As an industry skills body, Energy & Utility Skills has long-advocated for a more flexible and responsive skills system to help unleash the opportunities of the UK’s Net Zero and environmental goals.
We welcome today’s announcements from the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Education that demonstrate the ambitions of Skills England, which create the conditions for the step-change in our skills system needed by our sector.
It is encouraging to see that Skills England will bring together businesses, training providers, trades unions, Westminster departments and local government to provide a strategic oversight of skills needs, aligning with a reformed post-16 skills system.
Energy & Utility Skills looks forward to working closely with Skills England to ensure that the sector’s skills challenges are understood and addressed. In doing so, we will collectively deliver the skilled workforce needed to establish Britain as a clean energy superpower, promote growth and widen opportunity across the UK.
Energy and utilities businesses are in the vanguard of the transition to a net zero economy and the vital measures to deliver environmental improvement. Our detailed labour market intelligence (LMI) of the power, gas, water and waste & recycling industries, show that we expect 205,000 new roles in our industries by 2030. And an additional 450,000 additional appointments will be needed to cover retirement and staff churn.
And our ongoing work on occupational mapping, standard setting and analysis of routes to competence provides the evidence base for further development of apprenticeships, qualifications and industry schemes necessary to meet these demands. This work will support the development of short courses that we will need to upskill and reskill the existing workforce and enable transition between sectors.
Our work can provide the evidence needed to introduce flexibility into the skills system while retaining the quality needed by employers. And it will improve consistency of training outcomes across the UK given that skills remains a devolved issue. This is equally important in regions of England, where we will need to meet both regional skills priorities and national workforce imperatives.
It is equally encouraging to see a focus on reforming the post-16 skills system. While employers in the energy and utilities sector support apprenticeships, there is a clear need to update the curriculum for 16-18 year-olds. We hope that Skills England will use this opportunity to refocus on vocational training and engage closely with industry to understand the outcomes that employers need. And we would strongly support a renewed focus on level 2 provision which provides a significant proportion of the intake of many employers.
For 25 years, Energy & Utility Skills has successfully engaged the sector in skills and workforce research and analysis, developed vital schemes and programmes as a result, and provided evidence-based employer data to inform policy. As a well-established industry skills body, Energy & Utility Skills looks forward to working closely with Skills England.