Challenge 1: People - Skills for a Net Zero Economy
Speakers:
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership | Dianna Neal, Strategic Lead for Enterprise, Economy and Skills, London Councils | Mark Corbett, Head of Policy & Networks, London Higher | Richard Keogh, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and External Engagement), University of Roehampton | Peter Mayhew Smith, Principal & CEO, South Thames Colleges Group | Forbes Low, Chief Executive, Kingston Chamber of Commerce | Rachel Bennett, Strategic Lead, South London Careers Hub
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership
Welcome to the Skills for a Net Zero Economy challenge. My name is Polly Persechino and I’m Head of Economy, Skills & Employment for the South London Partnership. One of the programmes that I head up is the Mayor’s Academy Hub around green skills, so that’s all about forging relationships between training providers, skills providers, and businesses to create pathways into green jobs for young people, as well as creating wider job opportunities, work placements and apprenticeships within the green economy. We work with some brilliant stakeholders, some brilliant educators, some brilliant employers.
So obviously, the acceleration of the rate of decarbonisation and the growth of these green industries means we need people who are equipped with the skills and the knowledge to take on these newly adapted roles. And we’ve gathered an expert panel today to talk to us about how we might do that, but I’d really like the panel to introduce themselves.
Dianna Neal, Strategic Lead for Enterprise, Economy and Skills, London Councils
I’m Dianna Neal and I’m the Strategic Lead for Enterprise, Economy and Skills at London Councils. We’ve got six shared ambitions that are set by our leaders and one of those is climate adaptation and Net Zero, and also the seven pan-London programmes that are working across the boroughs and across London to look at those challenges.
Mark Corbett, Head of Policy & Networks, London Higher
I’m Mark Corbet, Head of Policy at London Higher, and we’re a membership body representing universities across London, from the very small institutions like RADA, to UCL with 50,000 students. Kingston, Roehampton, and St. Mary’s are members as well, so we have a very diverse membership, but what we do is represent London as a global city.
Within London Higher, we have a very strong sustainability network. It’s mainly been looking at the operational side of things like institutions and how they decarbonise, but that’s very much now moving into looking at how we look at the skills better, more strategically across the city. One of things we’re doing now is looking at our operational staff, how they interact with our academic staff, maybe sharing, lessons there and experiences from people at the coalface of sustainability as well.
Richard Keogh, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and External Engagement), University of Roehampton
I’m Richard Keogh and I’m the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and External Engagement at the University of Roehampton where I have responsibility for all of our research, our broad knowledge exchange activities, and contracting with public and private partners, as well as our technical and vocational skills, agendas, and learning. As part of that, we’re currently incubating a new sustainable Engineering and Technology Centre under Professor Steven Pretlove’s leadership, which is looking to operate at the forefront of net zero skills across South London.
Peter Mayhew Smith, Principal & CEO, South Thames Colleges Group
Peter Mayhew Smith from South Thames Colleges Group. We’re a set of colleges in the lovely boroughs of Kingston, Merton, Sutton, and Wandsworth, so we’ve got a good span across the communities in South West London. We see our role very much as being a community-based organisation that’s working productively with our local businesses and the people in our area to ensure that they have access to a very vibrant economic opportunities in in this part of the world.
One of the things that we’ve been working on in the last couple of years, has been to look at the ways in which we can develop a skills infrastructure for people entering this whole field of learning. We’re very keen to continue developing training opportunities that will attract young people into the professions that are arising out of the whole green skills agenda, but also to support businesses that are training existing staff to retrofit new technologies in people’s homes and businesses. But the other thing that’s really coming across for us, and I think it’s an important part of this, is that understanding the green skills agenda is everybody’s problem. It’s not just about very technical solutions to specific issues in people’s homes and businesses, but it’s actually about awareness and capabilities so that we can all contribute to the solutions that are needed for our all our futures.
Forbes Low, Chief Executive, Kingston Chamber of Commerce
I’m Forbes Low and I am the Chief Exec at Kingston Chamber of Commerce. Our role in all of this is as a connector – we are a conduit for a lot of businesses within the within the borough, collaborating with partners, colleges, the council with the university. We pick up where our business members and where they are with the green agenda and it’s been fascinating over the last two to three years to understand what so many businesses and individuals at home and at work are doing. Our work is to continue joining the dots, and also trying to put a lot of these conversations into plain English. There’s a lot of acronyms, there’s a lot of things going on, and I think there’s a there’s a lack of clarity which really needs to be opened up.
