 Felly, hi, hynny. Freddie Saynes yn dechrau i leolodol fflygon ond gymrydau ten raining of the net zero energy and transport committee for 2022, which we are conducting in hybrid format this week. We have apologies from Natalie Dawn MSP. At agenda item one, we have consideration of whether to take agenda items three, four and five in private. Item three is consideration of evidence hearing today in relation to skills and training. Item four is consideration of new evidence the committee has received in relation Utilisation and Storage. Item 5 is consideration of the P&O Ferries Limited announcement last week in relation to staffing and services and the correspondence that the committee sent to P&O last week. Do we agree to take these items in private? That is agreed. Thank you very much. Items 3, 4 and 5 will be taken in private. Our next agenda item is an evidence session in relation to our inquiry into the role of local government and its cross-sectoral partners in financing and delivering in net zero Scotland. That inquiry is also considering what role the Scottish Government and its agencies can play in supporting local government to deliver net zero targets. In January, we heard from local authorities, public sector leaders, community development bodies, the business sector and major private financiers. For the next part of this inquiry, we are looking at some of the key themes that emerged from the first half of the inquiry. One of those themes is the role of the planning system in achieving net zero. To discuss the theme, I am pleased to welcome our panel this morning. That is Robbie Calvert, Policy, Practice and Research Officer, Royal Town Planning Institute, Jane Tennant Chair, Scottish Young Planners Network, RTPI and Pam Ewing Chair, Heads of Planning Scotland. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for being with the committee this morning. We have allocated around 75 minutes for this session and we will move straight on to questions. The first question I have looks at the RTPI research, which highlights that nearly a third of planning department staff have been cut since 2019. That was part of your submission to the committee. The committee has heard the practical difficulties arising from this shortage of planning officers. We heard from Scottish Renewables that the timeframe for completing a decision around planning can be up to seven years, which obviously has a significant impact on projects being developed. RTPI has estimated that over the next 10 to 15 years, the planning sector will have demand for an additional 680 to 730 entrants into the sector. My first question is, is it realistic to expect that this figure will be achieved and what needs to happen for this target to be achieved? Perhaps with that question, I can kick off with Robbie to be followed by Pam and then Jane. Robbie, over to you, please. Thanks, convener. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for having me here today. When we're thinking about this pipeline of planners that you just raised there, we have 680 additional entrants that we need over the next 15 years. Whether we achieve that or not depends very much on processes and things that we've put into place now. As part of that research, it identified about 100 graduates a year in terms of planning graduates coming out of our schools in Scotland. That has very much remained quite a steady state output over the years. We need to think creatively about how we bring more entrants into the sector. Compared with other sectors, 680 additional people into the sector is not actually that significant. However, as you said in regard to the Scottish Renewables and many other private sector organisations, all flag planning is one of the crucial means by which we can deliver our net zero ambitions. I was a little disappointed when I responded to the on-shore wind policy statement. In regard to the climate emergency skills action plan, both those documents identify and flag the green jobs that we need going forward. We are very much based on the manufacturing side of, for example, on-shore wind turbines and issues around that. Although they briefly touch on the fact that we are going to need more of those professional services, including planners, there is no real means to how we are going to achieve that or not. Noting things such as the national transition training programme or potential funding through the energy skills partnerships, we draw on some of those schemes to bring some much-needed funding for planning. We need to explore the establishment of an apprenticeship scheme that we have established quite successfully in England. We are exploring that in Scotland and we are at the early stages of doing that. We have been jointly commissioned alongside Heads Planning Scotland in the improvement service to undertake some research on the matter, which is called the future planners project. We are looking at how to increase the pipeline of planners, looking at things such as awareness of planning as a career and scopes into the profession and the effectiveness and the inclusion of a potential apprenticeship scheme. That is due for publication in May and June. One other thing that I want to touch on quickly is that it is important to discuss in the research by partners in planning and Skills Development Scotland. Not only did it identify the issue of additional planners coming in, but there is also a succession planning issue that we have in planning authorities. A lot of planning authorities have an ageing workforce, so we are just 9 per cent of the workforce under 30 and then 35 per cent over 50. We really need to consider in the short and medium term how we succession plan for this. That is particularly important when we think about net zero because there is a really high demand for this kind of middle-tier planner, so that is team leaders and senior planners. Those are the kind of planners that are going to be dealing with major renewable infrastructure projects. Those need landscape capacity studies, zones of visual influence, landscape and visual impact assessment. There is a range of relatively unique considerations in terms of development for planners, ecological impacts, construction on peatlands, for example, and aviation concerns. Those often require more senior planners within the planning authorities to deal with those applications. In the short term, we really need to plan effectively for the large-scale retirement that we will see over the next five to ten years. I will stop there. Thank you very much, Robbie. You mentioned a couple of points that I know my colleagues want to follow up on, for example on predyships. Before I hand over to other panel members, the 6.80.7.30 target for new entrants, does that take into account attrition levels? You mentioned that a number of planning officers are perhaps reaching the end of their careers and there has been significant attrition levels. Does that overall target take into account the expected attrition rate over the next ten years? Yes, it does. One thing that target potentially does not take into account of, and it is something that I am sure we will get on to later on, is additional work coming online. That is in consideration to, for example, the draft MPF4. There are many additional assessments, new and expanded policies, a lot of additional and unfunded duties coming through in the planning act. That will increase the burden on planning authorities and will require more planners to undertake this increased workload. It could be that that figure is, in fact, an underestimate. Okay, that is great. I am sure that we will look at that again. Thank you, Robbie. We will come back to you later. I wonder if I could pose the same question to Pam and Jane and feel free to pick up any of the issues that have been discussed so far. Thank you, convener, and good morning. Yes, in respect of resources, planning and planners have a really important role to help to achieve net zero across Scotland. However, there is that need to properly resource and also to skill. It is not just about having the numbers, it is making sure that we have the skill sets in the right places. Robbie has touched on the futures planners project, which we are very much on-going currently. We are working with Tom Arthur MSP and Minister on that project. That is going very well. That is looking at recruitment retention and promotion of planning as a career. One of the challenges that we have is that many people are not aware of planning as a career. What is fundamental is that planning is part of the construction sector in Scotland, but it is also part of green recovery. Therefore, it sits fair and square in right in the heart of the agenda. We need to ensure that we have not just got the number of people in the resources to take forward the planning applications, to take forward the intentions of the national planning framework for policies that are coming, but to have that skill set there. One of the things that I would touch on, and I am sure that we will touch on the draft national planning framework for as we go through this session, but heads of planning were very disappointed that there was not a delivery plan alongside NPF4 for consultation and comment. We do expect and indeed hope that, when that comes forward, that will look at the issue that is being raised about proper resourcing of planning authorities to ensure that the resources are there to deliver on the national policy intentions so that they are actually deliverable. Thank you very much, Pam. Again, you have picked up a number of points that we will explore in a bit more detail. Jane, I wonder if I could turn to you in terms of your position as chair at the Scottish Young Planners Network. Is planning seen and obviously you can feel free to address whatever issues you want, but an additional question is planning, do you see a lot of interest from young people in choosing planning as a career or is it a bit of a challenge to recruit younger people into the sector? Thanks, convener. I would say that awareness is definitely a key matter. While I am a young planner, I did not find out about planning until I went back to unit 28 and it was not probably until I started, until I properly formed the concept of it being a career and something that I could work with for the rest of my life. I have found that there has been an issue in terms of the careers advice out there, because even people who have come up behind me or are younger than me have also been on and done a geography degree, which makes sense, but they are not finding planning until they are part of the way into that degree, and there are undergraduate planning degrees. There is definitely an awareness issue there. I recently have been out to a geography society, which is part of one of the universities, and we gathered—there were quite a lot of people who attended our session for the RTPI. They were both politics and geography students, so I think that there is the awareness issue, and then following through from that, as well as universities have a make-up of international and UK students. Keeping people in the country that have been skilled up here is a bit of an issue, and I know a lot of the people that I have shared my master's degree with have gone back to their respective countries, so there is another issue potentially in there, in just getting that head count and attracting people to stay in Scotland and work in the planning system here. Thanks very much, Jane. Just one follow-up question in terms of attrition rates among, I guess, the younger planners network. Ones, are you seeing people leaving the sector, or is it fairly stable? I think that it's been fairly stable. It depends. We've got to remember, as well, a lot of us come out of university and go into the private sector, and some of us are in the public sector. Generally, I think that planners do tend to look between them at times, especially in the early careers. Perhaps some people have went to the private sector, and perhaps some people have maybe went into more economic development, or attacked slightly related things, but I have not seen that myself, not attrition within the young people. I think that our biggest problem is losing knowledge and understanding of the major applications. Okay, thank you very much. I've got a very brief follow-up for Robbie and Pam. Hiring planning officers is primarily a decision for individual local authorities, but looking at the challenges that you've outlined in terms of budget, resource and expertise, would there be any merit in looking to pool planning resources across more than one local authority area so that you can maximise budget, resources and expertise? Robbie and Pam, please. Pooling budgets in terms of hiring staff, I'm not sure. There's definitely a point there on regional planning, and we'll probably come on to that in a bit. A piece of work that we did, just thinking about resources more broadly, starting with the question of how much money does planning need to be effectively resourced? Ahead of the budget last year, we did a piece of work on that, and we established that, over the parliamentary term, we needed £86 million into the system for planning to undertake its statutory duties. A lot of that funding gap will be met through increase of fees, so there is the regulations to the fee increase that have been lodged. Of course, that is much welcomed, and it will bring much-needed resources into the system. However, our work did not establish that that would be enough for the planning system to undertake its statutory functions. I think that we need to be quite creative about how we bring funding into the system, so obviously with local government block grant arrangements, it's not for Parliament to say how local authorities spend their money necessarily, but there's other means by which we could bring other funding streams into the planning system. Our work identified the need for £24 million of that £86 million figure to come through such funding streams. That would fund, for example, the Office of the National Planning Improvement Coordinator, local place plans funding, which I'm sure we can come on to as well, an apprenticeship scheme, and then some of the additional duties coming through in the planning act 2019. For example, funding for that apprenticeship scheme would benefit all planning authorities undoubtably. I don't know if Pam wants to come in on that. Thank you, convener. Yes, just a few things. Through Heads of Planning Scotland, we do do a lot of sharing knowledge and sharing expertise. On occasion, resources can be used across authority to assist with some work. More recently, in the past two or three years, that hasn't proven possible. It's not to say that we haven't tried it across authorities, but there's simply not the availability of, shall I say, spare resources within an authority to facilitate that. There's a real pressure just now in planning authorities across Scotland. There's been a very significant increase in planning applications through the past 10 years, both in terms of what we call household applications, which are house extensions and minor applications, but also the big major applications and the larger developments coming forward. Actually, that pressure has seen, as I certainly have noticed across authorities, that perhaps there are more people choosing to retire a bit earlier than the otherwise would. I certainly think that the pressure of workload has had a role to play in that. It's not that we don't look at what the point you've raised. We do fundamentally look at that. Planning is quite different to other systems, such as building standards, where there are opportunities to take a national approach for part of that work. However, I would like to assure you that that expertise and knowledge is shared across planning authorities. Thank you very much. To the panel members, you've raised a number of interesting points, which I'm sure my colleagues will want to explore. Let me hand over to Fiona Hyslop. