A complaint made against a New Career Skills advertisement for plumbing and electrician courses that appeared on the company’s website has been upheld.

The complainant, who visited the website in April 2011, highlighted five claims in the text of the website that were believed to be misleading, including assertions that “more [plumbers] are leaving the industry than joining it”, and that “colleges do not have the capacity to train the yearly requirement of new plumbers”.

New Career Skills responded to all five claims, citing various sources, but the independent research conducted by the ASA ruled the complainant’s objections to be upheld due to unclear language or a lack of documentary evidence to support the claims.

The report concludes with the ASA ruling that “the ad must not appear again in its current form”. Furthermore, New Career Skills should “not… make misleading impressions about the potential for employment that might follow from the courses they offered”.