
Green skills in social housing
Net zero research, the competence gap, and attracting new learners
In what looks like becoming an annual event delivered as part of their client strategy, CIOB collaborated with the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) recently to convene their second roundtable meeting of representatives from the social housing sector in the UK.
Last year’s meeting investigated net zero in social housing. This new edition delved more deeply into just one aspect of that puzzle: the green skills challenge.
Chaired by Professor Robert Hairstans of Edinburgh Napier University and the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE), the event in June 2025 was conducted online under Chatham House rules to encourage honesty and open debate. Delegates’ identities have been kept confidential. Here we report on the findings.
Among the many competing priorities for social housing providers is the challenge to ensure that residents live in a safe, warm, and affordable home. A major driver of action has been the anticipation of a mandated requirement to improve social homes to an EPC ‘C’ rating or better by 2030 as a staging post on the way to net zero by 2050. As such, providing affordably warm homes is inextricably tied to improving homes’ energy performance through retrofitting.
This, then, is the context of the roundtable meeting, and it is challenging for social housing providers. The several million social homes include buildings of varying ages built to differing standards and subject to uneven repair and maintenance over time. Even if the science and technology of how to upgrade existing buildings is reasonably well understood, the art of applying that understanding reliably across all social homes has yet to mature. What’s more, the competencies needed to make that understanding work in the context of other issues – resident concerns, viability, health and safety, resource management - are only just becoming apparent.
No wonder, then, that there is currently a shortage in the supply of people with the right skills to achieve the right outcomes. And as the anticipated 2030 deadline approaches, that shortage is already building into a crisis. Roundtable delegates described current resources as overstretched and reported difficulty in recruiting people with the right building and maintenance skills. With an already ageing workforce and, as they perceived it, construction’s poor image among prospective future employees, they worried that the situation will get worse.
Their testimony is backed up by the Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero-sponsored Green Jobs Delivery Group review of the ‘Heat and Buildings’ sector in 2023. It concluded that, in energy efficiency and retrofit jobs, there are risks of shortages across all key occupations. These include retrofit assessors, solid wall technicians, roof installers, floor technicians, and cavity wall insulation technicians. The review goes on to say, “Steep increases in demand are of particular concern for supply chain support staff - principally among retrofit professionals including coordinators and designers given the lack of trainers, assessors, and routes to competence within the sector.”
This skills gap is not new, of course. The ‘crunch point’, as one delegate put it, has long been forecast. Indeed, industry and various UK governments have been working on the problem for at least a decade already.
Underpinning technical standards
For example, many of the ‘how to’ questions have been answered. The Retrofit Standards Task Force – set up by the British Standards Institute in 2016 - published PAS 2035: Retrofitting dwelling for improved energy efficiency – Specification and guidance – in 2019. This document, since updated, advocates for a ‘fabric-first’ approach to retrofit using passive energy-saving measures such as better insulation and windows before active ones. It also established several new roles, not least that of retrofit coordinator (RC), by now the lynchpin function in any retrofit project. Certainly, it was at the heart of delegates’ concerns around the green skills gap.
Despite this, delegates were far from confident that the technical basis of achieving net zero in buildings had been settled, pointing to the difficulty of interpreting PAS 2035. As well as more academic research (from, for example, the Centre for Net Zero High Density Buildings) feeding through to standards, they suggested the potential of harvesting and learning lessons from retrofit projects around the country as a possible solution.
Government funding to hit retrofit targets
With the PAS 2035 (and, indeed, an updated version of PAS 2030: Installation of energy efficient measures in existing dwellings) in place, the Government launched the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) in 2020.
Waves 1 and 2.1, as they were known, helped to fund the installation of 60,200 measures in 30,500 households. Wave 3 (under the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund (the SHDF’s new name) is distributing up to £1.29 billion for new energy efficiency measures.
