Driving instructors have recorded the fastest growth in demand of any largely self-employed trade in Britain over the past year, with job adverts up 58 per cent, according to research from business insurer Protectivity.

The analysis, based on official ONS job advert data, placed market and street traders second, with growth of 48 per cent, and childminders third, at 40 per cent. Protectivity examined more than 400 occupations and kept only those in which at least half the workforce is self-employed.

Bricklayers (28 per cent), floorers and wall tilers (20 per cent) and fitness and wellbeing instructors (18 per cent) complete the top six. Hotel and accommodation managers and proprietors (14 per cent), plasterers (11 per cent), taxi drivers and chauffeurs (10 per cent) and florists (9 per cent) make up the rest of the top 10.

Protectivity pointed to the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s average wait of 10.7 weeks between booking and taking a practical driving test, against a seven-week target, as one visible consequence of rising demand.

The research comes as the number of sole traders rose 5 per cent in the past year and 17 per cent since 2010, according to figures cited by Protectivity. Small businesses employ 16.9 million people and turn over £2.8tn a year, the insurer said, and searches for “register for self employment” rose 36 per cent over the past quarter.

The insurer also compared the ONS figures with its own sales of new business insurance policies, which it used as a measure of how quickly supply is growing in each industry.

The widest gap was in fitness. Job adverts for fitness and wellbeing instructors rose 18 per cent over the year, while new fitness-related policies grew 7 per cent. On Protectivity’s calculation, demand is rising 157 per cent faster than supply.

Growth within fitness was uneven. New Reformer Pilates policies rose 948 per cent, according to the insurer, with martial arts up 167 per cent, kickboxing up 159 per cent and boxercise up 135 per cent.

Chris Trotman, head of sales and underwriting at Protectivity, said: “Demand for fitness instructors in particular is growing at more than double the rate of new businesses entering the industry and in areas like Reformer Pilates, growth in new instructors setting up in the last year is outpacing almost anything we’ve seen before.”

“If you’re taking on new equipment, moving into a new specialism, or suddenly running several classes a week instead of one, it’s worth checking your policy actually reflects that, as plenty of business owners don’t realise their cover hasn’t kept pace with how much their business has changed,” he said.

Lana Durjava, founder of Quiet Progress Lab, a strength and conditioning coaching and nutritional advice business, said: “It’s become much easier to build something independently in this industry as you don’t need your own gym or huge funding to get started anymore, and the internet means you can combine coaching, programming and education to reach people well beyond your local area.”

She added: “Being good at your profession and being good at running a business are two completely different things and you really have to learn both to be successful.”

Protectivity said several of the trades on its list are among the least exposed to generative AI. It cited an academic study that built a task-based Generative AI Susceptibility Index for UK occupations, which ranked elementary construction occupations, a group Protectivity said covers bricklaying, plastering and tiling, among the least exposed.

The study by researchers at UCL, Cardiff, Oxford and Surrey universities found that 94 per cent of UK jobs had some exposure to generative AI by 2023/24, but only 13 per cent were heavily exposed across half or more of their tasks.

Bricklayers are also in short supply. The Home Builders Federation estimates the country needs at least 20,000 more to meet the government’s 1.5 million homes target, a figure Business Matters reported alongside a $32m funding round for robot bricklayer Monumental.

Protectivity said taxi drivers and chauffeurs face little direct threat from generative AI but flagged autonomous vehicles as a longer-term risk. Uber has begun offering supervised self-driving taxis in London, with a safety driver in each car.

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