East Coast EnergySkills development

Kevin Rodger, Policy Manager Skills, Suffolk County Council

Skills Shortages: The Potential Impact

• Delays in development and deployment with knock-on effects to subsequent stages

• Higher labour costs, as employers increase wages to attract the staff required, putting other industries at risk

• The introduction of labour from elsewhere in the EU,

resulting in a loss of employment opportunities

The Importance of Timing

• Short Term: Transfer from one sector to another.

• Medium Term: Attracting new entrants through e.g. apprenticeships.

• Long Term: Increasing the flow of children taking STEM subjects at secondary school.

The Challenges

• A bottleneck due to high absorption rates relative to the size of the current workforce.

• Absence of good information on the sector and its growth, feeding cautious decisions and investments by firms and training providers.

• Predicting demand (scale) and need (content). No minimum or shared standards and the costs of developing courses and training facilities, exacerbated by reductions in public sector funding.

• A lack of flexibility in the operation of apprenticeships.

• A general lack of awareness about the current and future career opportunities in the sector.

Training & Education: Existing provision

• The Energy Skills Foundation Programme• An extensive range of offshore training provision at

Lowestoft College• Undergraduate & postgraduate Energy engineering

programmes at UEA.• A Nuclear Skills Academy at West Suffolk College• Forces 4 Energy• STEM Ambassadors • Specialist Industry Training

Energy Skills for the East Coast: Implementation Plan

• Supporting increased local employment

• Helping to attract inward investment; and

• Enabling local businesses to grow

Priorities

1. Raising Awareness of the Energy Sector

Increasing awareness of career opportunities and entry routes

into the energy sector

2. Providing a Coherent Training and Education Offer

Providing access to a coherent training and education offer

for new entrants to the sector or those requiring re-skilling

or up-skilling as appropriate

3. Energy Skills Infrastructure

Ensuring appropriate infrastructure and information is in place

to support skills development for the energy sector