Closing the Skills Gap: Why the West Midlands Needs a New Generation of HVAC Engineers
25 Aug 2026
Published in: Member News
Stuart Smith, Managing Director at Lord Combustion Services, looks at how to close the current HVAC skills gap in the West Midlands.
The West Midlands has long been a region built on trades that keep the country running.
From manufacturing to engineering, this part of the world has never been short of skill or graft.
Yet in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) sector, we’re facing a challenge that should concern every home and business owner in the region; we don’t have enough people coming through to replace the engineers who will retire over the next decade.
This is not a niche problem; every home needs heating and hot water, and every business needs reliable, efficient systems to keep operating.
Demand across our industry continues to grow year on year, and as newer technologies such as air source heat pumps become a more familiar part of the mix, the range of skills our engineers need is growing with it.
The question is whether the West Midlands will have enough people ready to meet that demand, or whether we’ll be left playing catch up.
Part of the issue is perception; careers in HVAC had previously been seen as a fallback rather than a leading choice, but that’s always surprised me because it’s a sector that offers genuine stability - the kind that’s increasingly hard to find elsewhere.
Heating and hot water systems need maintaining and installing whatever the state of the wider economy, so career built here is on solid ground.
Heating engineers build real, transferable skills; an engineer trained in our sector understands electrics, boilers, plumbing, diagnostics and increasingly complex renewable technology.
These are skills that open doors, whether someone wants to specialise, move into management or eventually run their own business.
We also see strong opportunities for progression; many of our own senior engineers started as apprentices or came to us from other trades entirely, bringing transferable experience that we were able to build on.
This is why we’ve invested heavily into apprenticeship schemes, which are particularly successful with mature trainees looking for a career change.
We believe the sector needs to widen its net further still, reaching people who may never have considered HVAC as an option but who have the aptitude and appetite to learn.
Business leaders across the region have a role to play too. We need to work more closely with schools, colleges and job centres to make the opportunities and advantages in our sector more visible.
The West Midlands has always found a way to adapt and lead when it comes to skilled trades, and HVAC should be no different.
If we act now, investing in training and changing perceptions of what a career in this sector looks like, we can close the skills gap before it becomes a bigger issue, and give the next generation a career they can genuinely build a future on.
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