In her opening remarks, Baroness Parminter highlighted the House of Lords recent review of the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) which found that a lack of heat pump installers remains a key barrier to the uptake of low carbon technology in the UK.

Referring to the launch of Aspire as a ‘positive step forward’ in tackling this issue, the Baroness also voiced that she was ‘delighted’ to support Vaillant’s work in this area, including Vaillant’s recent survey of installers to better understand their attitudes on upskilling to fit heat pumps.

Mark Wilkins, Vaillant’s technologies, and training director presented the key findings of the recent installer survey.

Vaillant surveyed more than 1,100 installers to get a deeper understanding of their barriers and motivators behind reskilling to install heat pumps.

Encouragingly, the majority of those who took part in the survey recognised a need to train, with 87% of installers answering ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ when asked if they were interested in undertaking air source heat pump training in the next 12 months.

The top three motivators of these installers looking to undertake heat pump training were future-proofing their business or career development, the benefits for the environment by supporting the net zero agenda, and personal financial benefits from installing a diverse range of heating technologies.

Out of the 994 installers surveyed by Vaillant who expressed an interest in upskilling, 55% felt that they would prefer ‘entirely in-person training’ when it came to air source heat pumps, whilst ‘a combination of in-person and online’ was preferred by 40% of those surveyed.