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Thursday Mar 13

The Plumbing Industry Alliance, a body which represents most of the industry’s leading associations, is looking to rally support for its ongoing campaign against ‘rogue trainers’ - unregulated training schools that charge students ‘over the top’ fees.



Training schools which offer qualifications and then fail to deliver are costing students thousands of pounds, says the Plumbing and Heating Industry Alliance (PHIA). The Alliance, which represents some 20 trade bodies with over 30,000 members in the UK, is campaigning to put an end to what it calls ‘rogue trainers’ PHIA Chairman Chris Sneath says: "There’s a crazy situation where anyone can set themselves up as a training school and claim to teach someone to be a qualified plumber in as little as four weeks. Needless to say, these get rich quick merchants charge a fortune — I’ve heard of as much as £5000 — but the would-be plumbers parting with their money end up with virtually nothing, certainly not the means to start a legitimate career in our industry. It’s nothing short of daylight robbery."

The industry’s accepted qualification for a plumber is National or Scottish Vocational Qualification (NVQ or SVQ) at Level 3. Typically this takes a minimum of three to four years training on the job, combined with study at a recognised training provider.

Chris Sneath adds: "The entire plumbing and heating industry recognises the NVQ at level 3, a completed formal apprenticeship or appropriate experience over many years as the minimum for a legitimate plumber. Unregulated trainers will often turn out cowboy plumbers, with all the risks to public health that entails. But sad to say, the Government doesn’t want to know. I’ve personally spoken to government representatives, but they don’t want to interfere in what they call ‘free market practice’."

The PHIA is asking the media to support its campaign by refusing advertising from these rogue trainers. "We often see adverts for them contained in newspaper career supplements," says Sneath. "We do realise that it’s not always easy to instantly recognise the good from the bad, but we are happy to offer advice." The PHIA hopes that its campaign will help to eradicate what has become a problem

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bbb

Read it and weep.I was at a job the other day and woman was pestering me to employ her son who had done one of these courses a few months ago and was now unemployed. I felt sorry for the lad cos he was only 22 and hed shelled out near 5k and left his job to do this course and no one would take him on. In my opinion all training centres are run by robbers. I just wish people would open their eyes and look at the bigger picture before parting with the cash and dreaming the dream. Plumbing nowadays is a "dead end job" for some due to the influx of cheap euro workers taking over the sites and course cowboys thinking they know it all. It effected my business a little bit but with over 20yrs experience in plumbing,c/h and gas installations im not particularly worried

fuzzy

Are there any other experiences of rogue trainers?

pauls

i do agree, these training providers do need to be governed and they need to provide what they say they provide

fuzzy

it appears that they are very misleading