Recommendation 20

HM Government Accepted

the industry and other stakeholders. Any decisions about future funding are a matter for the spending review. We agree with the Committee on the need to provide as much long-term certainty as possible to industry and households and the soon to be published Heat and Buildings Strategy will set out the approach we will take, both in terms of action over the coming decade and our longer-term strategic approach to 2050, for reducing emissions from buildings. The Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme represented a significant increase in funding available for energy efficiency and low carbon heat, and it was expected that industry would need to scale up to meet the increased demand. During the scheme, we have worked closely with installers, scheme providers, trade bodies and certification bodies to monitor and address emerging issues with the scheme, through roundtables and attendance at industry events. We reduced the barriers to certification, working with the British Standards Institute to reduce the cost of purchasing the relevant Publicly Available Standards, and with Trustmark scheme providers and certification bodies to encourage them to streamline processes where possible. The Local Authority Delivery scheme and the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund will require many of the same skills and training as the Green Home Grant Voucher Scheme. Investing in these skills and training remains a key priority for us. As part of the Green Homes Grant Skills Competition, Government awarded over £6 million to support training for tradespeople delivering green home energy improvements, with the aim of delivering over 8,000 new training opportunities, and good progress is being made here (see answer to Recommendation 12). installers to deliver our 2028 target of installing 600,000 heat pumps per year. We are working closely with both industry and education providers to ensure that appropriate training is available, both for new entrants to the sector and existing heating installers who do not have heat pump experience. By the end of 2021, we expect industry to have capacity to upskill over 7,000 heating installers per year to install heat pumps. In addition, BEIS is also feeding into research conducted by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), which will constitute a skills analysis based on expected net-zero deployment trajectories advised by the CCC and focus on the skills required to improve the energy efficiency of new and existing buildings, as well as an anticipated large-scale switch to low-carbon heat.