New research undertaken as part of Wavin’s annual ‘State of the Nation’ survey, suggests that plumbers have seen an increasing number of issues as a direct result of customers not turning their heating on. Almost two thirds of the 500 respondents said they were receiving more callouts for faulty heating systems, at a time when the majority of those surveyed said they were already facing a workload that was too high.
There are also concerns about the long-term impact on the industry as a whole. A combination of busy workloads and frequently overrunning jobs is reducing the amount of time being spent training the next generation, with less than half (45%) of those asked saying that they had an apprentice.
Steve Harris, technical support engineer at Wavin UK, comments: “This research lays bare the situation we are now in. Plumbers are under more pressure than ever before to accept work that they can’t realistically handle to ease the strain on their customers. This could have serious repercussions on work / life balance, risking a skills exodus from plumbers who cannot keep pace with the demands being placed on them.
“At the same time, there is already a skills deficit that needs to be addressed. We need more plumbers entering the industry, not less, which makes the lack of time that can be given to training apprentices even more worrying.
“That’s what makes this research so crucial in raising awareness of the challenges we face. Plumbers pride themselves on hard graft and it’s better to be busy than have no work on at all – but unless plumbers are supported in addressing the skills shortage and tackling issues associated with the cost-of-living crisis, the industry is at risk of sleepwalking into a situation that will be difficult to come back from.”
Wavin recently sat down with a few plumbers to discuss some of the industry’s current issues – see what they had to say here: https://blog.wavin.com/en-gb/new-survey-reveals-true-cost-of-living-on-plumbing-industry
