To be surprised at £18 per hour for gardening?

[Spagnolia]

We are struggling to keep the weeds and brambles at bay and started to think we might get someone to help.

A guy was recommended by neighbour but I almost fell off my chair when I found out he charges £18 per hour for general weeding, grass cutting etc using our tools and equipment.

My junior doctor child gets £14 per hour!

We are far from the South East.

Do you have gardening help?
What is the going rate at the moment?

The market will pay for 'demand' . I am from the south east. House maintenance jobs are extremely well paid here because they are in such high demand and short supply.

Cleaners £15-20
Gardeners £18-22
Handyman/general maintenance £15-20

They do jobs that people with the money to pay can't or don't want to do.

Drs pay tax, NI, pension, indemnity insurance, the costs of running a car (which will be the same class of business use) and equipment (eg stethoscope) too.

South west. £20-25/hr for general gardening. Flat rate of £40 for mowing the lawn which took less than 40 minutes.

but I must correct the idea that you can compare doctors and gardeners in terms of pay for going between jobs. My GP spends hours extra travelling between jobs and patients after 6, all unpaid.

Yes, but that isn't really what we are talking about - a GP is on a salary, a very good salary at that (very quick google says around £82 000 on 'average' - which I know is rarely what 'most people are paid', but they start on £40K ish). They are paid a whole salary so the role, not an hourly rate.
The point about someone being hourly paid is that they can't actually earn 8 lots of their hourly rate. Whereas a GP - or me, traveling from one place to another - still gets their salary for the day / week / month / year, even if some of the working day is spent traveling.

I'm going to guess the GP.probably claims mileage too

I really don’t understand this doctor comparison, or comparison to any other profession tbh.

Your literally saying you or someone you know doesnt earn xyz and so why should a gardener.

Do you know how that sounds?

Besides all the complexities of self employment. Even if it was more - your saying they shouldn’t earn that. Because your worth more?

Well garden yourself then.

Oh no but you can’t because you don’t know how. But it’s unskilled?

Or is it just you couldn’t possibly get your nails dirty. And the person that will well how dare they charge a living wage. Absolute paupers they should be. Scrapping around in the mud.

How many acres is the lawn?!

I have several Dr friends, one has quit to run a personal training class and one has moved into finance. Dr's (and nurses) aren't stupid, why would they stay in a massively stressful job, risking making themselves ill, when they can earn more doing something easier?
I don't begrudge gardeners and hairdressers their pay but I think we are deluded if we think the NHS will survive much longer unless staff pay rises.

So I am massively overpaying mine and will be looking for a new one!

Seasonal job
Own transport
Own tools
YABU

@BungleandGeorge its no acres! It’s a larger than average garden, but it’s by no means huge. I think when we bought the house it was described as being on a 0.2 acre plot- so that included the house and large parking area.

Well you came on to moan about a tradesman wanting to earn a living wage so that's a bit pot calling the kettle black. If it's such easy, low skilled work and you don't want to pay a reasonable wage do it yourself .

I'm assuming the gardener is self-employed. £18 an hour also includes their time to travel to you, any tools they need, sick pay, NI, tax. How on earth would you expect them to survive on less than this? They have to make a living.

I've just paid £19 to the window cleaner who was here for approximately 5 minutes dribbling a bit of water down the windows and giving them a quick wipe over with a brush, so I think £18 for the garden sounds OK. You don't want to do it, just as I don't want to clean my windows, so throw money at it and move on.

Don't be ridiculous - you would pay a lot more than £18 per hour in most of the SE (where charging is often by the half or whole day). If you don't want to pay do your own gardening. As for the poster upthread boasting about paying less than minimum wage for what is often hard physical work.

As for being "nice" - what hypocrisy. You rubbish your gardener's skills because he doesn't have a lot of paper qualifications in an industry where its common for people to learn over years on the job.

Your precious boy also has massive potential earnings in both public and private sectors, compared to most workers along with signficant kudos and social status. Not to mention the pension scheme which is pretty golden even by public sector standards and all the insurance benefits which come with that, the guaranteed work without lengthy annual gap periods, six months full sick pay in the NHS and a range of other "big public employer" benefits. He doesn't have to pay the costs of running a business.

There is a case to be made over pay for some groups and levels working in care and health care. You don't need to punch down on the nobodies you consider beneath you to make that case.

Doing so by comparing salaried employee rates per hour with business charges per hour simply makes you sound ignorant.

They don't pay employers NI and most people in work where there isn't convenient public transport use a car to get to and from work. It will only be classed as business use if they use it to travel from patient to patient during the working day and typically insurance for a professional moving between jobs is a lot less than for a tradesman who may not even be able to get insurance for kit in the van.

Drs pay for insurance (about £2,000 a year I believe), parking at their place of work unless v lucky (13 hour shifts can cost over £30 in parking every day), exams every year which cost £000s (even though they have to do them as part of their job), and all the other usual things that people pay for. They also have accrued a minimum of over £80,000 debt to qualify, a sum that will only increase every year due to the 6% interest. As a first year qualified doctor they will be given the hospital bleep overnight and be in charge of the patients on several wards. They have no say in where they live, no say in their shifts or days off and never leave on time. For £14 an hour.

Many say, well leave if you don't like it. So they do, and the NHS suffers even more from lack of staff.

That’s not high, pretty low in this area tbh

People need to pay properly for services like this these days

That still doesn’t mean the gardener is overcharging!

That's very reasonable tbh ! I would charge you double for your snooty stealth brag!

My gardener charges £18/ph - I think it is too low tbh. It is a physical job and she gets a lot done in an hour, and has to travel here etc., has to work around the weather etc.

It is definitely less than my previous gardener but he used to do a lot more/had more skills e.g. could do the pleached trees/was really good at garden plant planning etc. so actually ended up cheaper (now have to get in a separate person for the pleached trees and that costs £££).

I'm surprised that your surprised that junior doctors don't earn much per hour when doing night shift. DH was a junior doctor 25+ years ago now and his hourly rate 'on call' was definitely the lowest in the hospital and I'm pretty sure less than minimum wage, so things have improved? They're still training - plenty of scope for earning a lot more in the future.

sorry, you're not your...

On what basis is it not legal? He's not employed by the poster. Do you understand the difference between employed and self employed?

£20 an hour here, what she gets done in 3 hours would take me all flipping day, and she takes all the rubbish away with her. I think she's a bargain.

*Drs pay for insurance (about £2,000 a year I believe), parking at their place of work unless v lucky (13 hour shifts can cost over £30 in parking every day), exams every year which cost £000s (even though they have to do them as part of their job), and all the other usual things that people pay for. They also have accrued a minimum of over £80,000 debt to qualify, a sum that will only increase every year due to the 6% interest. As a first year qualified doctor they will be given the hospital bleep overnight and be in charge of the patients on several wards. They have no say in where they live, no say in their shifts or days off and never leave on time. For £14 an hour.

Many say, well leave if you don't like it. So they do, and the NHS suffers even more from lack of staff.*

Doctor in family was asked to do Friday and Saturday night shifts in their 1st month as a F1 for £50 per hour, plus they got Monday and Tuesday off to catch up on their sleep, which they were still paid for. As a F1 and F2, he refused to do extra shifts for less than £50 per hour; £125 per hour Xmas Day. Our local A & E offered him £70 per hour, while he was at our house for a BBQ, to do any hours after 2 pm.

He has moved twice in the last 5 years, and both times he chose to live in a “nice” place!

You tell me of a gardener, who can reckon now to earn £1,500 for working an extra weekend a month?