The Datum Report

Occupation 5315 · Skilled trades occupations

Plumbers and heating and ventilating installers and repairers

Half of full-time plumbers and heating and ventilating installers and repairers in the UK earn more than £37,881 a year, and half earn less.

Plumbers and heating and ventilating installers and repairers assemble, install, maintain and repair plumbing fixtures, heating and ventilating systems and pipes and pipeline systems in commercial, residential and industrial premises and public buildings for non-renewable and renewable energy.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements, though GCSEs/S grades are advantageous. Entry is typically through an approved apprenticeship programme or college course in conjunction with on-the-job training, leading to a NVQ/SVQ level 3 qualification, or through building up work experience supplemented with short courses. It is also the law that gas engineers to be registered with Gas Safe Register.

What the work involves

• examines drawings and specifications to determine layout of system
• measures and cuts required lengths of copper, lead, steel, iron, aluminium or plastic using hand or machine tools
• installs fittings such as storage tanks, cookers, baths, toilets, taps and valves, refrigerators, boilers, heat pumps, radiators and fires
• tests completed installation for leaks and makes any necessary adjustments
• attaches fittings and joins piping by welding, soldering, cementing, fusing, screwing or other methods
• repairs burst pipes and mechanical and combustion faults and replaces faulty taps, washers, valves, etc

Also called

Gas engineer · Heating and ventilating engineer · Heat pump installer · Meter installer (water) · Plumber · Plumbing and heating engineer · Stove repairer (gas stoves) · Ventilation fitter

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for plumbers and heating and ventilating installers and repairers, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 10 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Bricklayers · Carpenters and joiners · Construction and building trades n.e.c. · Glaziers, window fabricators and fitters · Roofers, roof tilers and slaters · Steel erectors · Stonemasons and related trades