The days of the £50,000-a-year brickie are numbered as Britain's housebuilders tighten their purse-strings to deal with a rapidly cooling housing market.

Bricklayers, carpenters and plasterers face wage cuts of up to 10 per cent as housebuilders rein in their costs in a bid to shore up their profits, The Times has learnt.

Skilled labourers in large parts of the Midlands and the North of England will be hit hardest. In these regions, some of Britain's largest housebuilders have started to slow down their rate of construction on existing sites or even begun to mothball entire schemes where work had been due to start later in the year.

Neil Fitzsimmons, chief executive of Redrow, the housebuilder, said that he had started talks with suppliers to cut costs from between 2 per cent and 10 per cent, ranging from contracts for construction workers to the price of carpets and curtains.

Construction has been been put on ice at two of Redrow's sites in the North West, Mr Fitzsimmons said, where there were plans to build about 50 flats.

Barratt, Britain's second-largest builder, is attempting to eke out £100 million of annual savings from better deals with building material suppliers and contractors. By the end of June, Barratt is forecast to have sold about 18,300 new homes, compared with the 21,500 homes that it sold the year before.

Mark Clare, Barratt's chief executive, said: “There is an ability to go back to the sub-contractors and go in on prices. There is less trade on the sites - a slowdown in build rates. You slow down the wave of building on those sites, you have to get control of work in progress. That reduces demand and, therefore, wages.”

The basic minimum wage agreed by the construction industry for skilled craftsmen - from painters and plasterers to bricklayers and joiners - has risen 27 per cent in only four years to £9.72 per hour, according to figures from the Construction Confederation. Nevertheless, bricklayers working in and around London regularly command at least twice that rate. With overtime and bonuses, many experienced skilled labourers have been able to comfortably gross at least £50,000 a year for several years.

Property experts believe that demand for labourers remains strong in London, but that the capital is likely to experience a similar pattern to the regions as the market continues to stall.

Stephen Burke, construction director at St Modwen, the FTSE 250-listed urban regeneration developer, said that over the past few weeks his bill for contracted labour had fallen by 7.5 per cent. He had also seen a surge in calls from contractors worried about their work flow, he said.

TaylorWimpey, which sells about 23,000 homes in Britain and the United States, is also embarking on a cost cutting regime. Pete Redfern, chief executive, told The Times last month: “It is fairly normal to say that as the markets get a bit tougher those conversations [with contractors] happen. It is an ongoing natural process.”

Gerry Lean, the Construction Confederation's director of industrial relations, said that a 5 per cent cut in wages was “realistic, depending very much on demand”. Other industry figures said that pay reductions would be steeper.

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