By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor
Bank holidays, like this one, are generally spent resting, drinking or indulging in the UK’s favourite past time…DIY. Well it appears that this might not strictly be the case anymore, especially for men, traditionally the seen as the master builder of the household – AKA the first to A & E after hammering their thumb.
Recent consumer research by on-demand cleaning and repair service Handybook has found that 1 in 3 UK men have had to employ a handyman to assemble flat pack furniture, compared to only 1 in 4 women.
The research, which polled a thousand Brits, also found that Londoners are the most likely to require help with DIY, with over half of the capital’s residents admitting to hiring a handymen to put furniture together for them. People from the East Midlands were the most capable – with only 15% having ever used a handyman.
And overall, the younger the person, the worse they are at DIY. The least handy Britons were found to be 18-24 year-olds – nearly half of them (46%) admitted to employing handymen to put together shelves. A lack of equipment may be partly to blame as young people are less likely to own power tools – 85% of pensioners owned power tools compared to just half of all 18-24 year olds.
Oisin Hanrahan, CEO and Co-founder of Handybook, said: “Our research suggests that younger men, especially in London, require a lot of assistance with simple DIY tasks. Many have long suspected that women are the handiest of the sexes and our research goes a long way to prove this. Our advice for those looking to get some DIY done is to hire a professional. Or ask somebody from up north.”
It appears that the fairer sex is the handier sex. Either way it may well be a better idea to down tools and head to the pub.
For more information visit www.handybook.com