Students will be able to learn how to install, commission and maintain energy efficient homes in dedicated training suites with model houses equipped with solar panels and heat pumps

Waltham Forest College has won government funding for new green and digital skills training facilities.

The Forest Road college is part of a consortium of London colleges that successfully bid for £6.5million from the government’s Local Skills Improvement Fund.

The investment will see the college benefit from a new training centre, while Waltham Forest Adult Education Centre will boast a virtual reality suite.

The new green and digital skills training facilities will be equipped with “houses-in-a-box” that include heat pumps and solar panels, which will allow learners to practise installation, commissioning and maintenance.

£3.6m from the funding will be injected into delivering the new green skills training across the 24 further education providers who are part of the consortium. Approximately £1.5m will be put towards installing a digital network that will connect up to 30 training sites across London, including Waltham Forest College. The network, which will be operational by September, will allow specialist teaching on one site to be broadcast across to different colleges.

Hassan Rizvi, deputy principal of Waltham Forest College, said: “We are proud to be working collaboratively with other colleges to meet employer needs for Green Skills across London. We continue to develop exciting new courses which will be taught in state-of-the-art facilities, enabling our learners to secure jobs in the green and digital sectors.”

The funding comes as London’s green economy was recently valued at £48 billion, making up approximately 5% of the workforce, while around one in five jobs in London are in the digital sector.

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