Convention of the South of Scotland minutes: October 2024

Attendees and apologies

• Kate Forbes Deputy First Minister
• Graeme Dey, Scottish Government
• Pete Smith, Borders College
• Ray McCowan, Bordefs College
• John Wordsworth-Goodram, CGI
• Andy Leitch, Confor
• Joanna Campbell, Dumfries and Galloway College
• Gail Macgregor, Dumfries and Galloway Council
• Dawn Roberts, Dumfries and Galloway Council
• Malcolm Chrisp, Heriot-Watt University
• Alistair Fell, Iron and Pine
• Drew Easton, Jas P Wilson
• Laura Middlemass, Plexus
• Alan Baxter, Rowan Glen
• Kate Fox-Male, SCHLOSS Roxburghe
• John Curry, Scottish Borders Council
• Scott Hamilton, Scottish Borders Council
• Euan Jardine, Scottish Borders Council
• Jenny Linehan, Scottish Borders Council
• Martin Boyle, Scottish Funding Council
• Mike Cantlay, Scottish Funding Council
• Judith Young Scottish Government
• Greig  Robson, Skills Development Scotland
• Russell Griggs, South of Scotland Enterprise
• Jane Morrison-Ross, South of Scotland Enterprise
• Mary Thomson, SRUC
• David Hope-Jones, SSD Alliance
• Alison Irvine, Transport Scotland
• Rob Dickson, Visit Scotland

Items and actions

• 13.15–13.25  STANDING ITEMS:  Opening remarks, Natural Capital Innovation Zone video, Review of previous outcomes

• 13.25–13.30  STANDING ITEM: Regional Economic Partnership Update

• 13.30–15.00  DISCUSSION 1: Skills

• 15.00–15.45  DISCUSSION 2:Employers

• 15.45–16.15  DISCUSSION 3:Transport Update

• 16.15–16.30  STANDING ITEMS: Forward Look and Close

 

Start of Transcript

 

Euan Jardine

Thank you and welcome, everyone, here to St Boswells, our Council headquarters, obviously here in the Scottish Borders. We're here not just today to talk about the Scottish Borders, we're here to talk about the South of Scotland as a whole. The South of Scotland, it's one of those places where if you were to take away the signposts, you wouldn't know you were leaving the Borders and moving into Dumfries and Galloway. Fantastic region, got so much going for it, rolling hills, great beauty. When it comes to sport, we're certainly a heavyweight region as well. We've also got Galashiels just up the road, two years in a row the happiest town in Scotland. We've got a lot going for us here in the South of Scotland, a lot of things that we are developing. We've had major events like the UCI World Cycling Championships recently, just had the Tour of Britain coming through here.

But with all that being said, it's not all rosy, it's not all perfect, it's not all fantastic. We do have issues, we do have problems here in the South of Scotland. One of the key things we're talking about, skills and transport today, two very, very different things but two things that are interlinked and two things that we continually talk about here. If we were to improve those parts, we could make a huge difference for the people living in this region. Not just our young people, but every single person in the region. I think that's what we need to remember when we're talking about the skills and especially when we're talking about the transport. That's why I'm encouraged today.

We have obviously the Deputy First Minister, so thank you very much for coming here, it's absolutely great to welcome you. We've got Graeme Dey, the Minister for Higher and Further Education here to talk on this. Now we're not going to sit here and we're not going to [believe] - talking off a script, I believe we should be talking about real points, real facts and actually holding things to account. We're here to push the South of Scotland. We're here to make sure that the South of Scotland's voice is heard. Hopefully today you will hear the South of Scotland's voice, you will take it back to Holyrood and you will be able to pass down and help make decisions that improve the lives of the people in this region. Because the people in this region are what make this region special.

Now, with that being said, we've also today just been at the Tweed Forum, announcing £10 million of support for the Destination Tweed project, which is going to revolutionise a lot of our trails in this area, 113 miles spanning across the whole region. An absolutely fantastic initiative there and I'm glad to see the Deputy First Minister was there as well to launch it. But what we've also got today, we've got an innovation zone, Scotland's natural capital innovation zone. To start us off, to emphasise this point we've Jane Morrison-Ross, the Chief Executive of South of Scotland Enterprise, you may know as SoSE, is going to show us a video on this and talk through it and we'll see where we are. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the day.

Jane Morrison-Ross

Thank you, Councillor. I'm delighted to be here a year on from South of Scotland being given the designation of the natural capital innovation zone. It's been a very fast year and there's been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes to get us here. But my team say quite simply that it boils down to the South of Scotland being the right place, with the right people and the time being right, right now. This is a global first, showcasing our amazing natural capital assets, our robust and supportive partnerships and entrepreneurial and innovative mindsets.

We have led the way in the South of Scotland by being the first inclusive growth deal in the UK to develop a natural capital programme and the first to deliver a regional land use framework, more commonly known as the RLUF. Working collaboratively, we've taken up the challenge of NSET to show how a natural capital approach can deliver the overall vision for Scotland to become a wellbeing economy. Through a key focus on new market opportunities, responsible, sustainable investment and ensuring we have the right skills in place to maximise our opportunities and investments.

The designation of the natural capital innovation zone is a call to all of our partners in the south, be they businesses, communities, statutory bodies or third sector organisations, to come on that journey with us to create a South of Scotland that is fair, green and flourishing. It's underpinned by core principles of embedding circular economy approaches into our businesses, delivering community wealth building opportunities and that has to be at the heart of everything we do. Enhancing our creativity to deliver nature-based solutions and cultural change, which is a really critical part of this.

I congratulate our local authority partners for their passion in taking this forward and I'm extremely pleased to commit SoSE to this process through our role as an advocate and enabler, taking the South of Scotland forwards towards a resilient and sustainable future. I'd like to thank my colleague, Jayne Ashley, who's been really instrumental in driving this forward for SoSE as well with real expertise and passion, as we've seen across everybody that's been involved in this. Our video, I hope, will give you a flavour of our ambition and the opportunity ahead. If we could play that now please.

[Video playing]

Kate Forbes 

…to the South of Scotland Convention and I'm particularly delighted to follow that video and to follow the kind remarks from Councillor Jardine welcoming us all. A special thanks to the team at the Borders Council for all that you've done to pull this event together and to put on the hospitality that you have. I've met many of you, I've not met all of you. I'm Kate Forbes, the Deputy First Minister and I'm absolutely delighted to be taking on chairmanship, I think is the accurate term, but perhaps if we adapted it slightly to chairwomanship just for his occasion, and to try and ensure - my job is to ensure that you feel like this is a worthwhile use of your time.

That is my main aim, that around this table we have a lot of the public bodies represented, we have a lot of the political structures represented from government through to our local authorities. My hope is that the sum of the parts is far greater than if each of us were operating independently for the purpose of improving the prosperity, the wellbeing of the South of Scotland economy. I recognise that we all come to this with very different aims, ambitions, aspirations, the things that we're involved with, the projects and the initiatives. But actually I imagine the overarching aim that we all have is to ensure that for as long as we are in post, representing the organisations that we represent, we can leave behind a legacy that is of improved prosperity. I'd very much like us to work together in that vein.

The second part to that is that I'm conscious that many of us will sit in many meetings every day and the key test will be whether on every occasion that we meet we can actually identify that there has been improvement, change and progress. How we keep track of the actions that we agree and how we ensure that there is a level of accountability to all the conversations that we have and the decisions that we make also matters.

If any of you have particular ideas of how we can do that more effectively, then I'm certainly very open to listening. If there's a different way of distributing minutes, if there's a different way of recording actions, to make sure that we don't have brilliant conversations about all that could be changed and how we're going to change it and then meet again in six months' time, only to discover we're having exactly the same conversation. If there are things that you have ideas about, about how the Convention can work as effectively as possible, I am all ears in terms of the mechanics, the organisation of it. I want us to be focused over the course of this afternoon very much on action, what we actually do as a result of sharing our thoughts.

Secondly, where can we speak with one voice. We may have areas of disagreement, so where can we speak of one voice and be a very vocal voice on behalf of South of Scotland communities. Thirdly, how we see the interaction between policy and implementation. We can often have debates about policy, about what should happen and I always think that policy is only as relevant as the way in which it's implemented. We could have conversations about policy, but there really needs to be ownership about making it happen. To my mind, we have everybody around the table that we need to implement well. Where things are not implemented well, that's where they need to be flagged in terms of our actions.

