Highland UK Shared Prosperity Fund
People and Skills - Skills Challenge Fund
The Highland Council, with support from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, is inviting Highland businesses to apply for funding to support the costs of green skills training for their workforce.
The fund opened on 4 September 2023, with an online briefing session for interested businesses and organisations planned for Tuesday 19 September.
Applications must be submitted by 4 October 2023.
Skills proposals, through a Challenge Fund, are invited to provide training initiatives not currently provided or available in the Highland region. This has an aim of supporting and sustaining commercial organisations, with up to 50 employees, looking towards supporting green skills in their workforce.
Demand for greening organisations is driven by a range of factors, including public policies, targets and customer demand but is normally defined by three main trends:
- across occupations and industries, greening requires upgrading skills and adjusting qualification requirements
- new or emerging economic activities which create new or renewed occupations with related qualifications and skills profiles
- structural changes may create a requirement to realign sectors that will decline as a result of the greening of the economy leading to a need to retrain workers accordingly
In principle, there will be four types of jobs or activities which need to be recognised, with support being proposed towards those affected which include Green Jobs in Green Industries & Greening jobs in non-green industries.
The Challenge Fund has two aspects to it, skills and training infrastructure.
Skills
This will support Green Skills including technical and vocational qualifications at all levels up to SVQ 5 or beyond, comprising training for vocational licenses relevant to local area needs and high-value qualifications. The focus on skills will help to ensure we have the skilled workforce to support the Just Transition to a net-zero economy and climate resilience.
Subject to funding availability, a second phase of the Challenge Fund will be launched, providing training to other key sectors or activities.
Training Infrastructure
This will support investment in training facilities. This can be for expansion of existing or new facility investments to enable skill provisions to be provided that otherwise is not currently available in the Highlands. Any training infrastructure investment provided is conditional on skills training being planned and provided.
Examples of activities which we see as potentially being eligible would include, but is not exclusive to:
- electricians or roofers installing solar panels
- architects or professional's new techniques
- heating engineers or plumbers installing new formats of green heating
- motor mechanics moving into electric vehicles
- estates and land-based industries in peatland reclamation
- construction operatives moving into new insulation methods
- administrators needing environmental understanding of green skills to reduce carbon footprint
- diversifying skills (for example: hydrogen and carbon capture sectors may need enhanced project management, health and safety, or engineering skills typically found in oil and gas sector)