The Federation issued its warning following the release of statistics from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). As of late April, almost 19,000 Green Deal assessments have been carried out, but there are only 942 approved Green Deal installer companies to carry out the work. This is nowhere near enough to deliver energy efficiency improvements to Britain’s 26 million existing homes by 2050.
“There are more than 240,000 companies in the construction industry that employ fewer than 14 people” said Brian Berry, the Chief Executive of the FMB. “These companies are often best placed to carry out Green Deal work, but because it is difficult to access the market, they are reluctant to train the number of approved installers needed to retrofit Britain’s building stock.”
In a bid to help address the problem, the Federation has launched its ‘Strategy for the Low Carbon Building and Refurbishment Market’ (Download, PDF 513 KB) in order to help its members to engage with and participate in this market.
“Our new strategy will help increase opportunities for SMEs in the low-carbon refurbishment market” Brian Berry added. “Today’s statistics from DECC show our strategy is well timed. The Green Deal has now been open for business for almost four months and demand for work under the initiative appears to be growing, but it still feels like a missed opportunity to the majority of SMEs in the industry who haven’t seen any sign of transformation in the energy-efficiency market. As part of our strategy, the FMB will not only continue to call for the incentives needed to create consumer demand for energy-efficiency work, but will also ensure that FMB members have timely access to relevant high-quality training and certification services to enable them to develop their businesses to be able to respond to low-carbon work opportunities.”
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