We have a packed agenda today. I'm delighted to see the focus on skills, at which point I'll hand over to my colleague, Graeme Dey. I'm also looking forward to hearing about the progress with the Regional Economic Partnership as well. In terms of some housekeeping details, I'm reliably informed that there's no intention for a fire alarm test, so if it goes off I imagine you need to get out and I'm assuming that will be through that door.

The other thing is that the Convention is being livestreamed and recorded for transcription. Now as a slight improvement on the Convention of the Highlands and Islands, your microphones aren't on at all times, because that means that anything you mutter also makes it into the transcript. I think the Convention of the South of Scotland should feel freer to mutter because it won't be recorded, but maybe just mutter quite quietly. A link to the transcript will be circulated before the next meeting. If you're a tweeter, I don't know what the verb is for X these days, but we will be live tweeting from the Convention hashtag, which is autumncoss2024.

Now we've already heard from Jane Morrison-Ross about that brilliant news and having come this morning from the work around the Tweed trails, I'm feeling particularly inspired about all that you are achieving here. It's incredible to see and I'm confident that through the work of the natural capital innovation zone alongside the investments that are being made, that we will see huge progress in the South of Scotland, which is so key to the performance of the national economy as well.

We now move on to a review of the previous outcomes. Now you will see any updates to the outcomes from previous Conventions in paper 1. Given we have quite a lot to get through today, it would be helpful if you could share your comments on those outcomes with the secretariat team after the meeting. The secretariat team are sitting over there, so have a chat with them if you have got any points to note on that.

For my part, whilst I understand that previously outcomes have spanned multiple Conventions, reflecting the complexity and long-term nature of the issues they address, as I said, my aim is to deliver a Convention that is laser-focused on progress and shared actions. Whilst I think we should agree today's outcomes, those are timebound and delivery partners are clearly identified. I'll be asking the secretariat to ensure that that is the case as consistently as possible. Ownership and deadlines I think are our best friends when trying to make progress.

I'll just pause and see if there are any questions or comments, not substantively if you don't mind at this stage, because I'm keen that we get into the agenda. But any major concerns, red flags that you must share? Great, wonderful, thank you. Okay, let's move then into the first agenda item, which is an update from the Regional Economic Partnership. It's very evident from the paper that the REP continues to make good progress, with a sharp focus on the key issues that are facing the South of Scotland, where collective action can really make a difference. I'm delighted to hand over to Councillor Gail Macgregor, the chair of the REP - is that how we're calling it, what we're calling it - to tell us more about the important work that's being taking forward. Thank you so much, Gail.

Gail Macgregor

Thank you very much, Deputy First Minister, and it's lovely to be sharing a top table with you again. In the room, Kate and I have a strong record of getting things done and working very strongly together and I hope that this forum is going to deliver exactly the same thing, so congratulations on your promotion and it really is lovely to see you in person.

It's been a very busy and productive period for the REP, which I'm chairing this year, and we've shared a paper which gives an update on the work of the partnership since the Convention's last meeting in February. Now the REP's focus has been on progressing its three key priorities, which have been housing, transport and skills. I think that we are making good progress in those areas, but obviously more work needs to be done.

Firstly, on housing, the REP welcomed the Minister for Housing to the South of Scotland to launch a really ambitious housing action plan for the region. I was very proud to be there with Professor Griggs and other members that are here today. Euan and I have discussed this, we have now 10 tangible actions that need to be delivered over the next two years and if we don't deliver those 10 things we fail. It's incumbent on all of us and Euan and I in particular as political leaders, to ensure that those 10 tangible actions are delivered.

Now they include growing our regional construction sector, which is where skills come in really importantly. Proactively promoting the region as a place to build homes. Providing a strong and robust pipeline of housing sites, which is difficult sometimes, we all know that in our communities. That'll deliver economic transformation for the South of Scotland. Now supporting those who are innovating and creating more diversity in our homes, through partnership pilots and including options for student and key workers, will also be a key part of those 10 things that we have to do in the next two years. The REP is now focused on strategic oversight of the delivery against the plan.

Secondly, on transport and lovely to have Jenny here. The REP strategic action group on transport has agreed its key areas of activity. These include making the case for targeted transport investment and ensuring a strong evidence and data-led approach. The REP has been instrumental in shaping the paper on transport, which we will be discussing later today.

Thirdly, on skills. Very difficult area and it pulls together a huge amount of partners, but it's absolutely pivotal to the delivery of the other two priorities within the REP. On the task and finish groups of the REP's education and skills strategic coordination group, they've set out what they might need to expand skills provision for. This will include forestry, construction and engineering sectors. The REP has received updates on this work and provided feedback to shape the skills discussions today. We had a really lengthy conversation, a very useful meeting recently.

Now finally, in wider work, the partnership has also formally launched the regional land use framework for the South of Scotland, following extensive consultation and a submission to the Scottish Government. We have an endorsed and refreshed Regional Economic Strategy delivery plan, always a mouthful, which will be launched later this autumn and we've implemented a new communication strategy. This is starting with the successful development of a new website and launch of social media accounts.

Today Convention is invited to welcome the progress made in the three grand challenges of housing, transport and skills, as well as the wider priorities and actions that will collectively deliver on the ambition in the Regional Economic Strategy. We're being asked to commit to actively supporting delivery and collaboration in his work, for example, in collaborating to implement the agreed actions in the South of Scotland's housing action plan, as well as shaping and supporting emerging actions on transport and skills.

I will leave it there. There's a lot of work to do, there's a lot of work that's been done and I commend those that have pulled things together. But I think the skills debate today is going to be absolutely pivotal in moving forward in the direction we want to. So thank you, DFM, I'll leave it there.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much. Any quick initial thoughts about the work of the REP? Obviously if anyone wants to speak at any point just indicate. I'm delighted to see that the work aligns quite well with a number of national pieces of work as well, so the rural and islands housing action plan, for example, including some of the issues around construction sector. Also just getting more community-led housing happening as well and future job growth opportunities. So it's nice to see that dovetail.

I'm assuming unless there's anybody else to comment, that the action really there is to commend you for the work and to support you as you continue to progress that. Perhaps at the next Convention we could just get an update on what has been delivered and at that point start flagging whether there are things that you're starting to tear your hair out about.

Great, wonderful, thank you very much, Gail for that, which brings us on almost perfectly on time, which is very nice, to the skills item, which is one of our main substantive discussions of the day. Having just met with a number of tourism businesses immediately prior to this Convention, I'm blaming them for being late, although I was the one that kept talking.

I'm hearing the consistent challenge around workforce and skills, that's a very neat way of lining it up for this conversation. I think that's quite consistent right across Scotland, but there will be particularly unique challenges in the South of Scotland. We have huge reserves of talent and ambition here which are envied around the world, but as the world changes quite rapidly we need to make sure that we have the skills to deliver. As chief delegator today, I'm delighted to hand over to Graeme Dey, who'll give us all the answers.

Graeme Dey

Good afternoon, everyone. The Deputy First Minister's right about the need to engage employers in the work that we're doing. I've done quite a bit of that myself, my officials have done even more as we've developed our thinking and our planning around the reform agenda. I very much welcome the opportunity to discuss education and skills reform with employers from across this region this afternoon.

I think we would all agree that the system must deliver, certainly in two regards at least. It must give people the opportunity that they need throughout their lifetime to fulfil their potential and it must enable the vital research, innovation and knowledge exchange that underpins our global competitiveness. That is how we're going to support communities and the economy to thrive.

There is much about the system which is good, James Withers acknowledged that. There's much that we can build upon, but we must be honest here, there's also much which requires at the very least refinement. Now I know that reform can be challenging, but we've been clear as a government that we're not going to shy away from decisions which will deliver better services for learners and for employers.

Change of this magnitude is not going to happen overnight and we recognise the importance of working with the bodies involved, as well as stakeholders, to get this right. There are a number of projects currently progressing, including simplifying the funding body landscape, improving career support and taking a central role in the development of apprenticeships.

