M&E skills council to go ahead

SummitSkills is the name chosen for a new sector skills council covering the mechanical and electrical services sector which has just been given the official go-ahead.

The body will provide an overall strategic authority covering training and skills in the electrotechnical, heating and ventilating, air conditioning, refrigeration and plumbing sectors.

Official approval for progressing SummitSkills to a development stage was given by the Sector Skills Development Agency at the end of November.

Robert Burgon, chief executive of the British Plumbing Employers Council, said the aim now is for the new strategic authority to be up and running by 1 April 2003.

It will cover over 51,000 businesses and an estimated 558,000 individuals in a combined sector responsible for an annual turnover of £19.3bn, or 2% to 3% of the UK's gross domestic product.

The skills council has been formed by five separate employer organisations with the support of the Amicus union. It brings together three previous National Training Organisations in a single, more powerful and better financed body.

Key functions will be to anticipate future labour demands, to set training standards and to ensure that there are sufficient high quality recruits so that the skill shortages that have bedevilled the economic performance of the sector are not repeated.