Estate Agent Today

Nearly 1,000 people who forked out their savings to be trained as Domestic Energy Assessors have been told they will not get a penny back after their training provider collapsed owing £4m.

Yet, as the news emerged, Communities and Local Government are hard at work plugging new careers in an industry called Home Energy Advisers (HEA).

Last Thursday, CLG sent out an email explaining the qualifications required. Already, training providers are actively targeting possible recruits.

Meanwhile, administrators for Best Colleges, in Birmingham and Reading, which went into administration last year, have been told refunds are most unlikely.

When the firm crashed, 974 recruits had paid up to £6,500 each to enroll for training as DEAs. Most were half way through courses.

In total, the students had paid £3,784,000 – even more than the £2m owed by Property Professionals to its recruits.

A report drawn up by Best Colleges administrators FA Simms and Partners said: “At this stage the Joint Administrators do not consider that there will be sufficient funds available with which to make a distribution to creditors.”

Completely separately, an email has been sent out en masse by a firm called Commercial Energy Assessors, to DEAs about the new HEA qualification.

The email says the new career is for Housing Energy Advisers (not Home Energy Advisers) and the email offers DEAs a level three diploma qualification. It says that qualified DEAs are let off having to do levels one and two.

It is not known how much the qualification would cost for those who had to do all three levels.

One DEA, Paul Walker, of the Institute of Domestic Energy Assessors, said: “Where and when will this stop? This training and qualification is worthless, and yet this particular course will cost DEAs £950 plus VAT.

“The Government has handed training providers a licence to print money.”