 Good morning and a very warm welcome to the 33rd meeting of the Constitution, Europe, Excellency Affairs and Culture Committee in 2023. Our first agenda item is to continue to take evidence on our past, our future, and the strategy for Scotland's historic environment, and we're delighted to be joined this morning by Alex Patterson, chief executive of Historic Environment Scotland, and Dr Adam Jackson, head of strategy and policy at Historic Environment Scotland. I've brought along someone who probably knows more about our past, our future and its predecessor than anybody else, so I've elected Adam with me this morning. I just want to make four points about our past, our future or up off, as we all tend to abbreviate it to. I think the first point I would make is that OPIT, the previous strategy, actually achieved a lot and therefore there's a degree of continuity in the new strategy. It's not about throwing out everything, a lot of the good things that were done under the predecessor we carry forward, but the world has changed and what the new strategy tries to do is marry continuation of what worked and what was valued with the different world in which we operate today. I think the second point I would make is that it is not a his strategy and I think that that's an important point to make. It is a strategy for the historic environment. Yes, we co-ordinated and led its development and yes, we will have a major role in its delivery, but it is a strategy that's being developed by the sector, beyond the sector, and therefore that has implications for its delivery as well. I think that it's being extensively consulted upon and I'm really pleased that there's been a high degree of consensus around the priorities that the strategy has set out. My third point is simply around something that might seem quite unimportant, but I actually think that it's important and that's the name. As we got towards the end of the development and the consultation process, what did we call the strategy? Our past or future was actually a name that came from various sources as a suggestion, but I think that it's absolutely appropriate because yes, this is about the past and how we look after it and its precious and we care for it absolutely, but it's how the past plays in, not just to today but to the future and that's why throughout the strategy and throughout the narrative that we put around about it, this is actually a strategy for a better Scotland and how the historic environment contributes to that. It's absolutely aligned with the national performance framework, it's absolutely aligned with the programme for government and therefore seeing the historic environment and its contribution to a whole range of wider agendas is really important and I hope that comes through in the strategy. My fourth point is simply about how we deliver this because if delivery of this strategy is just down to the hes, which is not, or if it's just down to the sector, which it can't be, we won't achieve it. And there's a real emphasis in the strategy and in the consultation and in how we take it forward that this requires a real joined up effort of those within the heritage and the historic environment sector but those beyond as well and mainstreaming in how we achieve that has always been one of the challenges but that is quite critical to the delivery of the new strategy. We'll do our bit, we have a new team in place to make sure that we oversee and drive it but it is a strategy for the sector and it's a strategy for Scotland and therefore it needs that joined up approach to achieve its full impact. But with those few comments, thank you. Thank you, thank you, it was certainly brief introduction, we don't always get that but that was ideal for setting the tone for our questions today. If I could open with the question and a quote from the strategy because it acknowledges that we will not be able to protect every heritage asset and we will need to make difficult choices about historic places we invest in and which elements of our heritage we can maintain for the future and we must face all of this within a difficult funding environment. So I'd like a wee bit of expansion on the impact of the funding environment in terms of the numbers that you're able to protect but also to try and understand if there's a framework or a matrix around that decision making process and how that develops. So I think I'd offer you two comments on that. When we were drafting the strategy we were trying to balance two things, one was let's have a sense of ambition as to what the historic environment can be and can do but let's also realise the environment in which we're operating so I was trying to balance some ambition with a degree of pragmatism and I know the committee's heard it before but there will never be enough resource financial or otherwise to do everything that everybody wants to do and so we thought it was important in fact not just us but everybody thought it was important that we reflect in the strategy that there will be difficult choices not everything is rosy and will be okay difficult choices have to be made and that is the reality. What I think is important is how you make the choices and you had the director of BEFs I think in front of you last week you might have noticed earlier this week that BEF launched a sustainable investment toolkit. Now actually that is an output from the first historic environment strategy where lots of people in the sector but asset owners beyond the historic environment sector said we're all in the same boat here and whether it's historic monuments or whether it's railways or whatever else it might be we need some sort of mechanism a transparent mechanism for making the choices so that sustainable investment tool has been very well received you know as I say developed as part of the predecessor to our past our future and it says there are four things there are four considerations in making decisions one is the cultural significance of the assets themselves the second is economic contribution that they make the third is the social or community contribution that they make and the fourth is their environmental dimensions as well so I think what we're getting to and with the launch of this toolkit by BEFs this week is an agreed approach and an agreed methodology for helping make decisions which will be the reality given the financial and wider environment in which we operate. Thank you. Did you want to come in on that Mr Dr Chow? Not on that point now. Thank you. Can I move to questions from the committee as Ms Forbes? Thank you very much and good morning. Alex, you mentioned that the strategy was not his strategy but you'd obviously led on it and there are three priorities in the strategy for delivery over the next five years in terms of net zero communities and wellbeing economy. There is no objective in terms of preserving old buildings which struck me perhaps as the most obvious one. Is that because it's implicit in everything that you do because there's not an issue there or for another reason? So when the strategy was being developed we could have ended up with about eight, nine, ten or a dozen different priorities and I chaired a group of chief executives that oversaw this and we thought if we end up with a list of priorities of that the chances of them getting done is remote so that's really focused and that's where the three came from. The strategy does however point out that not everything that we need to do is in there and so looking after historic properties whether it's castles or standing stones or tenements or schools is there and has to continue so there's a focus on those three things and in doing some of them like the net zero we will be looking after the historic environment. If we get the fabric of historic properties right it will contribute to their preservation and their maintenance and resilience going forward but there is a lot of if you like business as usual that we will do and other organisations will do that's maybe not articulated in the three priorities but those three come out as the overarching three from the sector that we should collectively roll our sleeves up and trying to deliver. I suppose the reason I ask and I'll come on to a last question in a moment is whether there's a conflict between those three overarching objectives which to be blunt could be the objectives of actually any public sector strategy in Scotland so they're not anything that I would disagree with but could there be a conflict between those objectives and actually your core remit of preserving historic buildings for example if you are investing considerable sums of money in the laudable aims of delivering the transition to net zero which means that you're unable for example to keep the sort of the upkeep of another building. I