Gross profit and net profit
Gross profit is sales less the direct costs of the work: parts, paint and materials, sublet, and usually the technicians who did it. Net profit is what's left after the overheads as well: rent, business rates, the office, insurance, equipment and everything else.
What repairers' accounts show
The large repairers file full accounts at Companies House, which gives the only hard UK figures. None of them is an independent single-site bodyshop, so treat them as reference points, not targets.
| Company | Turnover | Gross margin | Operating margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steer Automotive Group, year to March 2025 | £468.7m | 44.3% | −1.9% |
| Solus (London), Aviva's repairer, 2025 | £240.5m | 47% | 22% |
| UK Assistance Accident Repair Centres, 2025 | £352.8m | 28.0% | 13.9% |
From the companies' filed accounts. The year before: Steer 44.5% and 2.3%; Solus 52% and 21%; UK Assistance 19.2% and 6.2%.
- Steer is the largest repair group, with 199 sites at March 2025 after nine acquisitions in the year, Gemini among them. Its operating loss comes mostly from £25.9m of amortisation on the businesses it bought and £14.8m of one-off costs: its underlying EBITDA was 8.8%, down from 11.1%. Staff cost 37.5% of turnover.
- Solus and UK Assistance are insurer-owned and now both part of Aviva, so their prices are set within their groups. Solus's staff cost 26% of revenue. UK Assistance has no staff of its own, and its costs fell mainly because it paid lower fees to stay on a repair panel.
What bodyshops report
The ABP Club's 2025 survey of 274 repairers asks which way profits moved, not what margins are:
Profits lower
44%
Than a year before. 17% said the same.
Profits higher
39%
2% were making a loss.
Expect a rise next year
49%
19% expected profits to fall.
The sample leans towards bigger businesses: only 10% turned over less than £1 million a year, and 35% more than £5 million. The last published margin figures are older:
- 2019: an average pre-tax margin of 4.92% across 21 large groups, down from 6.68% in 2018, with profits down at 14 of them. On their average insurance job of £1,748, that's about £86.
- 2015: £13.52 net profit on an average insurance job of £1,380 taking 15.7 hours, about 86p an hour.
We found no accountants' or trade body's current survey of bodyshop margins. Your own figures, against what your labour rate was built to earn, are the better benchmark.
Gross profit by category
With no UK benchmark by category, work out your own. Here's the repair from our job costing guide, as quoted, with technicians' pay above the line:
| Category | Invoiced | Cost | Gross profit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | £1,112.04 | £570.24 | 48.7% |
| Parts | £1,600.00 | £1,280.00 | 20.0% |
| Paint and materials | £420.00 | £330.00 | 21.4% |
| Sublet: ADAS calibration | £300.00 | £250.00 | 16.7% |
| Recovery | £150.00 | £150.00 | 0.0% |
| Whole repair | £3,582.04 | £2,580.24 | 28.0% |
A made-up repair, before VAT. Labour's cost is the technician's pay with National Insurance, pension and unsold hours.
Each category earns differently, so the mix of work matters as much as any one margin: a month heavy on parts-intensive replacement work shows a lower overall gross profit than one heavy on repair labour. Our parts and paint pricing guide covers how each is priced.
What's squeezing margins
Repairers' average labour rate fell 4.7% in 2025, to £48.23 an hour, while their costs kept rising. Body repairers' median pay rose 6.5% and paint technicians' 9.2% to April 2026, and employer's National Insurance rose to 15% from April 2025. Prices have risen too:
| Year | Vehicle maintenance and repair | Spare parts | All prices |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 6.8% | 4.1% | 9.1% |
| 2023 | 8.0% | 3.8% | 7.3% |
| 2024 | 7.0% | 4.8% | 2.5% |
| 2025 | 6.3% | 4.1% | 3.4% |
| Year to September 2026 | 3.7% | 5.1% | 3.5% |
ONS consumer price indices, series D7IP and L7R3. These are prices consumers pay, not what insurers pay. We found no UK index for paint.
- Low labour rates were repairers' biggest threat in ABP's 2025 ranking, ahead of a shortage of skilled staff. National Insurance changes came 7th.
- Work is thinner for many: 44% of repairers had less work in September 2025 than a year earlier, though that was down from 57% in 2024.
- Parts shortages held up at least a tenth of the jobs at three in four bodyshops in 2025, keeping cars in bays longer.
In pounds: the example bodyshop from our labour rate guide, paying its technicians the April 2025 median of £16.73 an hour, broke even at £53.64. At the April 2026 median it needs £55.60, £1.96 more on every hour it sells, in a year when the average rate repairers were paid went down. A bodyshop that doesn't work its rate out again each year loses that margin without noticing.
Insurers' losses and write-offs
Insurers are under pressure too, which keeps them pushing on repair costs. EY puts motor insurers' combined ratio, claims and costs as a share of premiums, at 98% in 2024 and 102% in 2025, with 108% forecast for 2026 and 103% for 2027: anything over 100% is a loss on underwriting. Premiums fell 12% in 2025 and EY expects them to rise by about 16% over two years, partly blaming rising labour rates.
More cars are being written off rather than repaired. On insurers' own customers' claims, write-offs rose 9% between 2019 and 2023, from 272,042 to 296,135 cars, according to the FCA. Every total loss is a repair that doesn't come to a bodyshop. Our guide to Cat S and Cat N write-offs covers the categories.
Insolvencies in motor repair
| Year | Insolvencies |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 164 |
| 2020 | 132 |
| 2021 | 145 |
| 2022 | 236 |
| 2023 | 274 |
| 2024 | 251 |
| 2025 | 293 |
| January to September 2026 | 206 (222 a year earlier) |
Insolvency Service, September 2026 release. All motor vehicle repair companies (SIC 45.2), not only bodyshops. Scotland had 16 in 2025.
2025 was the highest year since the series began in 2016. Large names fail too: Nationwide Accident Repair Services went into administration in 2020, and in September 2026 Page Automotive Group, a south of England repair group with more than 100 staff, called in administrators after losing £1.1m on £24.2m turnover in 2024.
Where to look when margins slip
When margins slip, the leak is usually one of these:
- Work done but not charged. Hidden damage found after the strip that never went to the insurer as supplementary work. Our quote guide covers authorising extra work.
- Parts missing from job cards. Every part bought but not put on a job, and every return or credit not chased, comes straight off your parts margin.
- Shop supplies counted as paint. Sealers, clips and protective gear in the paint bill make materials margins look worse than they are, and hide what supplies really cost.
- Hours lost. Jobs that run over the quote, technicians waiting on parts or authorisation, and rework: every one costs labour and bay time.
- The wrong rates. A labour rate that hasn't kept up with your costs, or work taken at rates that don't cover them. Our labour rate guide works out what yours needs to be.