Rachel Bennett, Strategic Lead, South London Careers Hub
I’m Rachel and I’m the Strategic Lead for the South London Partnership and we’re part of a national network of career hubs that operate across the country. We’re one of four hubs within London and work over five local authorities – Croydon, Sutton, Merton, Kingston and Richmond as well as one-hundred-plus schools and colleges. We work alongside senior leadership and governors to really help strengthen and support careers education, both at an institutional level and also at a regional level too, and alongside that, we work really closely with employers and business to make sure that we’re connecting local businesses to young people – that careers education is responding to the needs of the local economy, and that young people have the skills, experience and knowledge to leave education and go into really good sustainable jobs.
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership
So, we’ve got approximately 27 years to meet our net zero targets (depending on which climate action plan you’re working towards), and nationally, we’ve got 9.1 million students in education. So, our big question is, how can we effectively address the global scale of developing skills for a Net Zero economy? And what do we need to do to take those skills forward?
Peter Mayhew Smith, Principal & CEO, South Thames Colleges Group
Well, I think there’s a number of things that we can do but let me pick on two.
One is that there’s a there’s a set of clear technical needs around our ability to install and manage a new infrastructure for green technologies. Whether that’s solar panels, or EV charging points, or microgeneration solutions in local neighbourhoods, they all need a new set of skills to be developed across construction and engineering students. It is happening and we work with a number of awarding bodies at the moment, to help develop those really specific technical skills for particular sub sectors within the green industry as a whole.
However, I don’t think it’s developing fast enough and I don’t know that we’re keeping up with the technological innovation sufficiently well, so I couldn’t guarantee that all of our motor vehicle students can maintain an electric vehicle now as they, as they are being trained through their programme. And you can see clearly when you give that as an example, that there’s a gap there in the qualifications, market and the innovation available to those students to certify them for the future.
But like I said before, I think there’s a second issue that’s probably just as critical – one where I think that we’ve got to look more deeply at the capabilities of everybody in the population. We at South Thames College Group (STCC) have an employee’s forum on green action and sustainability and what’s coming through is that there’s a welter of different understandings of what that means for those people in their roles as parents, citizens, employees. Actually, there’s a new phrase that relates to carbon literacy – a motive that helps the population meaningfully contribute to this change process.
This is an important point. We have a responsibility to make sure that everybody in our organisation is informed and acting in a meaningful and productive way to tackle climate change and do things that put the world on a better footing to deal with it.
Richard Keogh, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and External Engagement), University of Roehampton
Just to pick up on the last point that Peter has made, at the University of Roehampton, we’ve developed a carbon literacy module, which is available to all of our students as an optional additional module to build that broad understanding and skill set, because we really believe that all jobs in the future are going to be green jobs. What we’re also seeing is a considerable amount of student choice, not just in terms of where they want to study, but where they want to work, and does that align with their values. I think it’s incredibly important that as educational institutions we foster support, but also develop that.
I did, however, just want to pick up a point that Peter made in relation to the technical skills and support that’s required and of course, that’s absolutely fundamental. There are two key challenges there for the education sector, but also, for employers and the skills needed/skills gap. One is I think, collectively, we have to lift our eyes to the horizon, and really think about what the future skills needs are not just the skills needs we face today.
At best, we’re talking about a four-year horizon for a higher or degree level job and preparing someone with the skills that they need. We need to be developing that with and for industry, and thinking about what the possibilities are there. So, we can’t just talk about the challenge now, we have to look to what the challenge is in the future. The second thing I’d like to add there is that I think fundamentally, the structure of education has to change to recognise the fast-paced world that we’re in, we can’t train someone today and give them a three-year degree or a four-year master’s and expect that that’s the only skills development they’re going to need over the course of their life.
I think that’s particularly true of the green skills and zero agenda, where we’re seeing the sectors that these jobs are in, and the sectors which are beginning to understand the skills they need adapt and evolve so quickly. We really need to be thinking about how we support upskilling and retraining throughout people’s careers, if we’re going to truly address the skills needs of the future.
