UK skills group seeks partners

The shadow board for the National College for Wind Energy is looking for skills providers who can offer specialist facilities and qualifications to help develop a national partnership.

The Humber Local Enterprise Partnership is acting as facilitator to get organisations on board.

The Humber was identified as the best location for the UK’s first national college for wind energy because it has the pre-existing infrastructure with lots of offshore wind farms, a deep water estuary, large ports and there has already been a lot of investment in the industry.

Last year the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills announced it was setting up seven national colleges that would offer specialist training in wind energy. The government department is expected to announce the timeframe for the development of the colleges by the end of 2015.

Shadow Board Chair, Maf Smith said: “The proposed National College for Wind Energy will be established on a hub and spoke model with the “hub”, i.e. the headquarters, being based in the Humber region.

“The “spokes” will be skills providers located throughout the UK, with the aim of addressing skills challenges and amalgamating the expertise and facilities of existing providers to provide best value for the investment being made.”

The college wants to map out current provision of skills and facilities against what the industry needs.

Organisations that want to submit an initial expression of interest need to give the college details of their location, details of relevant skills for the wind and marine energy sector supply chain and an overview of their specialist facilities.

Organisations must submit their expression of interest by 5pm on Monday November 9. Details can be found at this link.

For an informal discussion should Teresa Chalmers, acting on behalf of the National College’s Shadow Board on nationalcollege@humberlep.org providing full contact details.

 Image: Humber Gateway (Eon)