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us. I would like to come to Robbie, Pam and Jane. Robbie, you mentioned the national planning framework for, and the draft that we have will place a number of new net-zero-related commitments on developers and planning authorities. I'd be interested to find out from you if you think that the profession itself is prepared for such changes if what needs to happen. What do you think planners should be doing to help deliver net-zero to Robbie, please? Thank you for that question. Last year, when the Scottish Government published the position statement, it went in record saying that the MPF4 would radically address climate change. In many regards, if we get this important stage of the consultation process right, this could be the case. Fundamentally, we need an effective consenting process, and we have concerns, as do a number of stakeholders, over the clarity of the framework. That is in terms of the wording for the decision maker, but also in terms of the clarity of the process. For example, the policy relating to zero waste mentions the use of decarbonisation strategies, but there is no more information on what they are and how they are assessed. There are a number of additional GTs and assessments coming through. Some of them will be beneficial in achieving net-zero, for example the carbon life cycle assessment, but to support planners to be able to process planning applications, to be able to deal with those assessments, we need to set out guidance on how they do that, set out clear frameworks for applicants and how they submit that kind of information. Thinking more broadly about how should planning address net-zero, fundamentally, planning is a tool for local government in delivering that place-based approach to decarbonisation and climate change adaptation. That needs to be driven by a robust evidence base that looks at climate change mitigation, adaptation and carbon reduction targets. Through that plan making and through front-load in that evidence base, planners can identify the infrastructure needs, allocate the right sites for development and provide that strategic framework to achieve net-zero ambitions. Touching on the previous question, there is an important role for the Scottish Government's digital planning strategy, so that has seen a significant investment of £35 million over the next five years. A number of efficiencies could potentially be derived from that strategy, and hopefully it could also support planners when they are building evidence bases to support the preparation of local development plans. Once we establish the evidence base, planning can determine the location, the scale, the mix and the character of development and ensure that the density and the layout, the building orientation and the landscaping can reduce carbon dioxide emissions but also make developments more resilient to climate impacts. Planning can encourage a wide range of behavioural change, for example, encouraging people to travel by act of travel through creating walkable green neighbourhoods and, I guess, the premise behind the 20-minute neighbourhood policy that we see in the MPF4. At development management, planning can ensure that the right low-carbon technology is delivered in the right place, so consent in renewable developments but also restricting fossil fuel extraction, for example, but really supporting this green industrial revolution. That is something that we can really see coming through if we look at the national developments that are being promoted in the draft MPF4, which certainly have that green growth theme running through them. However, just equally, net zero ambitions and climate change adaptations do have tensions between them as well. For example, they need to reduce travel by private cars, connect into existing heat networks and avoiding flood risk areas and all the things that we need to do on this journey to net zero but some of them might conflict and contrast and often need to be taken in a case-by-case basis. That is a really important role that development management plays. Most importantly, planning is about seeking those magical moments in which action on climate mitigation and adaptation also delivers a wide range of other benefits, for example, health and wellbeing or tackling inequality, as we know. Some of the most vulnerable people in society are going to be affected by climate change the most. I will stop there. That was very comprehensive in terms of your view on MPF4 and what we need to do. Can I just ask about the profession itself? Are you saying that they just need the right evidence, the guidance, etc? Do they need to change and develop themselves as a profession? Are you saying that there is no upskilling that we have required for net zero for existing planners that they could just hit the ground running now? Or will they need to professionally develop, do you think? I would say partially. I think that for a long time planners have worked with sustainable development since the early nineties, to be honest, so it is nothing new in terms of that. I think that now we have a stronger central policy framework that will allow planners the confidence to, for example, refuse development that is not in line with net zero ambitions, but there is going to be definitely some upskilling in terms of climate literacy. I will refer back to the carbon life cycle assessments that is a new assessment coming through. We will have to upskill planners to be able to handle that. We might not have to look that far. Those frameworks and processes are available elsewhere, for example, in London. I move on to Pam. You talked about the importance and need for a delivery plan for the draft NPF4, and it is not there. What would you like to see in that delivery plan? I think that, just coming on to that, just to set the context for the delivery plan, some upskilling is needed for planning and related professionals to do it, the skills they are to do it, the plan really comes to the tools. There are two things. You can have the people with the skills but you need the tools to be able to effect the policies and actually make the intentions of national policies happen. Fundamentally, we need two things. We need very strong, robust, clear and deliverable national policies, and we still have some way to go on draft NPF4 to ensure that those policies are robust and deliverable. The delivery plan, what we would like to see, is that it does not just address place making and it does not just address the national developments that are set out in the draft NPF4. We would like it to look at the capital and the revenue funding that is required to deliver the intentions of those policies. A net zero in the wider climate change agenda is a fundamentally important part of NPF4, and rightly so. However, what we must have in that tool, in that key policy document, is not policies that say must and should but policies that actually require change, that one must do something rather than should. The wording of that is very, very important when you are a planning officer sitting with a planning application in front of you and having that dialogue with the developer that is proposing that development. That strength of national policy is very, very important. We would want the delivery plan to cover both capital and revenue that we have touched on some of the revenue policies today. I think that we would also want to see heads of planning, what we call a spatial expression of energy. The energy plan actually set out spatially. There are lots of different documents coming forward, looking at local heat energy systems, looking at wind energy, etc. What we need is a comprehensive energy plan spatially to see what can be achieved in Scotland to help that planning process. I think that all of those things would give us a much more solid footing. Heads of planning are very much welcomed draft NPF4. It is a good document, but we do think that there is some way to go to bring the delivery plan forward and more concise and deliverable policies. I will go back a bit to the people aspect and what the impact would be of the shortfall in planners and funding on the ability of planning authorities to help deliver net zero commitments. Planners will become a premium, not just in the public sector, but in the private sector. Is there a potential for a brain drain of planners from the public sector to the private sector, as the private sector itself is trying to do more in the area of net zero? It is happening now. There is a shortage of planners, particularly in some of the rural local authorities. They are finding it particularly challenging to recruit as part of the future planners project that both Robbie Calvert and I have touched on, which is currently on-going. We are undertaking a review, but also with the young planners network. I am getting a very positive response to that. We are currently just analysing those returns. It is really hard to recruit into the public sector just now, not just local authorities. That is very challenging. Until there are some changes brought into place and we have not defined what those changes are, Robbie's touch and apprenticeships, we need to promote the career. We need to promote planning as a fundamentally important career as part of the green agenda in Scotland. Thank you. I am not sure if she is through the school frozen to do it. Can you hear me okay? It is breaking up slightly. Carry on. Okay. Apologies for that. I was saying that we need to promote the planning profession as part of the green agenda, which is a fundamental part of. Thank you very much, Pam. Finally, to Jane, if you can comment on draft MPF4 and your views and particularly that role of planners. Do you think that this young generation of planners see themselves as leaders within local authorities on net zero? I think that we do. I think that the university courses are changing year on year to keep up to what we need to do. We recently did a round table on the MPF4 where we had a student along. I asked the question, do you feel that the universities are giving you up properly for this in terms of the skills? There are a lot of practical elements being brought into the courses. As planners, we need to fulfil 50 hours of CPD and continue professional development every two years as part of our chartered membership or just to make that. Generally, the people that are in planning want to upscale, to get on top of what they need to get on top of in order to carry out their job. It is crucial. When you think of development management planners, where you have 30, 40, possibly more applications to your name, maybe enforcement cases to deal with, pre-application inquiries to deal with and maybe other things on the side, you are working and trying to build up those skills at the same time. Maybe if we were better resourced in terms of numbers, if you had 20 planning applications to your name, you could definitely do a lot more in terms of getting those skills more embedded, maybe more quickly, you could work in a more mentoring system, maybe people would have time for that. Whereas the job itself, I have worked in development management and it is a conveyor belt you are on and you are always learning new things every day, but sometimes you need a wee bit of time just to bed in some knowledge, which maybe you do not always get when you are under the course. Okay, thank you very much all of you indeed and I will pass back to the convener. Thank you very much for that. I think that Monica Lennon has a supplemental in this area. Thank you, convener. Good morning to our panel. I was listening to the answers to the deputy convener's questions. Robbie, you were right to say that this is not new to planners and planners have been working with sustainable development since the early 90s. I just wondered in terms of the weight that is given to issues relating to the climate and to nature. Is sufficient weight being given to the net zero agenda or is it the case that planners are being expected to take all things into account and try to be all things to all people, but we are still not getting that clear emphasis? I just wondered in terms of, I suppose, as a development management point of view, in terms of that picking order of material considerations, where does net zero sit day to day for most planners have become to Robbie and then Pam on that please? Thanks, Monica. Really good question. There is, if we're thinking about the draft MPF4, there is some issues in terms of how the decision maker will use the document, especially in terms of prioritisation. The climate emergency policy and the nature emergency policy are both sat within the universal policy section, so the first section of the national planning policy area of the MPF4. They are to be applied to all planning applications, but, as set out by the Scottish Government, all relevant policies are to be applied in the decision making process. A number of stakeholders are a bit concerned about how the planner will prioritise, for example, climate and nature against economic development or other policy considerations. It drills down a little bit into the devils and the detail. For example, in the climate emergency policy, it says that significant weight needs to be applied to the climate emergency and to determine the applications. As far as I am aware, it is the only time that significance is used in the document, so there is a steer there for planners to give extra weight to that in the process. Whether that is clear enough, helpful enough for the decision maker, that is contentious at the moment. Thank you. My camera has been turned off because there are a few connection problems. Absolutely. We have sustainability policies currently across Scotland in our local development plans, but what we really need to see, as Robbie Calvert has highlighted, is a real strengthening of the policies that are proposed in the national planning framework for. I referred in the previous answer to not having policies that they should or could, but requiring and the musts and that type of policy language will be really important. It is that fundamentally stepped change that we need. Planners already absolutely have climate change and net zero. It has kind of ingrained in how one works and a lot of the policies that are set out just now. What we are really asking of the planning system and not just local government. It is national government, it is a key agency and it is all working together. Is that fundamental step change if we are to achieve the net zero targets? Jane, if you would like to add to that, working on the front line of planning, you are very familiar with a pushback from applicants when they look at all the policies that say, ah, but this will create extra jobs or we cannot afford to put this into the scheme. Is there a lot of pressure on planners to maybe sometimes let things slide? That is just a nature of development management and somebody putting forward a development. The policy is there and should be providing certainty for one side and clarity for the other, but there will always be and we will only need to look at the likes of planning law to understand how a particular point can be argued in both directions. I think that that is perfectly acceptable because you have got the public interest and the vested interest in terms of the private sector. Planning is about finding that balance, is about looking at everything in detail and then in the round. That is part of a development manager's job is to do that, but the wording of the policy etc is really crucial in being able to draw a line and try and get to achieve the net zero targets and things that would be nice to others now. I had a number of specific areas to ask you about. The first one was full cost recovery for those management functions. Given the funding difficulties that planning departments have at the moment where you see full cost recovery sitting and how you think that that can be delivered equitably between minor applications and major applications, could I perhaps start with Pam with that one please? Certainly and thank you for the question. Firstly heads of planning welcome the recently published increase in national statutory fees for planning and largely those commenced in the first of April this year. Heads of planning have been seeking full cost recovery for some time now and we continue to have those discussions with Scottish Government colleagues. We are currently really looking at how the full cost recovery should be defined and certainly heads of planning are very keen to explore that that is well beyond planning application work itself. Though when you get a planning application for say a wind farm as an example there are many people who are involved in that not just the planning officer themselves who is leading that application and it's really important that that full cost recovery considers that. It's also that planning authorities are not funded local government isn't funded to bring forward a local development plan which is a considerable piece of work often the region of half a million pounds to fund that piece of work as well as planning enforcement and other areas. So part of the conversation we're having just now with government is for this full cost recovery and we certainly hope that the outcome of that will be a wider scope. Just to reiterate some of the things Pam said there and I