Why have the colleges failed after 4 years of promises for Renewable Education

Department for the Economy (Northern Ireland) did not have the information requested.

Dear Department for the Economy (Northern Ireland),

I am writing to request the follow information and explanation of the failure to provide renewable training in NI?

1. Why is the Department after 4 years sole focus is on High Carbon Training in our colleges? We in the plumbing Industry had to continue working and would have been the ideal period with empty workshops to refit with the required equipment to deliver Renewables, what's the excuse?

2. Why is NI pushing Hydrogen Strategy when the rest of Europe is going Heat Pumps?

3. We have private providers here who have stood ready to deliver Renewable Courses but for some perverse reason the Department of the Economy have ignored this resource and instead repeatedly failed to have colleges provide the courses? Colleges can place purchase orders with private providers where they are incapable of organising and delivering these courses, why have they not done so?

4.Can you explain why the department always excludes the local plumbing trade body in consolations as after all they will expect our members to install this Air Source/Ground Source Heat Pump or Hydrogen strategy?

5. In March DFE announced £178 million for bounce back, how much of this money has been squandered in funding colleges who are still failing to deliver training requested four years ago but the colleges have repeatedly failed to deliver? Covo19 is not a viable excuse for the failure.

6. As previously suggested strip the Colleges of the funding and provide buy local cards to employers and support local private businesses in the total absence of the Colleges to organise anything? Looking on SERC website today29/6/2022 again there is a new Scam page claiming courses September 2022 to June 2023 but again, no dates, no contacts to book a course so this is done to placate the Department of the Economy and keep stalling. This has been the strategy every time questions are asked. The colleges have done this for the last 4 years, time for the responsible persons holding back NI to be fired.

7. Can DFE respond with a ROCK SOLID date, no changes, no slipping dates, no excuses if any Heat Pump courses will run in September in any college in NI? Its only 4 years late.

The failure of DFE and their Colleges is pushing Northern Ireland further back into the dark ages, Ireland, GB and Europe are at least 15-20 ahead of NI due to the department failings.

I would note that having asked these questions privately by email I have received no response and have only the recourse to do and FOI and write to the minster.

Yours faithfully,

Alasdair King

DfE FOI, Department for the Economy (Northern Ireland)

1 Attachment

Good Afternoon Mr King,

 

Thank you for your request for information, please see attached
acknowledgement.

 

Kind Regards

 

DfE FOI Team

DfE FOI, Department for the Economy (Northern Ireland)

Dear Mr King

Thank you for your request for information. Following a search for information in relation to the questions below, I have established that no recorded information is held by the Department.

You may wish to look at the ICO guidance below in relation to how to frame a request for information that would assist me in searching for recorded information.

https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/off...

I hope you find this guidance useful.

Many thanks

Karen Davidson
Information Management Unit

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