The Datum Report

Occupation 5114 · Skilled trades occupations

Groundsmen and greenkeepers

Half of full-time groundsmen and greenkeepers in the UK earn more than £28,288 a year, and half earn less.

Groundsmen and greenkeepers cut and lay turf and maintain areas for golf courses and other sports grounds.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. NVQs/SVQs in Sports Turf Management are available at level 4. Apprenticeships and professional qualifications are also available.

What the work involves

• levels ground and installs drainage system as required
• cuts and lays turf using hand and machine tools and repairs damaged turf
• moves soil to alter surface contour of land using mechanical equipment and constructs appropriate landscaping features and maintains such features
• monitors and maintains the quality and condition of turf
• rolls, mows and waters grass, marks out pitches

Also called

Greenkeeper · Groundsman · Groundsperson

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for groundsmen and greenkeepers, full-time employees, 2024 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 10 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Agricultural and fishing trades n.e.c. · Farmers · Gardeners and landscape gardeners · Horticultural trades