Skills for the Future

East Sussex College welcomes delegates from SkillsFuture Singapore to the newly opened ESC Training Hub.

The event, held on 8 February during National Apprenticeship Week, ran in collaboration with Sussex Chamber of Commerce and included guests from the Department for Education and SkillsFuture Singapore.

The delegation from SkillsFuture Singapore were visiting to find out how the Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) for the Sussex area has been developed, to see how they can duplicate the initiative to support their own skills requirements in Singapore. Sussex Chamber of Commerce is the employer representative body responsible for the LSIP in the area and works closely with East Sussex College on skills innovation including the development of projects such as Greener Sussex, which the college’s Training Hub is a part of.

Rebecca Conroy, CEO and Principal of East Sussex College, welcomed delegates to the Training Hub at Hampden Retail Park in Eastbourne. The event was an opportunity for the College to showcase the Training Hub to an international audience, sharing best practice and information on its inception.

“All of our partners and wider partners have really come together to share expertise, to deliver vital skills in green technology,” said Rebecca. “It’s going to deliver a great range of opportunities.”

At the core of the hub are collaborative activities; East Sussex College works with employers, the Council and other providers to provide workforce industry exchange, facilities and equipment, skills provision and employer engagement.

“There was a need for a decarbonisation centre here,” explained Nick Backstrom, Lead Coordinator on the project. “We achieved this between the College, OHM Energy and Eastbourne Borough Council. This was a good mix of the public sector, curriculum and a private company working together.”

“The reality, especially in Hastings, where one of our campuses is located, is old houses that need to be retrofitted,” Nick continued. “Across the UK there are 27 million houses that need to be retrofitted. If we can do that by 2050 we will reduce Co2 by 30%.”

The centre is equipped to train workers in retrofit, from insulation, heat exchange ventilation, heat pumps and solar panels, and was designed to be self sustainable. Academic equipment comes from Germany. Training rigs were designed by employers to be the most suitable to explain to technicians who are retraining.

“It’s all good to get 16-18 [year-olds] here but we need the existing workforce to be up to speed [in green technology] as fast as possible,” said Nick, “so we built these bespoke training rigs. In fact, this house is one big training rig!”

The ESC Training Hub delivers a vast Skills Provision. They have produced 29 renewable energy courses in total. Nick explained the benefits of training the workforce in retrofit to the visiting Singaporeans. “All our courses are driven to some sort of job outcome. There will be up to 400,000 jobs by 2030 in order to carry out the retrofit works and solar installations. Of those, 50 per cent are trades, 50 per cent are white collar workers, so we’re talking about the office workers, assessors, managers, and coordinators.”

Nick went on to liken the visiting country with the UK. “When a government goes out to look at areas that need renovation, they release national retrofit funds, similar to in Singapore, with the housing trusts out there. They offer grants; larger grants are given to councils and when they give out the work to contractors, they’ll write in some sort of social value. Part of that social value is training to ensure the sub contractors are actually being skilled up and educating people. This is what we are here to do and where we are now.”