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Turfing cost per m², built up properly
Start from the benchmark — published wages, a real gang, the costs on top of wages most people forget — then move anything you disagree with. The whole sum stays on the page.
The working
- 2 × labourer at £13.18
- £26.36
- Gang wage, per hour
- £26.36
- + 35% on top of wages
- £35.59
- × 8 hours on the tools
- £284.69 a day
- Prep and layraked to a fine tilth, rolled out and tamped£284.69 ÷ 100 m² × 1.20 = £3.42/m²
Benchmark
£3.42/m² labour
CIJC rates · labourer £13.18/hr · gang of 2 · 35% on top · overheads and profit 20%
Materials, scaffold and supervision are not included in this rate.
What’s in this?
- Employer's National Insurance — 15% above £5,000 a year
- Holiday pay — 12.07%
- Pension, auto-enrolment minimum — 3%
- CITB levy — 0.35% of payroll
- Sick pay, training and employer's liability insurance — the remainder
- At 0% this is a CIS subcontractor's labour price — National Insurance, holiday and pension are then theirs to carry, not the job's.
The location range is authored, not measured — our tender data says what was bought where, not what labour costs there.
Price a whole job with this ratePut in the job size and your lump sums — scaffold, plant, skip — and get the job total.
The minimum starts at a day of the gang, priced — £341.63 — because travel, unloading and setting up make a day the honest floor. Type your own, or 0 for none.
Put a job size in and the total appears here.
Turf is perishable, and that changes how the job is planned
Turf has to go down within about a day of being cut, or it starts to yellow and die on the pallet. That makes turfing the one landscaping job where the delivery drives the programme rather than the other way round: you prepare first, take delivery second, and lay the same day.
Commercially it means a wasted day is a wasted pallet. If the preparation is not finished when the turf arrives, you are paying twice — which is why the preparation and the laying are one operation on this card rather than two.
The preparation is what the lawn ends up looking like
Laying turf is quick — 100 m² a day for two is realistic on a clear, level site. What decides whether it looks right in six months is what happened underneath: clearing the old surface, levelling, breaking up compaction, raking to a fine tilth and firming it.
Rush that and every dip and lump shows through the grass within a fortnight, and you cannot fix it afterwards without lifting the turf you just laid.
What moves the day
- What is there now. A bare, level plot is the benchmark. An old lawn to strip, a builder’s mess of rubble, or ground compacted by machinery is preparation before any preparation.
- Access. Turf is heavy and it comes on pallets. If it cannot be dropped near the plot, every roll is barrowed — and a rear garden through a house is a genuinely different job.
- Topsoil. Where the ground needs building up or improving, that is material and machine time on top, not part of this rate.
- Shape. Curved beds and awkward corners mean cutting every edge roll to fit. Rectangles are fast.
Price from the plot you have seen
The benchmark assumes a clear site and reasonable access. Almost every real garden differs from that in at least one way, and you will have spotted which when you looked at it.
Set the output to match, put the turf and topsoil in as materials outside the rate, and add the skip if there is an old lawn coming out. The minimum charge covers the small ones: a front garden is well under a day of laying and a full day of a crew.
Questions people ask
How much turf can two people lay in a day?
Around 100 m² a day for a two-person crew including raking and preparing a reasonably clear, level site. Stripping an old lawn, poor access requiring everything to be barrowed, or ground needing topsoil and levelling first will all reduce it.
How quickly does turf need to be laid after delivery?
Within about a day of being cut. Turf is perishable and will yellow and deteriorate on the pallet, so the preparation is finished before the turf arrives and it is laid the same day. A delay does not just cost time — it can cost the pallet.
Why does ground preparation matter so much for turfing?
Because every dip, lump and compacted patch shows through the grass within a couple of weeks, and it cannot be corrected without lifting the turf again. Laying is the quick part; clearing, levelling, breaking up compaction and raking to a fine tilth is what decides how the lawn looks in six months.
Does a turfing price include topsoil?
No. Turf and topsoil are materials and sit outside the labour rate, as does removing an old lawn. Where a garden needs building up or the existing soil improving, that is additional material and often machine time on top of the laying.
Why does a small front lawn cost more per square metre?
Because a crew turning up for 30 m² still travels, unloads, prepares, lays and clears up — most of a day for a fraction of the area. That is what the minimum charge on this calculator is for: the day is the unit, not the square metre.
Where these figures come from
The wages are the national minimums agreed between employers and unions, republished each July. The costs on top of them are the statutory ones every employer actually pays. The outputs — how much a gang gets through in a day — are blended from published estimating guidance, and they are the part worth arguing with, which is why every one is a control you can move.
Other trades
- Bricklaying£35.68/m²
- Blockwork£23.84/m²
- Plastering£8.50/m²
- Rendering£38.34/m²
- Floor screed£2.83/m²
- Concreting£7.92/m²
- Tiling£17.71/m²
- Roofing£32.80/m²
- Block paving£25.56/m²
- Tarmac driveways£15.34/m²
- Resin driveways£16.61/m²
- Painting£14.17/m²
- Stud walls£17.71/m²
- Patios£31.95/m²
- Repointing£26.57/m²
- Plasterboarding£12.39/m²
- Decking£31.88/m²
- Fencing£25.56/m²
- Coving£7.08/m²
- Loft insulation£4.27/m²
- External wall insulation£38.34/m²
- Soft strip£8.54/m²
- Hand excavation£85.41/m²
- Shuttering£8.50/m²
- Mesh and rebar£2.56/m²
Pricing a job like these?
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