Hi I decided to start a fresh conversation about the specifics of the difficulties in your area of gas service engineers, rather than take more discussion from the origional post, I have experience of working both in the north and the south, you have some specific difficulties in the recruitment and retaining of decent engineers, I have absolutley no interest in getting into the politics of it all, when it was decided to get natural gas back again, the whole island had a massive problem, how do you get qualified engineers to come over, Pheonix offered some good packages, re-settlement etc, but with many other places just because you have ACS or at that time was ACOPS meant you had passed the minimum course, didnt mean you were any good, but they had to start somewhere, I seen first hand a company from Scotland being brought in to help out, their vans were burnt out and bricked with locals screaming Brits coming to steal our jobs, That helped a lot, I went over with CORGI as it was at the time , now called Gas safe, same shoite different day, we were treated terribly, they simply didnt want to be regulated, a few lads I knew that moved over met local girls who just wanted to move to the mainland so they are all back here now, I wish I knew the answer to the problems that companies over there face, we struggle here to get decent operatives, and the standard is getting worse year in year out, so copying our training models is definately not the answer