think that's I know the hops work in 2018 had cost recovery set about 66% in terms of core application processing costs and we would definitely support that to move towards 100%. We'll see whether the fee increase does that although there is very in control across planning authorities in terms of how fee income is reinvested into the service and that's something that will vary but just to stress her point made on local development planning and I think unfortunately that's one of the areas that might suffer in a resource-deficient environment is a lot of that kind of place vision and that creative work needed to sort of set out the framework for net-a-zero as if planning authorities are just sort of treading water undertaking the statutory functions and really focusing on development management. We have additional concerns there. Alongside the draft MPF4 consultation there's a local development plan, the draft local development plan regulations and guidance and within that there's a lot of additional work there that we're concerned about for development planning teams and I think that's twinned with potential concerns that increases in planning application fees will be simply reinvested into the development management service and so we might have an acute resourcing issues in development planning teams specifically. Yeah and that engagement work with LDPs is so so critical to then getting the right development applications later on. Absolutely, absolutely. A meaningful community engagement is expensive. Yeah, yeah. Jane, do you have anything you'd like to add to those points? Thanks. I would only really echo what Robbie and Pam has said and I think in terms of the trying to get cost recovery obviously the planning side has been brought up there that that does need to be supported etc but I would also always say that I think we have to be mindful of what development management is and that is it's a service, it's a customer service, people are paying fees to get their planning applications determined, there's also the statutory time scales in which to determine them and there's the fact that the authorities are measured on that performance as well. So again I'll go back to the point of having 30, 40 planning applications to your name as your caseload along with other things. How the question is how much quality can you build into every single one of your applications when you're in that position and how much about in terms of investment from like the private sector side, house founders etc, you know that customer service is important, you won't return to an restaurant if you don't get served properly to know so I think you've got to be mindful of the whole system and what is trying to achieve on the ground. Yeah, thanks. Can I move on to another area which is permitted development and whether you have views about how or if permitted development rights should be extended in certain areas and how you see that relating to policies to protect the historic environment. I get a lot of constituents getting in touch or maybe in conservation areas who are struggling with decisions around whether it should be three or six millimetre thick double glazing on issues about astragals and windows and everything else and they feel that if they're to upgrade their homes then it can be a bit of a minefield in terms of getting planning approval in historic areas so I wonder if you have thoughts about particular categories of permitted development and also where we draw the line in terms of protection of the historic environment. Hey those are two big areas but can I start with Robbie just general thoughts on that? Yes I think well firstly for your constituents I just want to flag the service provided by Planning Aid Scotland so they provide a free and partial planning advice service that's something I volunteer for and regularly take cases for so I think there's definitely a point there in supporting people to navigate through the system and I think we need to look at the draft MPF4 in regards to that as well this is the document that the public are going to have to engage with so be careful there's not too much jargon there and it's not inaccessible that's especially considering that members of the public might also have to read the draft MPF4 alongside local development plans and potentially local place plans as well. In terms of permitted development rights we advocate that we cautiously explore their use you know you look down in England and there's been some difficulties with permitted development rights for example with office to residential conversions and so these have circumvented the planning system to some degree and has led to very poor quality accommodation being delivered so you know some concern there but in terms of if we can take out some of the more non-contentious applications out of the system and allow planners to focus on the bigger more important applications then I think we would broadly support that. I don't know if I have one. Jane, do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah thanks I would just echo what Robbie said there that I mean the permitted development rights you could debate that for quite a while and I would think caution would be right particularly around certain things it depends on what sort of sector you're talking about in terms of those permitted development rights because there's household of permitted development rights there's telecoms permitted development rights if for example the telecoms permitted development rights are slightly more restrictive in the likes of a national park because obviously we get landscape concerns I think we would all support landscapes being protected in a national park so we've got somewhere nice to go and sort of good for tourism etc so it depends on where you want to talk and exactly where you want to talk about it I mean I think the context here is is very much the decisions that local authorities are having to make around energy efficiency improvements or you know installation of installation of solar panels on roofs or whatever and those those type of household developments or EV charging points or or whatever sort of infrastructure that that is important yeah I would just add that when we talk about protections and you spoke about the historic environment there is a lot that I'm not quite sure where you would draw that line because we do want to protect our historic environment but we do also need to be getting in around these sort of net zero ambitions it's hard to know where to draw that line but it's death it could be debated for probably a number of reasons thanks and Pam yes thank you in relation to the built heritage in terms of permitted development rights heads of planning wouldn't support increasing those permitted developments where you have designated areas whether that's conservation areas or properties that are listed those designations are there for the per enhancement of those areas and properties are maintained so it's important that the permitted development rights are removed in many of those areas and instances beyond that in our wider urban areas then yes I think there is scope to look at some minor development in some of that could be energy related and you know you give a good point a good example in terms of the charging points and how they might roll out so heads of planning is very happy to look at those aspects of potentially additional permitted development and that actually is an ongoing conversation with colleagues in Scottish government okay my last question then was around you know effectively where are decisions made where is it appropriate to make decisions and I think Robbie earlier on you were talking about some of the challenges that departments have particularly the loss of senior managers and specialists maybe around visual impact ecology whatever so in terms of renewables development is the current boundary between determination at local authority planning department level and determination at national government level the right drawn at the right threshold so I'm talking about section 36 applications here I'm aware that some councils may be in a situation where they get a hydropower scheme with an enormous environmental impact assessment hugely technical huge amount of ecology required around that hydrological assessments and that might end up on a on the desk of a relatively junior planning officer so is those sort of issues live and is the right kind of level for determination set through section 36 at the moment or not and yeah so I think it's was a currently set at 50 megawatts I believe Bob that's the section 36 and but then the planning authorities obviously a consultee I think from the perspective of planning authorities and I think Pam will be able to support this point but I believe it's about 50% of the application fee goes to them and I think that is contended a wee bit because like as you say a lot of planning authorities effectively have to almost determine the planning application of fresh even if they are the consultees and undertake a lot of quite resource intensive community engagement type work as well alongside that so you know that much needed resource has to come into the planning system to support you know programmes of upskilling and ensuring that the officers have have the right expertise to deal with some of these assessments I think another really important part of that puzzle is some of the other professional services within local authorities for example landscape officers so you know ensuring that you have enough of them because they're a really important part of determining onshore winds and so providing that internal expertise to the planning officer and in a reasonable time frame is another important part of achieving decisions in a good time frame okay Pam yes thank you and just building on what Robbie has just outlined I mean yes I think the section 36 fees could be looked at again to look at what's the proportion local authorities get and I think it's in those instances where planning authorities aren't just sitting in their own heads of planning provides a really good network and people do reach out if they've got a particular question or has somebody dealt with x y or z and that that knowledge and expertise is shared and it will tend to be planners with more experience that will deal with these types of of applications so a number of planning authorities will have planners with experience in in terms of energy energy applications and and energy and energy consents okay thanks um Jane I don't know if you want to add anything no I think don't give him coverage great thanks back to you convener thank you very much marquette next up is Liam Kerr to be followed by Jackie Dunbar Liam over to you thank you convener I'll direct a question to Jane Tennant specifically at first Jane you talked your opening remarks about finding out about planning and the fact that you'd found it as a new career so can you help the committee understand what options and support are available for those who do wish to change career and work in planning and what could be done to encourage more people to make such a move um thanks um I don't really know in a sense um I came back to plan a bit I found planning through environmental management course um I took up environmental management because everything was kind of going environmental at that time and I thought there had to be like a skill set and it was a well-rounded course in terms of its like social and sort of physical like the renewable side of things economics so it attracted me in that way um I've recently been speaking to some geography students which is a very logical sort of step to come out of that and go into sort of planning um or a related sort of specialism um and I think it's just trying to make sure that one people are aware of it as a career and what exactly is involved in it um because I think sometimes maybe only people think of it as being a people that comes around and sort of deal with your house extension or whatever if your mum and dad had had an extension or if your parents have been in like planning or architecture or something that seems to be how people are aware of it so I think there's needs to be more in geography courses in school pointing towards planning as a career and let it follow through from there because it's schools and that kind of level before you start to go to university where you make up your mind of what you're going to try to do or think what you could do. Thanks very much sticking with skills I'll direct a question to Robbie Calvert please. Robbie in your opening comments he said that something about in England you can do a planning apprenticeship but that such an apprenticeship wouldn't be available yet in Scotland can you help the committee understand why is that why is that difference there and you also talked about some work you're doing to bring an apprenticeship to Scotland so when does that conclude when will that come to a decision on whether it will happen or not and in whose gift is it to bring it in? So I will work back on your questions there so the work that we're doing alongside Heads Planning Scotland improvement surface called the future planners project that Pam also discussed that's due for publication May June in terms of the apprenticeship I think there's an issue in particular that the skills development I think it's a numbers issue really so in England there's obviously a larger population so a significant extra requirement in terms of planners and there is here and so there's a kind of threshold in terms of numbers of people who would go through an apprenticeship scheme per year that skills development Scotland won't really assess it as an individual option for for an apprenticeship and there is an opportunity to have planning alongside other built environment areas as part of a sort of joined up kind of apprenticeship approach built environment one and but to run an individual one I think they need at least a hundred per year and which is below which is above what we would need as a profession or be able to probably maintain in terms of an apprenticeship scheme so I think there's definitely an issue in terms of numbers and as I said compared to other sectors the number is relatively small in terms of additional entrants that we need but the position of planning is absolutely vital in terms of net zero that's not a huge amount of numbers but will have a massive impact in terms of whether we can achieve net zero or not. Thanks for that I think that's a fair point to make and if I might stick with you Robbie Calvert but Pam and Jane come in if there's something that they wish to add but it sounds like demand for planners is going to be huge and vitally important as you say. Are you aware Robbie Calvert of what impact local authority funding settlements from the Scottish Government has had on places to train for these skills and also the local authority's ability to afford to hire more planners and do you get any sense yet on what this year's settlement which I think Cosly said was 100 million pounds cut to local authority budgets might have on those places to study and the local authority's ability to hire the planners that they might need? Yeah I think this goes back to what kind of support we provide in terms of education planning education and there is a limited run of for example bursaries I know that Jim Boyack trusts for example have a small amount of funding each year but that's something that could certainly be expanded and I know in the past many senior planners now were paid to study planning many many years ago so we could look again at that and in terms of budgets for local authorities I think Pam might be a better step to answer that and again it will vary across planning departments across local authorities how much is invested into their planning service I know quite a few planning authorities have had significant recruitment drives recently and I also note the kind of base wage has gone up the salaries increased so maybe that's indicative of a shortage of planning planners entering the sector as well I think Pam has come in now. Yeah very grateful that Pam would you like to add to that? Yes thank you I mean there are real challenges that we've talked about hiring you know actually recruiting and planners and planning authorities and we've touched on many of those and it really starts with getting more people into the profession whether that's at undergraduate level but also postgraduate level which may be a quicker route where people are interested in coming into the profession. The impact in funding has been considerable particularly over the past decades and services such as planning services have been