Incompetent or Dis-Interested Sparks of Today.

In that screenshot that Jon has posted it says there are 65,000 NICEIC registered electrical contracting businesses, in a recent post on this forum someone else claimed that last years changes to the entry requirements to the NAPIT and NICEIC Competence Schemes has stopped 25,000 electricians from being able to apply for membership.

It was a full fifty years last year since I went to the youth employment office in Redditch and got my National insurance number as back then you could leave school and get grown ups jobs at fifteen, I actually worked full time in a factory over the summer then carried on at school in the autumn.

To keep numbers simple, if we worked fifty years 2% of the work force would retire each year, but it's an older workforce and the rate of retirement is older so the retirement rate is more, plus a lot of older guys who had carried on working past retirement age did not start again after being told to stop at home during the Covid lockdowns.

At a steady 2% retirement rate I would expect the NICEIC to have lost between 2,000 to 3,000 contractors since the start of Covid two years ago, but with the higher retirement rate and older guys past retirement dropping out I would not be surprised if the figure is more like 10,000 contractors, in addition there are the NAPIT and unregistered self employed contractors to take into account.

I suspect that in reality the number of registered electrical contractors has fallen dramatically, I also think a lot of younger electricians are not registering with either scheme, as they can make more money with less hassle sub-contracting and flying under the radar.

All in all, I am really not surprised that someone cannot find an self employed electrician to sort out a bit of messy wiring that someone else put in.

In that screenshot that Jon has posted it says there are 65,000 NICEIC registered electrical contracting businesses, in a recent post on this forum someone else claimed that last years changes to the entry requirements to the NAPIT and NICEIC Competence Schemes has stopped 25,000 electricians from being able to apply for membership.

It was a full fifty years last year since I went to the youth employment office in Redditch and got my National insurance number as back then you could leave school and get grown ups jobs at fifteen, I actually worked full time in a factory over the summer then carried on at school in the autumn.

To keep numbers simple, if we worked fifty years 2% of the work force would retire each year, but it's an older workforce and the rate of retirement is older so the retirement rate is more, plus a lot of older guys who had carried on working past retirement age did not start again after being told to stop at home during the Covid lockdowns.

At a steady 2% retirement rate I would expect the NICEIC to have lost between 2,000 to 3,000 contractors since the start of Covid two years ago, but with the higher retirement rate and older guys past retirement dropping out I would not be surprised if the figure is more like 10,000 contractors, in addition there are the NAPIT and unregistered self employed contractors to take into account.

I suspect that in reality the number of registered electrical contractors has fallen dramatically, I also think a lot of younger electricians are not registering with either scheme, as they can make more money with less hassle sub-contracting and flying under the radar.

All in all, I am really not surprised that someone cannot find an self employed electrician to sort out a bit of messy wiring that someone else put in.