Of course of particular importance to this group in our session today is the work that we're doing on skills planning. Today's papers emphasise the need for effective skills planning which is truly collaborative between employers, training providers and institutions and I'm pleased to see that so many key partners are represented here today. As I said, we've committed as a government to taking a lead role on national skills planning, while strengthening approaches to regional skills planning.

This work means building on the best practice that we know of and making that the new standard. Our skills planning work will be key to delivering a system which is more agile, more responsive to our economy, social and environmental needs and our ambitions. We're currently in the process of sharing some initial guidelines which will steer our approach to strengthening regional skills planning. I know that my officials are meeting each Regional Economic Partnership individually in the coming weeks.

We've embarked upon a 10-year transformation of our public services and I'm under no illusion about the scale of the changes required in my portfolio. At the same time, we must continue to respond to the opportunities and the challenges presented to us by major economic transformations, like the transition to net zero. To be clear, whilst fully delivering on our reform ambitions will take time, there is much that we can do in the short term which will have an impact and establish a clear direction of travel.

Because the Government won't be able to deliver this on our own. We fully recognise the importance of partnership working, which is why it's so important for us as ministers to spend time with partners like yourselves, working through which elements of the present approach need to be retained, which should be built upon and which need replaced. I'm happy now to pass on to Greig Robson from SDS, who's going to kick off the presentations for us. Greig.

Greig Robson 

Thank you, Minister and good afternoon, everyone. I'm Greig Robson from Skills Development Scotland. My task today is to set the context and do it at pace so that we've got discussion. We are going to kick off with a short video today and the point of putting the video up is I'm sure we are going to use terminology like parity of esteem, flexibility of funding, industry demand today. But those aren't terms that always resonate with our residents. We need to take it back to what are we trying to do here and the Minister referred to it, we are trying to make sure people and businesses can fulfil their potential and that's what [skills is]. Can we play the video?

[Video playing]

Greig Robson

Okay, I hope that's inspired everybody in terms of the difference that skills can definitely make to people and our businesses in South of Scotland. I want to very quickly go through paper 3, drawing out some headlines. This is very much we are focused on what we think makes South of Scotland different, so this is our story, in a sense.

Very quickly some headlines around our economy, there are less people unfortunately employed in South of Scotland than 10 years ago. A combination of changes in the economy and challenges around population, our large employing sectors of health, retail and manufacturing, our small but very important specialisms of agriculture and forestry.

We have an issue around low wages, which we're not in denial about and you can see there from the occupations that are the big employing occupations in South of Scotland tend to be three occupations that are known for low wages unfortunately. In terms of demand, like all regions in Scotland, there was a post-COVID spike in demand for labour. The labour market has cooled somewhat in the past year, but demand is still noticeably still quite how. Some hints in the slide there in terms of where demand is coming from, care workers, cleaners, sales and retail, all in high demand in volume terms. You can see from the job posting adverts what employers are commonly looking for.

We know that we have fewer higher level occupations than other regions and more employment in occupations requiring less qualifications. We also know that economic inactivity is an issue. It rose significantly and even though it's come back down, there is still a significant proportion of the working age population not available for work for various reasons. In your papers we tell a story of recruitment challenges, we are not unique in that and wouldn't claim to be, but certainly rurality exacerbates some of those challenges that have been felt across the country as well. I'm sure we'll come back to that in our discussions.

Some headlines around our people, our young people do engage positively with our annual participation measures, above the national average in both areas of the region. In terms of where young people go, in our region less young people go into higher education, more go straight into employment and progression into further education is about the same as the national average.

Claimant count unemployment is at low levels in historic terms, it's always too high so there's no complacency there, but what that lowish level means is there's not a huge amount of people actively seeking work that we can tap into to fill the vacancies that we've got. Again it takes you back to that one in five that are not available through economic inactivity.

We know that we've got less people with higher level qualifications in South of Scotland, more people with no qualifications. Our geography means that travel to work becomes really important. We've got more people reliant on cars and the rise of home working that was possibly seen as an opportunity, the latest census showed that that actually hasn't come through in South of Scotland as you might have expected compared to other regions in Scotland. We know that too many of our residents experience low wages and poverty, with wage issues again exacerbated by issues around rurality, i.e. higher energy and transport costs.

Some headlines around our businesses, we are a region of small and microbusinesses and we really value the role they play in job creation. But I'm sure we will hear more today about the challenges this causes in terms of how they interact with the skills system, so I'm sure we will come back to that.

Some words around our future and I suppose how we're approaching this. Our future outlook, when you look at some of the forecasts and SDS commissions, there is strong demand for labour forecasts. The need to replace workers leaving the labour market alone creates a significant demand, we call that replacement demand. But you've also got growth opportunities and there's some significant detail in the paper around the economic opportunities, particularly around net zero, that place South of Scotland well in terms of exceeding those forecasts that are in your paper.

We believe it only takes a small proportion of some of these economic opportunities to come off and you're exceeding those forecasts for labour and you've got a real challenge in terms of filling those jobs in the future. At the same time as that positive outlook in terms of job creation, we do have this shrinkage of the working age population and the demographic challenges that again I'm sure will come up today, squeezing that working age population and making satisfying demand challenging.

You heard some mention today of the work of the RES and the REP, so some detail around how it works in South of Scotland. The REP has prioritised, as we said, it's got three grand challenges, skills makes it in, so it's a top priority for the REP. We've got South of Scotland Education skills group, we've got subregional LEPs and the Crichton Campus Leadership Group. We've had a pathfinder in the past year as well and we've got a network of skills providers absolutely pushing to deliver all this. So we have got all the structures you would expect to see in place and the strategy that's really focused on making a difference.

I've done that very quickly, so what would I like people to remember as we move into some of the other papers? We have said we've got three grand challenges in South of Scotland and we are absolutely aware that these challenges interact.

I'm sure housing and transport will come up in the skills discussion today. We know we need holistic approaches to dealing with it. We are realistic about the challenges we face. Low wages and productivity are a long-term challenge, they've been around for some years, we're not in denial about that. But is there a sense of doom and gloom in the room and the partnership? Absolutely not and I think that comes from the economic opportunities that are detailed in your paper and that sense that we've got a generational opportunity here in terms of the investment that's planned, particularly around net zero.

However, with that generational opportunity we still think there are real risks around the availability of labour and that's why we think yes, this is about skills, but it's also that question of availability of labour. How do we get more people back into the workforce? It might seem semantics on that last point, but we think that importance of increasing the size of the available workforce is really important. I think there's a consensus that we're excited about the future, but we also are understanding that the responses need to match the pace and scale of the opportunities that are flowing down the line.

I hope that gave people a sense of where we think we are in terms of the context of the discussions today. What we've decided to do in the rest of the day is look at those challenges and opportunities through a different lens and that's what you've got in your paper. With the first paper we're looking at the issues through a sectoral lens, we'll then move on to looking through a skills pathway lens. Then we'll finish up today with a session looking through the lens of employers and how employers work within the system.

Quickly drawing breath and moving on to the key sectors paper, which I think is paper 4, I just wanted to quickly give you a bit of context of what this paper's about. It obviously talks a lot about the skills planning we've been doing in South of Scotland, but we've picked out two case studies. I've had many partners say to me why forestry and visitor economy? There could be different sectors in this paper, we have other sectors that have already been alluded to, construction, engineering, that could easily could have focused there.

One of the reasons we did pick forestry and visitor economy is there's a golden thread from previous Conventions in terms of discussions. But also they illustrate quite different types of sectors with challenges. Forestry is not a massive sector in employment terms, but very important and very important nationally as well. Whereas visitor economy is a larger employing sector and it's got issues that again are not absolutely unique to South of Scotland, but the issue of rurality makes it a unique challenge facing the visitor economy in South of Scotland. I'm going to hand over now to Rob Dickson from Visit Scotland to take you through the visitor economy case study to kick us off.

Rob Dickson 

Thanks, Greig. Good afternoon, Deputy First Minister, Minister, everybody. I'm just going to take a few minutes, as Greig alluded to, to pick up where Convention left off in February when it launched the Responsible Tourism Strategy for the South of Scotland. We said we would return to the issue of skills, we didn't really dwell on the issue of skills at that time, although it forms an important part of the strategy.