in heads of planning view particularly affected by previous settlements. The statutory planning fees is the main income for planning authorities and as I've touched on we welcome the recent increase that's about to be implemented from the 1st of April but that only goes some way and I would stress that fees isn't the total answer to how you properly resource a planning authority so we would like to see other consideration given into how does that funding come into planning authorities directly to assist in delivering the skills that are required and delivering the number of people that's required to in order that we can achieve the Scottish Government's intentions that will be laid out in national planning for and other key documents. I'm very grateful convener unless Jane has anything to add I shall hand back to you. No I don't think so no. Okay well thank you very much Liam let me hand over to Jackie Dunbar and I'll then pass after Jackie pass over to Monica Lennon. Jackie over to you. Good morning panel if I can just follow up on a couple of things that you've already touched on. I think Jane you've been speaking about planning as a career and I think you just mentioned that education in schools we should be trying to to ensure that our pupils are aware of planning being a career. Is there anything more that schools can do to ensure that this can happen because I know you still get career days and everything but I'm sure when you're in S3 for example it might not be top of your mind to become a planner so what could the schools do to try and encourage our young folk to come forward? Thanks but I'm a long time out of school myself so I can't say I'll be reflecting too well on it but I think I'll take my opportunities with careers days and I think just generally that like if you do a geography course for example and you really enjoy geography maybe your careers advisor or your teachers may be going to push you towards doing a geography degree coming out and doing a geography teacher. There is a lot more jobs that can come out the back of a geography degree it would be planning other specialisms potentially people need to go and do a masters or whatever but I think it's also just about being able to tune in to what your subject can offer in terms of jobs and being able to explain that to pupils about so if you have a pupil that's interested in your course and this is for any career sort of thing that they point you towards all the possible options of that interest and where you could go in life and I think that's really important and I don't think it hasn't it wasn't the case for me I know someone who's come up 10 years behind me it wasn't the case for them so I think there just needs to be a wee bit more thinking about how a higher or whatever translates into a better career if that person's interested in that course. That's grand I think we by what you're saying we need our planning department to step across the corridor to speak to our education department and local authorities to plug your department for you. I think it was Robbie we heard from earlier convener about the the skill sets needing to be in the right places and I think and about growing your I was going to ask him if growing your own in the local authorities is doable especially with you know if we can get the apprenticeships stuff off the ground I know my own local authority grows our own environmental officer so I'm not sure but is that something that local authorities could bring forward? Yes that's what we're seeing down in England anyway with the apprenticeship scheme there and so in terms of the kind of educational component that can be about one day a week kind of day release type thing and then over a number of years and so yeah I think to the grow your own approach would be very useful I think in particular for a lot of rural planning authorities that are quite far away from some of the planning schools which are predominantly in the central belt or Dundee so you can imagine up in Shetland's or Canary for example and they do have trouble hiring graduate planners that grow your own approach can be very useful I think there's also and it's also about bringing more diversity into the profession as well and so ensuring that we have children from lower income backgrounds and potentially not going to go through the university route and pulling them into the profession through the apprenticeship scheme so I think we could improve the diversity of the profession in the long run as well and just to briefly touch on the previous question as well I think there's a wider point about educating younger people in terms of planning because it's also about civic participation as well and we know in the planning system young people aren't getting involved in the consultation process engaging with applications and I think there's a broader point there about educating young people on planning and placemaking considerations and really mobilising the kind of school strike young green movement into professional roles where they can make a difference throughout their career okay and Pam you spoke earlier about local authority sharing expertise and best practice can can you maybe explain briefly what arrangements are currently in place for this and what could be done to improve the the best practice of sharing with other local authorities thank you yes I mean that we have a very strong network across heads of planning Scotland and that continually gets built upon so if somebody for instance receives an application and they think we don't have a particular expertise or we have a whole range of questions in this then there is mechanisms there for them to draw on that I guess the reality is our profession is quite small in Scotland and there is a good network already within that and that builds on training as well rtpi Scotland Royal Town Planning Institute whole chapter they have a chapter network that is called events are held and all of these things are really important in terms of building particularly young people coming into the earth people at the start of their peer building their networks but planning really needs to be seen as part of the construction sector part of the green economy and raising the awareness in the sector I think a mention was made to we need to go and chat the doors of our education colleagues I actually think some of this sits with hope that Scottish government heads of planning as part of the future plan project are really raising this in terms of within the Scottish government what can be done across directorates to get that recognition of the profession as part of the STEM programme within schools and how is that built in and there's also a role in terms of positive publicity and that's not just for planning authorities it's for lots of people including elected members both at a local level and a national level of how do we actually celebrate better the fantastic places that are getting shaped and built out across Scotland and what's being achieved with planning and planners at the at the heart of that so I think there is much to do but through the future planners project we are looking at the things that have been raised including the sharing of expertise how do we build on that we're looking at what could be done to create more short-term opportunities create more short-term opportunities for people to come in and get some experience as well so there's a wide range of actions being taken. Thank you and if I could just ask one last question and I'm not sure who would be best to to answer convener so whoever thinks is best if you can just shout out. We saw through the Covid-19 that some decisions were being made and things were being put in place in super quick time so what lessons can we learn from from this going forward as we try and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions I'm not sure who would be best placed. I'm happy to come in on that convener I mean yes lots of things had to change super quick as we all started to to change the way we were working and adapt systems when the pandemic came along. Planning authorities have reflected on that and they've reflected it annually we prepare a planning performance framework and we've reflected that over the past two years of those and what are the lessons learned and actually what are the positives out of that in terms of driving forward improvements. I think there has been a lot of improvement in terms of the digital capability of the system and Scottish government are taking forward a digital programme to enhance that further over the coming years so that will be important in terms of that. I think those are the key changes and the key lessons to be learned it's about how can we have technology that will assist us to make the job of the planner easier in terms of process and not have a cumbersome process but I would highlight that you know when we think back a decade ago heads of planning discussion then was we need a simplified and a streamlined planning system and we're actually have moved well away from that and we have a much more complex planning system and we can't really see that reducing so that complexity takes time to work through a planning application or takes time to develop a local development plan or be part of delivering a project so planning has got more complex I think it's important to recognise that and it really comes down to the strength the strength of policies so we can deliver quicker and we can deliver better if our national policies are clear concise and deliverable the submissions that we receive are a very of a very good quality from the work communities have been engaged at an early stage as well and communities feel involved in many of these applications coming forward. Thank you very much I have no other questions convener thank you great thank you very much Monica Lennon has the final set of questions Monica over to you please thank you convener this has been a really interesting session I see that as a former young planner a former planner but it's great to be talking about the future of planning today and it's no surprise that I believe that planning jobs are the ultimate green jobs and I do believe we need more visibility for the profession and all the opportunities that are for planners going back to the point about routes into the profession and university I'm old enough to say that I studied planning in the late 90s at the university of staff Clyde and that's no longer an option for planners so we've got two universities in Scotland where you can go as an undergraduate Dundee and Harriet Watt thinking about what Robbie has said about being more diverse and thinking about people from perhaps more working-class backgrounds I know that when I go to schools you know lots of young people what they talk about planning even though they don't maybe know what the planning profession is but they know that planning is all around them and this generation is more aware and more passionate about environmental social and economic justice so what would I say to young people in central Scotland for example who can't afford to move away to Dundee or can't even travel to Harriet Watt because public transport is very expensive in this country what other routes are available to them right now and do we have enough planning schools in Scotland maybe start with Jane and then come to Pam thank you yeah there's I mean we've touched on the course added and of course I've recently interacted with which was a geography the geography society at the university of Glasgow and so there's like the environmental management course at Glasgow Caledonian University that offers planning content as well as invite like sea work EIA work that kind of side of things so it's got good broad brush there are most likely other courses out there beyond geography at the university of Glasgow and the course I did at the Caledonian University but these courses can feed into it and there is also you can like find yourself a sort of relative planning role and I'm the I don't know much about it but there is the associate group within the RTPI that you still end up becoming chartered there is potentially like a potentially forthcoming sort of apprenticeship thing but if you're in an environment management course or GIS or you know geography sort of base things these are easy I see them as easy features in because you have already kind of built up a lot of the skill sets and general knowledge about about a natural environment so these are feeder courses into that it doesn't I didn't do a town planning undergraduate I did a town planning masters and that was the route that I saw was just coming through that clear to your APC with an accredited degree but there is the associate group and there are other courses that can give you that foundation of knowledge I guess. Thank you Jane, Pam then Robbie. Thank you for your support for the profession that's very much welcomed. Some of this has really been looked at through the future planner study that we're really getting our teeth into just now and that's let's not we recognize we've got too much of a dependence on people coming from school into university and coming into a planning authority but we're really looking to how do we widen those pathways get different pathways so we can take people from school give them some work experience how do we link it into colleges and get those different networks and pathways coming through it's not just planners with a degree in planning and then a member of the the royal town planning institute that work in a planning authorities that will be the predominant resource in a planning authority but there are a role for technician there are a role for other professionals working alongside and I think when we look at the net zero agenda and overall climate change it's how do we get all of those complementary professionals working working together and in the context of the discussion this morning supporting the planners in terms of delivering and whether it's application local development plans or projects but fundamentally we need some shifts for this to make it happen I mean I found it hugely interesting to be involved in the future planners project but there are so many different funding streams but none of them are really jumping out adheres a route for planning and yet planning sits instead and planning is part of the construction sector so I think part of it is we need to re-profile the profession and the need for that and moving forward but we also need to look at the funding streams that can come in to help planning authorities bring those individuals directly from school actually have the funding to provide those whether it be through internships through university or school placements or actually having the ability to have a member of staff or members of staff to give them the time to get out into schools to reach out and to help young people just think through you know what what is it they would like to do and so there's a whole range of things being looked at but fundamentally some of that will require additional revenue funding to local authorities. Thank you Pam Robbie. Just to address directly the question about what would you advise someone in the central belt now just to flag again the Jim Boyack memorial trust that is for students who maybe have financial hardships and there is some funding available for that so that's maybe a more immediate approach and I agree with everything that Pam and Jane have said but I think there's another opportunity in terms of community engagement and how we can as planners sort of bring the planning system into the eyes of young persons and as part of my voluntary role as planning aid Scotland I did a bit of work at Culloden High School which was around the instruction upgrade up there so we were firstly engaging young people about decisions on this big piece of transport infrastructure which was quite interesting because it was getting their input was more away from the sort of private vehicle because a lot of them were getting buses or walking to school for example but as a part of that planners from Highland Council then also set out what the planning system was to maybe 300 high school children so I think there's a good opportunity there going forward with how we do community engagement and I know in the planning act there's a lot more about engaging young young persons and I think we need to use that opportunity to promote it as a career as well and I think also with local place plans which I haven't really touched on today but if we can involve younger people on that and increase that civic engagement increase that involvement with the planning system hopefully you can pull in more interested