UK Welder Salary 2026/27: Pay, NAECI Rates & Take-Home

UK welder pay: what the survey shows

The ONS classifies welders under SOC 2020 code 5213 ("Welding trades"). In the ASHE 2025 provisional release the median full-time gross pay is £35,344. The 10th percentile is £24,967, the 25th £29,783 and the 75th £44,176; ONS suppressed the 90th percentile.

ASHE covers employees, not the self-employed, and does not split welders by coding, process or sector. We could not find readable published sources for private-sector grade bands, day rates or offshore rates, so this page does not quote them. The one published pay agreement that names welding is the NAECI, below.

NAECI 2026 rates for engineering construction

The National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry (NAECI) sets terms for hourly-paid engineering construction workers on major and basic engineering construction projects, repair and maintenance sites and outages across the UK. It is overseen by the National Joint Council for the Engineering Construction Industry (NJC), whose signatories are the ECIA, the Electrical Contractors' Association of Scotland, the Thermal Insulation Contractors' Association, GMB and Unite. The ECITB is a separate body, the industry training board.

NJC Communique 02(26) sets the 2026 settlement, effective from Monday 4 May 2026: hourly pay rates up 4.5% and welding proficiency pay up 7.2%. The grade that applies depends on the job; the welding proficiency payment is added by category.

Source: NJC Communique 02(26), 22 April 2026, Attachments 1a and 1b (categorised work, basic pay, adult rates), linked from the NJC National Agreement page. Shift, night and 16 / 17-year-old rates differ. Retrieved 2026-09-30.

Coding: welder qualification under ISO 9606

A "coded" welder holds a qualification certificate for a particular process, material and position range. For steels the standard is BS EN ISO 9606-1 and for aluminium BS EN ISO 9606-2. Processes are identified by their ISO 4063 reference numbers: 111 manual metal arc (MMA), 131 MIG, 135 MAG, 136 tubular cored metal arc with active gas shield, and 141 TIG.

Under ISO 9606-1, as TWI summarises it, the certificate's validity must be confirmed every 6 months by the manufacturer (clause 9.2). Revalidation (clause 9.3) is by one of three routes, and the route must be stated on the certificate at the initial test:

• a retest every 3 years;
• every 2 years, provided two test welds were made and tested by radiographic, ultrasonic or destructive testing in the previous 6 months and records are kept; or
• without a fixed limit, where the welder works for the same manufacturer, the manufacturer's quality system is verified to ISO 3834-2 or ISO 3834-3, and the manufacturer has documented welds of acceptable quality.

Take-home: worked scenarios

Computed from our salary and self-employed engines, 2026/27 England bands, before pension contributions unless stated. The employed rows are the ASHE percentiles above, plus an apprentice paid the apprentice rate for an assumed 40 hours a week. The last three rows are illustrations, not typical earnings.

Offshore row. With no pension, £10,000 of the £110,000 sits above the £100,000 taper threshold. On that slice Income Tax is £6,000: £4,000 at the 40% higher rate plus £2,000 from the lost Personal Allowance. Salary-sacrificing that £10,000 into a pension would save £6,200 of Income Tax and NI.

Company director row. The salary leg pays £4,486 of Income Tax and £1,794 of employee NI. Under ITA 2007 s.13A the dividends are first placed in the bands, so the £500 allowance uses basic-rate band space: £500 at nil, £14,770 at 10.75% and £29,730 at 35.75%, a total of £12,216 of dividend tax. The dividends come out of profit that has already borne Corporation Tax, and the company also pays £4,500 of employer NI on the salary, so this row is not comparable with the self-employed row on personal tax alone.

CIS for construction welding sub-contractors

The Construction Industry Scheme applies to payments under construction contracts for "construction operations" as defined in Finance Act 2004 s.74. The definition includes construction, alteration, repair, extension, demolition or dismantling of buildings or structures, expressly including offshore installations, and works forming part of the land such as pipe-lines and industrial plant. It excludes drilling for or extracting oil or natural gas, and the manufacture of engineering components, plant or machinery, so factory fabrication for a manufacturer is outside it. It also does not cover operations carried out outside the United Kingdom and its territorial sea. Whether a particular job is in scope depends on the work and where it is done; CIS340 is HMRC's guide.

When CIS applies, the contractor deducts a percentage of the labour element of your invoice and pays it to HMRC. The rate is 20% if you are registered as a sub-contractor and 30% if you are not. Materials such as welding wire, electrodes and shielding gas are not subject to the deduction. You reclaim the deductions through Self Assessment, where they are set against your Income Tax and Class 4 NI for the year.

