Thoughts from the Brentwood Plumber

“When I left school, I wanted to work in the RAF as an engineer, but I didn’t have the qualifications I needed. I had various jobs until I secured a 5 Year Apprenticeship with Ford Motor Company and became a Commercial Heating Engineer. After 18 years with the company redundancy loomed. I knew I had a year before I had to leave so I used that time to re-train in the Domestic Heating industry, with a view to one day owning my own business, however it wasn’t really viable back then, so I got a job with British Gas.

“They were a good employer and gave me the opportunity to develop my skills and take my career further. I became a technician and then a trainer, all the while working my way up until I was a general manager, managing teams at HSE and Gas Safe Register. A few years ago, I hit trouble with pension reforms and decided to leave – with a redundancy payment that gave me the cash I needed to set up on my own. 

“Now I’m getting towards the end of my career it’s interesting to reflect on the past, but also look to the future of the industry. It’s at cross-roads and it will be interesting to see where it goes. 

“I can see the potential in renewables and support them in principle, but until the government fully commits to its green agenda, we’ve no chance of meeting our net zero targets! They keep shifting the goal posts. 

“Relying on sole traders like me to bite the bullet and train ourselves to fit heat pumps just isn’t going to cut it. We need a properly incentivised scheme to help engineers pay for renewables training and a decent public information campaign to get the pubic on board. The current funding scheme to help homeowners meet the costs of switching to heat pumps and solar PVS is all very well, but you need to be relatively well-off to afford to upgrade your heating system in the first place.

“They should start by encouraging us to start making small changes that will help us buy into the bigger decisions we’ll need to face in the future. For example, there should be a proper information campaign about the benefits of smart technology for heating systems. The roll out of smart meters has been too slow and a lot of my customers still don’t know about the intelligent controls that can be fitted to their heating systems, or the fact that they can reduce the running temperatures of their boilers without losing heat in their homes. The crazy thing is that as well as helping us reduce emissions, taking these simple steps will save them money. 

“By encouraging the public to start taking responsibility for the amount of gas and electricity they use individually, the government would more easily get everyone on board to support the bigger issues we face going forward. 

“Being a heating engineer is a great career. I look at the young ones coming up behind me now and wonder what their careers will look like in twenty, thirty years’ time. It’s exciting, I just hope the government gets it’s act together soon. They need to commit to a single renewable energy source and get us all behind it.”