics afterwards, rather than treating each trade's timeline in isolation.