Worked example: a registered welder invoices a structural steel contractor £3,800 for a week's site work (£3,200 labour + £600 consumables and gas). The contractor deducts 20% of £3,200 = £640, pays £3,160 to the welder, and pays £640 to HMRC. At year-end the £640 is credited against the welder's Self Assessment bill.

Gross Payment Status lets established sub-contractors who pass HMRC's turnover, compliance and business tests be paid without deduction. For a sole trader the turnover test is at least £30,000 over the last 12 months, ignoring VAT and the cost of materials.

Use the CIS calculator to model the 20% / 30% deduction on a specific labour invoice.

Offshore travel and the section 305 exemption

Offshore pay is taxable in the ordinary way; the Income Tax exemption for offshore workers is narrow and covers getting to and from the installation. Under section 305 ITEPA 2003 (HMRC EIM34110), an employee whose permanent workplace is an offshore installation pays no tax on transfer transport by sea or air between the mainland and the installation, on related overnight accommodation and subsistence near the mainland departure point where the timing of the transfer makes it necessary and it is provided at reasonable cost, or on local transport between that accommodation and the departure point. Reimbursed reasonable expenses on the same items are also exempt.

Any other cash allowance, such as a flat daily offshore or rota allowance, is not within section 305 and is earnings under section 62 ITEPA 2003 unless another exemption applies. Travel between home and the mainland heliport is not transfer transport as section 305 defines it. Because a flat allowance counts toward adjusted net income like the day rate, it can take an offshore welder into the £100,000 Personal Allowance taper.

The exemption depends on the facts HMRC sets out in EIM34110: the installation must be the employee's permanent workplace, and mainland accommodation must be necessary because of the time of the transfer and provided at reasonable cost. Welders engaging through a personal services company should have their accountant confirm how section 305 applies to their contract.

Expenses and capital allowances on welding kit

For a self-employed welder, costs split into revenue expenses (deducted from profit in the year), capital expenditure on plant and machinery (relieved through capital allowances such as the Annual Investment Allowance), and mixed-use costs such as a vehicle or home, where only the business proportion counts. There is no statutory £200 (or other money) threshold that makes a tool revenue rather than capital; it depends on the facts of the item.

Revenue expenses

• Consumables: welding wire, TIG tungstens and filler rod, MMA electrodes, shielding gas, grinding discs, wire brushes, anti-spatter spray.
• Protective clothing and PPE: welding helmets, gauntlets, fire-retardant overalls, safety boots, respiratory protection.
• Vehicle costs: actual fuel, insurance, repairs and servicing for the business share, or HMRC's simplified mileage rate of £0.55 a mile for the first 10,000 business miles and £0.25 after that.
• Training that maintains existing skills: coding tests and revalidations, inspection refreshers, offshore survival training while in active offshore work.
• Insurance, phone (business share), accountancy fees and professional subscriptions.

Capital allowances (Annual Investment Allowance)

The Annual Investment Allowance gives a 100% deduction in the year of purchase for qualifying plant and machinery up to £1,000,000 a year. For a welder that typically means welding sets, engine-driven welder-generators, plasma cutters, band saws, pipe positioners, fume extraction and vans (cars do not qualify for AIA).

Illustration: a £25,000 van bought by a sole trader with £75,000 of profit reduces taxable profit to £50,000. That saves £9,946 of Income Tax and £511 of Class 4 NI, computed from the 2026/27 rates; most of the profit removed was above the Upper Profits Limit, where Class 4 is charged at the lower rate. If the van is later sold, the proceeds come back as a balancing charge.

Fume extraction. In safety alert STSU1-2019 (February 2019), HSE cited International Agency for Research on Cancer evidence that mild steel welding fume can cause lung cancer and strengthened its enforcement expectation for all welding fume: general ventilation does not achieve adequate control, so suitable engineering controls are required, with respiratory protection for residual fume.

Mileage tax relief calculator for the simplified method, or the capital allowances calculator to model AIA on a van, rig or fume extraction purchase.

Use of home and VAT

HMRC's simplified flat rate for working from home is £26 a month for 101 or more hours of business use a month; the alternative is a proportion of actual household costs. You must register for VAT once taxable turnover over a rolling 12 months exceeds £90,000. Since March 2021 the VAT domestic reverse charge applies to most supplies of building and construction services between VAT-registered businesses that are reported within CIS, so the customer rather than the supplier accounts for the VAT.

Comparison with other trades

Full-time median gross pay from the same ASHE 2025 provisional release:

• Welding trades: £35,344.
• Electricians and electrical fitters: £39,647.
• Plumbers and heating and ventilating installers and repairers: £37,881.
• Carpenters and joiners (SOC 2020 5316): £34,014.
• Bricklayers: £33,030.
• Civil Service AA / AO: median £28,020 at 31 March 2026 (Cabinet Office - Civil Service Statistics 2026, Table 25).

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