This consultation closed 16th October 2026.

Overview

Occupational standards have played an important role in improving quality and matching training to employers’ needs. However, advances in technology and artificial intelligence, changing workforce demographics, evolving employer needs, and regional economic priorities are creating new demands on the skills system.

Through its Skills for Work programme, Skills England is considering how occupational standards and the training they underpin can better support growth, employers, places and young people.

Stakeholders are invited to consider the following:

• how well do occupational standards describe what’s needed for skilled work?
• how can they better support young people into jobs?
• do current occupational standards reflect what employers need?
• where should we simplify without compromising quality?
• how do we reflect what’s needed locally and regionally?
• how do we keep pace with future labour market trends, including artificial intelligence?

Read more about the consultation here. 

REA Response and Stakeholder Engagement:

On 16th October the REA responded to Skills England’s (SE’s) Skills for Work survey.  The survey is part of SE’s programme to consider how occupational standards and the training they underpin can better support growth, employers, places and young people.  SE aims to make recommendations ‘informed by evidence, practical experience and a broad range of perspectives from across the skills system’.

REA’s response is here and our included skills analysis record is available here.

Examples of our points are that: there are severe difficulties recruiting or retaining people for lower supervisory jobs and skilled occupations in the solar, decentralised energy, energy demand, green gas, biomass, energy from waste, electric vehicle, renewable transport fuel, innov8, organics and landfill gas sectors; in the clean energy and organics recycling sectors, identifying and communicating career progression pathways would reduce recruitment and retention difficulties; it should be checked how occupational standards link with the qualifications/standards in government-approved technical competence schemes for managers of permit-scale waste management facilities; and it could be beneficial if competence in reporting for Digital Waste Tracking purposes were to be included in one or more occupational standards for the waste management sector.

When announcing its survey, SE also invited stakeholders to take part in further events they will plan, share feedback by emailing [email protected] and invite SE (using the same email address) to stakeholders’ events so they can talk to stakeholders directly.