Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many people were employed in the solar energy sector in (a) Barnsley East constituency, (b) Barnsley, (c) Yorkshire and the Humber, (d) England and (e) the UK in the latest period for which figures are available.

In 2014, 9,500 FTE employees were estimated to have been directly employed in the solar photovoltaic sector in the UK, including 9,000 in England. BEIS does not hold data that is broken down by region, and data for the solar thermal sector is not available.

Further detail can be viewed online through the UK Environmental Accounts: UK Solar Photovoltaic Sector 2014, (part of Low carbon and renewable energy economy, final estimates: 2014) at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/articles/ukenvironmentalaccountsuksolarphotovoltaicsector2014/uksolarphotovoltaicsector2014

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/datasets/lcreestimatesdataset.