think it goes back to my previous question there is not enough resource never will be to do everything we want to do so we as an organisation have a responsibility to look after historic properties but I've said on the committee before we can't look after all of them to the in the same way to the same degree and that's why this sort of tool for making choices is actually is actually very relevant but your point is right you could have these three priorities for many other sector strategies or many other organisations and that's kind of good because what this is showing is and this was part of the brief we received from the minister in terms of developing the strategy make sure that we try and tie the historic environment what it does and the contributions it makes to those wider agendas so if we look if we achieve collectively some of the aspirations for net zero it will improve the historic environment but it'll also contribute towards the wider government net zero aspirations if we invest in the historic environment and the jobs it creates and the visitor income that generates and all these other economic benefits that will contribute to the wellbeing economy so I don't necessarily apologise for the fact you can maybe take the three and apply them to others I actually think that's quite good and it's actually saying the historic environment is not left field to mainstream Scotland or mainstream priorities it's centre stage and we can deliver those centre stage priorities but it needs more of a recognition of that firstly and secondly adjoining up of the of the resource across government and across organisations to deliver it last question was really about the portfolio that you have and I mean you've touched on this already in terms of the tools that you use for what you can do and the many things that you can't do but what expectation do you have that the his portfolio for want of a better phrase will expand at all in the coming years considering there's no shortage of historic buildings that are in need of a good owner so it's on two two thoughts I mean I suspect we will be approached or ministers will be approached with a view to other properties coming into care I think that's quite lightly and you know we're talking to other organisations like the churches and so on who are facing similar challenges but I think it raises a wider issue about what is the PIC portfolio is it something that is a collection of assets that you deliberately go out and try and tell the story of Scotland with it's not been developed in that way it's a portfolio that's quite static in my time in this job no new properties have come in and none have left and actually I don't think that's right either we've had approaches where we've considered a request for a property coming to state care and actually decided the better way is not and that organization is now thriving because we've handed it in a completely different way so there is a there's a question there about what does state care of properties mean going forward and how do we take them in but I would say that bringing things into care is not the only solution there are other ways of helping properties and so on and organisations consider their assets but I think it says lightly that we may be approached and it's why a few years ago we set out a we call it an acquisition and release policy which actually sets us out so if we get approached by anybody with a view to a property coming into the care of ministers what criteria would we apply how do we consider an application both to come in and to be taken out of care so if we are approached there's a very clear approach and methodology that we would apply to consider that and part of it is about the significance and the historical significance and the culture significance of course it is but some of it is also about the practical implications of taking something on but you know where's the resource that goes with it is it going to add yet more to the budget pressures and so on so there's a whole range of considerations that factor in where that to happen but I always say state care should not be the last resort it should be an option but let's explore other options and the example I gave just a minute ago was a good one where yeah it could have come into care but the best solution was for it not to be we're standing behind it in a different way but if it can be managed by a local community or a heritage agency um there's not us but with our support that's as good an outcome thank you thank you Mr Cameron thank you thank you convener and welcome to the the panel um can I ask uh you both for an update on the number of sites that remain closed or have restricted access and what the current timetable for reopening those sites is particularly in light of evidence that we heard last week from uh jocelyn cunliffe who's the acting chairman of the architectural heritage society of scotland who i think was concerned that the full reopening of sites was taking too long so so i think but i was last here we talked about this high level masonry programme and i think at that time looking back at my notes about 35 of our sites that we had restricted or closed had had their inspections we're now at 60 66 which is good and we'll get all if you recall there were 70 sites we identified and reported to list the needed inspections and we'll have all of them done bar two and the two are for a good reason by the end of march next year so on the inspection side of things making good progress at 53 of these sites we've been able to either reopen them or improve access but there are still a number that are closed i think the figure and it's not just high level masonry i think it's round about 20 some of those are closed because they haven't been inspected yet some are closed because we're doing repairs with a few to getting them reopened and some of them are closed and we will reopen because our seasonal sites will reopen them at the start of the the start of the season so i saw the comment last week my view is that i think we've made remarkable progress on doing the inspections i'd go out and about and talk to community groups and particularly those where our sites have been restricted and everybody wants to be first and everybody thinks we're going too slow but given what we had to do to get this up and running i personally think we've made remarkably good progress i'd like it to be faster but we're trying to do this new work as well as keeping all the other sites that are open open and Edinburgh Castle still in castle needs a lot of work just to keep the lights on day in day out so that's that these are the broad broad numbers our priority whenever we can create a bit of access whether it's full reopening or whatever else we do i was in Roth say a couple of weeks ago the castle's been closed for a couple of years i was able to tell them in February the castle will reopen and we'll get it open we're working with the community as to how we make a noise about that but getting it open for the new season is vitally important my only comment in this will be a look i think it becomes business as usual that repair of sites is is going to be going to be there some of the properties we're working on i'm afraid they will be scaffolding there for some time because the repairs require quite a bit of work but where we can improve the access we're doing it and i think from where we were in may 2022 from a standing start to where we are now i think i think our teams in the ground have done a brilliant job frankly i don't know if Dr Jackson wants to come in on that not on the high-level mainstream thank you very enough one of the points that's made last week was about where where liability for risk sits and where does it sit is it with he s or is it with ministers yes so i'm very clear it's accountable office for his that it sits with me i think the comment last week was if if the properties were more well they are ministers properties they're either ownership of ministers they're in guardianship that if the responsibility for them was more obviously with ministers then somehow the risk appetite would be greater i don't i don't buy that and i don't buy it for two reasons one is the legislation applies to all of us and i think i said to the committee when i was here last year i spent a lot of time with lawyers asking questions about you know how we interpret this and you know we you know irrespective of the nature of sites and where they may be unroofed on clifftops the health and safety and occupier liability legislation applies to us and therefore i don't think it would make an awful lot of difference as i as i say if i say to community groups when i'm out with them why are we doing this because it's not as if we've never inspected the top of walls before we