Recommendation 3

DESNZ has made good progress in increasing the number of trained heat pump installers, but it faces a huge challenge to make sure there are enough installers to achieve its target to install 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028. DESNZ reports that it is on track towards meeting its target to have 12,000 trained heat pump installers by 2025, with 7,000 installers trained so far. The Heat Pump Association estimates, however, that there will need to be 33,700 trained heat pump installers by 2028 in order to meet DESNZ’s overall installations target. DESNZ recognises that there is more to be done to achieve this and that it needs to keep investing in training heat pump installers after 2025, but decisions for future training grants will be for the next spending review. A key challenge will be to retrain around 110,000 existing gas heating engineers to be able to install heat pumps. Although DESNZ considers this could be done quickly, this is nonetheless a large number of people who will need to be retrained given the number of installers it has trained so far. Recommendation 3: DESNZ should, as part of its Treasury Minute response, set out what actions it will take to increase the number of heat pump installers after