The UK has the oldest and coldest housing stock in the world.
Coupled with soaring energy prices and concerns about the climate emergency, that means insulating homes to reduce energy demand is vital.
The Chancellor recognised this in 2020 with the £3 billion Green Homes Grant, which offered grants for installing insulation and low carbon heating measures, such as ground source heat pumps, in people’s homes.
Sadly, the lack of supply chain capacity led to the scheme being unsuccessful, an issue repeated with the Green Homes Grant Local Authority Delivery scheme being under-subscribed.
“Insulate homes to reduce energy demand”
With the UK Government’s 2050 net zero deadline looming and more than 27 million homes to retrofit, we should be aiming to deliver two retrofitted houses every minute.
But consider your own construction supply chain, direct labour organisation, or even your own tradespeople. Are they short of work? No – especially the good ones.
Do they understand how to decarbonise a building? With some notable exceptions, usually not.
It will be down to new entrants to deliver retrofit – today’s school leavers and those workers transitioning into a new sector post-pandemic.
Moving into what will become one of the fastest-growing sectors within a few years, local authorities should be planning now to capture this retrofit dividend.
Currently, colleges are training far more gas fitters than air source heat pump engineers; architects and engineers are not trained on how to retrofit properties, preparing learners for yesterday, not tomorrow; and the further and higher education sectors need support to help bridge the strategic gap.
The Retrofit Academy Community Interest Company has created a package of regulated qualifications that can be used to train a coherent retrofit workforce, based around the requirements of the key British Standard (BSI PAS 2035).
These include a Level 2 award in understanding domestic retrofit, a Level 3 certificate in retrofit advice, Level 4 award in retrofit assessment, and Level 5 diploma in retrofit coordination and risk management.
They have been delivered to more than 2,000 learners from the existing energy efficiency industry. However, we recognise this must be massively scaled up to meet future need.
To help with this, we have set up the UK Retrofit Training Network, using an infrastructure-level approach.
We are creating a licensing model that will support colleges, universities and private training providers to deliver a national curriculum of quality-assured retrofit training for the local market.
And we are building a network of key cities and regions across the UK to create a skills vision for retrofit. Liverpool City Region, Devon and Essex County Councils and Belfast City Council have signed up and we are actively seeking new partners.
Funding totalling £1.75 million through the Community Renewal Fund has enabled the Retrofit Academy to bring together demand and supply for retrofit labour, creating jobs for trainees through a family of employer sponsors in Devon and Essex.
These pathfinder projects create a template that local authorities can work from for future funding, such as the Social Prosperity Fund or Department for Education Digital Bootcamps.
We believe our approach will help areas to build the infrastructure and networks required for long-term job creation and sector competency, and to deliver warmer homes.