have but it's always been a visual inspection from the ground or fly a drone over and what we basically asked herself was the question does that give us enough assurance about the condition of the top there's if you put a person up there and put your hands on would it just confirm what we've seen from the ground from a drone and the answer was no that's not that's not sufficient assurance so the chance of something falling and seriously injuring or worse someone who's walking underneath i can't take that risk and i don't honestly think if it was more obvious than under ministers they would take that risk as well that's what that's what we're dealing with here and presumably hess has an insurance policy as well oh yes we heard you yeah so that's kind of obvious yeah can i um but i'd rather prevent the incidents happening of course of course can i change tack to another area which is community asset transfer um i was very struck that in our past our future you estimate that around a third of all community asset transfers since 2015 involved the heritage asset which um as i said last week this was both surprising and pleasing i think but it does bring challenges to communities who are running that asset the national lottery heritage fund who gave evidence last week have a proposal for a kind of longer term support for community asset transfer beyond simply acquiring it and transferring it to community because there are obvious questions of management and maintenance etc that continue for a long time is that an area that you as an organisation are exploring um i'll give a view and i'll adam can give you the right answer i guess um so we're we're open to community asset transfers even of piscs and we've had a couple of inquiries over the last few years but they've come to nothing and i think it's largely because um you know the the obligations than the sort of financial obligations you're taking on and looking after historic properties is quite significant um there has been one example of a community asset transfer of a visitor centre down in Dondonod so the friends of Dondonod run that and we look after after the castle but the general principle of community asset transfer we've got a policy in that and that's that's that's absolutely fine if i put on my my old hat from a Highlands and Islands enterprise perspective we supported this a lot but the easier bit is actually getting the capital funding to transfer the asset it's how you make it sustainable so there's lots of support out there all i would say that from a from a his point of view is and it relates to sort of the wider issue about funding and how you sort of you know deliver the strategy we've tried to adapt our grant schemes um to make them more accessible for that type of initiative i think you'd Caroline from the lottery here last week as well we've aligned our grant scheme so it's easier for organisations to approach both of us for that type of both capital and revenue funding and the example i mentioned right at the start around the request for care that we found a better way of doing we're actually supporting that community who own the asset and operate the asset through our through our grant scheme so i think i think it is communities need to be careful about taking things on because there is the sustainability of them and keeping them viable but the support to do it is absolutely part of our part of our thinking maybe Adam can comment on the numbers i can't comment on the numbers exactly i think really it is true that while there's probably no end of appetite out there potentially for community to take on assets it is the long term the problems will still remain often with with the heritage assets in terms of their ongoing maintenance and longer term funding and um i don't think the solutions are yet found as galax has said looking at grants and other funders looking at that too and potentially i suppose looking at how we may enable other ways of making it work in a business sense um and we can support that to a degree in terms of our enabling um role in in that in that space but um i think in in truth i mean where there's a business case where we can see that there is legacy that there are there is a future beyond the first two three four years a longer term future for the asset then actually we are open and as alex says we have um we have a policy on this i think probably what we need to look at more is how we can work more effectively in collaboration potentially and you mentioned a couple friends of don donalds and things where we may work more effectively with communities in kind of sharing in a way aspects of delivery and that would benefit local communities and i'm sure that's a sense more broadly than just he s so and that probably will help to address in part the issue of legacy thank you both very much thank you convener i have a supplementary supplementary on the first question that donald camion asked about closed and restricted buildings i think i'm writing saying and i'll be embarrassed if i'm wrong that clopman and tower is one of yours in fact i think we've corresponded around in the past but that has always been closed and i don't think there's any plans as far as i'm able to open it of you any update on what's happening with that given its significance can i write to you on it we have three hundred thirty six so i carry some of the information in my mind but not not the specific so if i can drop you a note on it that would be appreciating i just generally then if i can just ask are there properties like that which have no real prospect of reopening that you have no i've i've said all along that there is no property that we've said we were not going to reopen i've also said because i'll sometimes get this that you're just going to leave some properties just to sort of the elements to whatever no and we will manage every property what managing your property means might differ but but we're going to we're not going to let things just just go but no our aim is to get properties open some i'll be honest we'll take a bit of time because the amount of work is is quite significant so i can't sit here and say by you know by summer 2024 all the properties will be open we'll do our best but the reality is some some will take a bit more time but let me drop you a note specifically on on that property be at least 25 years i know of but i'll come back in with a subsequent question thank you mr stewart thank you convener good morning gentlemen mr paterson you talked about an opening statement about a joined up effect so there needs to be joined up thinking along how you manage this and this you've touched on collaboration already and i think that the effect of engagement that you've already seen and done that comes very evident in the strategy and what you've achieved in the past is is to be commended but the strategy does require local authorities to be a a key player or a key partner in this whole process because they can provide the some of the flexibility some of the focus and also the economic benefits that can happen within a location but within the strategy itself it doesn't really go into the detail regarding how HST is going to improve that and the collaboration between yourselves and our local authorities so can i ask why is that the case that there's not such detail there um so can i offer you two answers i'll offer one and add them all off with a second i'll just pick up the local authority specifically and maybe i don't see a bit more about thinking about the delivery model um so um the previous strategy um tried to engage local authorities and um with not an awful lot of success um we want to try again and one of the things we're going to do around the um delivery model is create a steering group and we're going to invite cosla to to sit on that but i think beyond that i'm slightly less worried than i might be picked up from the committee notes of of last week because local authorities are integral to the delivery of the historic environment strategy and everything to do with the historic environment and we have multiple ways of engaging with them whether it's been ways of we're a statutory consultee in the planning process so we give lots of advice to local authorities on consents and applications and so on we set the historic environment policy for scotland which is part of the planning system and therefore our considerations that local authorities have to take into consideration when when making decisions the new npf4 national planning framework 4 we inputted a lot to that so there's elements of protection for the historic environment written within that which local authorities have to consider when making decisions so i would say it's not as if we don't have good contacts or links with local authorities we work with colleagues