Retrofitting all the homes in the wider Bristol region needed to meet net zero targets would take more than eight centuries at the current rate. Britain has some of the leakiest homes in Europe due to poor insulation but a major investment is aiming to fix this in the West of England.
A new skills plan aims to help about 3,000 people a year living in Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath and North East Somerset to access training. And the West of England mayoral priority skills fund will seek to respond to gaps in skills for green and tech industries.
Demand for certain skills is expected to soar in the coming years as the region tries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change. These include retrofitting homes with efficient insulation and installing new heat pumps, to cut heating emissions.
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Dan Norris, West of England metro mayor, said the new Skills Connect, a new regional “skills brokerage platform” would help people get into training and find good quality jobs. The investment was agreed during a West of England Combined Authority committee meeting.
He said: “This is a big priority for me and over the last two years we have trebled the value of skills programmes led by the West of England Combined Authority. We have supported over 30,000 people to access training — I don’t know how many full crowds at the Rovers ground that is, but it’s a lot of people — to develop their careers and find good employment opportunities.
“[This includes] things like HGVs to retrofit, to digital and even specialist welding to construct the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station, which has to be done in a very particular way. But the system, frankly, is too complicated. It’s too hard for people to access and it needs to be less difficult to do that.”
Skills Connect will draw together the 250-plus jobs and skills programmes in the West of England region into one place, to make it easier for all residents who want to upskill, reskill or progress in their jobs to find and access the programmes that will best help them. The plan is to have an easy-to-use website as well as a network of advisers and coaches, who will be able to provide tailored one-to-one support to help residents move on and into work.
But the current rate of retrofitting homes and installing heat pumps is far too slow, according to Councillor Claire Young, the new Liberal Democrat leader of South Gloucestershire Council. She added that South Gloucestershire & Stroud College could “play a vital role” in addressing the skills gap.
She said: “The available evidence shows that we’ve got a significant need to invest in green construction skills training, because at the current rate of installation it would take around 873 years to install on the solid wall insulation, and 457 years to install the required heat pumps to meet the 2030 net zero target across the region — which clearly doesn’t add up.
“We’re particularly keen that our further education establishments can rise to the challenge, such as South Gloucestershire & Stroud College, which can play a vital role in meeting this need, while training and upskilling residents from some of our most disadvantaged backgrounds and areas across our region.”
One “positive outcome” from the climate crisis is the new jobs needed across the region, according to Cllr Kye Dudd, cabinet member for climate at Bristol City Council. He said a huge renewable energy deal, called City Leap, will create 1,000 jobs in the next five years.
Cllr Dudd said: “Often with climate change, the messaging around it is quite negative. The world’s going to end, you have to stop doing this, you have to stop doing that. And there’s truth to a lot of those arguments, but they don’t land very well with the public.
“But the messages that do land well with the public are the positive outcomes from the need to change. One of them is the jobs that are coming forward. And those messages land better. With projects like City Leap within Bristol, over the next five years we’re going to see a £600 million investment in decarbonisation, and 1,000 jobs are going to be created.”