The next slide might be a little bit challenging from there. It's challenging enough from here, it might be a bit more challenging from that end of the room. Responsible Tourism Strategy for the South of Scotland was launched earlier this year. It's very ambitious but it's rooted in a high degree of confidence that there is potential in the South of Scotland to grow the visitor economy significantly. Not just significantly but by £1 billion to £1.76 billion by 2034 and to support in the context of today's paper a further 6,000 jobs to 20,000 FT posts, again within the next decade. These are ambitious numbers, but we are confident that they are realistic numbers based on the potential the South of Scotland has across the national visitor economy.

We set out within the strategy that we would transform the visitor economy by self-evidently inspiring visitors to come to the South of Scotland, develop the businesses here so that the visitor experience is as high quality as we can make it. But also supporting businesses no matter the stage of development they're at or the scale of them to succeed. But we wanted to do that in a way that acted responsibly and reflected the focus on the environment in the South of Scotland and the strength of the natural capital in the South of Scotland.

Behind the overall strategy is a three-year action plan that we're already well into the first part of delivering, the first of three three-year action plans to deliver that decade's worth of a strategy. The work that goes on, on a week by week basis, between the two councils, South of Scotland Enterprise, South of Scotland Destination Alliance and my colleagues at Visit Scotland is as tight a group of officials working on a strategy to deliver our ambitions here as I think you will find anywhere in Scotland. But as Greig has said, the challenge of skills is at the heart of the strategy and we recognised that when we launched the strategy later this year.

Whilst we've been able to set out the level of ambition that we've got for the development of the visitor economy in the South of Scotland and there's strong evidence for that growth in demand, that also leads to strong demand for labour support to the sector. As Greig indicated, it's already a high volume sector in terms of employment, but there is demand for more employment. There are well understood challenges that would be true across the whole of Scotland, but they are particularly acute in respect of three things in the South of Scotland.

The need to inspire more young people to stay in the South of Scotland and work in the tourism sector, a need to ensure that they have the right skills to be able to do that at the right stage of their career, and a need to create quality year-round employment in order that we can sustain that 52 weeks of the year offer to the visitor. That in turn will address the challenge of seasonality. The industry itself in the South has recognised the challenge and the need for action. That's set out very clearly within the tourism strategy itself.

There is a set of skills-focused actions within the tourism strategy. As I say, we didn't dwell on those earlier this year at the Convention. We're now dwelling on them and we're drawing them to the forefront of everybody's thinking in the conversation today. The first is a commitment to develop a specific workforce skills plan for the tourism sector in the South of Scotland. The second is the need to advocate for careers in tourism and hospitality, building respect and recognition on this. That links very clearly to work that's been done and published recently in the work of the Fair Work Convention on hospitality, which was published just a few weeks ago and which the Government will respond to in the fullness of time. But which I think builds on part of what we've recognised as being necessary here in the South of Scotland.

There's clearly, as you can tell from the way the papers are presented, a very close working relationship, not just between the agencies and organisations that I've highlighted already but with Skills Development Scotland as well. They in turn are working with a set of partners to make sure that the case for this work on skills is as clear and compelling as it can be, because we recognise the package of services that's required needs to be enhanced and needs to be somewhat stronger than has been the case so far. They in turn are looking for a very specific piece to do with the training of chefs in the region and practical solutions are required to address that specific shortage.

Then in the latter three actions that are embedded, there's a need to look at qualifications and pathways, including the work with all education providers as young people leave school is important there. Clearly working with directly the two colleges in South of Scotland to provide that training and linking it to what we are trying to do in terms of the growth of the industry is an important part that's set out within the strategy.

Finally, I alluded to this earlier, the need for fair work. There has been much done in recent years on that. The progress since COVID - and you heard, Deputy First Minister, this morning from employers themselves about the work they're doing to enhance employment terms and conditions, with young people in particular but with all employees and to try to secure that full year-round employment is critical. Those actions set very clearly within the context of the Responsible Tourism Strategy for the South of Scotland make the case as to why skills require our collective focus.

Since the launch of the strategy earlier this year and in advance of today's conversation about what more might be done, South of Scotland Destination Alliance, their Chief Executive David Hope-Jones is with us today, hosted an initial round table session in April to explore what needed to be done to bring the various points in the strategy to life. They agreed a shared vision from the industry partners who were there, that they wanted young people to see tourism and hospitality as a desirable career, that they were inspired, therefore, to stay and work in the South of Scotland, but they would also secure the right training and qualifications to succeed. So a clear linkage between the demographic challenge, the qualification challenge and the volume of employees needed challenge.

Then also a vision that businesses have the ability to recruit and retain a skilled, capable, motivated workforce as a result of - and this is where we get to the growth piece in the visitor economy - a higher quality visitor experience and year-round fair quality employment. These are complex issues that have been set out in quite clear terms within the strategy and which already the work that the group is doing and the SSDA have led in April, have allowed us to see what the way forward is. But the opportunity today is to take that to a different level in terms of the conversations and where we might get to in terms of practical actions. I hope that gives a sense of one sector and the lens of the detail that we have on the visitor economy. Thanks, Greig.

Greig Robson

Thank you, Rob. We're just going to pass straight to Mary Thomson from SRUC to cover forestry.

Mary Thomson 

Thanks, Greig. We'll move on to some forestry slides hopefully, there we go. I think, first of all, just to emphasise that bringing a forestry case study today because, as Greig's articulated, of the significant economic importance of that sector. It's a growth sector for the region, it's also a sector of significant importance with regards to achieving net zero and moving away from the current UK status where we're a net importer of timber. SRUC as a specialist provider, we do see comparable challenges across the wider land and nature-based sectors.

Firstly, I think really helpful to just go through a wee bit more information on the sector and its importance. The South of Scotland produces a third of Scotland's timber. That is also 20 per cent of the UK's supply of timber, which for a region I think really demonstrates that we're punching above our weight in this sector. Greig's already touched on the fact that this might not seem like a huge number of employees, so when you look at the number of employees involved in primary forestry and logging, that's around 900 to 1,000.

However, the wider supply chain is hugely significant and you can see there between 3,000 and 5,000 employees across the region. I think as a resident of this region, that is evident in what we see day-to-day. We see growing businesses, we see increased numbers of timber lorries on the road. It's clearly a really active and developing sector and of course underpins some of those priority areas, such as housing and construction, that were mentioned at the beginning of the session today. When we talk about the wider supply chain, what we mean here is creation of wood products, processing, sawmilling, pulp and paper and wood fuel.

On net zero and sustainability, if we are to achieve Scotland's net zero ambitions in relation to tree planting and being self-sufficient in timber production, then the South of Scotland is going to be pivotal to that. That comes back to the natural capital innovation zone that Jane was talking about at the beginning of this section. As well as the economic and net zero importance, of course forests and woodlands of key recreational importance, forest trails, woodland walks, sport and recreation. It links to integrated land management, so wider benefits of farm woodland creation includes diversified income streams, shelter for livestock, flood mitigation and just that increase in biodiversity on farm as well.

That slide really summarises where we are with regards to the sector and its importance, but also the changes that we're seeing in the sector. Because of the growth and the increasing demand for workforce, we're seeing not just skills shortages as the sector changes but also workforce shortages becoming a challenge.

I think traditionally the sector is perhaps not known for its STEM focus and technology, but when we look at our lifelong learning portfolio at SRUC some of our fastest growing courses are those technology-focused courses, so robotics, drone and sensor use, artificial intelligence use and the data analysis that is required alongside that. We do see innovation across the region, so we've got Confor at the moment trialling one of the first electric-powered articulated lorries in the country. I was fortunate a few weeks ago to visit Jas P Wilson to understand more about the innovation in forest engineering that we're seeing in the South of Scotland.

When we look at the evidence from job applicants, we see that there is a gap in the technical and specialist skillsets, but also importantly, a gap in the wider skillsets that are required in this growing sector. It's not just about some of the core skills that we would have considered previously and the kind of entry level technical skills. In this picture you've got the forwarder that we use at Barony to train students on. Prior to them moving onto that we use a simulator and then when they progress into the workplace they get to, as they develop their skills, use increasingly technical and technology-focused kit.