of local authorities day in day out particularly from our heritage and consenting and casework perspective and there are these mechanisms but i think one of the things we want to change with our past or future compared to its predecessor is how we deliver and how we deliver more locally and i might be just ask Adam to say a wee bit more about that because i think that gives us another way of engaging local authorities yes absolutely um our place in time the predecessor strategy as alex has said really struggled in fact it did have a working group of local authorities which didn't really deliver and was closed down really after a couple of years in our past and future we've learned some of the lessons of that really and realised actually that it's at the level of action local action and actually to extent regional action that we see local authorities engage and it hasn't become any easier obviously because local authorities have their own funding and other issues playing out so looking forward to delivery and i appreciate and we may come on to questioning around this that the strategy itself is light on the delivery section we are committed to publishing a more detailed delivery plan in June but in June in 2024 a delivery framework which will set it out in more detail but over the next few months what we'll be doing is mapping where the actions within this strategy at a regional or more local level as well as national level can and where they can be delivered and how they can be delivered and we'll be speaking to stakeholders including local authorities around those because we have to make it i think it's a question of negotiation it's like partnership and collaboration work you really need to achieve a common goal beyond just the priorities and engagement has achieved i think consensus around those common goal i think on the ground in terms of where the benefits may lie locally in regionally and that's what we're intent on pursuing that said i think sometimes we overplay the lack of engagement as alex has already suggested of local authorities with this dark environment they're 32 of them and their priorities are local but they are engaged with this dark environment day in day out and we engage with them on the ground around projects and programmes of work and indeed around current city deals and growth deals and those are opportunities as well to player under OPOP. As you identified the delivery of how you manage success and how you measure success is vitally important and it sometimes comes down to the data that you use and there's some data that we will always receive just because of the the nature of the business you're involved in but there are others that are a little bit more technical or others that are a little bit more you know what the environment has to offer and that's not as easy to measure depending on how you progress that so can i ask you know how do you try and go through that little minefield of making sure that you get the right data that is giving you the correct information to then put forward some strategy or idea or you know we're going to we're going to go so far on this because we've been told the following but if you're not told and you don't measure uh how can you then encapsulate all of that because you've already said today that you've got your fingers in many pies but it's trying to manage that so that the data that you receive is giving you the best measurement and the best progress that you can have that will give you the opportunity to then succeed so you're absolutely right and um one of the sort of strange things about our place in time the previous strategy was when it was launched which was before my time there was no measurement framework for it and it was only about 18 months or two years into that we developed it and you had the 13 indicators this time in the strategy we've set out a range of outputs or outcomes that we want to try and achieve and alongside each of them we've identified what the data source is going to be and we've checked that that data source is able to give us what we need and i alluded earlier on to the fact that while this is not a hedge strategy people look to us understandably to to steer it and drive it and so we've created a small team and one of them is a data analyst because we know how important the data and monitoring progress actually is. However my only comment would be there is data and there's data and actually not all of the tracking is quantitative and there's lots of good examples in case studies out there that we're trying to gather but i would summarise that simply by saying you know while there's lots of good things from the previous strategy that we want to take forward there's also lessons that we learn and having some framework for measuring progress and how we get the data to evidence it has been built in from the start and i think that that has to be the case because if you if you are going to get the ultimate goal that you're trying to achieve then you need to make sure that that's there so all of that then comes down to resource and financing and how you how you how you framework that and within the strategy you've given some ideas as and the progress that you want to see and the elements that you you've identified are priorities but there are also within the strategy areas that you know you want to do but you might not be able to do because you are constrained by time the the geography or something or the finances behind that so it's how do you balance that to ensure that you get what you want to achieve so that your strategy acts succeeds because in some ways if it doesn't go that far it will fail yep um so i think maybe my first observation would be the fact that we've only got three priorities gives a focus and i said it earlier when we reviewed that a previous version there was at least nine or 10 so we thought for the reasons you articulate you know there's no point so that's that's really focused so that that i think is is is part of it i think when we map the delivery and the delivery the delivery under the previous strategy was pretty much through working groups and we'll continue with some of these the skills one for example has you know has made good progress there's more to go so that will continue but other issues like looking for you know the fiscal frame the vat in fact that doesn't need a working group that just needs a bit of work in fact we've done it and you know we'll be saying something about it quite quite quite soon so a more flexible delivery model but the resource issue let's be honest it will be a challenge and we've got i think three priorities and i think a reasonable list of actions under each one they'll have to be prioritised within within the strategy i guess going forward i think secondly we all know the financial constraints that we're all operating in so you know we don't nobody knows their budgets for next year yet so that that'll be a factor but two other elements two other such strengths that one is i go back to this point about aligning grant schemes across the sector we've changed ours we've worked very closely with the lottery and aligned so for organisations wishing to bed in for projects and so on you know rather than you've got a process and you've got a process and you know i'm bringing it together and my final point in that is this is not a strategy this is not a strategy for the historic environment delivered by the historic environment sector the fact that it's got net zero at the heart of it and other priorities says we need to get that mainstreaming across the sector and across government and be able to access other pots of money frankly so green initiatives or net zero so if the strategy is not just for delivery by the sector the funding should not just be constrained within the culture portfolio as well and so i've already had conversations with other bits of government about how we try and align around this i'll be honest it's not going to be easy because for too long culture and historic environment has been seen as a separate thing off to right field and not mainstream so it won't be it won't necessarily be easy to do but the fact that the priorities are so mainstream i think gives us an opportunity so there's also be a challenge but i think there's three or four ways in which we're trying to sort of alleviate it yeah i'll just come in on a couple of points there i mean we did learn an awful lot from that previous strategy and as a as alex said actually it took three years before a measurement framework was put in place for the previous strategy and then we've been reporting against that but one thing we learned from the having 13 kpi is that it was too many but also that there was a challenge in terms of acquiring the data from the sector in effect large organisations