Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what support the Government plans to provide to industry to train and retrain the workers required to retrofit the UK’s ageing housing stock.

Upskilling and growth of the supply chain is essential to deliver against Net Zero targets for the decarbonisation of buildings. In September 2020, the Government launched a £6.9m Skills Training Competition to provide 8,000 training opportunities for the energy efficiency and low carbon heating supply chains. Training delivery for this scheme finished at the end of October 2021.

The Government is also supporting growth of the supply chain by investing £2.5 billion in a National Skills Fund and continues to work closely with the market to support training in key skills shortage areas as well as opportunities for increasing capacity.