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership
So, we’ve heard from Richard and Peter about how important businesses are in this transition. But how can we work better with businesses and how can educators work with businesses to develop these skills?
Forbes Low, Chief Executive, Kingston Chamber of Commerce
There has to be a massive educational shift of people understanding the new job market and what the required skills for those roles are. I still think we are to a certain degree, slightly set in a very stereotypical Doctor, lawyer, those kinds of professions, and I think there has to be a major shift within appreciating that there is such a broad capacity within green skills. I think there is a parental knowledge which needs to be learned and appreciated. Because otherwise we can have the trainers, but if people don’t realise that actually these jobs could last for much longer period, it’s just not going to happen.
So, I think there’s kind of a winning of the hearts with all of this. To try and answer your question – I think from businesses, my view is that accreditation and that form of recognising the work which you do with getting an accreditation, works both ways. It helps a business in terms of future procurement, and all kinds of procurements, all forms of contracts will increasingly look at what a business is doing. So, I think getting a really good accreditation, will keep the business on its toes, keeps it relevant and I think that’s a very good way of kind of businesses which need to respond to this.
Many, many years ago, they always used to talk about green printing and everything else and that was back in 1990, and so I think now there has to be such legitimacy with these accreditations or else there is a degree of lip service. So, I think businesses are beginning to realise that they have to really step up here, and I think that’s a good win all the way around.
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership
Rachel – you could probably answer a little more about collaborating with businesses and educators on what we need to do to kind of respond to business demand, particularly around building capacity with our young people.
Rachel Bennett, Strategic Lead, South London Careers Hub
So, I think that there is a real opportunity for us to build this careers community across schools, colleges etc. When we talk about educators, we’ve got career leaders who are one of our main points of contact for careers education, but actually, what role do teachers, what role does senior leadership of governors play in there?
I think one of the ways we can really boost collaboration, and part of the work that the Careers Hub is doing both in South London but at a national level, is looking at teacher encounters, and how can we bring teachers out into industry so that they have an a much larger awareness of industry, sector, the challenges, but also what are those opportunities there? How can they take that knowledge and insight back and cascade that across all of their institutions, so you have a really strong careers community.
I also echo what Forbes says about parents – I think parents are a huge influencer in young people’s lives. So how do we cascade that breadth of information out to those other key players within a young person’s community and network? We know, having done networking events between career leaders, and educators and business, that there is a real desire for networking, We had a green career Summit, earlier this week, actually with about 300 students and employers, but the feedback that we got from career leaders in attendance was that having that networking ability of being in front of businesses and industries to really find out more about the opportunities was vital.
Finally, how can we make it as easy as possible for educators? There is a huge amount of information out there, a wealth of opportunities that come through, and how can we consolidate that? How can we make sure that those opportunities are reaching educators, and in the long-term reaching our young people, and take away some of the noise that’s there? Because, you know, often, educators have very limited amount of time for careers education, so what can we do to make it easier to boost that collaboration?
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership
Obviously, this is South London, but we are part of a bigger place of London. Are there any examples that you know, of good collaboration between educators and business? Or are there any opportunities that you think we might be missing from a South London perspective?
Dianna Neal, Strategic Lead for Enterprise, Economy and Skills, London Councils
I think the process that everyone went through with the Local Skills Improvement Plan was really interesting: there was a pan-London exercise, but then there were then four sub-regional exercises too. Again, I think really kick started a conversation which I think can be quite difficult with green skills, because it is so cross-cutting. And, you know, what is a green skill? Well, you know its definition is very broad.
I think we should also look at collaborating across sectors as well. Collaborating for us tends to work quite a lot with FE (Further Education) not so much with HE (Higher Education), but we know that there has been work done in the past.
London South Bank University does lots of work on apprenticeships, and so they’re linking all that work on apprenticeships with green skills, and they’re working with Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark, so they’re all mechanisms out there. But I think the key thing is how do you kind of make that more systematic and more every day, when, businesses have lots of other things to think about as well?
Creating the conditions for both businesses and educators will help them to realise that this transition is worth the investment. We’re in a demand led system in education and this is a massive structural shift. And actually, demand led systems probably need a bit helped a bit to deal with that. I think that’s where national government and London government can play a big role in that through policy certainty, funding etc.
