London sets up taskforce to address green skills gap
Source: Smart Cities World | By
City of London Corporation’s Skills for a Sustainable Skyline Taskforce will address skills gaps around building, retrofitting and maintenance of low carbon commercial buildings, supporting the aims of the Climate Action Strategy.
The City of London Corporation is launching a Skills for a Sustainable Skyline Taskforce to identify and address skills gaps around the construction, retrofit and maintenance of low carbon commercial buildings in Central London boroughs.
The taskforce will support the aims of the City Corporation’s Climate Action Strategy which commits to net zero carbon emissions across the City Corporation’s operations by 2027, and to support the achievement of net zero for the Square Mile by 2040.
Skills shortages
The taskforce will run for three years and will be chaired by deputy chairman of the City Corporation’s Policy and Resources Committee, Chris Hayward, City Property Association (CPA)’s chief executive, while Charles Begley, will serve as deputy chair. The taskforce’s Strategy Steering Board will be responsible for defining the overall strategy, influence and outputs and will be made up of industry leaders.
The taskforce comes in response to the findings of a poll of 100 industry professionals which revealed:
91 per cent said the commercial built environment sector lacks sufficient skilled workers to achieve net zero targets
80 per cent believed a lack of workplace diversity is an issue for the sector
87 per cent agreed there is a growing “green skills” gap in the commercial built environment.
It will bring together leaders from across the commercial built environment, including representation from local authorities, central government, employers, industry bodies and training providers.
“Central London urgently needs a larger skilled workforce to decarbonise its commercial buildings and this taskforce will lead the way in finding solutions to fill this skills gap,” said Hayward.
“We must work at pace to attract new talent as well as upskill and reskill the existing workforce as we look to meet our ambitious climate action goals.
“The areas which we have identified as having the greatest scope for improvement are the full development lifecycle, including design, retrofit, construction and maintenance.”
Begley noted that advances in technology and innovation are opening up a wider range of job opportunities within the built environment, with the drive towards greater sustainability being embedded from “financing to fit-out”, as well as the long term operation of a building.
He added: “However, there is evidence of a growing skills gap which threatens…