How our pricing works
Ask most agencies what their margin is and you will not get a straight answer, because the margin is the business. Here is ours.
A normal agency quotes you a charge rate. One number. You do not see what the operative takes home, so you cannot tell whether the rate you agreed was ever going to attract somebody good. When a placement does not last the week, you have no way of knowing whether that was bad luck or a rate that was never realistic.
It gets worse the harder you push. Ask a percentage agency to sharpen their price and the easiest place for them to find it is the worker's pay, because that is where their margin comes from. You end up paying less and getting less, without ever being told which.
Take the percentage away and the whole thing straightens out. You can see what you are buying, and quality becomes a dial you control rather than a lottery you enter.
Why we’re different
Per person, per day, flat. Whatever the trade, wherever the site. Most agencies quote one number and keep the split to themselves, so you never know what calibre your rate was actually buying.
Ours doesn’t move. Want someone better? Raise the pay, and all of it reaches the person holding the trowel.
How our pricing worksSlide it as high as you like. The £25 never moves, so every extra pound goes to the operative. A day rate covers 9 worked hours.
These figures cover operatives paid through CIS or their own limited company. PAYE is worked out differently, because employment costs vary by person.
Happy with your charge rate? Leave it exactly where it is. Because our margin is fixed, more of that same money goes to the operative, which is how you reach the ones who can pick their site. Fewer walk-offs, better continuity, and not a pound more on the budget.
Spend unchanged, quality up
Cost control the priority? Set pay against what the role and the region genuinely command, then add £25. With no percentage riding on top, your cost stops climbing every time a pay rate does, which is where labour budgets quietly leak.
Quality unchanged, spend down
How people are paid
Ask an agency to quote you PAYE labour and you will usually be given a single percentage covering employment costs. That number is an assumption, and it is nearly always rounded up, because rounding up is safe for them and invisible to you.
We work out the real employment cost for the real person, on their actual earnings, and then add the same fixed £25. Where somebody has not triggered the pension threshold, or sits below the secondary National Insurance threshold, you are not charged as though they had. You pay what it genuinely costs to employ them, and our margin does not move either way.
Most operatives on a construction site are paid this way, against their own UTR or through their own company. The rate is the two numbers you have just seen: the pay you agree, and £25.
Employer National Insurance, pension contributions and the apprenticeship levy all depend on the individual and what they earn. There is no single honest number that covers everybody, which is why we do not quote one.
If you are not sure which applies to a booking, ring us and we will tell you before you commit to anything.
Permanent hires
We do not take a percentage of anything, salaries included. A flat fee, and an eight week rebate if the hire does not stick.
See permanent fees in fullOn standard terms, yes. £25 per person, per day. It does not change for a labourer or a site manager, it does not change because a site is awkward to get to, and it does not creep up when pay rates rise.
9 worked hours. Every day rate we quote, and every day rate on this site, is based on a 9 hour worked day, for the pay rate and for our £25 alike. If a site works differently, tell us at the point of order and we will price it against what you actually need.
Under an exclusivity or sole supply agreement, yes. We agree a volume matrix in writing and the margin steps against agreed numbers, because at that point you are committing to something and so are we. Outside that arrangement the rate does not move on volume, since a discount that depends on numbers you never quite reach is not really a discount.
Nothing. That is the point of it. A percentage agency earns more every time a rate rises, which quietly sets their interests against yours. Ours stays at £25 whether the operative is on £120 a day or £260, so every extra pound you spend reaches the person on site.
On a £180 day rate, a fifteen per cent margin is £27 and twenty per cent is £36. At that level the difference is small. It widens fast: on a £260 rate the same percentages are £39 and £52, while we are still charging £25. The more skilled the operative, the more a percentage costs you.
No. If you would rather we advised, we will tell you what the role and the region are genuinely commanding and why, then you decide. What we will not do is quietly set the pay as low as we can get away with, because it does not earn us anything.
No. The calculator covers operatives paid through CIS or their own limited company, which is how most construction site labour is paid. PAYE carries employment costs that vary by person, including employer National Insurance, pension and the apprenticeship levy, so we work out the actual cost for the actual individual and add the same fixed £25 on top, rather than quoting an assumed percentage that is rounded up in our favour.
A flat fee, in the same spirit. £3,500 for a salary under £50,000 and £4,500 at or above it, with an eight week rebate if it does not work out.
Tell us the trade and the location and we will tell you what it takes to fill it, with the pay rate and our £25 written out separately.
