The Green Homes Grant Skills Competition is for training organisations to help create a workforce equipped and trained to deliver the scheme.
The competition will make available up to £6.9m to support an increase in capacity of the installer base in England, and so support PAS and MCS certification through the delivery of training courses in order to implement the Green Homes Grant Scheme according the following work packages. A maximum of £1m will be available for each training project,
The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy hopes that the funding could result in up to 5,000 training opportunities. The number of projects funded will depend on the range of solutions proposed and the quality of the proposals received.
Successful projects will be expected to achieve one or more of the following:
- installation training to National Occupational Standards or higher as appropriate, resulting in either a formal qualification for the trainee (where available) or other demonstration of competence
- support and training for existing installation companies to gain required PAS 2030: 2017 and/or PAS 2030: 2019 certification, including possible contribution to certification costs
- support to gain TrustMark registration and/or MCS certification, including possible contribution to certification costs
- training in the installation of one or more individual energy efficiency and/or low carbon heating measures supported by the voucher scheme, including training for individuals with existing construction skills, and training for those new to the sector
- training in wider whole house retrofit knowledge and awareness (covering wider issues such as building physics, moisture, ventilation, cold-bridging etc)
- support for training in retrofit assessor and retrofit coordinator skills to PAS 2035 standard, leading to the relevant qualification.
In July 2020, the Chancellor announced £1.5 billion of support through the Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme. Under this initiative, the government will fund up to two thirds of the cost of home improvements, up to £5,000, for over 600,000 homes in England. This is expected to support approximately 100,000 jobs in the construction sector and is a key part of government’s green economic recovery through and beyond Covid-19. Homeowners and landlords will be able to start applying for vouchers from the end of September 2020.
For further details of the training competition see www.gov.uk/government/publications/green-homes-grant-skills-training-competition
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