David Cooper of Newcastle-under-Lyme went from working in a care home to running his own pest-control business.
“It was quite scary really” is how David describes suddenly hearing he was being made redundant on Christmas Eve 2008.
A slight understatement: David, 45, has a wife and a teenage son at university and, like many of us, a mortgage. He had been working as a gardener/handyman at a care home for Staffordshire County Council for 13 years. At that time, he was the family’s sole breadwinner.
“I was offered the basic courses through the JobCentre and Connexions like how to write a CV but they were not really at my level,” says David. “The jobs around were all minimum wage stuff. Everything seemed geared for young people rather than my situation."
David was helped through the North Staffordshire Workforce Development Programme run by trade union UNITY through the North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership (NSRP).
The programme gave immediate and specific support to people facing redundancy in North Staffordshire, including funding free skills courses. Advantage West Midlands (AWM) contributed nearly £1.5million in funding and the programme was so successful it was run across the region by Unity under the name Better West Midlands.
“Fortunately, I was referred to the Programme and decided to take advantage of their offer to fund a pest control course for me," says David.
“I had caught rabbits, moles and rats as a pocket-money earner from when I was 12 years old. I had always played it safe and gone for the full-time employment option but decided I could make a business using these other skills I had.”
David and his wife Jackie now run JD’s Pest and Vermin Control from home and are steadily picking up business on anything from getting rid of wasps’ nests for householders to vermin control for garden centres, golf clubs, pubs and fast food outlets.
He said: “I would definitely recommend people to go along to the Better West Midlands programme. It was a real life-saver for me at a time when I didn’t know where to turn.”
