East Midlands Masonry Ltd

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East Midlands Masonry Ltd

Builders, Property Developers, Bricklayers. Providing solutions for the most challenging projects anywhere in the UK is a Hodgkinson Builders' speciality.

The Company:

From purpose-built offices at Pride Park in Derby, Hodgkinson Builders offers a comprehensive range of supply and construction services in brick, stone, glass block work and flint. Our work has been used in housing, factory, retail, specialist and prestigious development and refurbishment projects in locations as diverse as Ilkeston and Iceland. The company has 150 bricklayers, ston

e masons, forklift drivers and labourers, together with a database of several thousand tradesmen on whose services it can call. In short, we are big enough to deliver on contracts with multi-million price tags but not so big that we lose sight of quality standards on those with a multi-thousand label. We’re built on solid foundations. Managing director Ian Hodgkinson, the friendly and professional face of Hodgkinson Builders, is a great believer in building good relationships with both the people with whom he works and those for whom he works - as long as they share his unremitting commitment to quality. That is something on which he won't compromise. Before launching his company 18 years ago, Ian lectured on a range of construction skills at a local college and was well aware that the building industry didn't enjoy the best of reputations with the public at large, thanks to its frequent failure to deliver a quality service, on time and within budget. Determined that things would be different at Hodgkinson Builders', the company's mission statement is an unequivocal: ‘to build your buildings on time, within budget and with complete safety’. It's a policy that stems from a family involvement with the building trade that stretches back over 70 years - and a personal determination to head the best company of its kind in the construction field. Ian's pledge to customers is a simple one:

"At Hodgkinson's, you will deal with caring, qualified, honest and willing personnel who actually want to help you. No ifs. No buts."

30/08/2026

BRICKXIT 🧱🇬🇧
Well, this was a good one to wake up to.
I’m quoted extensively in today’s Sun on Sunday talking about something I’ve spent most of my working life around: bricks, bricklayers and British housebuilding.
The headline figure should make us all think:
352 MILLION bricks were imported into Britain last year.
At the same time, we’re talking about building 1.5 million new homes.
We have clay beneath our feet. We have brickworks. We have skilled people. We have the engineering knowledge.
So why can a brick manufactured hundreds of miles away sometimes arrive on a British building site cheaper than one made here?
As I told The Sun:
“If it is cheaper to transport a heavy brick hundreds of miles than to make it in Britain, the problem is not the brick. It is the system surrounding it.”
This isn’t anti-import. Builders have businesses to run and costs matter.
The question is why British manufacturing starts the race with what I described as a “hodful of extra cost on its back”.
Energy is a huge part of that. Brick kilns operate at around 1,000°C or more. If we’re serious about housebuilding, we need a serious long-term strategy for the British industries supplying it.
And here’s the frustrating bit…
TEN YEARS AGO, I was interviewed by the BBC about Britain’s reliance on imported bricks. My business was sourcing bricks from Spain because Britain couldn’t produce enough of what the industry needed.
A decade later: 352 million imported bricks.
Different pressures. Same underlying problem.
It is time to put British manufacturing back at the foundation of British housebuilding.
Great to see The Sun on Sunday putting this into the national conversation.
And whoever came up with BRICKXIT… I’ll give you that one. 😂🧱

28/08/2026

COWBOY BUILDERS: ABOUT TIME. BUT DON’T PUNISH THE GOOD ONES.
Cowboy builders are back in the news, with Government plans to tackle rogue traders and help the public identify trusted tradespeople.
I’m all for it.
After 40+ years in construction, nothing frustrates good builders more than seeing someone take a customer’s money, produce dreadful work and disappear.
They damage the reputation of the whole industry.
But don’t turn tackling cowboys into another mountain of paperwork and cost for legitimate builders already paying tax, VAT, insurance, wages and training while complying with Building Regulations, CDM and health and safety.
Meanwhile, the cowboys simply operate under the radar.
That isn’t a level playing field.
And it brings me back to something I keep banging the drum about.
Why charge 20% VAT on qualifying home extensions that could help with the housing crisis?
Extensions improve living conditions and can create additional accommodation, particularly bedrooms, without needing another piece of land or an entirely new house.
Why not offer targeted VAT relief on qualifying extensions where the work is carried out by properly registered, demonstrably competent builders?
Give homeowners a financial reason to choose the legitimate builder.
It could support proper businesses, protect consumers, bring work out of the cash economy, improve our housing stock and create much-needed additional accommodation.
Regulation should target the rogue, not regulate the good builder out of business.
Make competence, registration and accountability worth something.
Give proper builders a level playing field.

