Concerns have been raised that the amount of training available for green technologies is not sufficient to meet the current demands of a growing industry.
According to SummitSkills – the Sector Skills Council for Building Services Engineering – the lack of available training could lead to rogue traders and poorly fitted installations.
In a recent report, the council identified a worrying lack of appropriate environmental technology training to meet future demand. It has also discovered that some training providers are failing to check the basic competencies of their students before allowing them to train.
Further findings of the report indicated that no region in that UK was actually equipped to meet the potential demand for training that could occur in the next few years.
Research manager at SummitSkills, Dr Michael Hammond said that the lack of provision was especially worrying, given the up-coming Green Deal and the Government’s commitment to cutting carbon emissions from UK housing stock by 2020. It was also concerning that a significant minority of the training providers surveyed were unaware of the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS). For households to get access to Government funding under schemes such as the feed-in-tariff (Fit) incentive, installers must be registered under the MCS accreditation scheme.
Dr Hammond added that there is a level of responsibility for both employers and training providers.
“Employers are already asking for existing tradesmen to be up-skilled to fit and maintain environmental technologies, rather than introducing new environmental apprenticeships.
“When they choose their training provider, they need to bear in mind that only technologies fitted by MCS-accredited installers will be eligible to access feed-in tariffs and other financial incentives for their customers,” he added.
