Plumbing and heating engineers are invited to attend a series of half-day workshops organised by the Association of Plumbing & Heating Contractors (APHC)to provide opinion and ideas on a Compulsory Licensing Scheme.

The free to attend workshops are being hosted by APHC and BPEC and include special guest company Monument Tools who will be facilitating a practical demonstration of a range of their tools.  Leading suppliers will also be exhibiting at the launch event in Leicester. Currently, confirmed companies include Altecnic, BPEC, Monument Tools, Simpro Software, Spirotech and Testo.

The APHC argues that a Licensing Scheme should protect and forbid anyone using a term such as ‘Licensed Plumbing Company’ or ‘Licensed Heating Company’ or ‘Licensed Plumbing & Heating Company’ unless the company and its installers are accredited and undergo a programme of continuous professional development and scheduled assessment. The idea of the workshops is to open this up to debate and enable plumbing and heating engineers to have a say.

CEO of APHC, John Thompson, comments: “We want to discuss the rights and wrongs of such a scheme, how it could fit within the current framework of legislation and existing competence schemes, how it could be enforced, funded and promoted, what could the membership criteria look like, how would competence be measured, how could it work for new entrants, existing installers and those installers with many years’ worth of experience but who don’t hold an official qualification – just to mention a handful of discussion points.”

 The half-day workshops will run between 9am and 12pm on:

  • 2 Oct – Leicester, which includes an Expo of leading industry suppliers and manufacturers
  • 3 Oct – Surrey, hosted at Monument Tools and includes a factory tour
  • 4 Oct – Taunton
  • 5 Oct – Newport
  • 10 Oct – Chester
  • 11 Oct – Leeds

The Association also plans to speak about the viability of a single mandatory Licensing Scheme at PHEX Manchester (3 – 4 October), plus there will be open debate on social media during Quality Plumber Week (1 – 7 October) via the hashtag #QPW18 on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.