young people through that route as well. Thank you Robbie and thank you for mentioning the Jim Boyack memorial trust I was a trustee many years ago and I'm glad it's still going from strength to strength the last time I checked I think that the annual grant was around about 1500 pounds maybe just over 2000 pounds is there an opportunity for that fund to be supported by the Scottish Government and other stakeholders has that already happened or is it mostly made up of individual donations? I'm not entirely I don't think it would by Scottish Government we would certainly welcome that and I mean I know other professions for example I know this is slightly off top dentistry there is funding available for that education as a part of that the graduates then have to work for the NHS for a number of years and could we establish a system like that where graduate planners then work for a planning authority for a number of years if we had that funding available centrally from Scottish Government that would be very much welcomed. No that's really interesting I think that's a point we could pursue because I know previously we've asked Scottish Enterprise at this committee to define a green job and they weren't able to do that so if we could at least get planning given as an example of a green job that that could open some doors just a very final question I know we're pushed for time I'm trying to catch the convener's eye but I wanted to ask about 20 minute neighbourhoods if we think about previous generations of planners we're able to say that they had helped to create new towns now when we look at the challenges ahead and opportunities we want to see planners really at the heart of creating 20 minute neighbourhoods and that will involve working with what we already have in lots of cases is that a way to encourage people into planning to motivate the current planning workforce and what are the main opportunities and barriers around that perhaps come to Pam and then Jane and Robbie if there's time convener very briefly I'm getting the eye very briefly panel Pam I'll be quick I'll be quick 20 minute neighbourhoods isn't a new concept but it's very much central to the draft national planning framework for and is welcomed I think there's challenges about how it's rolled out or in rural areas and will more have an urban focus but I think what you're really highlighting is the place making the place shaping part of the planning profession and actually we talk about planning and planners and actually should we be talking about place makers and place shaping and sometimes it's about the language and actually if we talk like that we might actually engage more young people than we do than talking talking about going to study town and country planning thank you Pam for that very good brief answer Robbie yeah I totally agree with Pam there I don't think 20 minute neighbourhoods are good but I think it's a great opportunity to get across the the value of planning and place making I think especially after Covid especially that that focus that everyone has on their neighbourhoods I think it's a great opportunity to seize that and say well look this is what positive proactive planning can do for areas and yeah and I think that could be a great opportunity within that to bring younger people into the profession as well so yeah very much important the 20 minute neighbourhood and the living well locally as well importantly great and the last word to the the future of planning gene thank you yeah no I would just echo everything that Robbie and Pam have said I think ultimately where people engage most is within the local area so yeah if we can get like school kids and teenagers and stuff engaged in their local place through that 20 minute neighbourhood sort of concept it is highly likely that it could get more people into planning as that is the best click into place about what how that sits within how the world comes to pass really and what happens on the ground thank you very much great thank you Monica and thank you to our panel for joining us this morning we very much appreciate your insights into the challenges and the opportunities in the planning sector and beyond that brings us to the end of our allocated time the committee will have a private discussion of the evidence from this panel after we hear from our second panel and I will briefly suspend the meeting for a setup of the next panel thank you once again well welcome back everyone we now welcome our second panel after focusing on the role of planning with our first panelist we will now explore skills and vocational training and to discuss this I welcome our second panel who are joining us remotely Chris Brody director of regional skills planning and sector development skills development scotland jamie broken head of climate partnerships and climate change institute and Simon Hewitt principal dindian angus college lead principals for climate emergency ecology scotland thank you for joining us this morning we have around 75 minutes for this panel and we'll move straight on to questions my first question and you may if you've been following some of the evidence given to committee in this area we have heard that skills shortages within local authorities in key areas will limit the ability of local authorities to meet their net zero targets I'd like to hear from the witnesses on whether you agree with those concerns is this something that you recognise and if so are there particular areas where the skills shortages are most acute and what steps you think are necessary from yourselves from the Scottish government from Scottish government agencies and from local governments themselves what steps need to be taken to address those concerns and skills shortages and perhaps I could start with Chris then move on to Simon and then Jamie so Chris over to you please great thanks and good morning to the committee and thank you for the invitation to give evidence today I think the point you made right in the introduction there about the being skills shortages right across the economy is absolutely absolutely right we're facing significant labour shortage challenges at the moment due to a number of factors some of it is down to a very high labour market and part of that is resulting from the economic bounce back we've seen from Covid part of it is down to changes in terms of freedom of movement which has impacted kind of in some sectors I think a very underreported story is actually changes in the number of people who reveal work and that's partly driven by demographics it's partly driven by rises in economic connectivity that all of that is important as context because I think what it tells us is that there are challenges not just across local authorities but right across the private sector at the moment at the heart the question is is what we can do about that and it'll come as no surprise for me to say that I don't think there is a single silver bullet or simple answer to the multitude of challenges that we're facing in Skills Development Scotland one of the primary things we're doing is actually working with employers to understand where pinch points are so we get active engagement right across a whole range of industry sectors I think critically we are looking at where there are opportunities to be aligning the £1.9 billion that we invest in education skills behind economic opportunities and behind good jobs I think that's got to be a critical component of what we do I think more broadly we need to look at steps we can take to grow Scotland's kind of labour force so it's all very well having skills aligned to where skills requirements are but we also need more people back into the workforce and I think as well we need to recognise that the economy and the labour market have been through a significant period of challenge as a result of Covid in particular and what that's thrown up is a lot of turmoil on the labour market so I think we need a skill system and routes to training that include a big focus on upskilling and reskilling. I'll kind of pause there and we realise I've given quite a general answer but no doubt we'll pick up in some specific cases. Thanks very much Gwest. Now that's a very good overview of the challenges you set out and some of the I guess unique factors at play in the labour market given the exceptional couple of years we've just had. Simon, I'll pass over to you with the same question and then James. Good morning. Just really to build on a few points that Chris made I think it has been an extremely difficult two years for everyone within Scotland and beyond. I think throughout that time colleges also have been challenged significantly albeit the agility and the responsiveness of colleges throughout this period has been quite refreshing to see. I think from our point of view in terms of the skills gaps we're seeing skills gaps emerging right throughout this particular sector. I guess in terms of steps one of the kind of key critical steps and one of the things that we have seen that has worked and one of the positives of the pandemic is how we have all kind of worked together for common aims and common good and that's no difference particularly within this sector. I know Robbie mentioned this morning once given his evidence energy skills partnership, ESP, which is something that has been established really to bring industry partners together as well as Scottish colleges to really look hard at the skills needs, focusing hard on wind and marine training, hydrogen training, advanced manufacturing training etc and really how we can work together to effectively plug the skills gaps that are there already. Colleges do play a vital role at this point. I think that there's already excellent examples across Scotland where there is already good work that's happening, but we are aware that there needs to be more done, but for more to do that will require more targeted specific funding that will require a real strategic intent similar to what we've seen with the early learning childcare focus in 2019. However, as a sector we've got the infrastructure there, albeit that needs investment, but I think that the key step is really how we work collectively to try and address this. Thank you very much, Simon. Jamie, the same question to you. Feel free to pick up on any particular issues that are most relevant to your work. Thank you, convener. There are several questions in what you asked. You are asking specifically about skills shortages and local authorities. I would agree with that statement and with Chris's observation that that's a shortage that we see across the wider economy. You asked about skills gaps and we see that this is not going to be a comprehensive assessment, but we see both technical skills gaps and softer skills gaps, so the technical skills gaps are in areas like carbon accounting and climate finance that make sure that climate impact is embedded into all the decisions that we make. The softer skills are more about behaviour change and enabling partnership building and stakeholder engagement. You asked also what we need to do about it. Part of that is putting more people in with climate skills into roles of influence and driving change, but part of that is also, as Simon touched on it, building knowledge networks, thinking about where capacity and capability are best built, but not having to reinvent the wheel during best practice, during knowledge networks across both the public and private sector. There is a lot in that, which we could unpick as the discussion unfolds. Thank you very much for those opening remarks. They were necessarily general in their nature, because the question was quite wide. Let me focus on one of the key areas and bring it back to local authorities in terms of one of the key challenges local authorities will face in meeting net zero targets. That is the heat in building strategy, which will require 200,000 homes a year to be retrofitted and installed with new heating systems by 2030, but with the work beginning in a few years time. To put that into context, the current run rate for the installation of new heating systems is around 3,000 a year, so there is clearly going to have to be not an evolution, not an incremental change but a revolutionary step up in the number of buildings that will be retrofitted. Do we have anywhere near the number of qualified engineers and project teams that will be required to physically meet those targets? I appreciate that that might not be directly relevant to all of what you do on a day-to-day basis, but I would appreciate your views. Same order, Chris, then Simon, then Jamie. Thank you. That is a terrific question. To put some scale on the challenge, at the moment we estimate that there are about 2,000 people just picking on heat carbonisation and the installation of heat pumps as part of that challenge that you have outlined there. There are about 2,000 people in installation roles in the sector at the moment that all of those individuals are not necessarily focused entirely on heat pumps, they will also be focused on the fitting and care of gas boilers. So what we did a couple of years ago suggested that there wasn't immediate scale shortages at this moment in time, but there is a looming challenge in terms of that rapid scale-up that you are describing that we need to take place in terms of heat pumps. It is not just around heat pumps, it is also around kind of thermal installation, and somebody asked them to suggest that we could need to double or triple the workforce in a very short space of time. The challenge then becomes how do you do that? I think that we are needing to look at at least two axes. One is about getting more people into those related trades, and that is absolutely part of the challenge. The biggest part of the challenge is going to be on reskilling the existing workforce as well. I think that there is a third dimension to the challenge, which is the timing of the upscaling of investment around retrofit of housing and the installation of heat pumps, in that you will see a very large peak before the requirement begins to stabilise in about eight to ten years' time potentially. That presents difficulties, I suppose, in terms of directing people into what might be perceived to be a relatively short-term job or short-term activity. To say again that the challenge is ensuring that we have the right upskilling and the right reskilling through our colleges and our other training providers to meet that demand. Some of the work that we are doing at the moment is to try and move that away from the very national level and look specifically at what we need to put in place across different parts of Scotland. We are currently working with Glasgow City Council on a piece of work to quantify not just what we think is going to be needed in the Glasgow City region, but to understand the extent to which that provision is in place. It could be in place. Today, I had to counsel a visit to Bortlas College where we were being down to have a very similar conversation about how we can build a programme of skills investment to support the programme of housing investment that is anticipated through housing associations in the south region. I am glad that you were able to address that question directly because it was quite specific. Just before I hand over to the others, you mentioned the need to potentially double or triple the workforce in this area, which will mean retraining or reskilling, but I would imagine that retraining and reskilling will take possibly two, three or four years in some cases to achieve that level of scaling or training, which means that it needs to start now for the work to begin in 2025-26, which means that the corresponding scaling up of courses available, places available needs to be available now or at least in the next 12 months. Where are we now in terms of that massive significant upscaling of training required? Maybe an assignment to come in on that in a little bit of detail in a moment, and in his role in relation to the energy skills partnership and also Collegy Scotland, where we are now in time. What I would say in relation to the committee making about upscaling and reskilling taking two to three years, I think that the upscaling and reskilling period is much shorter than that, and we are looking at designing approaches and reskilling approaches that deliver in 12 weeks, 16 weeks rather than three years. There is another component that we need to look at, and I know that Simon and colleagues are looking at this in the college sector. We are also looking at it in terms of apprenticeship, which says that the qualification frameworks that we teach need to reflect the skills of the future, not the skills of the 1990s or