The eight student plumbers who scored most highly across the SkillPLUMB 2024 national qualifying heats have been named:
David Bateman-Smith – South West College NI / Ashley McFarland Plumbing & Heating
Dillon Newton – Cornwall College / Justin Eyre Plumbing & Heating
Elliot Julian – a full-time student at Cornwall College
Jack Fenton – Belfast Metropolitan College / Ian Reid Heating
Jackson Gill – New College Durham / CGE Yorkshire Ltd
Samuel Page – Suffolk New College / Whitwell Services
Shaun Wilcox – Moray College UHI / Moray Council
Shay Ewing – Moray College UHI / Andrew Barclay Plumbing & Heating
All have now been invited to go head-to-head on the 20th & 21st November at Oldham College for the SkillPLUMB 2024 UK Final. In total around 50 WorldSkills UK National Finals will be taking place that week at nine different venues across Greater Manchester.
The next three highest scoring competitors will act as reserves should any of the Top 8 be unable to compete:
Morgan Finney – Northern Regional College NI / CFM
Tristan McGrath – South West College NI / Damien Hinnigan
Daisy Turner – Barking & Dagenham College / Toucan Plumbing & Heating
SkillPLUMB is organised by industry charity BPEC and is part of the WorldSkills UK competition framework. The event has Ideal Heating as its headline sponsor and is supported by other industry sponsors including Mueller Europe, Monument Tools, DeWalt, APHC, JIB-PMES, SNIPEF, Grohe, Water Safe, CIPHE, Plumbmaster and McAlpine Plumbing Products.
In the quest to be named SkillPLUMB champion, competitors will have to tackle a complex task that involves the installation of a central heating system and hot/cold water system, incorporating a boiler, unvented hot water cylinder and associated pipework and bespoke designed copper radiators.
In a first for this year, competitors will be demonstrating their low carbon skills in a new heat pump task developed in collaboration with Ideal Heating.
Those who perform well enough and are age eligible could be in with a chance of competing at WorldSkills 2026 in Shanghai, China.
“Congratulations to our top competitors for an excellent standard of work this year; we look forward to seeing them all competing in November,” said Neil Collishaw, BPEC CEO. “It’s very exciting to be launching a green skills element to the final this year. Today’s apprentices are the plumbers of tomorrow and installing low carbon solutions such as heat pumps will be central to their future role – so we’re proud to be able to showcase these skills and help prepare them for what’s to come.”
