We present the results of a deep wide-field near-infrared survey of 12deg^2^ of the Pleiades conducted as part of the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Galactic Cluster Survey (GCS). We have extracted over 340 high-probability proper motion (PM) members down to 0.03M_{sun}_ using a combination of UKIDSS photometry and PM measurements obtained by cross-correlating the GCS with data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, the Isaac Newton Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Additionally, we have unearthed 73 new candidate brown dwarf (BD) members on the basis of five-band UKIDSS photometry alone. We have identified 23 substellar multiple system candidates out of 63 candidate BDs from the (Y-K, Y) and (J-K, J) colour-magnitude diagrams, yielding a binary frequency of 2844 per cent in the 0.075-0.030M_{sun}_ mass range.