But as we look at the career opportunities in the sector and the importance of integrating land management, changing land use policy, those leadership and management skills are important. Stakeholder engagement entrepreneurship, embedding circular economy principles in new product development and data analysis. All of those things that you would expect in a fastmoving and growing sector that has a STEM focus.

I wanted to just - and this is my second and final slide. I think a wee bit about the challenges and opportunities, what we're doing already and the good news is that we're not starting from nothing. There is work ongoing here already, but we do face significant challenges for the sector and the region. I've talked already about the technical and specialist skills gaps, as well as the wider skills gaps. I think on skills it's really important to emphasise that facilities, equipment, highly skilled educators and mentors in the workplace are critically important for forestry and forest engineering as specialist sectors.

At the moment, we do see a deficit in the required resources and we're working together in the region to overcome that. We're exploring all options, so regional skills providers working together, submitting collaborative funding bids to overcome some of the financial challenges and those hopefully successful funding bids will offer some opportunities for providers to accelerate a response to the needs of the sector.

On workforce shortages, we see an ageing demographic, which I think Greig alluded to previously. We also see a predominance of SMEs and microbusinesses. We don't have enough school-leavers progressing into forestry and the wider land and nature-based sectors. We also encounter relatively low levels of awareness of the technology focus and wider skills requirements of the sector. Because there are unlikely to be sufficient numbers of school-leavers, we also need to encourage those career changers into the sector to improve our diversity and to make sure that we are fit for the future with the workforce that we require.

As all of us how have run microbusinesses and SMEs know, when you are working in your business it is not always easy to reach the upskilling opportunities that you need and the working on your business and the professional development that you might need. For these SMEs, releasing personnel time can be really challenging and has why the lifelong learning pathways are important. This is about growing provision in the more traditional learning pathways, in full-time pathways, but also in apprenticeships, CPD and training courses that provide that microcredential or short course approach that is needed to support the sector to get to where it needs to be.

Again, with the rurality context of the South of Scotland, accessibility can be one of the fundamental things. Partnerships, blended provision are all really important for us to get to where we need to be. Talent attraction and sector attractiveness, some work has been undertaken already but there is certainly more to do here with regards to influencing the career influencers, supporting those who influence school-leavers to understand that this is a STEM sector, there are good careers, there are interesting jobs and there are well paid jobs to be had.

So, what are we doing? As I say, the good news is we're not starting from a standing start, we've got some good examples already evident. On vocational skills and training across the region we're working in collaboration, preparing to scaleup provision for forestry as a priority sector, based on some robust understanding research. Partnerships are key, so between education providers SRUC have been working with Borders College, you'll hear more about that in the pathways section, to address some of the skills needs in the land-based sector. Forestry is one sector where the skills planning collaboration that we've undertaken has built the case for change. Further collaboration is now needed to enact this change.

We hold evidence that there's a compelling case for a material uplift in provision, so around 25 per cent across the region of skills pathways for the forestry sector, with the main providers working hard to examine the level of capital investment required, along with a need for deeper collaboration with industry and a refreshed approach to supporting that learner demand and encouraging young people and career changers into the sector. Actually, right now we are working in partnership, so SRUC working in partnership with Borders College to pool together some skills funding bids for Borderlands funding for forestry and actually also across the wider sectors that we support.

Partnerships with industry are absolutely key here. I think Andy's here from Confor, we've been working with Confor to demonstrate that commitment to identifying the broad skills required, so the forest operators, business managers, conservation experts and ecologists. We've also got an emerging piece of work on collaboration in forestry-focused land-based engineering. Working with Jas P Wilson, building on the successful modern apprenticeship provision that we have to encourage more into that sector to meet the sector needs.

We've seen some great initial work on forestry summer schools, skills camps, pre-apprenticeships and we're working to understand what the funding mechanisms are to help us to grow that provision, to bring more into that entry level pathway. Some of that work has included working with the funding that was available through the likes of Young Person's Guarantee. We ran immersive forestry taster days, encouraged applicants to courses at that time, encouraging young people into the sector. But also using some of the upskilling funds that have been available to develop the higher level technology-focused CPD courses.

On improving diversity, that has been a challenge. You can't always go and get the people that you want to come into this sector, but we have just had some very good news this week that the most recent round of some of our specialist CPD courses saw 75 per cent female enrolments, which has really flipped that demographic compared to where it was previously. Much of that has been thanks to some of the targeted funding. I've mentioned upskilling but we've also seen a Women in Forestry Fund and a Practical Skills Training Fund.

I think really to close from me now, what's really clear to me is that collaboration is key. For SRUC I lead on skills and lifelong learning. I also look after our significant portfolio of commercial activity, so I see that challenge on the other side, I see the employer challenges. We don't see it anywhere more prominently than in the forestry sector at the moment, I think. So collaboration is key with industry educators, regional skills influencers working together. We need to see the volume of provision increasing, we're working on that. The levers of change are within our reach.

So what can we do going forward? Focus on lifelong learning and widening participation, focus on that capital investment that's required for facilities and equipment to support us to expand provisions. That might be things like more simulators available to get more people into the pathways for the practical training. Where existing revenue funding is concerned, making sure that we're prioritising that to meet sector and regional needs. Forestry is a compelling example of where there's a really good case for change.

Again going back to that industry engagement, these thorny issues are only going to be tackled if the educators work in partnership with industry. We have seen just very recently this industry engagement for the forestry sector being prioritised at the highest level, with Chief Forester Helen McKay leading two industry level meetings with representatives from the highest level across industry and education, bringing those people together who can effect change. That's the Chief Forester, the industry bodies and the specialist providers, SRUC Barony and UHI Inverness Scottish School of Forestry, making sure that we are doing everything we can to bring people into the pathways to support this sector. That's me, Greig.

Greig Robson

Thank you very much, Mary. I'm just going to hand over to colleagues from Scottish Funding Council to talk to paper 5 and the session around skills pathways. Just a reminder to everybody, we are going to come back to these inputs in the discussion at the end of this input from Scottish Funding Council and college colleagues. Thank you. Mike?

Mike Cantlay 

Greig, thank you. Good afternoon, colleagues. I'm about to introduce Martin Boyle, interim Chief Executive of SFC and other colleagues. As a braw lad - I had to make that point, as a braw lad. To be a braw lad you have to be born in Galashiels, the happiest place in Scotland two years in a row and no surprise to me - I'm happy to introduce paper 5 on skills pathways. I think every Convention, if you remember, colleagues, has talked about regional tertiary pathfinders since 2022 and this is where we get to look at the progress that we've made along the way.

It's not, in a sense, a Claudia Winkleman moment, the votes are in, where we look at simply successes and failure, because it's not like that. For one thing, the whole purpose was to focus on the Borders and to trailblaze the Borders and then take Borders and the South of Scotland in general, to take the learnings out across the rest of Scotland. In many senses we've just started the process, we've got a long way to go. Also obviously to be successful you can't stop, this is a process and we will only be successful if we keep up momentum. Martin.

Martin Boyle 

Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, colleagues. So really welcome the chance to have this discussion today on skills. I think the Convention lobby are aware of the Scottish Funding Council's role as the funder of universities, colleges and research. However, less well known and understood is our statutory duty for the quality of the provision we fund and also our duty to secure coherent provision. This coherent provision includes the provision of clear and effective pathways for learners as they progress through the education and skills system and to successful outcomes.

In developing the pathways, our duties require that provision should have regards to the skills needs of Scotland and the issues affecting the economy, our local economy. We should also not forget the vital role that colleges play as well in supporting those most disadvantaged in society and impacted by poverty, et cetera, they play a huge role.

Our funding supports about 15,000 learners in the South of Scotland, ranging from access programmes to degree provision and work-based learning, including apprenticeships. It's important to recognise though that there's not a one size fits all solution for pathways and we should guard against promoting specific types of provision over others. Indeed, the recent review of the skills landscape advocated the need to secure parity of esteem between pathways.

Reflecting on the specific labour market and regional economic context in the South, it's fair to say that institutions and partners face challenges that are common to other parts of Scotland, whilst also experiencing particular regional pressures which are definitely more unique. However, as we've heard, the region has specific strengths and opportunities, such as net zero and natural capital, which if harnessed can support inclusive growth. Effective skills pathways are an important tool in addressing the challenges of planning supply and response to demand outlined in the first two papers we've just been listening to.

