10035106EV at BTCClosedCollaborative R&DISCFThe aim of Bridgwater & Taunton College's (BTC) project is to train all Automotive Teaching staff members for the Institute of Motor Industry (IMI) Level 3 Award in Electric/Hybrid Vehicle System Repair and Replacement qualifications in order to give BTC the ability and capacity to integrate the IMI Level 2 Award in Preparing Heavy Electric/Hybrid Vehicles for Repair into all its automotive apprenticeships and programmes. This aim is partnered with the goal of increasing the diversity of professionals within the industry through outreach activities, specifically, for women. The initial rollout of the additional Electric Vehicle (EV) qualification will be to full-time (FT) and work-based learning (WBL) students on the programme to reduce the skills gap of those entering the automotive sector. The first cohort to receive these qualifications will be Level 3 learners in the summer term of 2023 (April/May), with the aim of incentivising those on the Level 1 and 2 programmes to progress through the automotive programmes to a higher level, thus improving retention. The second stage of this project will be to offer this 2-day qualification (Day 1 Theory, Day 2 Practical) commercially to the local and regional automotive industry in order to lead in upskilling the region to respond to the interest and uptake in EVs nationally, and specifically in the South West, where there is currently registered the highest number of EVs per 100,000 people in the nation. Alongside both of these project stages, BTC's automotive department will engage in outreach activities to promote the new element of the automotive programmes and generate interest to bring a more diverse cohort of learners into the programme, and then the industry. This project is innovative as no other training provider is known nationally to be carrying out this programme. BTC's rollout of this programme could be a trailblazer in its approach to addressing the EV skills shortage and looks forward to working closely with the PEMD Skills hub and other training providers to share best practices and improve outcomes.