25/08/2026

🚨 ONE MILLION YOUNG PEOPLE GOING NOWHERE. YET WE CAN’T FIND ENOUGH PEOPLE TO BUILD OUR HOMES! 🧱🏠
More than ONE MILLION 16 to 24-year-olds are now not in education, employment or training.
At the same time Britain is crying out for skilled workers.
Bricklayers. Carpenters. Electricians. Plumbers. Engineers. Groundworkers. Site managers.
How have we got this so wrong?
I’ve no university degree. No fancy career plan.
I learned a trade.
That trade gave me a wage, confidence, responsibility and eventually a career.
That’s why these figures make me angry.
Not with the youngsters.
With the system.
We’ve spent years pushing university as the gold standard while vocational education has somehow been treated as second best.
It isn’t.
Graduate vacancies have reportedly fallen sharply, yet construction continues to talk about a massive skills shortage.
There’s your clue.
We don’t need another glossy brochure telling a 16-year-old about “career pathways”.
We need employers prepared to give them a start.
And construction needs to look at itself too.
We constantly ask:
“Where are all the bricklayers?”
Maybe we should be asking:
“How many have we actually trained?”
You can’t spend 20 years failing to bring enough youngsters into an industry and then act surprised when the skills disappear.
I’ve seen young people who struggled in classrooms absolutely flourish on building sites.
Give them something practical to do.
Give them responsibility.
Teach them properly.
Pay them.
Expect something from them.
And watch what happens.
Britain needs homes.
Britain needs skilled workers.
More than ONE MILLION young people need an opportunity.
Surely we can join those three dots together.
Stop treating vocational education as second best.
Get apprenticeships back at the heart of British industry.
And give these youngsters a bloody chance.
👉 WHAT DO YOU THINK?
I genuinely want to hear what the industry thinks. 👇

24/08/2026

🤖 ROBOTS WON’T SOLVE BRITAIN’S HOUSING CRISIS 🧱🏠

Every few months, we hear that another machine will replace bricklayers.

Dutch company Monumental is bringing robotic bricklaying technology to Britain.

They’ve recreated the traditional 2+1 gang except this one has wheels.

Meet the 3 Ps:

🧱 Pisa lays the bricks
🧱 Petra supplies them
🧱 Panama supplies the mortar

Together, they can reportedly lay around 1,000 bricks a day, helping create capacity for another 20,000 UK homes within two years.

Impressive? Yes.

But a BUILDING SITE ISN’T A FACTORY.

Bricklaying isn’t just putting mortar down and dropping bricks on top.

It’s setting out, dealing with openings, lintels, DPCs, insulation, ties, movement joints, cuts and levels while reading drawings, handling weather and adapting when site conditions don’t match the plans.

Apparently, someone can learn to operate these robots in around four weeks.

Four weeks?

You might learn to operate the robot.

But you haven’t learnt how to build a house.

We should ask ?

“How do we build houses without bricklayers?”

“Why aren’t we producing enough bricklayers?”

Where are the apprenticeships? Where are the employers willing to give young people their first proper chance?

The real gap is getting them from college onto site.

I’m not against robotics. I can see experienced bricklayers supervising several machines and achieving productivity we can’t imagine today.

But here’s how I’d do it:
GIVE THE BRICKLAYER THE ROBOT.

Let technology reduce physical strain and improve productivity but let skilled tradespeople operate it and deal with problems when the computer says no.

Technology should support craftsmanship, not pretend it isn’t needed.

Learn the trade. Learn the technology. Become bloody good at both.

The robot may be coming

But it’ll need a bricklayer beside it for quite a while yet.

20/08/2026

IF YOU’RE GOING TO INFLUENCE THE TRADE INFLUENCE IT SAFELY.

We’ve got some brilliant construction creators with thousands of tradespeople watching what they do.

So why aren’t we influencing safety as much as tools, workwear and products?

If you’re cutting bricks, blocks, concrete or stone show the dust suppression, extraction and the correct PPE.

Silica dust is a killer.
In Great Britain, HSE estimates around 500 construction workers die each year from silica-related diseases, including silicosis and lung cancer.

Young tradespeople copy what they see. So let’s make wearing proper RPE, eye protection, hearing protection and gloves normal.

And brands sponsoring construction creators should be encouraging it too.

If you’ve got influence in our industry, use it.

Wear it. Show it. Normalise it.

Dust doesn’t care how many followers you’ve got.

19/08/2026

HOW MANY HOMES HAVE WE ACTUALLY STARTED BUILDING IN 2026? 🛠️

We hear a lot about housing targets.

1.5 million homes.
300,000 homes a year.
Planning reform.
Getting Britain building.

But I’m more interested in one number:

How many houses are actually coming out of the ground?

The latest confirmed Government figures show that 33,960 new homes started on site in England between January and March 2026.

That’s up 18% on the same quarter last year, which is encouraging.

But here’s the interesting bit.

We’re now well into the second half of 2026 and we still don’t have the official April–June figures. ??

So at the moment, despite all the headlines about housebuilding, the latest confirmed national figure for 2026 is still:

33,960 starts.