Retrofit skills development
An independent industry-led initiative – the National Retrofit Hub – was officially launched in 2023 with the stated aim of enabling the delivery of retrofit at scale. It convenes several working groups, not least Working Group 3, which is focused on workforce growth and skills development. It operates several task and finish (T&F) groups, including T&F1, Roles and qualification pathways, and T&F2, Training providers and infrastructure.
So far it has produced several resources including a retrofit qualifications ‘map’. It has also published policy recommendations for a national retrofit workforce strategy, which highlights 10 priorities for action:
- A national strategy to lead and coordinate delivery
- Clear and consistent policy to unlock investment
- Defined skills pathways and high-quality training
- Reformed funding models to drive skills via public sector procurement
- A skilled workforce delivering better outcomes
- Expanded training capacity to support a diversity of workers
- Reformed apprenticeships with retrofit pathways
- A national campaign to promote retrofit careers
- Actions to attract people from all backgrounds
- Support for SMEs and microbusinesses to grow and thrive
The competence gap
Focusing on the RC role, delegates highlighted the gap between, on the one hand, the skills people with retrofit qualifications and/or certifications acquire and, on the other, trustworthy competence. One delegate - a contractor who works primarily in the social housing sector – thought that a retrofit qualification should indicate that the person holding it was ‘a safe pair of hands’ – which is apparently not always the case in newly qualified people.
The missing ingredient seems to be a solid foundation in and experience of construction projects and the specific way they are undertaken in the social housing sector. An understanding of retrofit’s systemic interactions with, for example, the business case, procurement, stakeholder management and design management, are as important as technical knowledge and climate literacy. This is critical, to the point where, one delegate argued, it should not be possible to qualify in the RC role without it.
Inevitably, this means that the shortest route to plugging the skills gap in RC work at the moment is to upskill people who already have this experience. Delegates indicated that they have internal programmes to upskill staff, identifying building surveyors, quantity surveyors, stock appraisal surveyors as candidates with the most readily transferable skills for the RC role.
While this might be the shortest route, delegates were aware that upskilling using self-accredited programmes was insufficient for their own programmes of works (let alone the nation’s) and carried risks of unreliability and inconsistency of outcomes. While in-house expertise might give them peace of mind when it comes to monitoring the performance of suppliers, it cannot meet the overall demand for retrofit skills, which must also be developed in main contractors and down the supply chain.
To that end, delegates wanted a fit-for-purpose hub of standardisation across the educational ecosystem, including in competencies, the accreditation process, curricula, assessments, qualifications, certifications and registrations.
Competence frameworks
Much of this work is already underway. For example, the Construction Leadership Council set out the high-level, generic competencies required for effective retrofit in their 2024 Roadmap of Skills for Net Zero: Competencies for Domestic Retrofit. The idea is that industry should use it to develop competence frameworks for specific retrofit roles and occupations.
To complement this high-level roadmap, the Retrofit Standards Task Force is currently developing a new Retrofit Coordinator Occupational Standard, which will outline the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviours for retrofit professionals. Also, the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) is working on the various pathways to competence for many other net-zero roles. However, the unanswered question from our roundtable is how these competencies can be supplemented by an in-depth knowledge of the social housing sector and its specific approach to retrofit delivery.
Skills training
Delegates recognised that the training opportunities in the UK were burgeoning, even though the construction supply chain, notably SMEs, might not be aware of them yet or know how to exploit them.
For example, the government has recently announced a new £600 million fund to boost construction skills, specifically to support their pledge to build 1.5 million new homes by the end of this parliament. Presumably, this will feed into relevant skills under the CITB’s Net Zero Action Plan, a multi-faceted strategy which includes promoting green skills, supporting employers with a net zero Skills & Training Fund, and upskilling and reskilling the workforce by developing relevant training programmes, qualifications and accreditations.
The government also funds smaller enterprises such as the Green Skills Advisory Panel linked to Exeter College, which has members from across the green skills ecosystem, runs courses, and produces educational materials for schools.
