TRAINING STRATEGY TO BUILD INSTALLER BASE

The Heat Pump Association (HPA) has launched a Training Strategy that lays out how the heating industry needs to transform to enable the wider adoption of heat pumps throughout UK building stock. The association says upskilling of heating installers provides the potential for long-term job growth at the same time as helping to achieve net zero emissions – something that could form an important part of a `green recovery`.

The Strategy (see infographic below) contains five steps for how a plumbing and heating engineer can be trained to meet the new challenges we face in trying to achieve the UK goal of a zero carbon future, reducing administration cost, and recommending to government that they support a training voucher scheme for the first 5000 installers to go through the new course.

The Strategy comes at the same time two industry-wide consultations are published on qualification criteria for training courses. Both consultations have a deadline of 17:00, 29 June 2020.

Graham Wright, Chairman of the HPA, comments: [The Committee on Climate Change has made clear that we need to move to heat pumps taking over from gas boilers as the default replacement heating system within the next 10-15 years. This is ambitious, but entirely achievable if we move now to retrain and up-skill a market that already exists of around 120,000 existing heating engineers. The role of installers cannot be underestimated in decarbonising heat. The Strategy we are launching today, together with the consultations on qualification criteria released earlier this week, are key steps towards achieving this and provide the potential for green jobs as we look to recover from the current crisis."