like he s or the national trust in scotland could produce the data because they can provide that many small organisations which is the rump of the sector to be perfectly honest just couldn't and couldn't engage except for case studies and we took that learning into the framework which we've produced there and so their outcomes so their end goals which means the metrics are multi-layered and sit under those and feed them but they're designed to be scalable they're designed to be flexible and they're designed to be accessible and i think Elsa McFarlane from best made that point and they were consulted on as well with that in mind so that small or large organisations can be seen as be part of that framework and we'll put some more shape on it yet to come and can be seen to be contributing and can be visibly contributing as well through the microside that we've produced to demonstrate progress and that means because the strategy is about people and places as much as it's about heritage assets it means that at certain level we will still produce the things you're used to in terms of Scotland's historic environment audit like the punchy stats about how much we contribute economically across the nation or how many jobs or how many volunteers but at another level we'll be able to tell in a more qualitative sense meaningful stories i think from regional and locally about how the stock environment is delivering to well-being and other agendas and we'll also have the delivery framework and activity mapped in a kind of theory of change type model this is where we've said we'd go and this is the impact of things and that is the intention and at year one in june taking the launch data is june 23 we do intend to produce what would be our first progress report but also in a sense the baseline for the year and there will be gaps i'll always be gaps in data because while the sector is awash in data it's not necessarily got always got the right data but i think this is about direction of travel and not always sweating the fact that you haven't got the right data because you could spend decades sometimes getting perfect data but actually this is about improvement and that's the intention thank you thank you convener thank you um Mr bibby panel um last week we heard concerns about skill shortages in the sector particularly in relation to retrofitting historic buildings skills development in scotland noted they were currently reviewing apprenticeships to ensure skills needs were being embedded into many different qualifications such as plastering and you've talked about the importance of mainstreaming already we did hear some evidence around the skills plan was working well in relation to digital marketing and financial planning but clearly there's a big issue in relation to those those skills around retrofitting the lack of apprenticeships in scotland for example in stone masonry we were told has more to do with the demand from employers to take on apprenticeships being low do you recognise this what can historic environment scotland do to encourage skills development through apprenticeships um and what needs to be done to encourage more employers to take on apprenticeships so um in my very first meeting of um opit as was in the sort of in the chef district historic environment forum um this was item number one you know but seven years ago um and that's why i went and knocked the door of the chief executive of sds and said damien i need help to put together a sip a skills investment plan for the sector and part of the argument against it not from damien but from others was well what we do is part of construction and what we do is part of tourism and what we do is part of digital and creative industry and so on but actually i said it's really really important that we have a sector skills set skills investment plan with heritage of the historic environment on the front cover and um i think having having that group and which has had almost developed a life of its own because there are working groups drawn from FEHE across all parts of the skills and education landscape working to implement that plan and a modification of the plan and therefore it's why in the first quarter of next year probably february march time we will launch a refreshed version of that now um there are big skills gaps um and the one which gets a lot of air time is put it around stone masonry um and i'll just give you my my take on that um i i chaired around table and stilling either early this year or end of last year with all parts of the sector around about it and i don't think there is an issue of people wanting to enter the sector i think the demand is there we have a very significant um traditional skills stone masonry and other crafts apprenticeship programme i think we've got about 40 or so apprentices at any one time we've picked up apprentices who've been left to be behind dry when the Edinburgh college pulled out so we've done a deal with CITB and we'll we'll see these trainees and these apprentices through however the whole issue is stone masonry and and and and that is quite critical because um it's expensive the demand is there i think from people wanting to do it but it's expensive to provide um but it's not an easy fix because what i heard from employers was the qualifications not fit for purpose um and it doesn't meet the needs of industry so there's work going on now looking at the occupational standards and what the framework and what are your apprenticeships going forward needs to be i think part of the challenge in taking people into the sector is that many years ago it was quite large companies now it's a lot of very small companies for whom taking on an apprentice is actually quite a quite a commitment um and you know the way the funding model works doesn't doesn't quite work so um my team have been doing a lot of work with Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Funding Council and Government to try and find a way forward in fact our minister and the skills minister are meeting next week to try and find a way of bringing those two things together um my personal view is i think it's going to need a bit of a left field solution because i don't think i feel like mainstream you know fe sees it as either a priority particularly when times are difficult budget wise it's quite expensive to do these sort of things so at the moment you know most of the most of the apprenticeship training is done by us at Stirling or Elgin and that reflects another thing which is the demand for these skills not just to repair castles but to repair tenements and you know for retrofit and fabric conditions for energy efficiency we need to have them around the country and at the moment it's very sort of central central built base so it's why in the new sector strategy skills skills skills will be a key issue going forward a lot of progress is made but the stone masonry issues are here and now real challenge thanks for the answer and i welcome that there's that sorry the different ministers for skills and heritage are meeting to discuss that issue because clearly it is a big issue you mentioned obviously we're talking about the new strategy and a refresh skills investment plan for the historic environment sector skills development scotland noted last week that a number of the smart goals had not been achieved now i know Covid was was part of that but they also said that those working on the review were hoping to use goals in line with resources and i know you've said before we've talked about resources before more generally but obviously in relation to skills as well there'll never be enough resource and you've got to balance i think you said earlier a sense of ambition with pragmatism in terms of the new skills investment plan refreshed and not meeting those goals before and being more pragmatic in line with resources is this more realistic and therefore less ambitious than the previous strategy plan it's not less ambitious and skills take your first point about the numbers that were quoted to you last week we don't recognize those numbers the skills investment plan has originally launched we reckon about 59 of those actions have been delivered however actually that's not really the key point because in 2019 when Covid hit the group that oversees the sip revisited the actions and some of them were not relevant in the context of Covid in a different world so the baseline actually is that 61% of the actions in the previous sip have been delivered i think it's about 27% of work in progress and actually that's very small percentage won't happen or are being delayed so we didn't we saw the numbers and we thought that that doesn't quite quite tally with us but in terms of the new strategy you know it's hard to say what issue is more important than than any