My sister’s partner is thinking of moving to London temporarily for Scaffolding work, as jobs have dried up a bit where he is just now. He’ll be looking for accommodation and I suggested a flat-share, but he’s wary of laying out a deposit and committing to a minimum period until he’s sure that regular work is available. My other suggestion was a camp-site that has a section zoned for ‘residential campers’ like Lea-Valley Caravan & Camping site (like the Guardian article of a few years ago suggested). I suppose there’s also the Hostels idea which are pretty cheap at £12-15 a night but perhaps not the best idea sharing a dorm with 7 other people when you’re up at 5am for starting on a building site. My final suggestion was trading in his (new) car for a van or sizeable estate car and doing what the crane boys do and stick a bed in the back and kip in it Mon-Fri wherever the work is, but he’s understandably not too keen on that.
Anyone know of any other residential camping sites (preferably just outside London) where someone can roll up and pitch a tent for a few nights a week at a low cost?
TRaps And Drops are about the biggest in London with a reasonable amount of work on just now .I can think of 8 sites with huge scaffy around them they are doing just now . Constant day to day site work as its a take down as building goes down work . So if lucky he could end up on one site for months rather than going job to job .
when I moved into my current place I had to spend 8 weeks in a trailer tent (I brought second hand) as I sold my house & hadn’t completed on my new place
a trailer tent its not as basic as a tent caravanning & camping clubs accept them some don’t accept tents
you can also hook up electric in tents now days which is a bonus for long term
the link gives you some idea of what you can expect
there’s also pop up caravans
long term camping isn’t to much of a problem
what you will have to be aware of some places only allow 6 weeks at a time & with the summer months plan in advance ! or you could find out there are no pitches
Some good posts… thanks guys I’ll point him in the direction of this page and he can see what he thinks. The only stick-in-the-spokes is my sister who is dead against him staying away 5 nights a week. Anyone would think she didn’t trust him
On the plus side, he’s quite into bikes and my sister bought him his CBT a few months ago for his birthday. It’s his intention to do his DAS and get a bike once he has some reasonable income coming in, so if he comes to work in London and stays, maybe he’ll be another LB’er?
Aaaaaarghhhh!!! My sister has just been on the phone with… “He doesn’t want to move to London. How stupid are you? We’ve got a flat here with bills to pay so how’s he supposed to pay for digs as well?.. blah blah blah”
Jeeeeezzzz… you try to offer some constructive advice to help someone get into the line of work they want and all they do is throw it back at you asking if you’re stupid :Wow:
So am I the one being stupid here? To put you in the picture, he’s worked on the sites for 14 years since leaving school up until about 2 years ago when the economy dipped and the industry slowed-down. He’s been bus driving as a ‘stop-gap’ (2 years now) which he’s desperate to ditch and get into the building trade - either in Newcastle or Glasgow. Now to my mind it’s better ditching the bus driving and getting back into the industry as soon as possible if that’s where your heart really lies. If there’s work available in London paying £5-6 p/hr more than in Newcastle or Glasgow (where in addition the work is pretty sporadic) then I’d put myself out to get back into the game in London and use it as a stepping stone to a permanent job back north if that’s what he wants. I’d get a flat-share/bedsit, camp in a tent, stay in a travellers type hostel, doss in my car if I had a big enough one, or even jump on the bus every night to doss down in one of the lounges at Heathrow if I knew it wasn’t forever. The extra wages and consistency of work in London should cover his costs of a decent enough room somewhere. I’ve always been a fan of Norman ‘get on yer bike’ Tebbit when it comes to finding work, but it seem my sister and him won’t put themselves out and he’ll be in the same position in a years time, hating bus driving and still going on about getting back into scaffolding… meanwhile all the Eastern Europeans who are prepared to rough it for a bit are getting the jobs.
Anyway, been the same with my brother who’s been out of work for a while. I guess I’m just sick to death of hearing people whinge about a lack of work when they could walk into a lot of decent jobs if they were prepared to move to a different part of the country and get grafting. :hehe:
I’m with Jetstream on this one, I wouldn’t fancy getting ‘home’ from 10 hours scaffolding to spend the night in a tent. You’d end up spending the money on going out to the pub just to get a warm meal and a proper chair.
Much better to go for a room in a house or a bedsit or whatever.
+1 to the amount of work, I know some lads over from Ireland who are sure they will be in London for at least five years with the amount of work there is.
I’ll point him in the direction of this page and he can see what he thinks. The only stick-in-the-spokes is my sister who is dead against him staying away 5 nights a week. Anyone would think she didn’t trust him 