The Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) has said the £9.2 million in government funding for energy efficiency and heat pump training announced last week is a welcome boost for green skills. 

The new money is designed to support 8,900 training courses across England and was awarded by the department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) following its Home Decarbonisation Skills Training competition. 

The share allocated to BESA’s will allow it to deliver 400 free training places for qualified heating engineers looking to upskill to become MCS accredited heat pump installers and extend its existing network of specialist training providers.  

This will be the next phase of the programme the Association runs in partnership with MCS and heating equipment manufacturer Worcester Bosch that has already provided free training for 1,000 installers. The training will be delivered through the Association’s online training Academy and the new courses will run until the end of March 2023. 

A shortage of skilled workers has been identified as one of the biggest barriers to the government’s goal of achieving a net zero carbon economy by 2050 and a recent study found that the industry would need to train 46,000 workers and invest £150bn in the South East alone to get homes up to the necessary standards of energy efficiency. 

BESA said this next round of funding was a much needed “shot in the arm” for the training needed to grow the low carbon heating industry.

“There is huge and growing demand for this type of specialist skill,” said BESA’s director of training and skills Helen Yeulet. “However, getting access to quality heat pump training continues to be challenging for several reasons. 

“There is a shortage of trainers and only limited facilities equipped to the right level in places installers can easily access while juggling busy day jobs. And while market demand is clearly growing, it is still not at the level where many SMEs feel able to justify taking their valuable installers off the job for training days to upskill on new technology. We need to make the process easier and more cost effective for them.”