the early 2000s. We have an active programme of work looking at the components of our apprenticeship frameworks and our graduate apprenticeship frameworks so that the qualifications catch up with where the market is heading. Okay, thank you, Chris. That brings us neatly then to Simon, so Simon, I appreciate your thoughts on that. Thank you, convener. Again, just to echo Chris's points very much, this is something that is on the radar. We haven't started yet, we have most definitely started. The sector has already tackled this as part of the construction needs forum. Through the energy skills partnership, there are already a number of colleges that are actively within the space that are already delivering upscaling and reskilling that is needed. Chris is exactly right. We recognise the scale of the challenge and we recognise that shorter, sharper elements of upscaling and reskilling are the only way to tackle this. Alongside other skills shortages, curriculum needs to shift, it needs to change. It has shifted and changed to be much more focused. We are really pleased with how we have been working with other training providers and national bodies, as well as qualification agencies, to ensure that qualifications are fit for purpose. That is the upscaling and reskilling piece, quite clearly significant movement of work happening in there. There is also Chris touched on the apprenticeship piece. There was a college sector with the biggest delivery agent of apprenticeships in Scotland. We have around 11,000 apprentices year on year. We know again that that is an area, so we need to inspire more people into those pathways. I picked up on the evidence this morning that there needs to be more information, guidance and support around what the careers are, what the pathways into those careers are and how colleges, schools and universities can collectively work together alongside SDS and others to really help people to understand the careers and pathways and the various different upscaling and reskilling opportunities that are there to get into those areas. Definitely a lot is happening already, but we recognise that the pace needs to pick up. That is where we are speaking to Scottish Government and others around specific funding to allow that to happen. Before I hand over to Jamie, just to help the committee to understand I guess the wider context and the trend in the number of places available, college places, university places, apprenticeships in this area, it would be useful if you or the appropriate person could follow up in writing to the committee just to give us a sense of the trend over the last couple of years and the projected increase in the number of courses available over the next two or three years so that we can put that into some kind of context in hard numbers when we take a look at this issue in the round. Jamie, let me bring in you on the same question if that's okay. That's good, very well actually, so I'm only going to pick up on one and emphasise one thing that you mentioned in there, which is that you need to match your labour market supply and demand at a more local level. It's something that we're about to start trying to do with some of Simon's members actually and through the Edinburgh Climate Commission. Guilds and labour supply is just one part of a very complex kind of system problem that is climate change and you do need to think about, you do need to localise that supply and demand so that you're commensurate with your other elements of your climate challenge, like 20-minute neighbourhoods, like reducing our requirement on transport. If you don't match up your labour market with your point of service needs, then you're going to work against some of those things. Thanks very much, Jamie. Let me bring in Fiona Hyslop, who will follow up on some of the issues already raised. Good morning, everyone. I'll come to Jamie first if that's okay. I'd like to ask Jamie what your overview is. Is there a demand for reskilling and upskilling within local authorities? I'd like to focus on local authorities in particular, because that's the point of our inquiry local authorities and partners. Is there a demand for that? Are there any bottlenecks that might constrain that? If there isn't sufficient demand, does it need to be stimulated to make sure that within local authorities, right across lots of different areas of staff and professions, that upskilling and reskilling happens? Jamie? That's a complex question. Is there a demand, yes, local authorities recognise the need to build their capability and capacity in this area, but they need to build capacity as well as capability, so they need to bring in more staff in order to have that demand in order to then have the skills requirements. The challenge for local authorities now is not just to rebuild a bigger sustainability team, but to embed sustainability knowledge and net zero knowledge across everything that they do. I could give you some numbers and some statistics on the importance and the role of local authorities in controlling infants that they have over area-wide emissions. There is absolutely the need there, but that need exists on all levels. As I say, you need specialists, particular technical skills, but you also need to go through that change process of embedding. Climate is a critical part of everything that a local authority does and is embedded in every decision that makes from very senior level to operational level. How far are we on that journey? Is it the same across all of Scotland that you can see, or are some local authorities stronger in doing this than others? Are there any good examples that you might want to give us? We've worked closely with the City of Edinburgh, obviously, because that's what we're based on. We see ourselves as a critical and responsible city partner. We've certainly lent our own knowledge and capacity to helping them to build theirs. They've been very good at drawing on the knowledge of the university and the climate institute to support their net zero ambitions and to engage their city partners. I would highlight them as an example of good practice, but they're not the only ones. We're working with the Scottish City Alliance, which represents the seven Scottish cities local authorities. We've highlighted some specific areas, which I could go into. They are quite specific areas of where they need to build capability and capacity, and they recognise that. We've made some recommendations, which are currently sitting with the Scottish Government about how those are going to be implemented. I raised in response to the last question, there is a question about where you should best build that capacity and whether you do it seven times or 32 times across Scotland or whether it's better done at a national level so that you're not reinventing the wheel across different local authorities. Thank you. Before I move on to Chris Bodie, do you think that there's more of a challenge for rural local authorities on this agenda of embedding climate change skills, upskilling, reskilling, whatever, right across all aspects of local authority delivery? Yes, is my short answer to that question. Okay, thank you, Jamie. If we can move on to Chris, clearly skills planning focuses on the anticipated needs of industry in order to deliver green jobs, but we are focusing particularly on local authorities and that transition to net zero society. When you're doing your modelling, what have you done in relation to local authorities who are major employers apart from anything else? Obviously, as we know, it's very key to the delivery of net zero, so what assessment have you made of local authorities staffing and professional needs for the transition? Thank you for the question. You're right, our primary focus has largely been on understanding skills going for Scotland's private sector employers, but we have been engaged with local authorities in a number of ways. In terms of the Scottish Cities Alliance, which Jamie has just referred to, part of the group of public sector partners who develop the climate emergency skills action plan, I attend the Scottish Cities Alliance chief executives group on a coarsely basis. One of the messages that comes out of that is that local authorities absolutely have an important role in delivering the transition to net zero and are already making important steps in terms of developing skills and work force. In relation to the specific that was raised on the earlier panel this morning, we supported the Royal Town Planning Institute specifically around the planners study to look at where the bottlenecks and where the challenges were around the recruitment of planners. I'm not going to rehearse again the evidence that you may have heard this morning, but an observation that I'd offer as a former planner myself is that one of the challenges that local authorities face—and I think that this plays out across a range of disciplines—is the retention of staff. I have countless colleagues who started their careers as planners and local authorities who are now working in a whole range of settings from wind farm through development through to proper development through to finance, which is not related to the initial part of their career. That is a challenge that local authorities face in relation to early years learning and childcare when there is a significant expansion of concerns about people moving out into local authorities into the private sector. I suspect that we will see that played out across the transition to net zero as well over the next 85 years. Is Skills Development Scotland working with the Scottish Funding Council, feeding into government, where you see potential bottlenecks and, bearing in mind, you talked about over £1 billion of investment in the wider education aspect and on top of that, there's other green funding and green investment net zero funding from Government. Do you see the bottlenecks that you've described? We heard from the earlier panel that we might get best value if we want to try to enable things to happen, to look at planning, for example, and other areas of local authorities to enable that net zero agenda to be fully realised. One of the major pieces of what we're doing with the Scottish Government at the moment is a pathfinder project that will look at the entirety of the skills that we think are going to require for the transition to net zero over the next 10 years. That's focused on understanding where jobs are likely to materialise and when. Do we have sufficient insight into what specific skills requirements will be? Critically, we have a clear understanding of the extent to which that provision is in place across private trading provision colleges and universities. The way that I described sounds breathtakingly simple. That's a very complex piece of work that's under way and well under way at the moment. Where I think that allows Scottish funding council and Scottish SDS working with regional partners is to look specifically at where those bottlenecks are beginning to appear and to ask the question of the skills system, in particular the colleges and universities, about the extent to which they can respond to that. With that £1.8 billion that I referred to in terms of post-16 education and skills investment, about £100 million of that is through apprenticeships. The vast bulk of that resource is through our colleges and universities sector. I am not, for a second, suggesting that there may not be a requirement for additional resource to meet the scale of the challenges that are facing us. I think that it is contingent on us to make the best use of the resource that we actually have in the system at the moment. If I can move on to Simon Stewart now. Simon, you talked about the need to probably scale up on net zero skills and training in a similar way that has happened with the big expansion for our early years educators, so I would like to hear more about that. Obviously, we have also heard that the supply and demand is planned on a very local basis, and colleges are very well placed to do that and are very adaptable and flexible. In my own area, Westlothian College, funding from the Scottish Government and councils in Westlothian working with private builders is building a traditional house for retrofitting and a passive house for skills and retraining. Is that sort of thing happening right through colleges and what more can be done to make sure that that agenda is properly seized on? There are excellent examples right across the country. I guess that that is one thing that colleges do particularly well and work well with industry partners, both small and large. Some of the examples that are happening in Dumfries and Galloway have their green skills academy and Airshire College have their wind turbine technician programme. West College Scotland is working on micro generation. My own college, Dundee and Angus, is working closely with the MSIP, the Mitchell and Scotland Innovation Park. There is a lot of strong partnership working and a lot of local regional planning happening in this space. I think that, from my point of view, one of the big catalyst and the catalyst that certainly within our region has been good is the city deals and how the green agenda, green skills is absolutely at the heart of the regeneration and the city deal approach that has been put in place there. There is a catalyst there to focus around that. For us, we have brought around key partners around the table to really understand the supply side. We also have to be realistic in the area that, while there is a lot of knowns in terms of skills, there is a lot of unknowns in the sense of the direction of travel, what will be needed and how that will be delivered. The key is to work in partnership for that supply and demand piece. It should not be seen as just a college or a university or a training provider that is providing this. It needs to be a joined up approach. Otherwise, you risk duplication of funding, you risk duplication of effort. For me, those great examples that I have mentioned across Scotland right now are definitely helping, and colleges play a role as anchor institutions in that. That is really doing on their communities. They have already got great infrastructure in place in a sense of apprenticeships that reaches into schools. Around 12 per cent of school kids in Scotland are undertaking some education within colleges, so there is a really good opportunity to start to learn the lines between who does what and how to properly work together in a joined up fashion. You mentioned city deals, and what is happening in the Dundee Tayside city deal. Do you think that, because it was one of the later city deals, it has potentially got more focus on net zero skills delivery than perhaps some of the earlier city deals, city region deals that were established? Given the nature of what has happened over the past few years, particularly where we are in the climate emergency, the climate emergency skills action plan launch, it is absolutely inevitable that, yes, there is more of a focus within this one. However, in saying that, there has also been over the past two years a massive shift in the sense of how we work together, based on the pandemic. Even from my early involvement in the city deal to where it is now, there is a shift and a change in attitude and focus and approach. If I am asking about what could be done more, in my honest opinion, funding drives behaviours. Where there is competition, where there is duplication, that drives the behaviours in that. Effectively, what we have got in the likes of the city deal and some higher level initiatives is a real drive for partnership, a real drive for focus to work together, and certainly we see the best coming out when that is the case. Thank you very much. Next up is Mark Ruskell, to be followed by Liam Kerr. Over to you, Mark, please. Yeah, thanks. Morning to you all. I wanted to ask you, Chris, about the climate emergency skills action plan. Obviously, this has a longer-term outlook for the next 25 years, but there is a specific period that this plan relates to, which is 2020-25. Obviously, we are coming up to the midpoint in that plan now. Can I ask you about how that plan is evaluated? How will you know whether that is successful in delivering its objectives around climate? I was just waiting for my mic to come off there, and I apologise. Thank you for the question. You are right that the climate emergency skills action plan takes a relatively long-term view in terms of the skills plan in that it focuses out to 2030. The plan was published in December 2019. I am forgetting which year because of the impact of the pandemic. I am pretty sure that it was 2019. I am over the last, so I apologise. It