Published 4 November 2025, updated 3 August 2026

You cannot do this job properly without a van, and you cannot drive a van without a licence. That is the whole problem in one sentence. A plumber who does not drive works only when somebody else is free to carry them and their kit, which is workable as a mate on the tools and impossible as the person taking the call.

What not driving actually costs a plumber

The van is not transport, it is the stores. Fittings, copper, push fit, isolation valves, the press tool, a wet vac, a spare pump. The reason a job finishes today instead of Thursday is usually that the part was already in the van, or that you were ten minutes from a merchant and went and got it. Neither is available to somebody dropped off at eight and collected at five.

The mid job merchant run is the specific thing a non driver cannot do. A fifteen minute trip to the trade counter for the one fitting nobody expected is an ordinary part of the week, and without a licence it turns into a phone call to somebody who may or may not be free. Emergency work is worse again. A burst pipe or a boiler out in January does not wait for a lift to become available.

It shapes what work you can take on as well. Maintenance and reactive contracts, housing association patches, facilities work: they all hand you a list of addresses across an area and a van to reach them in. Those roles stay closed until the licence exists, whatever your skills on the tools are worth.

Book the week outside heating season

A week off does not cost the same in October as it does in June. Once the weather turns, no heat and no hot water calls stack up alongside servicing, and that is the stretch where being away is expensive twice over: the work you turn down, and the customer who rings somebody else and stays with them. The quieter months are when the same five days cost you least.

If you do planned work as well, refits, bathroom installs, first and second fix on a build, do not drop a course into the middle of one. A stripped out bathroom is a bathroom somebody is living without. Finish the job, then take the week, rather than trying to hold a live install open across five days of lessons.

Handing over the phone for the week

Self employed plumbers rarely have anybody to hand over to, so this is mostly about being straight with people. Tell your regulars a fortnight ahead that you are away and give them a name to ring, ideally another plumber who will send them back. Change the voicemail. What loses customers is not a week of unavailability, it is five days of ringing out with no explanation attached.

Do not try to run the course and the phone together. Taking a call between lessons sounds harmless, and it is not, because half your attention stays on a job you cannot get to and none of it is on the roundabout in front of you.

Choosing hours when you already move a van round a yard

Plenty of people in the trade have shifted a van on a driveway, round a yard or across a site, and reckon it counts for more than it does. It helps with the size of the thing and a little with clutch control. Junctions, roundabouts, dual carriageways and reading what other traffic is about to do are where the hours actually go, and none of that happens on a site.

Courses run from ten hours through to fifty. If you genuinely had lessons and stopped, the shorter and middle lengths are realistic. If your driving experience is a yard and a friend’s car on a quiet Sunday, plan for the long end and be pleased if it turns out you did not need it. A course recommendation based on what you have really driven beats picking a number that suits the diary, and a 30 hour Silver course is a common landing point for somebody in the trade with a bit of prior experience.

What a car licence covers, and what it does not

This is a car course, category B. That is what covers a car and the sort of van a one van outfit typically runs. Anything heavier, and the rules around weights and towing a trailer full of kit, is set out on GOV.UK, and it is worth reading against the van you actually intend to buy rather than assuming. Car tuition is all that is on offer here, so anything beyond category B is a different kind of provider entirely.

Paying for it when you are the whole business

The deposit holds your dates and your instructor rather than paying for the course, much the same way a deposit on a bathroom holds the slot rather than settling the bill. It runs from £180 up to £900 depending on the hours booked. The balance is the instructor’s tuition fee, agreed with them after booking and due before training starts, and it changes with your area and with manual or automatic, so nobody can hand you one national figure. The price guide shows how the two parts work together.

On top of that the DVSA takes £23 for the theory test and £62 for a weekday practical, paid straight to them. Since 12 May 2026 the practical booking is yours to make and manage in your own account, which for somebody self employed is genuinely useful: you can put the test where your own diary is thin rather than where it happens to be convenient for anyone else.