Turn the water off before you read the rest of this
The cheapest thing you will do today is close the stopcock. It is usually under the kitchen sink, sometimes in a downstairs cloakroom or under the stairs. Turn it clockwise until it stops, then open the lowest cold tap in the property to drain the pipes down. If water is anywhere near a light fitting, a socket or a consumer unit, switch that circuit off.
Every minute the water runs adds to a damage bill that dwarfs any plumber's hourly rate. It also converts an emergency into something that can wait until morning, which is where most of the saving actually is.
What the emergency premium is made of
Published UK market figures, from named cost guides. Not our prices.
| Component | Published figure | Source |
|---|
| Emergency call-out fee | £100 to £120 | Checkatrade cost guide, 2026 |
| Standard hourly rate | £40 to £60 per hour | Checkatrade cost guide, 2026 |
| Out-of-hours hourly rate | Up to twice the standard rate | Checkatrade cost guide, 2026 |
| Minimum charge on an emergency call-out | Commonly one hour | Checkatrade cost guide, 2026 |
| Repairing a burst water pipe, labour and materials, excluding VAT | £100 to £500 | Which?, plumber cost guide |
Those components stack. A caller who is quoted the call-out fee and nothing else has been told one of four numbers. Which? notes that prices tend to sit at the upper end of national ranges in London and the South East, and that any figure given over the phone is an estimate built on assumptions about pipework nobody has looked at yet.
Why the premium exists
Three honest reasons. The engineer is being paid an unsocial-hours rate. The merchants are closed, so whatever fixes your pipe has to already be on the van, which means carrying stock that mostly sits there. And an emergency slot displaces booked work that has to be rescheduled and apologised for.
Those are real costs. What is not defensible is a firm that quotes a low call-out to get through the door and discovers the price of the actual repair afterwards, in your hallway, at eleven at night, while your ceiling drips. If a price is only available on arrival, that is a negotiating position, not a quote.
Genuine emergencies, and the rest
Call somebody tonight
- Water running that the stopcock does not stop. A leak upstream of your stopcock, or a stopcock seized open, means you cannot isolate the property.
- Water near electrics. A wet ceiling rose, a soaked consumer unit or water tracking down a wall containing cabling.
- A burst pipe filling a room, or a ceiling visibly bulging. A bulge is water held by plaster and it will come down.
- No water at all in freezing weather with a suspected burst somewhere you cannot see.
- Escaping gas, which is not us and not a plumber. That is the National Gas emergency service, and it is the one call that comes before everything else.
This can wait until morning, and will cost less
- A drip you have contained in a bucket with the water off.
- A boiler that has lost pressure and will not fire. Uncomfortable, not an emergency, unless it is genuinely freezing and there is a vulnerable person in the property.
- A slow stain on a ceiling that has been there for a fortnight. Two more weeks will not change the repair, and daytime rates will change the bill.
- A dripping tap or an overflowing toilet cistern. Isolate at the service valve and sleep.
- Water that appeared after the flat above ran a bath. That is upstairs and their insurer. Photograph it, tell the managing agent in writing, and do not start commissioning work on their behalf.
If the water is coming through a ceiling right now and you are not sure which of those you have, the first actions are set out in water coming through a ceiling. For a split or burst pipe, what an emergency pipe repair actually involves explains what can be done on the night and what is a second visit, and the service itself is burst pipe repair.
Before you agree to anything on the phone
- Ask for the call-out fee and the hourly rate as two separate numbers, and ask whether the rate is different after a certain time.
- Ask what the minimum charge is.
- Ask whether the fee is still payable if the fault cannot be found tonight and a return visit is needed.
- Ask for it in a text message. A firm that will not put two numbers in writing before driving to you is telling you something.
The same questions, in more detail, are in the guide to plumber call-out fees.
What we charge
£150 per hour, agreed before we set off, with no call-out fee and no evening or weekend uplift. The rate does not rise because the property is difficult or because it is late. The total is hours multiplied by that rate, so the total depends on what we find, and we will not pretend to know it before we have looked.
If the job is a hidden leak rather than a visible burst, the search time carries our no find, no fee guarantee. For water coming through now, the service you want is emergency leak repair. If the leak can wait for a daytime visit, how much it costs to fix a leak breaks the bill into finding, fixing and making good.
One case where the right call is not to a plumber
If the leak is outside your property boundary, it is the water company's pipe and their cost. CCW is explicit that the water main, the communication pipe up to the boundary, the external stop tap and the meter are the company's responsibility, and that what runs from the boundary into the house is yours. If water is surfacing in the pavement or the road, report it and let them dig. There is more on the boundary and the notices that follow a leak in the Thames Water guide.