other but skills is up there and that's why you know ministers are meeting because you know in a world where resources are tight we cannot Scotland cannot achieve its net zero targets without the right number of skilled people to do it so it's finding the mechanism or finding the funding routes or finding the qualification framework that enables that to be delivered and when the new sip is launched there's an awful lot of the objectives and the principles of the previous one still hold true about encouraging more people into into the sector and we've done a lot of work working with SDS careers advisors and so on about increasing the awareness of careers in the sector with young people across across Scotland so there'll be a high degree of continuity but on things like the stone masonry green skills and so on there'll be a heightened profile so i don't think the new sip is overly ambitious i actually think and goes back to the whole thing about mainstreaming and not just saying this is a culture or a heritage or a historic environment issue this is an issue that we need to address because the wider net zero aspirations are fundamentally hooked to it thank you thank you mr batterson can i just ask a supplementary on your comments here which i'm understanding is it was around the apprenticeship model not being financially the right model and i just wonder if you give us a bit more detail on that and where the pinch point is is it with the colleges is it with employers you know how does it just not quite work it's it's it's it's not one-dimensional so part of it is about the cost so to do stone masonry training in the college is expensive with all the kit and everything everything else you need so when budgets are tough that's that's a consideration i think but i think i go back to the qualification and what i was hearing from a lot of the businesses in the sector is that actually we don't necessarily need everybody trained to full apprenticeship we actually there's different skills levels we need but we're having to put people through the full thing to get the the funding that follows the qualification then there's the there's a national occupational standards that populate it and then i think there's there's ways of spreading distribution or spreading training across the country which we need to look at as well so it's not simply a case of it's expensive which is it's maybe not the fourth case i'm not fit for purpose which makes it difficult for small businesses in particular to engage because you know of all the all the evidence that has to be gathered but some of them say actually that's not the evidence of competence we need it's this so we commissioned a review a report into stone masonry and and the challenges and it's come up with that sort of multi factor issue so if it simply was a case of look we need an extra x pounds and we can fix the stone masonry issue yes we probably could and there's things we could do with that but there's wider issues around the qualifications and so on that make it up you subcontract all of that work or do you have skill people that actually work directly for your organisation no we actually subcontract very little so there are things we subcontract there are specialist things we subcontract but when you go to one of our sites and you see people working on the scaffolding there'll be his employees so we've got a you know a very talented very well trained very skilled squad of colleagues who do the work and that's why in sterling in elgin and there's really only three training providers in scotland now glasgo college and us we are by far the biggest trainer of stone masonry apprentices so we train them for our own purposes but we also train on behalf of the industry as well and i mentioned a minute ago we've come to an arrangement with CITB where we will pick up trainees who's hope and left in their apprenticeship partway through and and we'll see them through and get the complete apprenticeship so we do a lot of it one of the options is we could do more we are an approved training centre or an sqa centre you know we do a lot of training but what we could get is something that's just a finger in the dike and it guesses through a couple of years this is a long term issue and yeah put a finger in the dike for now would not be would not be unhelpful but it needs a more fundamental sustainable solution so respect is a bit off the wall but i recently visited my own local college new college lecture mother world campus and visited their robotic hub where they're actually using cobot is to do skilled sanding welding work on repairs of turbines and part of that is is taking the the risk factor away from people actually having to abseil on these machines but they can be hoisted up when the robot does its work so the the skill comes from the person directing the robot have you looked at that technology for some of the work that you're doing to see if it's more commercially viable to and given the skill shortage if you can get some of that on to a different platform if you like with that work we use technology a lot i'm not sure if we've looked at robotic stone masons but can i go and ask the question of the guys who might know and come back to you yes absolutely and i'm sure my local college would be delighted to have a visit from you to look at some of those options but thank you for that i'm going to move to mr rascal please yeah thanks very much i've got a couple of questions so the first one is about fair work it's good to see fair work principles embedded into the strategy but i'm interested in how you extend those fair work principles to businesses that you work with to organisations that are getting grant in aid yep so there's two ways in which we do it one is through our procurement and so organisations who are supplying us we have a whole range of things that we ask them to do beyond just price and quality but you know complying with fair work principles is one and the second avenue is and i think i think i saw something recently where this may have been sort of the timeline that might have been pushed out but let me not be definitive in this but through our grants so the the organisations that we support financially through our grants programme we've got a grants programme of about you know 13 14 million pounds a year not into any of our properties but into others and so we're trying to encourage the fair work agenda by making a condition of grant offers just as enterprise agencies skills agencies more generally are having to do has there been any pushback on that i'm not aware i'm not aware not of any pushback i was just going to add on that another consideration here is obviously our past our future also look to other strategies not just Scottish government policy on this but the museum's gallery's strategy and obviously fair work features quite largely in there slightly different contexts because that's many small organisations and small museums and things like that but we did that with the purpose that actually beyond the point of what how we can directly address this issue through procurement and grants which we are doing as alex says how we can actually look it's more influencing i think than being able to control and dictate this how we can work with others i mean the wider sector to drive this um through the sector okay um last week we spoke quite a bit about climate change and you know it's obviously a key key aspect of the strategy going forward and you've mentioned already you know heat and buildings and fabric first approaches and that side of things but i wanted to just pick up on another area which is kind of less your direct emissions but more the emissions that are coming from visitors heritage tourism i'm interested in in what work you're doing to address some of that so in partnership perhaps with local authorities or with national park or other bodies i mean we've heard for example i think i can block alone the jossx national park is wanting to set up kind of mobility hubs to encourage tourists to kind of arrive in the park but then also to take a sustainable transport option to then go on to a visitor attraction how are you kind of embedding that sort of partnership approach working with councils and others to really drill down on unnecessary emissions sorry yeah um so i think maybe a couple of years ago we were of the view that we need to do this but what does it mean because there's lots of talk about responsible tourism or whatever else it might be um and how do you make it tangible so um we developed what we call a responsible tourism framework which sets out exactly that um tourism is vitally important it's vitally important for every single part of scotland um so there's nothing in what we are saying at all which we don't think which there's nothing we