The path to follow is that below provided your age (at time of viability to train as FTE) allows, and your health is, and remains, suitable for test flying.
Apply RIGHT NOW to work at QinetiQ (can go through
www.qinetiq.com and select job search, go through the rigmorole and look at South West vacancies, Aircraft Performance Trials Officer vacancies.
The vacancy will be at MOD Boscombe Down airfield just North of Salisbury, two minutes drive from Stonehenge, a locely part of the World.
If successful you'd paperwork assess and plan and execute practical trials on rotary wing and/or fixed wing aircraft alongside Military Test Aircrew. Most of the job involves paperwork and writing reports, but you would work with military aircraft every day on an active Military test Flying airfield, and have occasion to fly on test sorties (esp. Rotary Wing). If you are lucky, work there for some years and fit in with the organisation, or show flare, and preferably if you show total commitment to FTE as a profession for the next 5-10 years (e.g. PPL plus experience is one of many things for your CV for this route), you could in theory apply to train on the year-long Flight Test Engineer's long course at the Empire Test Pilot's School on site - and train hard there in reporting and flying/organising test flights and assessments with the Test Pilot students. There is significant competition for places from persons who have worked on this airfield over a number of years and who are well known, as well as others, and you need luck and proven health and commitment and a good record. If successful ETPS would be paid a substantial sum to train you on the "long course", and you be obligated to work as an FTE or similar for a period afterward.
For the commercial route, as the previous reply indicated, working for an actively test-flying company improves your chances, so Eurocopter or perhaps Agusta-Westland are some of the options. However, the FTE role is less formally trained I believe than at ETPS (short of sending their employees on that or another VERY expensive FTE course), and more, again as I understand things, part and parcel of normal FTE day-to-day working and experience at aircraft-R&D companies.
Hope this helps and puts a bit of reality into the mix !
The VERY BEST OF LUCK !
Oops, sorry, forgot about your CPL(H) bit.
Drop us a personal email - I\'m also in Soton and can put you in touch avec specific persons !