Memorandum 8
Submission from Energy & Utility Skills
1. EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
Introduction
2.1 Energy & Utility Skills is the Sector
Skills Council for the electricity, gas, waste management and
water industries. Employer-led, our purpose is to ensure that
energy and utility businesses have the skills needed to efficiently
meet their business aspirations. With some 528,000 employees,
the energy & utilities sector is of vital strategic importance
to the UK.
2.2 Our sector faces advancing technology, rapid
change, global competition and rising expectations of choice.
The skills of our people and their continuing development, are
crucially important to employers and employees.
2.3 Four strategic objectives drive our approach
to delivering on our purpose: act as a catalyst in developing
a sustainable skills market; use productive relationships to influence
stakeholder policy development; deliver industry standards and
qualifications, market intelligence and strategic skills foresight;
and be a high performing sustainable business.
2.4 Our work on our Sector Skills Agreement (SSA)
has reinforced our purpose and given us a strong platform to further
develop and deliver skills solutions for the sector. We are currently
taking forward the key skills issues identified in our SSA. We
have also developed a Sector Qualification Strategy (SQS) and
will begin implementing this during 2008. Our research programme
will ensure that EU Skills is an authoritative source of foresight,
labour market and supply side information and intelligence.
2.5 We work with central government and
the governments in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to both
influence and respond to the skills strategies for each nation,
in order to meet the skills needs of our sector. We also operate
in each of the English regions.
2.6 EU Skills welcomes the opportunity to
respond to the IUSS Committee Inquiry on putting science and engineering
at the heart of government policy as this is a critical issue
for us. We have a well established, and comprehensive, network
of employers, who are engaged through regular contact by our national
and regional Skills Directors and industry leads. We also have
well established high level employer strategy groups and workgroups
for each of the four industries in our footprint. This response
has been compiled using feedback from our employer networks and
comments have also been invited via our website. We have detailed
our response below.
CONSULTATION RESPONSE
3.1 The IUSS Committee has invited feedback
on the following points:
— Whether the Cabinet Sub-Committee
on Science and Innovation and the Council for Science and Technology
put science and engineering at the heart of policy-making and
whether there should be a Department for Science;
— How Government formulates science and
engineering policy (strengths and weaknesses of the current system);
— Whether the views of the science
and engineering community are, or should be, central to the formulation
of government policy, and how the success of any consultation
is assessed;
— The case for a regional science policy
(versus national science policy) and whether the Haldane principle
needs updating;
— Engaging the public and increasing
public confidence in science and engineering policy;
— The role of GO-Science, DIUS and
other Government departments, charities, learned societies, Regional
Development Agencies, industry and other stakeholders in determining
UK science and engineering policy;
— How government science and engineering
policy should be scrutinised;
3.2 Engineering and science skills are critical
to the development and success of our sector. They are also critical
to the economic success of the UK. We face many challenges in
ensuring that our sector has the right skills to develop, compete
and advance over the next 20 years.
3.3 We are convinced that action needs to
be taken to address the skills challenges we face over the next
20 years in order that the industries within our sector can
transform. The industries themselves have a history of developing
their workforces and industry collaboration has resulted in successful
developments such as the Power Academy, a recently announced NSA
for Power and a Water Skills Action Plan (driven by industry collaborations
PSSSG and WISSG[24]).
However, government action is now required to establish science
and engineering policies that will act as a catalyst and stimulate
a focus on skills development.
3.4 The commitments to developing a low
carbon economy, greener energy sector and meeting climate change
targets means our sector needs to reflect its changing environment
and develop and implement new technologies. Alongside this requirement,
there is a need to build new energy infrastructure to replace
old nuclear and coal-fired power stations that are due to be decommissioned.
The recent Business and Enterprise Committee report[25]
on energy policy estimated a huge investment will be required
to rebuild our energy infrastructure.
3.5 In addition, the sector has an ageing
workforce and is faced with a declining number of young people
entering the workforce. There is low interest in science and
engineering subjects at school and international competition for
science and engineering skills. This means that suitable candidates
for skilled roles, such as those that are central to establishing
continued improvements in productivity to meet the requirements
sought by the economic regulators, are scarce. Work is needed
to ensure that the sector is perceived as an attractive career
choice for young people and those from non-traditional employment
pools.
3.6 There is good evidence to suggest that
those who come to work for the sector stay for significantly longer
than the UK average. This suggests that, if the challenge of
getting candidates across the doorstep can be addressed, our sector
will be able to meet the upskilling challenge needed by its workforce
to meet the challenges ahead.
3.7 We are less convinced, however, of the
need to establish a separate Department for Science. Skills
policy needs to be much better coordinated across the UK, between
government departments and agencies and across national and regional
boundaries. The feedback from our employers is that the skills
environment remains confusing in relation to policy formulation
and delivery and the multiplicity of initiatives and funding arrangements.
