Annual Salary
£24,000 to £45,000
Average UK salary in 2024 was £37,430
(source Office for National Statistics)
Swap to Design & planning or Property management or go back to all job sectors
Swap to Design & planning or Property management or go back to all job sectors
Scaffolders put up scaffolding around buildings and structures so that tradespeople can carry out construction, renovation or demolition work.
Average UK salary in 2024 was £37,430
(source Office for National Statistics)
You could work: between 8am and 6pm; away from home
There will be
0.5% fewer Scaffolder jobs in 2029.
As a scaffolder, you would:
You may need to wear safety clothing and use safety equipment.
You could work on a construction site, at a client's business or on a demolition site.
Your working environment may be at height, outdoors in all weathers, physically demanding and you'll travel often.
You can get into this job through:
You could take a college course to learn some of the skills you need to get a trainee or apprenticeship position with a scaffolding or construction company.
Courses include:
You could apply to do a Scaffolder Level 2 Intermediate Apprenticeship.
This can take up to 2 years to complete. You'll do on-the-job training and spend some time with a training provider off-site.
You'll usually need:
You can join a company as a trainee scaffolder or scaffolding labourer, and do qualifications on the job.
Employers will look for a good general standard of education. GCSEs in maths, English, science and design and technology can be helpful, though not always essential.
Good communication skills, co-ordination, timekeeping and safety awareness will also be useful.
You may be able to do a skills boot camp training course in scaffolding or construction. This would give you some of the skills needed to apply for a trainee scaffolder or scaffolder's labourer position with a construction company.
You'll need to:
You can find out more about becoming a scaffolder from Go Construct and the National Access and Scaffolding Confederation.
With experience and further training, you could become:an advanced scaffolder, supervising a scaffolding team; a scaffolding designer, creating plans for scaffolding teams to follow; a site safety inspector, carrying out safety checks and investigating incidents; a contracts co-ordinator, working with clients and managing projects
You might also move into more general construction management or set up your own scaffolding business.
Scaffolding skills are important to retrofitting domestic and commercial buildings.
Retrofit careers
Retrofitting includes a wide variety of jobs and skills that help to improve the energy efficiency of existing buildings. When a property has been retrofitted it can retain heat for longer. This increases the comfort of a home whilst also lowering energy usage which can result in lowered energy costs and carbon emissions.
There are a wide variety of retrofitting jobs requiring lots of different skills including working in the construction industry.
For example in the West of England area Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) indicate that over 250,000 homes in the West of England require retrofitting. That’s a huge amount of retrofitting work over the next few years to meet the region’s net zero targets.
These pathway maps show how you can become a scaffolder in the West of England and are relevant for most regions within England.
You'll need: