Why is the Skills for a Sustainable Skyline Taskforce needed?
The UK Green Buildings Council found that 25% of total UK greenhouse gas emissions comes from the built environment (UK Green Building Council). For the UK to meet its climate action targets, the built environment has a major role to play.
Central London is globally renowned for its commercial built environment however, it lacks the skilled workers needed to decarbonise its commercial built environment. This includes workforce gaps in the design, construction, retrofit and building maintenance sub-sectors.
This Taskforce will convene employers, training providers, industry bodies and government to ensure that we have the skilled people we need to build and maintain a world class Net Zero commercial built environment.
This is essential to:
- Meet climate action targets within the City and wider London.
- Support a post-Covid recovery
- Build a globally competitive location which attracts investment and jobs.
Skills for Net Zero
Across the UK, retrofit work will be required on 2 million non-residential buildings, at a cost of £108bn over the next 30 years. 7,000 workers will need to be either recruited or retrained to meet this demand (Construction Industry Training Board, Building Skills for Net Zero, 2021). The density of skills shortage vacancies is highest in the construction sector, with 36% of vacancies deemed hard to fill (Department for Education, Employer Skills Survey, 2019).
The built environment sector also suffers from both an ageing workforce and a lack of diversity. Only 13% of the construction workforce are women (Construction in Training Board, Equality and Diversity Overview, 2022) and 3% are from BAME backgrounds(Government Employment by Sector, 2021). Furthermore, 80% of industry professionals recently interviewed said that said that the lack of workplace diversity is an issue for the sector (City of London Corporation Skills for a Sustainable Skyline survey, 2022).
The solution to these challenges is to reskill and upskill workers, while attracting underrepresented talent – to learn more, please email us at: SkillsforaSustainableSkyline@cityoflondon.gov.uk