Our paper identifies areas of good practice between partners, developing new pathways through collaboration, the critical factors for effective pathway planning, the important elements of collaborative working and recognises the role for information and advice and provides an insight into the lessons learned and good practice emerging from the regional pathfinder programme. This regional pathfinder programme was a key recommendation from our review of coherent provision and was taken forward for South of Scotland from 2022 onwards, as Mike said.

Building on the well established relationships, the pathfinder was created to understand and test how the education and skills system could be more responsive, integrated and supportive of economic recovery and inclusive growth. It was always intended to be an in-depth and thorough pathfinder. It wasn't intended to be something we do quickly. As Mike said, it's something that will continue and we'll just keep learning. It doesn't come to an end, it's continuous all across Scotland.

It's clear that colleges and universities continue to demonstrate their ability and willingness to respond in partnership to regional skills and education challenges, as well as collaborate with employers and industry groups. Regional collaboration is becoming increasingly more important to how the tertiary sector will need to operate to meet the needs of learners and employers in the future economy. This collaborative pathfinder approach allows for tailored responses to regional skills priorities and facilitated the development of new pathways and courses that directly address regional needs.

As we'll hear from the two college principals next, building on existing collaborative working rooted in the local understanding of skills needs and aligned to the Regional Economic Strategy priorities, the pathfinder prioritised projects which would have the most impact on securing simpler pathways and improved outcomes for learners, meeting societal employer needs and enhancing coherence and sustainability across provision.

But effective pathways are only one part of the solution. There's an essential role for effective careers information, advice and guidance to support and inform decision-making by learners, their parents or their carers. An example of the Career Services Collaborative delivery group in the Borders demonstrates a new responsive partnership approach to careers delivery.

I think given what's been said already, we also have to remember - and we see this a lot, not just here but all across Scotland - that people, young people in particular, make their own choices. Just because there are certain jobs doesn't mean they're just going to pick them. They've got their own ideas of what they want to do. We hear today that the workforce needs to grow and to change, to get people reskilled or to attract people back into the workforce. But we also need to attract more people to the South of Scotland, how can we make these roles more attractive to people who don't come to live here, because it's clear we need more people. Then that goes into our discussion about housing and transport, et cetera.

Graeme Dey 

I'm afraid we've not the time for our discussion, because we're 10 minutes over already. So can I encourage everybody to move this along, because I'm keen not to stop the opportunity for our discussion. Sorry, Martin.

Martin Boyle 

So in conclusion, I really welcome today's opportunity to discuss skills. Hopefully, the discussion will form the basis for a deeper explanation at a future Convention, following the publication of the pathfinder report later this year. In the meantime, I would ask everyone to reflect on the mix of pathways in the South. They need to secure parity of esteem, the pathfinder learning and how we promote collaboration. As I hand over to Pete Smith and then Joanna Campbell, who will provide more detail on pathway planning collaboration and priorities, let me express thanks on behalf of everyone at the Funding Council for institutions and partners who've done so much and continue to do so to support our learners and the regional economy. Pete's next.

Pete Smith 

Thanks, Martin, Deputy First Minister, Minister, Convention colleagues. The Minister will be pleased to know that I'm not going to read through this paper, I'm going to keep it succinct. What Joanna and I would like to do actually is just to take two or three minutes to explore some of the other successes that we've had in ensuring that the pathways are right for the South of Scotland. But also to consider a bit about how we might improve them a bit further.

Just if I can indulge you briefly with some national context, each year the Scottish Government's investment of some £632 million in colleges buys over 68 million hours of learning, with almost a quarter of a million students gaining a place at college. Twenty-seven per cent of all school-leavers come to college and 26 per cent of college programmes are HE level. The Fraser of Allander Institute estimates that over their 40-year working lives each cohort of college graduates add some £52 billion to the Scottish economy.

But as well as growing the economy, our work has a significant role in reducing child poverty, supporting the recovery of the NHS, meeting the challenge of climate change and supporting the Government's ambitions for just transition. Colleges increase social mobility and deliver in the widening access agenda, often bringing opportunities to those further away from the labour market. Martin identified there's 15,000 learnings in the South of Scotland, well more than 10,000 of those are at our colleges, with over 4,000 at Borders College and 6,000 at Dumfries and Galloway College. The video that you saw a few minutes ago from Greig Robson, I don't think I could better describe how pathways can, when you get them right, improve the lives for our learners, so I won't try and do that. What I will try and do is talk through some very brief examples in how we ensure our provision is aligned to regional needs.

Our curriculum planning is a detailed, mature process, utilising a wide evidence base. We use labour market data and our regional skills assessments identify changes in industry mixes, trends and demographic changes. But these don't by themselves give us the level of granularity needed to plan for local job markets or for individual employer need. Colleges work very closely with private sector employers, small businesses, schools, public sector agencies, to ensure that we understand their needs and aspirations.

In planning our pathways, our colleges historically have built on those strong industry links and we often manage industry forums such as those for construction, to ensure that we hear those collective voices. This enables significant additionality for our provision by increasing opportunities for our students to engage in work experience, therefore increasing their work readiness when they leave us. In many instances, we're actually cocreating courses. Borders College along with Morrison Construction and Galashiels Academy is currently delivering a level 6 construction management course, with all successful candidates guaranteed an interview for a graduate apprenticeship place.

We also engage with employers on their emerging needs and issues, so curriculum delivery can be flexed and futureproofed to meet emerging industry segments. Dumfries and Galloway have recently developed a qualification in cybersecurity, likewise Borders College with cybersecurity and e-sports. These are designed to ensure progression to HE as well as directly to the workplace.

We're agile in being able to support industry with emerging opportunities, regularly delivering bespoke courses, one example being the internship Dumfries and Galloway developed with Gretna Green Limited. Another Borders College recently delivered bespoke Excel training tailored to the specific needs of administration staff at MTEL, with a turnaround of two weeks from initial enquiry to delivery. We can demonstrate systems leadership working in partnership with other educators to provide the curriculum to match regional need, with the work that you've already heard about with SRUC and Borders College with the regional pathfinder and the work that Dumfries and Galloway is going with the University of Western Scotland, the cybersecurity degree.

Returning briefly to our schools, this year Borders College realigned all schools academy programmes to run as a full day on a Friday, rather than two half days, resulting in a better student experience and reduced costs to local authorities. This has resulted in almost a 30 per cent increase in numbers to 470, with reduced withdrawals. Dumfries and Galloway run a similar programme for around 400 pupils and their performance over the past three years has increased by 30 per cent as well.

The successful programmes are a result of closely working with local authority teams and there's a measurable impact. The students have a much better recognition and understanding of the pathways that are then available to then, should they move on to further education at college or indeed university. By ensuring the pathways are appropriate means that students, particularly in regional priority curriculum areas, benefit from employer contributions, resulting in a fit for purpose learning experience that delivers the requisite knowledge and skills for the student to be work ready. This work readiness is in turn evidenced by the students in those priority skill areas progressing to the employment opportunities that are available in region. I'll pass over to Joanna.

Joanna Campbell 

Thank you, Pete. I'll be quick, I promise. Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon, Deputy First Minister and Minister. As you've heard from Pete, both colleges work with our wider regional partners and are very solution-focused and keen to ensure that we support the South of Scotland economy. I really wanted to just cover off some of the limiting factors in being able to go further in developing our skills pathways. I just really wanted to make four points before we conclude.

The first one really is about creating the right conditions for collaboration. We have a plethora of groups all doing great work, but actually it does create repetition and confusion with employers. One of the benefits of engaging in the three South of Scotland pathfinder programmes was we had a regional delivery board and that regional delivery board, the commissioning and planning of our interventions sat well with the university and the college and SRUC's curriculum planning cycle. But it also, more importantly, focused on outcomes and their impact and that's really important.

The second point I wanted to make was about the prioritisation of resource. We've heard today about the need to support sectors, key sectors for the South of Scotland economy and our context is that growth is required to support the regional economy. But in doing so, we need to prioritise the skills needs of the region and both colleges rightly direct our public resources in meeting the needs of those priority skills. But actually we also need to address how we tackle poverty. Poverty is a significant issue for our learners and also tackling the climate change as well.