are saying which in any way downplays the importance of tourism far from it in fact pretty important to us as an organisation in terms of ticket sales and and income however there are things we can do so for example we have been installing you know on a from an infrastructure point of view you know eb charging at sites and bike facilities at sites we've got a such trans person working with us at the moment embedded in us to to do that but there's a whole range of other things some of our our our admission products how can we help people stay longer see more there are very practical things we're doing at sites in terms of reducing waste and and so on and then on on partnership so one of the big projects we've got just now through the island steal and orny is looking at how you embed those principles in what is quite an ambitious plan for the heart of neolithic orny so there are some of those bigger issues about rolling out infrastructure at our sites where it's possible to do and encourage other modes of transport but also very practical things around things like waste and and so on all of which contributes to making the tourism and visitor experience more sustainable i mean in terms of actual transport plannings take sterling castle for example very small car park attempting just to drive into center town up to the up to the castle but then there are other options is that something that you would be working with the council to actually plan yes management of it of tourism bearing in mind the historic nature of the city centre the answer to that is yes and on the very specific of sterling i think this was pre-covid so we probably need to revisit it again but we were looking at alternatives to transport to sterling castle the car park gets awfully busy it can sometimes you're going to watch reversing cars and reversing buses so we did look at what are the options for sterling but it's not just an option for us it needs to be part of that wider that wider consideration of people movement visitor movement about about the city so yeah look i think i think this is something that's really important to us and because we've got to we've got to measure visitor carbon emissions you know even if they're coming to our site as well as you know 10 other locations across scotland we've got responsibility to try and measure and reduce the carbon footprint of all of that we're not at an early stage but there's a long way to go in what we can do but i think we are we are practically taking steps and i chair internally a climate a climate group which looks at all the stuff we're doing around climate and deliver of a climate action plan and that was one of the things we're discussing in monday afternoon now we've got that responsible tourism framework out there and our estates colleagues are aware of it yes there's big things we can do around infrastructure but actually it's practical local stuff that makes a difference okay my last question is just about how you're engaging with marginalized groups um so you obviously have your your membership card holders i'm sure you have school visits and and other and other visits to attractions but you know there will be groups of people in scotland who who have not connected with us so you don't feel able to um there'll be other groups who perhaps struggle to engage our new scots as well um so i'm interesting how ensuring that our national heritage and and the national assets actually you know the benefit of that is felt by everybody in scot including people who perhaps wouldn't come to an asset for a whole range of reasons be it income or yeah can i can i give you a couple of very quick observations and i have my expert on the subject to my to my right so um we're very conscious of that and in our corporate plan operating plan um we talk about you know making the historic environment and our property is more accessible to everybody in scotland so you're right we have a schools programme we have a subsidised programme for schools so a lot of a lot of schools use our sites for that type of thing last year we increased the age from five to seven at which you start paying at all so for families interest a family ticket as well so we've tried to do that this year right now the first sunday of every month from october through to march is three any day who lives in scotland has free access to all our sites some of our sites are free to access any way but you know we can go to eddard bricasso free of charge and that's deliberately trying to encourage people who maybe wouldn't engage to to engage with with our sites and then across the sector for a number of years now we've had um access for a pound for all young scot car holders so there's a number of practical things but there's a there's a almost a more of a philosophical approach to engaging more more more more groups or maybe guys add them to comment we're coming at this in in all sorts of different ways i'll start really just looking inwards into he s in the first instance because actually a key to this is your own employees really 1500 or so employees and how representative are they of broader wider scotland and its demography which obviously varies from area to area so naturally we are as a public sector body required to produce the qualities outcomes and mainstream and reporting but going beyond that we've really been i think ramping up our activity in this area targeting in both employees in terms of how we can improve access looking at recruitment encouraging those employees who already part we would say of different equalities groups and represented a different ethnic minorities and so on to set up their own internal forums with the support of senior leadership and drive change within the organisation if you change within the organisation it also helps you change externally and also we've been doing a number of other initiatives i mean alex mentions a few located connected to the properties we're doing a number of other pieces of work we're looking at empire and colonialism around our properties which will lead to a swath of work around interpretation reinterpretation at our sites and the stories we tell and how we engage more widely than we have traditionally potentially and we've also done a host of already a number of projects and programmes of activity involving refugee groups and migrant groups around the antonine wall as an example talking about op-off bringing it back to op-off inclusion is at the heart of this and is an aspiration always i think we all know i think if we look at even just the national survey stats on that those who engage with the cultural heritage in the round tend to be certain demographic and so quite rightly as you point out there are numbers who are not engaging whether that's from social deprivation or from other areas so we're looking at how we can approach that and in the process of developing op-off we did actively target in a way engagement there's one actually very enjoyable occasion where we met with a group of Kurdish refugees in Glasgow actually but engaging with them around local heritage and trying to involve local community interest as well around local history so these are kind of small pockets of activity it fed into our thinking but actually that's an example of how i think we need to approach it and again it comes back to an earlier point that this is about how we do things on the ground quite often we can make changes to our recruitment process we can make other changes but actually it's how we do it and on the ground and how we work with others other organisations are more located in that space collaboratively in partnership to actually tell the stories that people want to hear and make and allow them to feel engaged now naturally with op-off also i mean this is housekeeping in a way we also have made it being keen to make it more accessible with easy read versions and things like that i'm moving forward i think our intent as well in the way we're looking at how we communicate would become more accessible excellent thank you thank you any other thoughts okay you know i have to declare an interest which i did when i first joined the committee with my partner as the minister responsible for this area but we'll do that now i thought about it last weekend didn't do it just to see i really enjoyed your analogy about the lack of stone mason's when you talked about a finger in the dike i thought it was very appropriate on clutmanin there's tower there's good news and bad news and it relates to my substantive question the good news is it's open 24 hours a day every day of the year except for st Andrew's day but the problem is it's only open to external viewing my point was really about internal and i see because i've got the benefit the internet which you wouldn't have had that has been talked