was 2020, my apologies. We published the plan in December 2020. We have been focusing on what we have described in the initial three-year programme of action that has been quite broad-based. There is an element of the plan that is about addressing some of the issues that we have heard about this morning about engaging young people, about future careers in terms of the climate emergency. There is a significant piece of work under way that has described a few moments ago to Ms Hyslop around understanding the extent to which we are currently investing in green skills and the scale of the delta that we need to close out in terms of future demand. There is a significant focus on upskilling and reskilling using the national transition training fund programme and the green jobs workforce academy. The plan has been developed by SDS, but it is not an SDS plan. It is a plan that we see very much as being co-developed with Scotland's colleges, Scotland's universities, with the funding council and other agencies. The implementation steering group, who oversee the plan, gets regular progress reports on the measures that are in the plan. We are expecting that evaluation of the plan will be carried out towards the back end of that 20-25 period. It is fair to say that we have made a good start, but the scale of the challenge that is ahead of us is pretty significant. I would hope and anticipate that we will see an increased ramping up of activity over the next three years. For those reasons, the evaluation of the plan has not yet commenced. We will commence that at the right and appropriate time. How responsive is that plan then to changing Government policy, changing circumstances? We have now got a massively ambitious heat and building strategy, although there are obviously inevitable questions around delivery of that. Does that not provide quite a new context for the plan that needs to be reconsidered? The client emergency skills action plan implementation steering group is absolutely alive to that. We have just created a decarbonisation heat and buildings subgroup of the ISG that is looking specifically at the opportunities and the challenges. We have created similar groups of interests, including employers around issues such as transport, but the point that you make is very well made. The plan cannot be a straight jacket around which we are slurishly focused on solely delivering that. That is an emerging area in terms of the Scottish Government's policy commitment. From a skills perspective, skills will be driven by investment and demand. We are very alive to the need to be very close to Government policy and for the plan to respond to that. What we do not necessarily want to do is to be rewriting the climate emergency skills action plan every 12 months. We anticipate that there will be a refresh of the climate emergency skills action plan in about 2023-24, but we keep the plan as a live document and the response to emerging care policy changes and other changes in the last week. I am sure that you caught some of the session this morning. As you said, you are following a plan on yourself. I looked through the document and I could not find one reference to planning and planning jobs in there. It was in a list of potential areas for skills development that there did not seem to be a particular focus on planning and planners. Is that something that you recognise that needs to change, particularly given the amount of infrastructure that we are going to need to build, the amount of place making and changes that are going to be needed in communities? I think that it is a fair point. I have not gone through the document with a planner's eye to recognise the number of references to planners, but one of the challenges with the climate emergency skills action plan is that we are recognising that the transition to net zero is going to impact right across the economy, it is going to impact the hospitality sector, it is going to impact food and drink. There is a piece where the lack of name checking of planners on the plan is not a reflection of the importance of that as an area of work. As I said a few moments ago, we co-commissioned with the Royal Town Planning Institute to look specifically at the challenges in the recruitment of planners and what might be done to address that. Again, the issues that it is uncovering have rehearsed some of them. Some of them are the committee that is warning us around the supply of planning provision and contracting. It is largely a post-graduate endeavour. In my day, there were two or three planning schools delivering undergraduate acric capabilities. The planning profession has changed significantly. I look back to my experience as a planner in Strathclyde in the late 1990s. A number of people who were on that course were reskilling and retraining through that university degree. They were based in a building control department or a planning department as a technician in a local authority. They were upskilling. Some of those routes into upskilling and reskilling for planners absolutely need to be addressed. Final question is for Jamie. You are working on developing those partnerships with local authorities to tackle climate change. There will be some big areas there. I would imagine around heating and energy alongside transport. Can you tell me a bit about who you see as being the biggest partners for local authorities to engage in? Where is that big workforce for delivery actually going to come from? Is it the utility companies that are going to come in and do street-to-street retrofit, whether that is university and district heating schemes, or household insulation or whatever? Where is that big workforce? When I look at housing departments within local councils, I am not seeing a vast workforce there to be deployed to retrofit and change entire communities. Where is the partnership there? Where is the bulk of that workforce in an area like energy that can engage in partnership working with councils to really make the shift to net zero? You have touched on a lot there in the context for this. Local authorities in setting area-wide targets for their emissions are taking on a huge challenge of which they have direct or in control over maybe six per cent of emissions from a local area. They absolutely cannot deliver the solution and they absolutely need to find ways of bringing in local partners to help to deliver that. What we have seen so far is closer links with other members of the public sector because they all have reporting and targets to meet. What we are helping to bring together through things like the Edinburgh climate compact are more innovative partnerships with the private sector. To come round to your question, what we are seeing that might be more innovative is that new players are coming into the market and new energies that have different business models and different ways of working and different experiences from other countries. You mentioned district heating schemes. The business models that we are seeing might work and the people who have experience in delivering them are not necessarily in the UK. There are organisations like that in FAL who are doing some work with their looking at business models for how they can introduce district heating into Edinburgh. It is complicated and it needs a completely different skillset. We have spent a bit of time talking about planners and the need for planning skills. You are not going to turn planners into carbon accountants but you need to build that capacity in both local authorities and the private sector to ensure that climate impact is assessed in whatever decision you make by whatever department you make and planning is a very big part of that. That is maybe people working together rather than a development of the planning skills. I have gone slightly off-beam on your question there but the partners, yes, anyone that interacts on that critical piece. One of the big obstacles that we see here is finance. We have done some work on economic impact assessment, on economic assessment of the measures that we need to take to get to net zero. We hear that consistently. Investment in climate is a good investment, an investment that pays it for itself. There is a gap between projects, good climate projects that are being brought forward in those reaching institutional investment and there is a specific skill there that is needed in order to bridge that gap in aggregating projects, articulating business cases and presenting them to the investment community. If we can get that right, if we can bridge that gap by working with that community, I think that we will unlock a lot of both economic potential and a lot of the latent pent-up demand for both investment and project delivery that we are seeing on both sides. There is an awful lot in that but that is a pretty critical part of industry that we should work with. They say that they want to work with us. It is just finding the kind of mechanics to make that work. Have you got examples of where that kind of expertise and capacity to manage and develop those kind of new partnerships is working well in local authorities? I wish that I could say yes. There are models that we see where that knowledge is being built and that capacity is being built. There are organisations and different forms of investment companies that are bringing those innovative models forward. However, there is not enough that there is still a big gap. I wish that I could say yes, we can see it being done and it is being done here and it is being done this way and you can all learn from that. There is a missing middle to building the pipeline of investable climate projects and linking them up with institutional investors in a way that makes all of that flow a lot easier. Some of the Scottish Government agencies may be able to, people like SNH, IBE might have a role in supporting that sort of thing. Next up is Liam Kerr, to be followed by Monica Lennon. Liam, over to you please. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I will direct my first question to Chris Brodie, please. Chris, the number of green jobs in Scotland has been declining in recent years. I saw last week in a response to a parliamentary question that I submitted that the Scottish Government is considering changing the definition of what constitutes a green job. Has skills development in Scotland been involved in those discussions and planning, given presumably the impact on skills development that would presumably occur? Great, thank you. We have been involved in those discussions that maybe refer you to a part of the climate emergency skills action plan, where we talk about the importance of having a real clear understanding and definition of what a green job is. There isn't one out there that we looked across international standards and didn't find one that fits the purpose, particularly in terms of skills. In the climate emergency skills action plan, we talk about three types of jobs. We talk about existing jobs that we know we are going to need more of. A great example of that, we have already had this morning in terms of planners. We are talking about jobs that already exist, but that will require significant upskilling and reskilling. Again, we have had a conversation around the conversion of gas boiler engineers into heat pump engineers, and that will play out across other disciplines. Thirdly, the CESAC talks about new jobs around emerging technologies that don't even exist. The work that we did suggests that a lot of attention gets focused on that third group. It's about the new jobs that we anticipate might come through new technologies. In reality, the delivery of the transition to net zero, particularly in the early years, is going to be delivered through that second group. We think through upskilling and reskilling of existing jobs and reskilling people to be able to address some of the challenges of the transition to net zero. That's a very contextual answer. The work that we've got under way is working with university of Warwick and university of Strathclyde to look at how we then translate that framework into a measurement definition that helps you to better capture both the demand site and when, do we expect, green jobs to appear and of what type? Critically, from the provision site, an issue that I have raised regularly through the climate emergency skills action plan, and I have raised this morning, is that we need to understand the extent to which the investment, the significant investment that we are already putting into the scale system, gets one of those three measures. To what extent are we well equipped to provide the planners of the future? Is that investment bent towards upskilling and reskilling? What's the capacity in the system to be able to develop training provision for jobs that do not yet exist? That work is due to complete later on in the spring. I don't have the exact date for that, but I can provide that to the committee. We expect that that definition will be the subject of some refinement and discussion between the partners who will be using it to inform the work that we demand and the work that we do on understanding the extent to which our investment already plays into green jobs. I would be very grateful if you could provide that later, if you wouldn't mind, Chris Brody. Simon Hewitt, on the upskilling and reskilling, particularly that Chris has just talked about, the convener asked earlier on about training required. In the previous session, I sat on the public audit committee and I seem to recall that the number of college places has been significantly cut in recent years. I seem to recall that it was over 150,000 places have gone. I also recall reading in January in one of the newspapers that colleges were facing a £51.9 million cut in funding. Simon Hewitt, does that landscape have an impact on our prospects of achieving net zero? If so, is there any sign of the Scottish Government recognising and addressing the need for greater funding and more college places? That is a really important question. Just to build a little bit on Chris's point about the upskilling and reskilling piece, it is right across all sectors, just thinking about low-carbon transport as well. Even to upskill the existing technicians out there in motor vehicle, around 36,000 people needed upskill us before any new roles come in. It is a significant job to be done in a multitude of different sectors to try to prepare us for net zero. Most definitely, there have been challenges. As you have mentioned, the draft budget will have a significant impact. Colleges now will have to step back and make some pretty difficult decisions about what they prioritise and what they do not. It is the knock-on impact of that. If you are prioritising net zero and the transition to net zero, then something else will not be prioritised. That is the kind of realism of the difficult decisions that will need to be made. In actual fact, it is truly deliver what we need to deliver, requires investment. Thinking about colleges' infrastructures alone, there is a significant amount of infrastructure that college buildings need support on. The area and a sense of equipment that is needed to try and get it to industry standard will require investment. It is likely to have an impact on the delivery to net zero. If anything, we should be calling for investment into that area and some ring-fence funding to allow colleges and others to tackle the challenge that we are all about to face. I am very grateful. I will take one more small question, if I may, and as I am remote, I am just going to do it. Chris Brodie, if I can just come back to you, because something occurred to me as you were speaking. In an earlier response during this session, you talked about there being a trebling of the workforce to achieve net zero. Is there a straight correlation here such that to treble the workforce, there needs to be a trebling of the budget available for funding, the sort of courses that Simon has just been talking about, or does it not work like that? That is a great question. I do not think that it works like that, if I am being honest. I will come back again to the reality that we invest heavily as a nation in terms of post-16 education. Simon is right that what we need to ensure is that some of that investment is actually investing in the system to support it to change, but we need to be able to ensure that we are making best use of that £1.8 billion investment post-16 education. It answers the question to what extent is it supporting our economic growth ambitions, whether they be around green skills, whether they be around digital. That is a centrepiece of the national strategy for economic transformation, which is focused