Our outputs and impact is measured through our outcome agreements. But we also are mindful of the fact that we need to maintain a broad curriculum to provide positive post-school destinations for our young people and to reprioritise further could potentially mean dropping an area that actually is important, to make sure we have positive post-school destinations but also could have negative consequences in the long run.

The third point I was going to make was about our interdependencies with our three grand challenges. Whilst skills is only one of our grand challenges, the interdependencies with housing and transport are very dependent on the education institutions having the correct volume of investment to be able to provide that skilled talent pipeline that you've heard about this afternoon.

Funding challenges of recent years means that there's a limit in what we can do and we really need to prioritise and direct our resources. We're now faced with having to make really difficult choices, which brings me on to my fourth and final point, which is about fundamentally both colleges are finding that we're increasingly having to turn students away. Either we don't have enough full-time or part-time provision, or we don't have enough modern apprenticeship places. For example, Borders College turned away 84 students in construction because they didn't have capacity and certainly within my own college we have waiting lists for construction and engineering.

As I said previously, we don't have the capacity and the activity allocated to be able to increase fand flex what we've heard about this afternoon. Really we urgently need to look at the funding model by which colleges are resourced and I'm obviously mindful of the work that's happening already through the tripartite group which you chair, Minister. My takeaway message from what we're saying this afternoon is that we were very much poised to do more. We're very keen to do more in partnership with the wider regional partners, but obviously we need to look at what choices do we make in terms of how we expand, where we focus our energies and being able to do so. Thank you.

Graeme Dey 

Thank you, Joanna. I want to open this up to as many views, particularly from employers, as we can gather this afternoon. Why don't we just kick this off with a very simple question, hopefully to get the conversation going. Without focusing on specific current skills gaps, how do you think skills planning processes could be improved either nationally or regionally?

Kate Fox-Male 

Hi, my name's Kate Fox-Male, I'm the HR Manager at the SCHLOSS Roxburghe Hotel. We are a luxury hotel and estate and we have a spa, luxury spa, we have a golf course and we've recently expanded over the past two years. I think it's about - and in fact I think it was Rob, you mentioned it in your presentation, it's about sparking imagination and passion for going into different sectors and going into different industries that maybe they don't know about, or that they're not told about in schools. I think hospitality - obviously a bit biased but is one of those industries and is one of those sectors that isn't maybe given the focus throughout schooling and throughout formal education.

Compared to other countries in Europe, where hospitality and jobs within hospitality are revered and given the recognition and respect. It's just not the same in this country, UK as a whole and I think that has maybe to do with, as I said, schooling and education. It's how people perceive the industry and I think that's a really, really key thing to start focusing on, as in just sparking that passion in youngers. It can happen a lot younger than you think as well. That's why we're personally trying to work with schools, so not just colleges, which we are, but schoolchildren as well, just as a start.

Graeme Dey 

Can I ask, do you think the industry does enough to promote themselves to young people. I don't disagree with what you've said. I saw a wonderful apprenticeship model in Fife, absolutely brilliant model. I think young people, they get so much out of it. I absolutely recognise [inaudible]. What more do you think the sector can do to promote themselves to young people?

Kate Fox-Male 

I agree, it's a two-way street, isn't it? I can speak on behalf of ourselves. We, as I said, are working with Kelso High School, so we're just outside Kelso. We go to careers fairs and they start from the age of like 12, 13 now. I think it has to start locally, particularly with education and things. Yes, on a grander scale across the country that can be done as well, but I think it has to be local and it has to be igniting, as I say, igniting that passion, it just goes back to that.

Graeme Dey 

Thanks. Any others?

Ray McCowan

Thanks, Minister. I think for me, the efforts just need to be better joined up. I think what you're saying there is the industry wants to do more, schools could definitely do more, the colleges could definitely do more. I think actually there have been models previously that have joined up these efforts. Several years ago there was an academy model, very similar hospitality academy model for Edinburgh. These core constituent elements are all there, we just need to tap into them and go back to what we were almost doing before and just keep doing it.

If you actually join up all of the bits, you will actually do it better. So it actually is doable, but that sort of model has succeeded before where we just bring the schools together, we bring the parents together to some degree, we bring the hospitality industry together. If you truly work collaboratively it can happen. The challenge we've got at the minute is all of the individual elements of that are working disparately in a slightly disconnected way. If we pool it all together, we've got a much better chance of delivering.

Graeme Dey 

Thanks. Mary and then Russell and then David.

Mary Thomson 

Thank you, Minister. Just to build on that, industry engagement absolutely key. We see already some good practice with regards to substantial work placements, work placements embedded in programmes. But also for some sectors seasonal internships can work really well where there's actually a paid placement quite often available for a student. I think from my perspective, going back to the net zero discussion, it's also really important that education and research providers can bring the sort of evidence and research that is needed to meet the direction of travel for a policy. So it's convening that educator, researcher business policy piece, bringing all of that together to help us to plan effectively.

Graeme Dey

Thanks, Mary. Russell?

Russell Griggs 

If I can build on what Laura was saying, I think there's a lot of good examples out there of specific businesses that have gone out into schools. I expect and I'm sure Drew could speal eloquently of the work that Jas P Wilson have done over the years and the high sticking rate, if I can put it that way, that we get from the first time they bring youngsters into school in their third and fourth year, to those that go on to work in the company eventually, so I think there is a lot. Maybe as an industry sector, the industry aren’t as good at sharing their experience perhaps as they could be. But I also think that if you look at the really good ones it's about selling a career, it's not about selling a job.

I think that’s where we all could learn more and I know if you look at not just Laura's business, but if you look at Gretna Green, that’s what they do. They get the people who are in there already working to sell and the chap who runs Johnstons of Elgin says he gets the person who came in last year to go and recruit the people that come in the following year. He doesn’t go out in his grey suit to go and sit and try and get them, he gets the people involved. So I think we do have a lot of good examples and I guess it's about finding a system that encourages us to share those examples, Graeme, more than anything. I think occasionally we get lost in the system rather than looking at what the good examples are.

Graeme Dey 

David and then Joanna.

David Hope-Jones 

Thanks very much, Minister. Absolutely, we represent 700 visitor economy businesses across the South of Scotland and as Rob said, we brought a number of the key businesses together in April to ask this very question. I agree with Russell, I think there's some really good examples of businesses, SCHLOSS being one, Laggan being another, that are reaching out to schools and to colleges. It typically is the larger businesses that have the bandwidth and the time and the capacity and what we need to do collectively is to make it as easy as possible for businesses.

We need to recognise that we're not just needing to influence the young people, we need to influence the influencers and that’s their parents. It's telling the parents that this is not just a summer job, this is a quality, quality career. We need to be able to show clear career pathways and we need to show that there's a whole range of different jobs in the visitor economy.

Just very quickly, if I may, five other very practical things I think we need to do. Deputy First Minister, to come back to your challenge earlier on, those 22, 23 per cent of economically inactive people, we need to listen really well to those people. What support would help you to get into the workforce and we need to think innovatively and differently to support them to be able to do that.

As far as the vocational training goes, the closer that we can work together - and this is a great strength of meetings like this and a team South approach - with the two colleges to connect with the industry of what the industry really wants and needs, the practical rather than the theoretical, the work placements and the apprenticeships. But as we heard in the meeting earlier on, it's also supporting small businesses to be able to address the challenges of particularly a young workforce whose late schooling was significantly interrupted by COVID and haven't come out of full-time education with the same skillsets that previous generations have. We need to support businesses to be able to employ those people and to be able to do it well.

We also need to look at the practical impediments that are there. SCHLOSS, I'm sure, would be happy to talk about the challenges of getting the accommodation for the staff that you're looking to employ, bringing them in. Again, Laggan is having the same challenges as well. Working together to help businesses and again transport as well, how do businesses bring the staff in? We're a rural and remote destination, we need to have practical solutions to transport and accommodation if businesses are going to find the staff that they need.

Finally, the seasonality point, which is why the work that we do supported by SoSE is so important. I can't stand up in front of a room full of 14 year olds and say there's a great career for seven months a year as long as you can twiddle your thumbs through the winter. It's investing in the visitor economy to have quality year-round jobs. I think those six things, that’s what we should do. Thank you.