One delegate argued that social housing providers had a significant self-interest in helping their construction partners – especially SMEs – to acquire the skills to meet the net zero challenge. At the very least, this could entail pointing out the training opportunities, including how to access funding for apprenticeships. Delegates reported that this is already happening, with some social housing providers helping their contractors with PAS 2035 and PAS 2030 certifications.
Avoiding waste
Amid a national skills shortage, delegates did not want any training to go to waste. There are two interconnected issues here. The first is that whatever is taught should meet industry needs, which vary from region to region depending on the character of the local housing stock and their associated pipelines of retrofit work. The second is to attract willing learners to make the educational infrastructure viable.
Hub-and-spoke model to meet regional needs
If a standardised educational system for retrofit skills is conceived as a hub, then it can be tailored to regional needs down connecting spokes.
The question then is about how to identify regional needs. Delegates mentioned the possibility of aggregating information about the upcoming publicly funded pipeline of retrofit work in a region as a way to find out what specific skills were likely to be needed there. Regional stakeholders could then collaborate on delivering the requisite programme of green skills learning and training the trainers.
To do that, of course, would require much more and better organised information-sharing and collaboration between organisations than is currently the case, and a dissolving of departmental silos within organisations. As one delegate put it, ‘corporate egos’ and ‘commercial sensitivities’ would have to be put to one side.
This could happen by developing green skills action plans for local authorities, regions, or devolved authorities, perhaps by following National Retrofit Hub’s cribsheet explaining how to set up regional retrofit hubs. The Regional Skills Partnerships in Wales were held up as a model for success.
Attracting students
Developing successful skills strategies isn’t just about meeting industry needs. It is also about attracting sufficient students to make the training viable.
The delegates acknowledged this as a challenge. Ensuring that there is a well-paid job at the end of it is probably the most important part of the battle. However, there are other obstacles, including scepticism among the existing workforce about the usefulness of green skills, construction’s image problem among school leavers, and difficulties of changing careers for mid-life re-skillers.
Scepticism among the existing workforce is a potentially ‘scary’ issue impeding upskilling. It is unclear how widespread the problem is. A delegate felt that past government pronouncements encouraging the uptake of heat pumps, for example, had backfired when it became better known that installation involved more than just replacing a boiler. Delegates thought a solution might be to identify ‘green champions’ to promote the technology of energy efficient measures.
Although contrary to recent CIOB research findings, the group’s perception was that school children and their parents have a poor view of construction as a career path, which was likely to make it harder to close the green skills gap. On the other hand, careers connected to sustainability were more attractive.
It ought to be possible, therefore, to emphasise the green skills over the construction skills. Not only would this embed relevant knowledge at the start of vocational training, but it could rejuvenate the industry’s ageing workforce by attracting more entrants. With a national programme of engagement in schools, colleges and universities – perhaps using CIOB’s schools packs – it could also help to reach underprivileged and overlooked communities to increase the industry’s diversity.
Another channel is to engage with mid-career re-skillers. While a potentially a rich seam, their specific time-of-life commitments makes them difficult to reach. Any training programme would have to be appropriately responsive, flexible and accessible. The delegates thought that pop-up training centres could be part of the solution for overcoming the difficulties, and could even help with training the trainers.
No complacency
Social housing providers’ concerns about the shortage of green skills extend well beyond the anticipated 2030 deadline for upgrading social housing to EPC ‘C’. The real challenge is about other regulatory requirements, the UK’s legally binding commitment to net zero by 2050 and, indeed, the wider climate emergency. The sector’s impatience for the relevant skills to be mainstreamed is only natural. It’s clear from the delegates’ enthusiasm and wealth of ideas, though, that there’s no complacency or lack of will.
Even if the educational infrastructure for training, upskilling and reskilling people for social housing’s net zero future is not yet meeting industry need, change is at least under way. Despite progress to date and improved policy certainty from government, the reality is that, as one delegate put it, ‘there is no silver bullet’: closing the retrofit skills gap will take some time yet.
Photo credit: Hill Group
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