Awash with plumbers

Jan 31 2006 By Helen Logan Evening Gazette

Turn the clock back nearly three years and reports abounded of brickies and plumbers earning soap-star style wages.

A pay packet of more than £70,000 a year was on the table for people entering these trades.

In contrast, at the time it was also reported that Coronation Street actor Kevin Watts, who then played Curly Watts, was earning just £10,000 more a year.

The wages had been pushed to extraordinary heights due to a shortage of trained construction workers.

In the North, the bumper pay packets could be £30,000 to £50,000 - more if people worked overtime.

And some brickies, plumbers, joiners and plasterers were prepared to travel to the South each week, where they could attract a basic annual salary of more than £70,000.

As a result, City workers abandoned high-flying jobs to retrain as plumbers.

But the bubble has burst and according to trade associations, the country is about to become awash with too many trainee plumbers.

The shortfall is 1,500 plumbers for the next three years but there are 26,000 on National Vocational Qualification training courses alone, and many more on other training schemes.

Some who changed careers are regretting that decision.

One geography graduate who had been working for a City law firm was tempted to jump ship and completed a NVQ course in plumbing.

But when he came to look for a job he found he would have been on £10,000 for two years while trying to live in London, and as a result would have had to take a second job to make ends meet.

Now he has returned to the City, working in credit risk management. Another ex-bank worker who retrained has been unemployed for two months.

So has the problem of never being able to find a plumber when you need one been solved?