Skills for Local Net Zero

Polly Billington, chief executive of UK100 explains how skills for local net zero can help the UK reach its net zero ambitions

Good intentions
The UK government has set ambitious Net Zero targets, some just a decade away. But reaching them requires more than good intentions. There are significant skills gaps to fill to achieve these goals.
    
The UK is facing significant skills shortages that threaten to derail progress in every sector and region of the economy.
    
That is the conclusion of UK100’s latest Skills for Local Net Zero Delivery insight briefing, released ahead of National Careers Week in March.
    
The briefing explores the barriers to developing the jobs and skills identified by local authorities as necessary for delivering on the UK’s Net Zero goal.
    
To pull together the briefing, we at UK100 — Britain’s only local authority network dedicated to Net Zero — spoke to our members across regional and political divides.

What are “Green Skills”?
In the UK Government’s Green Jobs Taskforce Report, the then climate and education ministers, Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP and Gillian Keegan MP, emphasised the importance of investing to ensure that “people have the right skills to deliver the Net Zero transition and thrive in the jobs it will create.”
    
What they didn’t do, however, was define or agree on a definition of ‘green’ jobs or skills in the UK.
    
Without this, it is challenging to identify where skills development can best be focused or deployed.
    
Recent polling on the green economy, jobs and skills, for example, found understanding to be “extremely low.’
    
In the absence of a standard definition, in our briefing, we considered Skills for Net Zero to include the full range of skills that the workforce will need to deliver the low-carbon transition.
    
This includes technical skills specific to sectors such as housing, energy, transport and waste, as well as managerial and strategic thinking skills that will aid in placing climate and sustainability at the centre of decision-making in every workplace.
    
Skills that local authorities have a major role in developing and fostering.

Skills for Local Net Zero
In an interview for the briefing, Kate Kennally, chief executive of Cornwall Council, said: “Local authorities have a unique and powerful role in developing skills for Net Zero. We are best placed to coordinate collective action by local businesses, educators, and communities. We need policy, frameworks and funding that recognise this.”
    
At the same time, in our survey of local authority officials, leaders, and councillors, we found that more than 9 in 10 respondents (97 per cent) agree that local skills development is a priority for delivering Net Zero.
    
But every respondent felt they needed more support from the government to unlock the jobs and skills required to reach our Net Zero goals.
    
At the moment, local authorities are being overlooked by a national employer-led approach to skills development that cannot deliver the skills to get us to Net Zero at the pace and scale required.
    
Local authorities are already leading and supporting local projects to develop green skills and facilitating numerous relationships between local businesses and providers.
    
Their leadership and understanding of their communities gives them unique knowledge and expertise to support local economic plans to generate jobs and develop skills.

What is holding local authorities back?
But, as well as being overlooked, local authorities are also being held back by a series of issues plaguing the Skills for Net Zero sector, including: lack of business confidence and employer demand for skills; limited, short-term and competitive local authority funding; and underfunding of further education.

Lack of business confidence
In an interview for the briefing, one of UK100’s Combined Authority members said: “Ensuring green skills are actively considered across different policy initiatives and work streams at local level is like stitching a patchwork quilt. Change must be driven by the government, through policy, long-term funding, and procurement modelling.”
    
Throughout our conversations with UK100 members, we found that the lag in demand for Skills for Net Zero from local employers and businesses is a major obstacle.
    
Local businesses lack confidence to drive investment in Skills for Net Zero. Government policies meant to encourage the market for green skills have not been comprehensive or long-term enough to give businesses the certainty they need to change their practices and processes.

Short-term, competitive funding
By 2020, reductions to local authority core funding were equivalent to a loss of 60p out of every £1 provided by the government compared to the previous decade.
    
Local leaders need a greater focus on balancing short-term and long-term priorities.
    
Despite this, the often onerous task of drafting bids for short-term projects consumes valuable time and resources with no guarantee of success.
    
Freedom of Information requests reveal that 245 local authorities have been forced to spend £27 million on bidding for short-term competitive funding streams since 2019.
    
It turns Net Zero into a resource-heavy competition for local authorities, reduces the scope for collaboration and reduces the funding available to deliver impactful and cost-effective programmes.

Further education funding
Another key barrier is the chronic underfunding of further education which has led to significant shortages in relevant courses and a shortage of tutors with the skills to deliver them.
    
Further education colleges also need long-term certainty for curriculum planning and many skills, such as heat pump installation or woodland management, require expensive facilities.

Recommendations
In our discussions with local authorities, one District Council member said: “We need more cross cutting approaches so that Net Zero runs through everything we are asked to do.”

With that in mind, we have developed three key recommendations for the Government to overcome the barriers to delivering on its Skills for Net Zero promises.

Skills for Net Zero Framework
The UK government should create a national framework for local skills development in order to reach Net Zero targets, which will bring together policy, local and national action and key stakeholders, and establish a defined leadership structure to oversee and commission local skills development programs.
    
The framework should define Skills for Net Zero, provide positive messaging around potential careers, encourage local authorities to foster relationships with local businesses and education providers, and lead local projects that develop Skills for Local Net Zero delivery.
    
The framework should also map employers’ role in Net Zero skills provision and identify opportunities to meet needs, encourage data collection and local labour market analysis, signal technologies of the future that the Government plans to invest in, and reward local authorities for green procurement.
    
All of which will help drive vital behavioural change.

Embed long-term Skills for Net Zero funding
The government should systematically integrate a strategic Skills for Net Zero approach to local authority funding settlements.
    
The key would be allocating a dedicated long-term budget for activities to develop Skills for Net Zero delivery and reducing reliance on short-term competitive funds.
    
This approach will encourage partnerships and collaborations, thus allowing local authorities to share knowledge and replicate successful initiatives.

End the wait. Insulate.
Local authorities have responded positively to government programmes and initiatives — such as the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme.
    
But much of this support, in the form of competitive funding rounds is not systematic, consistent or long-term enough to create the market transformation needed.
    
A locally-based framework to decarbonise and upgrade the energy efficiency of social housing and public buildings with sufficient targeted public investment will support the growth of local supply chains, give the market confidence and create a ready skills pipeline.
    
As our recent End the wait. Insulate. report makes clear, prioritising social housing can build a robust platform on which energy efficiency transformation in the wider housing stock can take place.

Conclusion
Ultimately, our briefing proves Occam’s razor. Investment in local Net Zero projects is the best way to support and speed up the growth of the local markets, provide incentives to drive local demand for Skills for Local Net Zero and provide opportunities to address regional and local inequalities.