New Retrofit Academy partnerships to upscale retrofit training and create local jobs

Speaking on behalf of The Retrofit Academy, chief executive David Pierpoint said:

“Our mission is to train over 200,000 competent retrofitters by 2030. We simply can’t achieve that as the training provider ourselves – we need to support others to develop their own capabilities and serve their local markets. These partnerships will allow us to work with large-scale education providers to deliver training at scale and to the same high standards that we would deliver ourselves.”

The partnerships are between The Retrofit Academy and:

Devon County Council, Exeter College and Plymouth College in Devon

Essex County Council and Adult Community Learning (ACL) in Essex

East Sussex College Group, supported by funding from the Department for Education, in East Sussex

Belfast City Council, Workforce and Belfast Metropolitan University in Belfast.

Job Creation and Social Value Partnerships

As well as setting up and supporting new Retrofit Academy Hubs, partnerships are being created to capture the economic benefits of retrofit locally. This involves collaboration between contractors and key social landlords – who are the most likely job creators.

In Belfast, the training consortium are teaming up with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, which has pledged to start delivering retrofit at scale.

In Essex, a partnership has been agreed with Warmworks, the managing agent for the southeast region delivering government-funded programmes worth over £100m in 2022-23.

David Pierpoint commented:

“Bringing employers to the table who will guarantee interviews for qualified staff will help create jobs. It will also result in local jobs being delivered by local people, benefitting the local economy and environment.

We would now like to invite other local authorities, LEPs and education providers to step forwards to form partnerships across the UK”.