The British Gas Green Skills Training Centre in Tredegar, South Wales, has been officially opened by Carwyn Jones, First Minister of Wales.

The centre is a first for the UK and aims to train over 1,300 people each year, including local long term unemployed people. The Heads of the Valleys has the lowest employment rate in Wales – 64 per cent, compared with 71 per cent nationally.

Developed in partnership with the Welsh Assembly Government, JobMatch, Jobcentre Plus, SummitSkills and Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, the state-of-the-art centre will offer training and qualifications for would-be energy efficiency assessors, installers of new green technologies as well as upskilling opportunities for British Gas engineers.

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Mr Jones, First Minister, said: "The British Gas Green Skills Training Centre presents an excellent opportunity to support Wales’ green energy potential. Earlier this year we launched our Green Jobs Strategy for Wales, which aims to develop skilled jobs for local people and the centre will play an important role in key part helping to achieve this."

The Centre aims to provide the best possible hands-on practice and experience which reflect the challenges trainees could encounter as qualified energy assessors or installation engineers.

Among the rapidly growing green technologies on show at the Centre are smart gas and electricity meters, Solar Thermal panels, Solar Photovoltaic panels which generate hot water and electricity, state-of-the-art combined heat and power boilers which use waste heat to generate power, and ground-source heat pumps.

(CD/GK)