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership
Funding is that ever elusive piece, isn’t it! We at South London Partnership recently commissioned a report looking at the occupational demand for construction skills and Construction Skills for Net Zero. So, we’ve identified approximately 635,000 properties that will need decarbonizing or retrofitting over the next 5, 10, 15, 25 years. We estimate that will require upwards of 66,000 person years to deliver: that’s not jobs, but that’s person year so that’s not insignificant. And the size of the challenge is really significant. But we know already, we don’t have the workforce equipped with the skills to do that work.
I’ll put it to the panel and maybe to Mark in a HEI capacity: what are the tangible things that we could do collectively to make an impact on those numbers in terms of developing the skills, curriculums, and education, so we can at least try and meet targets of over the next 30 years?
Mark Corbett, Head of Policy & Networks, London Higher
So very big picture – I think policy consistency is really, really important when you’re moving the goalposts, workforce planning is already difficult enough as it is, when you change things like big dates on electric vehicles, or new oil and gas, long term sort of green skills, planning for those shifting the goalposts makes it very, very difficult at the universities to speak to businesses and other communication businesses, and they’re changing, it just makes the whole thing very difficult.
We are doing stuff on working closely with businesses. So, a tangible thing we did this year was a report called Powering London, which looked at the relationship between the University of London and the business sector in London, which we thought could be improved. One of the first things we did was talk about the good things that we do so businesses know what we’re up to in terms of delivering skills and key workers, the research, the innovation, the business support, community support we do all across London. We’ve got a lot of support now from Michael Mainelliy, the incoming Mayor of the City of London, which is fantastic to see, so now it’s time to look at the things that universities can do as well.
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership
Thank you, Mark, and we’re hearing very loud and clear about the importance of policy consistency, some of which is beyond our control. But local policy, we have more of control over and I think one of the things we’re trying to achieve through the retrofit action plan is to create some very robust timeline targets that we can all achieve.
Just coming to our biggest FE provider in South London, obviously, the retrofit challenge for us is real but we also have a workforce challenge within construction. What are the tangible things that we could do collaboratively with educators to propel the talent pipeline towards construction and the built environment?
Peter Mayhew Smith, Principal & CEO, South Thames Colleges Group
Well, in general the construction sector struggles to attract sufficient workforce to deliver all the business that the public and investors demand of it. So, one of the things that has gone into the LSIP, which I’m glad to have heard that mentioned, has been a real prioritisation around construction. And we need to make it an attractive sector for young people to want to work in. We need to make sure that people see themselves in those in those jobs in the future, just generally, if we’re going to continue to be able to build houses and workplaces and so forth. For the for the future of South London there just simply not enough people entering that industry. So, there’s work to do to promote that generally.
But then I think the other big job is to make sure that it is it is a green industry. It goes from being actually quite a high carbon emitter, to being an industry that is able to demonstrate its carbon zero credentials very quickly, and can build in not as an innovation, but as a fundamental, all of the practices that are needed to make sure that homes and schools and hospitals and all the other buildings that get put up, are as green as they possibly can be. That becomes a basic part of your training as a carpenter or as a brick layout or whatever role you’re playing. So that’s the first thing.
The other issue is to retrain all of the people who are already in those industries. Most of the workforce who will see us through those 27 years between now and Net Zero is already in work, who will be contributing to that journey and that’s an enormous piece of work to retrofit the workforce ready to retrofit the housing stock and the buildings that we’ve already got. That’s a big challenge – to educate and encourage industries that are a little bit set in their ways, potentially. We’ve got to make sure that we’re able to inform, advise and persuade them to embrace some of these new opportunities, so that it becomes a realistic goal.
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership
Let’s now take some questions from the floor.
Delegate
At Kingston University, we always strive to enhance the collaboration culture with industry, such as councils and local businesses. One of the key barriers that we find is the lack of accessibility to data for students to research. So, if they are doing real life research in partnership with either a business or a council or with any other organisation, for that matter, data accessibility is one of the major issues.
Based on your experience and expertise, how can the accessibility of data become better to help us with the Net Zero agenda?
Forbes Low, Chief Executive, Kingston Chamber of Commerce
Yeah, I think it’s interesting. I was talking somebody earlier in terms of the plethora of information and requests out there for businesses and I think, for a lot of businesses who have started on the sustainable route, and actually have got that implemented, that degree of data might be more easily at hand.
