Supporting the retrofit of homes and businesses and the delivery of the 2030 clean power target is an opportunity for the UK Government to promote much needed high quality and skilled jobs. We would like to highlight two ways in which the Department for Security and Net Zero can ensure the workforce is in place to deliver on their ambitions around clean power and retrofit.
Supply chain support
We think consideration should be given by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to the introduction of a dedicated supply chain support programme for England. This could learn lessons from the support provided to the supply chain in Scotland by the Scottish Government’s Green Heat Installer Engagement Programme.
Through the Scottish Government’s Green Heat Installer Engagement programme, which we manage on their behalf, we support industry to upskill and become certified. We have toolkits:
- the heat pump toolkit (to encourage the heating industry to achieve MCS certification on heat pumps).
- the insulation installer toolkit to encourage the construction industry to increase the quality of their work and competency through the PAS2030 and TrustMark registration.
We also deliver webinars to raise awareness of the above issues. We administer the MCS grant to support heating engineers to gain MCS certification for heat pumps. In addition, we develop case studies so installers can learn from their peers. We also have the mobile heat pump training centre, which we delivered in collaboration with Energy Skills Partnership, South Lanarkshire College and heat pump manufacturer NIBE Energy Systems Ltd. This provides training to heating engineers based in rural and remote areas and serves those in areas where there is no current college training provision.
Further information about the support that the Green Heat Installer Engagement programme provides can be found on our website and further information about its impacts can be found in our recently updated report, Supporting Scotland’s Green Ambitions, which outlines some of the programmes that we deliver on behalf of the Scottish Government. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss the programme and the support that it provides in more detail with the Committee if that would be useful.
Long term policy certainty
Historically in England, short-termism, the stop/start nature of retrofit schemes and unbridged schemes have all undermined confidence to invest in industry and supply chains, as well as in skills and training. Previous schemes to improve the energy efficiency of our homes have caused problems for installers who have been left out of pocket for periods without funding and caused some businesses to have no option but to reconsider their staffing numbers.
Despite the new UK Government’s proposed Warm Homes Plan, there is still uncertainty around the future demand for low carbon heating systems and energy efficiency in England, which is hindering the supply chain’s investment in preparing for future workloads. Analysis from the Installation Assurance Authority suggests there are now fewer than 10,000 workers involved in delivering publicly funded energy efficiency schemes compared with 54,000 in 2012, before key schemes were withdrawn in 2013.
It is also worth highlighting the feedback that we continually receive from the supply chain through our work with them on the Scottish Government’s Green Heat Installer Engagement Programme which suggests that the most important thing that governments across the UK can do is provide clear, long term policy certainty. To instill confidence in industry so that local supply chains are expanded and up-skilled, they need certainty about likely volumes of work (including the volumes of different types of measures), its timing, its location and how much public funding will be allocated to support installations.
While the recent announcements in relation to the Warm Homes Plan, including the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund and the Warm Homes: Local Grant and a budget commitment of £3.4 billion, go some way in providing such certainty, there is still some nervousness. This is driven by the lack of detail around the plan to retrofit the UK’s housing stock, the long-term funding that will be available and the previous stop-start nature of support for energy efficiency – within the supply chain.
The UK Government’s Warm Homes Plan presents an opportunity to develop a package of policies that will deliver demand certainty as well as engage and support the supply chain to expand at the speed and scale needed to meet retrofit targets. Such policies would signal the UK Government’s commitment to this agenda and the wider work it is doing to support the supply chain and to encourage consumer demand for energy efficiency and low carbon heat.