justlead - thankyou very much for the advise. I decided to call my father, who's been a plumber man and boy and get his advise, it was the same as yours. I mean, exactly the same as yours!
I've decided to keep my rate to myself and not publish it on the new website. (I will post a link when it's up next week for anyone here who's interested to take a look).
The thing is, I'm getting more and more call out work and less bathroom renovation, full heating installs etc. I think its a sign of the economy, that people aren't spending unless they have to. Anyway, they always ask, 'what do you charge' and frankly I've outlaid so much recently on renewall of my ACS, extra appliances, tools, and my website, that I feel I deserve to put my rate up. It's a hard thing to do in a recession, but I have spent thousands of pounds to get where I am in my career.
After saying all this, I just did a charity job for an elderly lady who called as I was driving home! Only took me ten mins, but I need to toughen up. I suppose you can't always charge like a wounded rhino!