Energy Giants hires skilled trades as retrofit funding moves to local authorities

Clitheroe based Energy Giants is recruiting for nine roles and building its own teams of skilled trades, as funding for home energy upgrades moves from energy companies to local authorities.

The firm is hiring internal wall insulation installers, plasterers, pitched roofers, and painters and decorators, and is taking on an apprentice plasterer. A further three roles are run from its head office in Clitheroe: a solar PV sales manager, an assistant solar designer and sales administrator, and a qualified electrician.

The new teams will deliver retrofit programmes for local authorities UK wide and across the major conurbations, with work mobilising from late 2026.

The recruitment follows two approvals in September. Energy Giants was certified to PAS 2030:2023 for flat roof insulation and accredited under the Bluedrop Insurance Backed Guarantee Facility. It is also MCS certified for solar PV and battery storage, assessed by Simply Certification, a UKAS accredited body, and is TrustMark registered.

Managing director Miles Sharples has spent close to two decades in renewables. In that time Sharples and his team have led hundreds of retrofit projects in occupied homes and upskilled hundreds of workers.

He said: "We have built Energy Giants for the way this work is funded now. Housing associations and local authorities are the customer. I would rather build the teams and lead from the front than wait to see how it settles."

For more than a decade, most home retrofit has been paid for through the Energy Company Obligation, known as ECO. Since 2013, the larger energy suppliers have been legally obliged to fund insulation and heating upgrades for low income and fuel poor households.

The current version, ECO4, runs until 31 December 2026. In its place is the government's Warm Homes Plan, worth £15 billion over five years. Support for low income households now reaches homes through councils, including the £500 million Warm Homes: Local Grant.

For installers, that means a different customer.

Miles said: "For years the customer was, in effect, an energy company with a target to hit. Now it is a council or a housing association with tenants to answer to. They will still be that tenant's landlord in ten years, so they want to see the standards, the paperwork and the people before you get anywhere near a front door. I think that is right."

Miles has already worked that way. He led a cavity wall insulation programme for Kirklees Council, where failed insulation was removed from homes, the walls dried and treated for damp, and the cavities refilled.

He said: "People talk about energy efficiency as if it is a number on a certificate. In the house it is a bedroom wall without mould on it. It is somebody who keeps the heating on because the warmth now stays in. That is wellbeing, and it is why this work matters."

The trades work in sequence in occupied homes. Insulation installers fix and seal the boards, plasterers finish over them and decorators hand the room back. Roofers alter eaves and verges where the insulation needs it. Electricians wire, commission and certify solar and battery systems.

Trades on the programmes need experience of the PAS 2030 and PAS 2035 retrofit standards, and hold enhanced DBS checks for work in occupied homes.

Miles said: "The accreditations get you through the door. After that clients want to know who is actually turning up at the tenant's house. You cannot buy a good retrofit installer off the shelf. You take a good plasterer or a good roofer and you teach them the standards and how to work in a house with a family in it.

"I have spent years doing that and it is the part of the job I am proudest of. An apprentice who starts by mixing and cleaning up can have a trade for life."

Energy Giants installs solar PV, battery storage, EV charging and insulation for homes and businesses, and delivers retrofit programmes for housing associations and local authorities. The company is based at The Former Ambulance Station, Princess Avenue, Clitheroe.