There is an enormous amount of pressure on businesses just to get through the week to get through the month. And the requirements for data, as much as it is highly relevant, as you say, does put quite a bit of a burden on sort of the daily functions of a lot of businesses. It’s trying to get businesses to actually get into that headspace of “we need to do this”, let alone then collecting the data. So, there’s, there are some who are charging far ahead, but that whole point is, where are they in terms of trying to find them? And for them to actually come forward and say, “we have this data.”
So, our aim now should be to try to join those particular dots. But as I’ve said there has been a lot of pressure on businesses over the last couple of years, and whilst it’s highly relevant and super important (to receive live data from businesses), it’s just really hard to find those that are ready to share those statistics I’m afraid.
Richard Keogh, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and External Engagement), University of Roehampton
Just to add quickly, the way that the University of Roehampton is approaching this issue in relation to our new Sustainable Engineering Technology Centre, specifically, is by working with employers from the very outset in terms of the design of the programmes, the design of the initiatives that students will be working on, and a live project function which supports that. So, they will really be working that kind of hand in glove, both with employers, but also local government and in groups like the South London partnership who’ve been really integral to support that initiative for us so far. I think it’s in that kind of key and core partnership working that we can secure access to that sort of information.
Mark Corbett, Head of Policy & Networks, London Higher
Could we plug into our student start-ups as well? We have one of the highest concentrations of start-ups by students in the country. Is that something you’ve explored? That might be a good avenue to explore?
Dianna Neal, Strategic Lead for Enterprise, Economy and Skills, London Councils
Just quickly to add to that, at London Councils, we’ve got a sister organisation called the London Office for Technology and Innovation (LOTI), and they’re doing a lot of work on this. Councils are sometimes not great data sharing, even amongst ourselves, so LOTI are doing a lot of work to try and overcome some of those barriers. It might be worth seeing if you could link up with them.
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership
As a group of local authorities at the South London Partnership (SLP), we produce quite a lot of information and data. Sometimes there’s a bit of analysis paralysis. We keep trying not to get caught out with that analysis paralysis, and we spend a lot of time looking at, finding, and identifying data and in equal measure, we frustrate our partners, because we need that evidence base before we can the legwork and the groundwork. But everyone’s in the same boat, and we’re hoping to bring some of this evidence intelligence into one space and through the funding that we’re getting as well. Hopefully that provides a little bit of reassurance.
I think we have time for one more question….
Delegate
I recently managed a retrofit project where we were working with people from across South London who were unemployed, to raise awareness of career options. We found that in terms of progression, that there was a gap. There are bite-sized courses that didn’t lead directly to employment, or they could wait until September and join a one-year construction course if they want to go that way.
There’s a real gap in the middle for adults who want a three-month course that will give them the skills to take them directly into jobs. Do you think our current system is sufficiently agile to create credit and run those types of courses? Or if not, is there a way forward to get us closer to that?
Polly Persechino, Head of Economy, Skills & Employment, South London Partnership
So, we also have been looking at retrofit qualifications courses and there are so many opportunities out there already. However, the feedback that we get back from employers is that once you’ve gone through the retrofit courses, there is still a knowledge deficiency because they don’t understand the that the fabric of a building. They are not employable at the end of a three-week, three-month course. And actually, what we can’t do is look to new entrants necessarily to become these retrofit coordinators because they’re very specific, high-level qualifications and people have to have significant industry awareness.
We see that the quality of the retrofit provision is so different and that’s a real challenge for us, but it’s also a real challenge for the sector. So, what we’re doing is we’re bringing employers into that curriculum development piece, to make sure that the qualifications that we are delivering and supporting and promoting have all the necessary elements to ensure that people can get the jobs. And I think there isn’t a quick fix in any of this. My narrative is we can’t do this quickly.
Peter has already said that a lot of people who will be required to retrofit or decarbonise homes and buildings are already working in the trade. So we have a responsibility to reach out to the supply chain.
I think there are definitely gaps, but I think we will bridge that through developing our curriculums with employers and ensuring that our employers sign off on those qualifications and sign off on those employment pathway routes. Because if we don’t do that, we will have that gap between knowledge and skills and ability and competency and movement into jobs.
We’re not yet ready but I think this I think the mechanisms are there to allow us to do it. We just have to figure out how.
