I have worked the majority of my working life on building sites, I started in 1996 and have taken long breaks at times but every job I have ever had has been either site work or social housing. Back when I started there were no certificates needed to work on a building site nowadays things are different. First you need a basic health and safety certificate, that allows you to hold a CSCS card for five years without the basic health and safety certificate you can only hold the CSCS card for one year before needing to pass another test and you end up having to pay yearly.
Then for a growing amount of jobs you need a NVQ tradesmen card. These cards cost over £800 to obtain and they are a useless, meaningless,over priced, rip off that give certificates to people that have NO experience whatsoever!
I have noticed a strange pattern with these over priced qualifications and quality of work on site nowadays. That pattern is the more qualified people are the more clueless they seem to be. Many sites are legitimizing these fake qualifications and due to this many businesses are employing useless fake tradesmen that lack the experience that comes with learning on site.
You can’t go to college for three weeks and learn bricklaying, carpentry or plastering.
These NVQ qualifications bullshit is just a huge money making scam, it leads to paying money to earn money and it creates unnecessary jobs for the boys. DO NOT TRUST NVQ CERTIFIED TRADESMEN.