The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

• Completed
• Current / Planned

The same key stakeholders who were consulted with on the Skills and Capability Strategy will be used for peer review as the wider People Strategy evolves.

People Strategy Working Group

In an advisory capacity to determine the rationale and initial scope of the strategy there is a working group consisting of:

• NDA HR Director and Business Partners
• SLC HR Directors or senior SLC HR deputies
• Site Facing NDA Assurance Directors
• NDA specialist functions (e.g. Skills and Agency Supplied Worker areas) and
• the National Skills Academy for Nuclear CEO.

A Project Board, Delivery Team and Advisory Group are now in place to take the work forward.

Skills Strategy Development 2008

By working with partners across the industry we developed our Skills Strategy. The events below include outputs related to engagement activities that contributed to the development of the strategy for skills and capability.

• Completed
• Current / Planned

The People Strategy will be developed and consulted on through the

• People Strategy Programme Board (all SLCs)
• Advisory Group (stakeholders e.g. National Skills Academy for Nuclear, Cogent SSC, Trade Union representation etc.)
• the National Stakeholder Group.

• Completed
• Current / Planned
• Issues

How to comment

If you have any issues or concerns that you would like to raise related to skills, please email foi@nda.gov.uk

Previous stakeholder comments

Stakeholders at the National Stakeholder Group in May 2008 raised the following issues/concerns related to skills:

Loss and Retention of Skills

• We need to get on with work while we have the skilled staff in place.
• "Mothballing" hurts everybody: moral/social/economic/safety.
• Need message to Government to make funding a priority under invest to save
• What is NDA doing to ensure staff morale is high and new locally knowledgeable staff are recruited to sites being ‘mothballed’?
• Deferral will mean loss of skills.
• How do we know what skills are needed in medium/long term?
• Loss of skills during decommissioning hiatus(es)
• How can Site Licence Companies retain/encourage staff required to deliver NDA programme e.g. skills leaving nuclear industry to higher paid jobs in other industries?
• Loss of skills due to delays with defuelling/decommissioning
• Competition for scarce skills with new build coming forward
• Nominate LEAD SITE (Bradwell) before existing SKILLS are lost
• Retaining present skills whilst re-training/training for future
• How to manage skills need for decommissioning, New Build, London Olympics, etc?
• Shortage of skills if new build happens
• Potential loss of skills unless decommissioning and new build properly aligned
• Interim measures need to be put in place to address potential skill loss due to funding and other associated issues Is the skills issue a myth, given that most skills are transferable from other industries?

Best Practice Transfer

• Development/sharing of best practice
• Do we need a more integrated strategy to develop nuclear skills – with all the agencies and stakeholder groups working together rather than competing for the same (scarce) resources
• Maximising local skills potential/employment opportunities
• Developing existing staff skills
• Opportunity transfer/deployment of people/skills around NDA sites
• Incentivising skills development in SLCs Consider training for the broad ‘nuclear’ industry not just decommissioning. Many of the issues are common.

Attraction of Skills and Demographics

• NSG so NDA sponsoring production of school material will this be bilingual
• Would NDA consider sponsoring: - summer jobs for students, development of young people as budding entrepreneurs, development of new products
• Training young people
• Education and skills development within the community
• What proportion of the local population’s working at site are permanent/temporary? How strong is the commitment to skills enhancement?
• We need to bring back the apprentice schemes Tackle the age profile problems in the nuclear industry. New blood required.

Funding

• Does that mean you will fund learning networks?
• The only work Magnox South can do is to self perform due to funding restrictions.
• Money available to retrain staff, especially for staff at sites whose funding has been cut.

Resource Planning

• Formal recognition of transport skills (through NSA(N)?
• Regulatory resource and skills can only be planned if needs are understood and clear
• Review of ‘skills needs’ needed – to include non-NDA needs
• Is the responsibility for succession planning with NDA or site? Licence companies? It this not government business practice?
• Contingency planning Long term skills development needs to include all skill sets e.g. project controls, etc.