How much does it cost to unblock a drain in the UK?

A blocked drain is one of those problems that always seems to happen at the worst possible time, and knowing roughly what a fair price looks like before a drainage company arrives makes it much easier to spot a reasonable quote from an inflated one. Prices vary by region and by exactly what the job involves, but there are useful benchmarks worth knowing.

Most UK drainage contractors charge a standard call-out fee somewhere around £50-£100 for a scheduled visit booked in advance, with £60 being a commonly cited typical figure. This call-out charge sometimes covers the first hour of work, though it's worth confirming this upfront rather than assuming it. Where things change is with timing: an emergency call-out — evenings, weekends, or an urgent same-day visit for a badly blocked drain — can push the call-out fee up to somewhere around £100-£200, depending on location and how urgently the work is needed.

For the job itself, a single blocked drain typically costs roughly £100-£220 to clear across most of the UK, with London commonly running higher, often £160-£300. Where a company charges by the hour rather than a fixed job price, standard hourly rates commonly sit around £50-£100. Most straightforward blockages — a sink, bath or single external drain cleared with rodding or jetting — fall toward the lower end of these ranges and are often completed within an hour or so; a job that turns out to need CCTV investigation, deeper jetting, or work further into the system will naturally cost more.

A few factors reliably push the price up. Location matters — London and the South East commonly run at the higher end of any UK price range for trades work generally, and drainage is no exception. Access matters too: a drain that's easy to reach costs less to clear than one buried under paving, requiring excavation, or located somewhere awkward to get equipment to. And severity matters — a partial blockage cleared with rodding is a much smaller job than a full blockage requiring high-pressure jetting or, in a worst case, a CCTV survey to work out what's actually wrong before any clearing work can even start.

The single most useful piece of advice for avoiding a nasty surprise is to get a fixed price agreed before any work begins, rather than an open-ended hourly estimate with no cap. A company that won't commit to a clear price upfront, or that gives a very low quote over the phone before actually seeing the job, is commonly flagged as a red flag in the drainage trade — the honest approach is usually a firm quote, or at least a clear worst-case estimate, before the van arrives.

It's also worth asking a couple of practical questions before booking, particularly for anything beyond a simple single-drain blockage. Does the quoted price include VAT? Is a CCTV inspection included if the initial rodding or jetting doesn't clear the blockage, or is that billed separately? And if the blockage turns out to be on a section of drain that isn't actually the homeowner's responsibility — a lateral drain or shared drain that's transferred to the water company — will the contractor tell you, or will they carry on and charge regardless? A reputable local drainage company should be comfortable answering all of these questions clearly before starting work.

Finally, recurring blockages are worth treating differently from a genuine one-off. If the same drain keeps blocking every few months, paying repeatedly for a basic clear-out without ever finding out why is usually more expensive over time than paying once for a CCTV survey to identify the actual cause — root ingress, a collapsed section, or a structural defect — and fixing that properly. As with most trades work, the cheapest single call-out isn't always the cheapest overall solution once repeat visits are added up.

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