And even that needs some context, because Government statistics say the unusually high number of starts in late 2025 and early 2026 was partly affected by changes in reporting from the Building Safety Regulator.

For me, the real test of the Government’s housing ambitions isn’t announcements or planning approvals.

It’s boots on sites, foundations in the ground, bricklayers laying bricks and houses actually being built.

When the April–June figures land, that’s the number I’ll be watching.

Because if we’re serious about delivering 1.5 million homes, the second quarter needs to tell us that the industry is genuinely accelerating.

Are you seeing more sites starting where you are or are we still talking about housebuilding more than we’re actually building houses?

10/08/2026

SCRAP VAT ON HOME IMPROVEMENTS I WAS IN THE SUN ON SUNDAY TALKING ABOUT THIS AND GET BRITAIN BUILDING 🇬🇧

I think we need to seriously look at zero-rating VAT on domestic extensions, alterations and works that bring empty or unusable properties back into residential accommodation.

Yes, the Treasury would lose VAT at the front end.

But what comes back the other way?

More extensions get built. More renovations happen. Builders and tradespeople have higher turnover. Merchants sell more materials. Manufacturers make more products. More profit means more tax on those profits. More employment means more PAYE and National Insurance.

And importantly, more money goes directly into the hands of the tradespeople actually doing the work.

There’s another benefit nobody talks about enough it could help level the playing field against cowboy builders and the cash economy.

If the customer isn’t trying to save 20% VAT, there’s far less incentive to use somebody operating under the radar. Use a legitimate builder, get a proper quotation, proper invoices and a proper paper trail for the work.

I’ve seen too many people create enormous problems for themselves trying to save money using the wrong builder.

And the economic benefit doesn’t stop when the builder leaves.

Build the extension and people buy a new kitchen. Carpets. Curtains. Furniture. Lighting. Appliances. Fixtures and fittings. Maybe they landscape the garden as well.

One building project creates spending right through the economy.

So rather than simply asking, “How much VAT would the Treasury lose?”, perhaps we should be asking:

HOW MUCH ECONOMIC ACTIVITY WOULD WE CREATE?

Construction has always been a catalyst for growth.

Get people building, improving and investing in their homes and the money keeps moving.

This could be a win for homeowners, a win for legitimate tradespeople and a win for the wider UK economy.

It deserves a serious conversation.

29/07/2026

SCHOOLS CAN TRAIN THEM AT 14… BUT WHO’S GOING TO EMPLOY THEM AT 18?
Yesterday’s Government announcement to introduce more vocational training in schools from the age of 14 is a positive step, and I genuinely welcome it.
Yesterday I was interviewed by BBC Radio Derby, BBC Radio Nottingham and BBC Radio Leicester about exactly this issue.
I’ve spent over 40 years in construction and have championed apprenticeships throughout my career. Young people deserve the chance to discover practical skills earlier, and if vocational education inspires more youngsters into construction, then that’s good news.
But here’s the question nobody seems to be asking…
Where are the jobs?
Construction colleges across the country are already brimming with talented, enthusiastic young people who want to become bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians and site and
Then too many leave college only to discover there aren’t enough apprenticeships and employers simply can’t afford to take them on.
The issue isn’t a lack of enthusiasm from young people.
The issue is a lack of opportunity.
Small and medium-sized builders want to invest in the next generation, but rising employment costs, National Insurance, training commitments and commercial pressures mean many businesses just can’t make the numbers work.
If Government is serious about vocational education starting at 14, then it must be equally serious about creating the jobs that follow.
Give employers meaningful incentives to recruit apprentices.
Reduce the cost of employing young people.
Support the SMEs that train the vast majority of our future workforce.
Because education without employment isn’t a solution.
It’s simply moving the problem further down the road.
Britain doesn’t have a shortage of young people who want to build.
Britain has a shortage of opportunities for them to build a career.
That has to change.

28/07/2026

🚨 APPRENTICESHIPS ARE RISING… BUT ARE WE BUILDING BRICKLAYERS OR JUST BOOSTING THE NUMBERS? 🧱

The latest figures from CITB are encouraging.

More than 5,900 apprenticeship starts during 2025–26 represent a 43% increase on the previous year, with a further 1,680 accelerated apprenticeship places planned across key trades including bricklaying, carpentry and roofing.

That’s great news.

But here’s the real question…

Will those apprentices become the skilled workforce our industry desperately needs?

Getting someone through the gate is only the first step.

They need experienced mentors, quality college training, varied site experience and the time to learn their trade properly.

Construction doesn’t need apprentices who spend two years sweeping up or carrying blocks.

We need to invest in the next generation so they become the bricklayers, carpenters and tradespeople who will build Britain’s future.

Let’s focus on quality as well as quantity.

Address

36 Royal Scott Pride Park
Derby
DE248AJ

Telephone

01332228944

Website

http://www.bricklayers.com/

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