Government prepares to deliver training for a greener future
The prospects for the UK’s green and renewable industries for sustained growth have been boosted by the announcement of a new National Skills Academy for Environmental Technologies by Skills Minister John Hayes. The academy will receive up to £2.5 million of funding over three years, matched by employers. It will work with industry and training providers to ensure that employers in new areas of business such as the installation, maintenance and repair of solar PV panels, ground-source heat pumps and biomass products have a highly skilled workforce to help them grow and to support the Government’s ambitions for renewable and low-carbon growth.
In its first five years, the National Skills Academy aims to deliver around 2000 publicly funded and over 200 000 privately funded training courses. It will develop a network of 14 specialist training-provider ‘hubs’ based in further-education colleges, with over 80 accredited training providers throughout England.
The accredited environmental technology delivered by the academy will be approved by SummitSkills, the sector skills council for building-services engineering.
Keith Marshall, chief executive of SummitSkills said. ‘The building-services engineering sector is playing a vital role in helping the Government meet its carbon-reduction targets. Via the National Skills Academy, we now have an accredited, quality-assured training infrastructure to ensure the sector has access to the skills it needs to meet the challenges and opportunities of the low-carbon economy.’
