Some of you seem bent on misunderstanding what Bronx said. He never said a FI can or does teach 40 hours a week.
Now I'm confused about what the FIs are saying. Some say FIs get £40 an hour. Some say the school charges that for instruction but keeps some and doesn't pay the FI the £40. If that's true either the student is subsidising the SFH cost or the school gets a hidden profit.
I've done some training in the States and you know where you stand. $XX for the helicopter and $YY for the FI. The school gets $XX and the FI gets the $YY. Your not expcted to pay extra for any time he spends checking helis, doing odd jobs around the school when he's not teaching. I don't know if they get paid by the school for that extra work or they accept it as part of being on the low rungs of the aviation ladder but it's not included in the amount you pay for the FI. Either way, the student isn't paying for it in his FI charge.
I agree with Bronx. £30/40 an hour for PPL instruction is way too much. As Whirlygig says, its all to do with supply and demand. If the cost of learning to fly wasn't so high there'd be more people able to do it and the demand would go up. You might get less per hour but your overall earnings would go up.
Part of the problem is because the CAA abolished PPL Instructors. It wouldn't be so bad if we had the US licensing stages, but a UK CPL is OTT and unnecessary just to teach PPL. It costs people a fortune to get a CPL and they want to recoup some of the cost and also it looks like it gives FIs ideas above their place on the ladder. Yes they're professional pilots, but usually with low hours and only an R22 rating. There's no way they'd get a 'professional' job other than instructing until they've built up some hours and they need the hours as much as the stude needs the instruction.
Moderators.
This is wandering away from what the original question. Would a thread comparing SFH rates and FI rates around the world be a good idea?