This complexity has been acknowledged in the recently published
UKCES document Simplification of Skills in England.[26]
3.8 At the moment, education and skills
responsibility is split across two Government departments in England:
DIUS and DCSF. The Scottish Government, the Assemblies in Northern
Ireland and Wales have devolved responsibility for policy in relation
to education and skills. DWP also has a role to play in the skills
agenda. Our sector also links to the responsibilities of DECC
and Defra. We welcome the creation of DECC bringing together
responsibility for climate change and energy policy and are keen
to support the sharp focus that this will bring to energy policy.
However, we believe that, for skills issued to be addressed,
a joining up of approaches across government is critical and the
creation of a further government department could potentially
create more complexity. It is important that all government departments
involved in the energy and utilities sector have a shared vision
for skills development across the sector.
3.9 We believe that employer involvement
should be central to the formulation of science and engineering
policy. The voice of employers on science and engineering skills
can be accessed through the Sector Skills Councils. We are a
member of the Science Cluster of SSCs that is led by SEMTA.
3.10 The work on our Sector Skills Agreement[27]
and ongoing feedback from our industry groups illustrates a desire
from our employers to get closer to policy formulation and also
skills delivery, based on a robust national strategy for skills
development for each industry. Our employers believe there needs
to be a stronger link between their views and understanding of
their industries and government policy and decision making. We
also feel that any regionally driven policy and or initiatives
should be linked into regional employer networks who, in turn,
should be aligned and linked to national sector and industry strategies.
3.11 We have achieved high profile successes
for our sector, based on industry collaboration. Our successes
include:
— Delivering a three year Ambition
Energy programme that enabled over 2000 unemployed people
to enter a long term sustainable career within the energy sector.
Over 85% were still in employment six months later;
— Designing an implementing a workforce
planning tool that enables individual companies to forecast their
skills needs over the next 15 years;
— Transforming £1.6 million
of ESF funding into a £72 million investment in skills
development by Ofgem;
— Driving employer support and investment
of over £750,000 for a National Skills Academy for Power
that was announced in September 2008.
We are working with our industry groups to address
many more of the challenges the sector faces and ask that a coordinated
government approach to science and engineering policy focuses
on employer involvement. This means a policy that is developed
through active involvement of employers whilst ensuring that the
diverse number of bodies with a strong interest in science and
engineering capability are aware of the industry-sponsored approaches
being developed and are asked to actively work with employers
towards long-term mutual value.
3.12 If we are to address the skills shortages
and gaps we face in the UK in relation to science and engineering
that are evident in our sector, we will need joined-up government
thinking. This requires a joining up of action across GO-Science,
charities, learned societies, RDAs and other stakeholders that
you mention in your brief—along with industry—bearing
in mind that a fully competent engineer takes three to six years
to train to full competence. This is a significant challenge
and if the UK is to realise the full potential of innovation,
skills issues need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. We
see some of the main solutions as detailed below:
— Working with government/s to modify
immigration rules in the short term, whilst investing in skills
development in the UK;
— Providing accessible funding to upskill
existing technically skilled people in our companies to higher
levels;
— Ensure that appropriate training
is available to meet employers' needs (eg, through collaboration
with Foundation Degree Forward and other bodies);
— Develop the training capacity to
deliver the level of engineering skills that the industries are
now identifying (evolving through work with the economic regulators
on the investment needed for long term skills);
— Teachers training through industry
on engineering skills and challenges;
— Creating training facilities as "safe"
places for young people to obtain exposure to engineering in a
practical way;
— Creating engineering focused teaching
or e-learning packages for curriculum support;
— Support existing engineering students—develop
our industries' links with Universities (eg., via the Power Academy);
— Obtain maximum industry impact on
engineering initiatives, eg, working collaboratively to support
the 14-19 Diplomas;
— Using young engineers within each
industry to reach out via social networking such as podcasts,
video-casts etc., placing engineering in the attractive light
that our employees understand first-hand;
— Add an engineering positive image
to the safety messages that our industries often take out into
the primary school system.
3.12 We see the approach as a collaboration
between government and industry. However, each company can make
its own contribution, individually and collaboratively. We will
also continue to work with our sector collaboratively to influence
the economic regulators to support further investment in skills
development. We will also work with other Sector Skills Councils
in the Science Cluster and the network of National Skills Academies
to form and deliver collaborative solutions.
CONCLUSION
EU Skills welcomes the opportunity to respond
to this inquiry. We hope that the comments made in this response
will help the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee
in its deliberations.
January 2009
24 The PSSSG (Power Sector Skills strategy Group) and
WISSG (Water Industry Skills Strategy Group) are industry-led
groups consisting of senior members of companies from the power
and water industries, facilitated by EU Skills. Back
25
House of Commons Business and Enterprise Committee (December 2008)
Energy policy: future challenges-First Report of Session 2008-09,
paragraph 26. Back
26
UKCES (October 2008) Simplification of Skills In England. Back
27
EU Skills (2006) Sector Skills Agreement Stage 1. Back
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