about at least since 2017 the reason i mentioned it is all because it'll be true of so many different sites and buildings that you have clutmanin tower was owned by robert the bruce and it's said i know whether it's true or not that he held a parliament there as well so you can see the broader interest and it's on that issue which i raised last week i'd just like to hear a bit more about you mentioned the importance of ticket receipts and numbers going through i mentioned last week as well that when we took William Wallace's sword to the united states and called it the brave heart sword the consequence of that was a huge uptick in the the numbers going through the Wallace monument which i know is owned by the council not by his and it's that kind of thing in a situation where finances are grim and about to get grimmer whether you're sufficiently looking at how you can tap into the history and legacy of some of these buildings particularly in relation to whether it's a diaspora overseas visitors might be interested because the cost of learning pressures is probably hard to get more people domestically going but whether how seriously and how vigorously you look at maximising revenue from that source? Commercial income or non-granite and aid income vitally important to us but pre Covid's over 60 per cent of our income was self-generated just under 40 granite and aid it switched over Covid but we're heading back that way which forces us to think well what other opportunities are there so there are three or four sort of things we're doing one is our commercial activity ring I mentioned to the committee before one of the things we'd like to do is change our business model and we'll progress that and get more flexibility so hopefully we can get that over the line before the end of the financial year that basically means that if we push the boat out on on commercial activities then we want to be able to retain that and reinvest it in the historic environment at the moment and all NDPBs of this restriction at the moment we need permission to use it or it's offset against reduction in granite and aid so our business model work is really important and ministers and others have been very supportive in that. The other standard of looking at is fundraising now I'll be honest fundraising has not really been a big part of what we do over recent years it's interesting the tourism market has come back much more strongly than we anticipated so our commercial income this year is slightly ahead of where we forecast but going forward with costs on the going one way we need to look at other other avenues so we're we're taking sort of tentative steps I would say but we haven't yet tapped into the diaspora idea but it's on our list so some of some of the things we are doing for example is a lot of our sites are free to access so can you sort of be tapping donate type of type of arrangement at some of our sites we're pretty good at tapping into research funds through research councils and other things as well so actually we have a fundraising plan that we want to ratchet up and we've got a couple of people working in our fundraising activity now we need to be careful because we can sometimes be seen as if you like the big organisation in the sector which is quite with loss of small and therefore we need to be careful as to how we pitch our fundraising but certainly tapping into that wider diaspora is something we have on our minds and in fact a couple of comments have been made to me over the last couple of years particularly around some of our sites where we've had restrictions that given the affinity of a particular clan or whatever else is there an opportunity to partner in terms of a project going forward so I would say it's early stages but it's certainly something we can look at I just wonder whether doing that on a more rigorous basis to stop being parochial about my own area first thinking about somewhere like Badby in the Highlands which is pretty grim for its significance but also to go and visit you're on the edge of a cliff so can you imagine why you might want to be careful about how you get people there but the interest you could probably engender from especially from Canada in the States because that's where a lot of the immigration came from it's just to say whether it's possible and it would be true of any new potential acquisitions that you had as well to actually make part of your criteria you know what you could tap into I mean Americans for example the biggest spenders when they come here and they are coming back I've seen it around here as well but the potential for really dramatically increased income if you can tap into that seam of what interests people and it'd be true of different countries as well it's pretty huge so is there any capacity to do it on an individual site basis and see what the potential is there? There is but I think my answer would probably be the same as I gave you to the last question it's on our radar of something we want to do up until now it's not really been something we've had to do or had the flexibility within our model to benefit from but whether it's a site specific or whether it's a more general approach yes we can do it and I think the first step we've taken is putting this in place a small fundraising team to start to develop now whether it's through sdi or through Scottish business network or through some other diaspora organisations I think we can tap into it so it's not it's probably my glibest answer of the morning it's on our plan to do but to be honest we haven't actually tapped it properly yet on that last point always always keen to tap into the clan networks across the world can I return to the question of skills and to ask a very broad but I think quite fundamental question and it's picking up on the evidence of Brian Dixon last week who said I quote even if the national trust for Scotland had the finances to deliver large-scale capital works across Scotland I do not think that we would have the skills available in Scotland to do so that strikes me is pretty significant I mean firstly do you agree with that and also what you know how do we sort sort this out yeah I do agree and it goes goes back to my earlier comment about it's hard to say one priority is more important than the other but skills underpins so much of what we do so the whole thing about net zero and maintaining properties and so on is fundamentally back to the skills so I do agree with Brian and that's why I've said you know the the old skills investment plan and the new one is is so fundamentally important to the delivery of not just the new strategy but the wider dimensions it's going to be challenging because we all know that the world of education and budgets at the moment which is why I think some more creative approaches is worth looking at I also think that there are philanthropic opportunities around skills which we should what we have explored and we should we should continue to explore and my personal view is the demand is huge doing it the way we've always done it won't get us to an answer and you know the conversation next week between ministers will hopefully help move somewhere that forward but I agree with Brian and Brian the sat in the skills group that's that's developed the sip and so on so that's true I think the other thing I would say on this is that because it is such a common issue whether it's us or NTS or Scottish canals or others we're actually talking just now about how we don't just look after our own skills needs but how do we come together and find a collective way forward about doing it and you know that made sense anyway you know did the skills investment plan stimulate it possibly but it just makes sense so I think if we are going to do more training and Brian needs more and John needs more at the canals let's try and find a joined up way of doing it working with the skills organisations SDSSFC and so on thank you I think as I mean pretty much covered it I would say really it's a bigger issue than the sector very much so and it requires the education and skills sectors really to be on board and working with us and we know that the ministers talking to this point next week it is as so much across the new strategy can only be delivered working cross sectorally and being innovative probably in terms of how we source funding with private sector thank you thank you can be a thank you I think we have now exhausted all questions mr paterson dr Daxon thank you very much for your attendance at the committee it's been really interesting session with you and I'm sure we'll look forward to finding out what the look about each tower ends up down the line so thank you very much and that note I'm going to close and we move into private session we'll have a short comfort break thank you