on skills. We recognise that the public sector funding settlements are unlikely to treble over the next 10 years, if it has it against. It is very much about ensuring that we may make effective use of the existing resources in the system, that we apply additional resources where they are available to effect change. That needs to be the answer, but it is not a straight correlation to say that we need to trebel this budget or trebel that budget. I want to ask about the green jobs workforce academy, so it is probably best for Chris to pick this up. I admit that I have been a little bit skeptical about the green jobs workforce academy because it seems to me to be a very fancy website, but I am not sure how much value we are getting out of it. I know that it has only been about six or seven months since it launched, but can you give us a flavour of how it is actually helping local authorities and their workforce in terms of the technical skills and the soft skills that Simon talked about? I know that he talked about evaluation around 2025, but how will we be able to check in and see if that is having a practical benefit to local authorities in the months and years ahead? It is a really good question. I think that it is really helpful to set a bit of context about what the green jobs workforce academy is and what we want it to be. The initial iteration of the green jobs workforce academy phase 1 was part of the Government's 100-day commitment. We had a number of underlying principles that informed the development of the first phase and the future phases of the green jobs workforce academy in some of those that I have referenced today. The first is that recognition that upskilling and reskilling is going to be a really important part in our armoury in terms of getting sales into people for the transition to net zero. The second is that the transition to net zero plays out across the entirety of the economy, but it will play out important in some areas first. The third one is absolutely recognising that there is a significant world-class asset in Scotland in the shape of 45 further and higher education institutions that are delivering HNCs, HNDs and degrees. They are also doing upskilling and reskilling. I lie to that one of the things that we saw emerging really rapidly as a result of Covid was that move to online learning and delivery. All of those components informed that first phase of the green jobs workforce academy. It does not have a physical presence, although the courses that are developed and can be accessed through the green jobs workforce academy take place online and colleges and universities and institutions. Our ambition for the green jobs workforce academy and there is work under way around all of that is to ensure that it is communicating information on employment opportunities as they emerge right across the transition to net zero. The second is to help better educate people who might want to reskill their upskill about where they need to do that and how they do it. We are currently developing a further iteration of the skills discovery tool, which will allow people to go in and say, I think that I fancy a job in area X, my skills are, and they will get a dedicated report that articulates to them where they need to upskill, where that upskilling is available and where some funding is available. We are also building the functionality so that it engages people with our army or careers advisers. We have 800 careers advisers working across schools and tribate and adult CIE advice, so people engaging with the workforce academy will be able to book an appointment in time with our advisers. Finally, we are also exploring the concept of a green skills wallet where they will be funding that is attached to individuals on a graduated basis in the sense that people with lower skills will potentially get additional funding to undertake upskilling and reskilling. It is very much a piece of work that I think is an academy that will continue to go and develop over the coming years. You are right to point out that it has only been running six to seven months. At the moment, what I do not have for you is detailed performance information, but as that becomes available we will be sharing that first with the climate emergency sales action plan implementation steering group and that will be available in time to share with colleagues in Government and Parliament. I appreciate the early days to produce that data, but will you be collecting data on how many local authority workers have accessed the academy and have gone on to undertake training, for example? It would be helpful to know, particularly in terms of our inquiry, what that interaction is between local authority workers and the academy. I do not have a direct answer to that at the moment. What I would say is that, like all our training programmes, our training support is agnostic to whether we are working in an SME in Shetland, a local authority in Glasgow or a big bank in Glasgow, Edinburgh. I need to confirm with the team that is operating in the academy the extent to which that information is available and what some of the challenges might be in collecting that. I am happy to undertake to respond to the committee and to respond to you specifically in a bit more detail on that issue. That is great. I know that we are pushed for time. I had another question that would surprise me about planning, given our earlier session. I feel that I can put in Chris under the spotlight, but he has told us that he is also a former planner. The points that were made about planning apprenticeships, which exist in England, is that something that Skills Development Scotland is looking at? It was Simon who talked about colleges as anchor institutions. We have talked a lot about routes into planning, especially through university, but we have not really heard about opportunities in further education. Are there routes for planning technicians, for example? If we could maybe get a few words on planning apprenticeships from our panellists, that would be great. I will come back to Chris. Of course, the recommendation to explore a planning apprenticeship was one of the recommendations of the report that we co-published with, the Royal Town Planning Institute. I think that the issue is less about an apprenticeship framework per say and about workplace learning and workplace training. I will refer back to some of the comments that I made a few moments ago. When I trained as a planner at Strathclyde on my course, there were two or three colleagues who were actually embedded in planning departments and were doing their training part-time. I think that what we are exploring is whether what is the best route to broaden those opportunities into the planning profession. Is it about having a new planning apprenticeship or a graduate apprenticeship or amending the format and content of existing courses? I think that the critical thing about that is that it is recognised that the planning profession is quite different from what it was when I trained. There is an underlying piece about ensuring that the nature of planning education in Scotland is yes, it is there, and the routes are there, but it is also up to date as well. I wish I had never outed myself as a planner now. It is okay. Welcome to the club. Simon, I do not know if Jamie wants to add anything but, yes, over to Simon. One of the things, particularly in further education in colleges, is the ability to add a breadth of different skills and subjects within courses. We begin effectively at SQF 1, 2 and 3 upwards. One of the roles and the key role that the college sector can play is to give it at least an initial understanding of early-level skills, awareness of not just planning but a wide range of different sectors and of different job roles. I know that that is one of the roles that is particularly within transition to net zero and the climate emergency. As a sector, we have earned 240,000 students every year, so we have a role and responsibility to help to raise awareness of the actual climate emergency but as well as the potential roles within that. Some specific colleges have planning units within that. My own college, which has a tie-in to Dundee University, has specific elements of planning within that but, again, at an early awareness raising stage. That is where colleges are contributing at this point in time, not just in planning but in a wide range. Effectively, we are keen to use the size and scale of the college sector to ensure that many people are aware of the climate emergency and the broad pathway into the routes that they can go down. I am not sure that Jamie did want to add anything. Well, Simon has kind of answered it for me. As well as the specific careers here, the challenge is to embed climate impact and climate knowledge across all professions and across all courses so that anyone who is entering the labour market now sees that as a critical part of delivering whatever job it is that it takes on. Simon, you said earlier on that we need to blur the lines of who is responsible for what in terms of education and training, etc. I could not agree more. I think that I was speaking earlier about some education should be started at primary school level and upwards. With that in mind, what local authorities are doing to work with you to make sure that that is happening? Are they informing you of their priorities when they are setting their budgets so that you know what to expect from them? Sorry, your microphone is not on. Oh, apologies. That is a really excellent question. I guess what education can be very good at at times is siloing itself, not even just in the sense of school colleges and universities, but within departments and institutions. If you think about skills of the future, you know, multiple skills are needed across multiple roles. You know, it is no longer just a computing course. Computing is embedded within almost every course that is done now, so that sort of perception now needs to change. I think that we need to look much broader across what are the soft skills that are preparing young people and, indeed, adult returners to go into the job market. Yes, there is definitely a sense that I can only speak from my own local authority where we have been heavily involved. We have been able to influence some of the strategic priorities. We have put a real emphasis on the school-college partnership. There has been a recent report that was launched through CDN College of Scotland around the role of colleges in that school-college partnership, on how we can help to build capacity. We know that there are challenges for teachers in those specific areas. We know that there are challenges with equipment and infrastructure, so we need to be able to blur the lines of what is a college education, what is a school education. Actually, it is just an education, an option and a choice and a pathway that should not matter if it is done in school, or in a college. There is a realisation and awareness. I know that it is very different across local authorities, right across Scotland. There are very different approaches. Even the basic challenges of aligning timetables in the school day are the simple things that are causing some of the bottlenecks. Where we could make a significant impact is recognising the importance of that school-college university joint work-in piece. We have clear aligned days and clear strategic priorities in each region, and we are properly working collectively together to tackle that. I think that it is going to take that whole education system approach to allow that to happen. If I can move on to Chris now. Chris, you mentioned earlier about needing more folk back to work, and we need more routes for training for upskilling and retraining. Can I ask a really simple question? What do you mean by retraining folk who are already in the industry or coming into an industry for the first time? I am asking because folk out there who are moving over the just transition staff are maybe not aware of what information is out there to go and find out about do I need to retrain or do I need to reskill and what is the difference? I hope that I am making sense when I am asking that question. Also, what can our local authorities do to build the capability and capacity that was spoken about before? Not only for their own workforce but also to help the private sector, sorry. You are absolutely right to draw the distinction between retraining and upskilling. In simple terms, an example of upskilling would be someone building on their existing skills in a job or in a company that allows them to be more effective at delivering their job. In relation to the transition to net zero, as I have said several times, that has got to be the important component. Retraining is about more in the space of moving from one job or sector or company into another. It is about a fundamental ratio of moving from a civil servant like myself to being an engineer would require not to be upskilled but to be most significantly retrained. The reality of our education skills system in Scotland is that, for a long time, we have been focused on that transition from school into the labour market. It is a significant huge proportion of our investment and, including our modern apprenticeships, has been focused on people aged 80 to 24. One of the challenges that we are wrestling with is how we create the space and the system to focus on the challenges of the next 10 years, not the last 20. We have heard the phrase, difficult choices, several times being used by sign today, but part of the system that I think needs to wrestle with is how we rebalance that investment towards a more balanced portfolio of training routes that meet the labour market and the skills needed in the future. One of the issues that has brought, or several issues that have brought this into chat focus, has been what has happened as a combined result of the UK's decision to leave the EU as well as the Covid pandemic. We have had a choke on labour supply for one of the better terms, where we have fewer people coming into the country than many of those who have come in may have gone home. Secondly, I mentioned this right at the outset. I apologise, something is calling in my mobile. We have also seen a significant increase in economic activity. There is something like £286,000 that I have probably quoted at the number rule, but there is £286,000 that I have quoted at the number rule. There are nearly 823,000 people who are classed as economically inactive and not available for work. At a time of significant labour shortages, we need to be thinking quite hard about bringing in some of those people back into the labour market to address those shortages and, again, retraining will be a really important part of that. Thank you very much for that, I have convener. We are up against the clock, but I wanted to follow up briefly with Chris on Monica Lennon's question on the Green Jobs Workforce Academy. As you will appreciate, Chris, there is a bit of confusion on exactly what the academy is about, but you helped to clarify that. Is there a dedicated budget for the academy? What is that budget just to give us a scale that ascends some context of the scale of resource that is being put into the academy? I will provide a written answer to that convener in the danger of misstepping over a number of statistics. What I would say is that that is not necessarily a straightforward question to answer. Let me explain why. Is there a dedicated budget for the delivery of the Green Jobs Workforce Academy as a site and as a concept? We can provide those details in due course, but I am not in a position to track the extent to which training is undertaken through the academy. If an individual goes into the academy and goes into a course in Lewis Castle College or in Simon's College, we are not at the moment routinely tracking the financial contribution towards that. We will be able to provide an answer in terms of the dedicated budget to the Green Jobs Workforce Academy, but the way that it is designed will draw on existing resource already in the scale system. I hope that that makes sense in terms of the challenge in answering that question directly just now. No, it does, Chris, and I very much appreciate that. If you could provide what you suggested in writing to the committee, that would be very much appreciated. That brings us to the end of our time, so let me thank the panel again. We covered a significant number of issues. Thank you very much for your insights and for setting out your views on some of the challenges faced in this area. That brings us to the end of the public session, so I now close the public part of the meeting. Thank you very much.