I may win this month\u2019s doom and gloom award for saying so, but I am concerned at how things are going to turn out over commercial Green Deal, given that there looks set to be a considerable shortfall in numbers of qualified GDNDEAs.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s DECC or the sector skills council Asset Skills which is responsible for this situation, but someone has made a real mess of things. It was DECC which in 2012 put up \u00a31 million to subsidise the training of 1,000 \u2018Go Early\u2019 GDAs, with Asset Skills tasked to get them through by the end of the year. It was obvious by early December last year that a large number of the DEAs signed up by Asset Skills for the subsidised (they paid 30% of the fee) GDA training, were not to make it for the end of December deadline, and West Country assessors\u2019 group DCHI pleaded for the deadline to be extended, at least to the end of January, and preferably to the end of March.<\/p>\n
How many DEAs were in training then has not been revealed, but probably about 800. If the deadline had been extended, we might have got all 800 qualified by the end of March. But it wasn\u2019t extended, and as of the end of March Asset Skills had only got around 600 qualified, meaning as many as 25% probably couldn\u2019t meet the deadline and didn\u2019t qualify, with the result that Asset Skills was left scratching around in April trying to put together another 200 DEAs, to replace those which were lost through what seems to me a short-sighted and frankly pretty dumb decision in December. And if that wasn\u2019t bad enough, they now decided to make the whole thing even less attractive by introducing tough terms requiring candidates to pay in full (\u00a31200) up front, and lose the subsidy if they don\u2019t qualify by the end of July. Smart move. You\u2019ve already put a lot of DEAs off the whole thing, so introduce swingeing terms and put the rest off.<\/p>\n
Even worse, they have applied this to the main cohort of commercial assessors, who have to pay \u00a31800 up front and risk losing \u00a31260 if they don\u2019t qualify by the end of July. How has this gone down? \u2018Lead balloon\u2019 is a phrase that springs to mind. The number being targeted was not revealed, but I suspect it was 200, and as a result of asking assessors to put up nearly \u00a32,000 and risk losing it the number actually recruited is probably about 80. Asset Skills is now talking about making up the numbers by recruiting \u2018new entrants\u2019, who will need to be trained as NDEAs and GDAs, though how they plan to recruit them is far from clear.<\/p>\n
All this is certainly not the fault of assessors, but sadly that doesn\u2019t mean we won\u2019t be on the receiving end as a result. Those of us who are commercial energy assessors and have been around in this business for a while will know that we have been here before. I became an assessor back in 2008, secure in the knowledge that the 2007 regs specified that no-one could do my job unless they spent time and money obtaining the qualification I had. But businesses lobbied government, claiming EPC prices would be high because there was a shortage of assessors. And what happened? In 2009? Government introduced regs allowing unqualified \u2018data gatherers\u2019. What DCLG meant was that Level 3 assessors could assist on Level 4 or Level 5 jobs if supervised \u2013 but it didn\u2019t say that for another year. During that year numerous outfits had set up providing useless, inaccurate EPCs provided by completely unqualified people, at fees no assessor could match. As a result fees fell off a cliff in 2009 and haven\u2019t recovered yet.<\/p>\n