An urgent retrofit skills revolution must be locally led and nationally funded, says Cara Jenkinson, cities manager at climate solutions charity Ashden
World leaders will be gathering in Egypt for the COP27 climate conference at the beginning of November to take action to halt a runaway climate emergency. For the UK government, this marks the end of its COP presidency – and though there were some strong global commitments at COP26, the UK must now get its own house in order – by addressing the energy crisis and slashing emissions from our homes.
Despite housing accounting for 16% of the country’s total emissions (more than that produced by all UK cars), the Conservatives have not fulfilled their manifesto pledge which earmarked £9.2bn for energy efficiency measures in homes, schools and hospitals.
Shockingly, our homes are the most energy inefficient in Europe and without concerted efforts to retrofit them (and our schools and hospitals), our dependence on expensive gas will continue. And if all this wasn’t enough to inspire action then talk of winter power cuts and more families falling into energy poverty should be a rallying call for action.
Ashden is advocating for a retrofit skills revolution
At Ashden, we’re pushing for change and working with government and local authorities, as well as celebrating the best UK examples of how we’re going to make the shift to low carbon with our 2022 Ashden Awards.
Sparking a retrofit revolution now would slash carbon emissions, make energy cheaper and provide an economic boost. It would also create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs and upskill many more workers as part of the transition to a low carbon economy.
To signpost the right direction of travel, Ashden recently published a policy briefing: Practical Steps for a Locally Driven Retrofit Skills Revolution, showing how local authorities can play a leading role in the transition towards this zero-carbon future, with the necessary backing from national government. It underlines the need for policy certainty from Westminster, including financial incentives, regulation, public engagement and a major programme of investment.
The briefing shows that we need a long-term, national retrofit strategy to provide certainty to education providers and construction employers so that they invest in skills development. The biggest obstacle to rolling out a national decarbonisation programme is that building companies have previously invested significant time and money, only to have the schemes cancelled by government after a few months.
And every day lost is a missed opportunity given the scale of the task we face. Action is needed by both local and national government to achieve the mammoth target of retrofitting over 19m homes by 2035. Current forecasts show that we will fall far short of training the estimated 400,000 retrofit professionals required to achieve this.
It is important that the industry ‘scale up’
If we’re serious about upskilling the current workforce and bringing young people into retrofit roles then it’s essential that we scale up what’s already working on the ground. Local authorities are starting to work with colleges and employers on skills programmes, with Portsmouth City Council leading the way through an ambitious partnership with Portsmouth City College to create a NetZero Training Hub. Devon and Essex councils are working with the Retrofit Academy to kick-start the development of a competent retrofit workforce, with over 400 learners completing courses.
To attract people into retrofit roles, it is critical that apprenticeships cover the right skills, are well paid and lead to good jobs – and this is just what training and construction company B4Box offer. Based in the north-west, B4Box is an integrated construction training provider and retrofit specialist, working in an area badly affected by fuel poverty, to make homes more energy efficient and fill the skills gap with green jobs.
They have combined multi-trade, skills training such as joinery, plastering, tiling and roofing, with the guarantee of employment, tackling inequality and delivering a wide range of high quality, low-carbon, construction services.
Upskilling the construction workforce
In Manchester, the Low Carbon Academy is upskilling the construction industry through its Retrofit Skills Hub. This provides people who live or work in the area with the green skills and a range of qualifications needed to retrofit homes and carry out other energy efficiency measures. The initiative is also upskilling local tutors through the Train the Trainer programme, where college tutors review their current apprenticeship offerings with the Low Carbon Academy and work together to identify areas for adding additional training.
Local government can deploy important levers to drive the development of retrofit skills, such as using their own spending power to require suppliers to train staff. UK councils spend over £1bn annually on repairs and maintenance of council-owned homes, and a further £1bn on government-funded retrofit projects. This means that strategic procurement, developed by local authorities, offers significant potential to influence skills training, supply chains and retrofit delivery – pumping money into the local economy while creating jobs.
But to really scale up locally led initiatives, much stronger national government support is needed now. This includes more funding certainty for the retrofit of those in fuel-poor homes and long overdue policy and incentives, such as reduced stamp duty to encourage those on higher incomes to make their homes more energy efficient.
A comprehensive national retrofit training strategy is needed
A comprehensive national retrofit training strategy is required, and the government’s new Green Jobs Delivery Group must make retrofit and low carbon heat a top priority. They have made a start with the time-limited Home Decarbonisation Skills Training Competition announced in September 2022, but so far, policy initiatives have been piecemeal. Ministers responsible for energy, levelling up and education must work together to deliver joined-up action on retrofit skills development.
Construction apprenticeships need to be overhauled. Builders, plumbers, and heat engineers can earn a lot of money once qualified, but an apprentice wage of £4.81 an hour may make a retail job more attractive. Apprenticeship standards must cover retrofit skills and not just new build, and to be more flexible so that it is easier for small and micro-businesses to take on apprentices. As our homes become smarter, with heat pumps, solar and even battery storage, construction training must be broader.
Further education colleges, which train 160,000 construction workers each year, must be supported to upskill lecturers and build new training rigs. To encourage people that have been out of the workforce for some time, adult education is critical, and the government should restore the Adult Education Budget to 2010 levels.
They should also integrate skills training into government-funded retrofit schemes by setting specific skills outcomes for larger funding bids and allocate a proportion of funding for training programmes, taking inspiration from the Scottish government’s procurement contract with Warmworks. This mechanism for delivering Scotland’s national fuel poverty scheme sets employability and skills targets.
If action is taken now an innovative retrofit skills revolution will enable a rapid scale-up of energy efficiency work – a triple win – boosting local economies and jobs, tackling the climate emergency, cutting energy bills. An exemplar retrofit strategy could represent a real legacy of our COP26 presidency.
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Cara Jenkinson
Cities manager
Ashden
Tel: +44 (0)20 7410 7023
info@ashden.org
www.ashden.org