Graeme Dey 

Thank you. Joanna and then Euan.

Joanna Campbell 

Minister, you posed a question, how can skills planning be improved? I've got four hopefully helpful suggestions here. I think it's about creating the right commissioning environment, so one of the things that’s worked extremely well for both colleges is by bringing employers in and discussing with them what skills do they need to allow their businesses to grow. I've got many good examples of that. One of the examples that we haven't touched on this afternoon is the NHS and that’s not just important for us in the South of Scotland, but actually to Scotland more nationally.

We've heard about other examples in the hospitality sector, so we've worked with Gretna Green, for example. We've created an internship programme with them, worked with Natural Power. All of these programmes that have been extremely successful are where employers come in, they specify what their requirements are and we co-create our proposition that allows their business to grow.

The other thing is that we haven't really spoken enough I think this afternoon about what we do through our school-college partnerships. For example, in Dumfries and Galloway we work very closely with Dumfries and Galloway Council on our college academy programme. It's been extremely successful, it's gone from strength to strength and I'm pleased to report that our performance and attainment in our school-college partnership has increased by 30 per cent. Now that is phenomenal, 30 per cent over the last three years.

Then my final point I was going to make was that if we know that we need to co-create propositions with employers to support our regional economy, then it needs to be on a very robust evidence base. Public resource is limited, it needs to be allocated in the right way for maximum impact. Thank you.

Graeme Dey 

Before I bring Euan in, can I just check, that growth in your school-college partnership delivery, is that funded jointly with the Council? Or is it funded purely from your credits?

Joanna Campbell 

It comes from college credits predominantly. There are FAs that some of those are funded through the Council, but all of the rest of it is through our credits.

Graeme Dey 

Thanks. Euan?

Euan Jardine 

Thank you, Minister. It's a good discussion and one of the key facts I'm noticing in the paper are small microbusinesses are significant job creators in South of Scotland, 58 per cent. I think we're slightly getting away from that there because we can't create jobs if we don’t have the people and the opportunities to do that. This weekend actually I've had quite a few emails in my inbox around the funding cut to Young Enterprise Scotland. Yes, for me that speaks volumes of what we are, in a rural area. We're taking away the skills for young people in six years to study something, an entrepreneurship, where they’ve got the opportunity to go out and build a business once they leave.

They can go through the college system, they can go through the university system, or they can go out and start a business. There is no direct pathway these days and I think we need to be hammering that point home. I think if we cut funding like that, it really cuts away the legs from people and their opportunities to do the skills. I wonder if there's a way you could at that funding, or you could look at a rural aspect for the South of Scotland, where you're looking at 58 per cent here created microbusinesses, small businesses. We could have a different opportunity doing that through our Developing the Young Workforce, the DYW. Thank you.

Graeme Dey 

Thanks, Euan. I was struck in the paper that there's a fleeting reference to private training providers. I think there's one reference to them, that they exist in the South of Scotland. I'm just wondering, to what extent do businesses access private training providers? Has there been a mapping exercise done about what's available from them?

Laura Middlemass 

It's Laura Middlemass from Plexus. As part of our modern apprenticeship programme we use Borders Technical Training Association. There's a lack of electronics engineering courses within the Borders. Our graduate apprentices have to go up to Edinburgh to train. For those, I'd say, kids that are coming straight out of school maybe with lower grades, et cetera, and just going straight into modern apprenticeships, this support within the Borders is fundamental. I would say that having courses within the Borders College would certainly help Plexus to retain talent and train them within our specific industry.

Drew Easton 

Drew Easton, learning and development manager for Jas P Wilson. We've had eight years where we've worked extremely hard as a company to engage with young people. It is very difficult to actually get engagement with schools and certainly within Dumfries and Galloway there are only really four or five schools that have got any form of technical base.

Part of the challenge, I think realistically, is working in partnership and I always talk about lighting the fire with young people. Youngsters now really don’t truly know what they see themselves doing in the future, they haven't really thought about a career. I think the point that was actually raised about a younger generation going in and working with young people is a very good point. To that end, our apprentices actually do the legwork. If we go into schools to do any work with the schools, it's our apprentices that go in.

If we have site visits, then our apprentices that take the young people around about the site, but it's extremely challenging, extremely difficult, the system's a little bit wooden. In fairness, there's an awful lot of good people within the schools that are really quite keen to engage with industry, but making it actually happen is particularly challenging, often around about curriculum and trying to ensure that resources are available.

Also for young people coming onto an industrial site, schools seem to have a real challenge in terms of minibuses, transporting groups, transporting young people to sites. But I think the model that has worked for us, once you get that fire lit then offering work experience for young people and if I'm very honest about it, young people on the whole tend not to be work ready. I think the system's working against them in terms of work readiness, particularly from schools.

Graeme Dey 

You really articulate well an issue that I've had raised with me across the country about that ability to engage with schools. It's one of the things that's driving our whole look at the careers service, how we empower young people to make the decisions that they need to make. I'm struck listening to you, Drew, about a model of foundation apprenticeships that's delivered in Aberdeenshire by the Council, they partly fund it. Overwhelmingly the Scottish Government funds it, but they fund it and they have dealt with that transport issue by actually providing the transport for the young people.

They’ve embedded the foundation apprenticeship in the curriculum, so it's the equivalent of a hire. The benefits that are being felt for employers who I've spoken to up there, how they’ve benefited from it, but also an uptick in academic performance amongst the young people. Because they are identifying through that programme in many cases the career path they want to follow and recognising that there'll be some subjects at school that they have not been enjoying, but they now realise that they have to stick in it and there's been an improvement in their academic performance as well. Now it is an expensive model but it's one we are looking very closely at, because it's paying dividends.

Russell Griggs 

Graeme, if I could, could I just build on what Drew said and answer your question directly. It's not just about other private training providers out there - and Rob's going to correct me if I get this wrong. When we started, the textile sector came to us and said could we do our own training, because the challenge was at the time when we started to try to bring more people into the textiles sector, which has a history of finding it very difficult to take on people, partly from the bad times they went through about six years ago. The system doesn't allow that to do it. The only funding we could find to bring people in was from taking people off unemployment. So you couldn’t go to a school and plan one with them, because the industry somewhere in the system isn't allowed to access the type of training funding that the colleges and others can use to do that.

We have the same issue down in Dumfries and Galloway with a little group of engineering companies that Drew represents, through that. So where industry wants to do it, it is very, very difficult for them to access funding to support them, other than if you take people off the employment register. In fact we had to shut the course down that very successfully we did for about two years with the textile industry, because it was bringing the wrong people in, not young people. I think there's a bit about if we're going to do this properly, turning it round and saying if a sector can legitimately provide its own training, how do you bring them into the funding system, if that's the right way of putting it, Graeme.

Graeme Dey 

Scott?

Scott Hamilton 

Thank you very much, Minister. Really a number of the comments have been made, but I really wanted to emphasise what David was talking about in terms of our business and sector. SMEs are a huge part of how we deliver economic growth here in the South of Scotland. It's fantastic and I will never knock it, but anybody involved in a small-medium size enterprise, they're not only an accountant, they're not only an HR representative, they're not only doing the payroll, they're doing the training, health and safety, all these aspects come together.

So when it turns to talk about skills, we have got a responsibility here to try and derisk some of the element there, because what we're asking them to take on is a huge challenge and it's a huge challenge to any business but never mind one that's fighting with all those other pressures that they're under. I think it's incumbent of us to look at that element of how do we derisk things, but the only way I think we can fundamentally truly work together around this table is multiple year settlements. When it comes to investment in education, in services, it's the only way that we can actually deliver for businesses to meet the challenges as we see them.

I think the second point, which maybe hasn’t been touched upon at this Convention is that yes, we have to look at our homegrown talent, I think that's absolutely important. If you live here, you want to have a job here, you want to work here, you want to bring up your family. We've also got to remember that there's a number of students that come to this area outside of this part of the world. That's important and I think we should be focusing on how do we market our region better to show that we can be an area of higher education and achievement.

To our younger people who leave the region, to go to university and other parts of the world, that's fantastic, I welcome that and I think that's great for them. What we want to see is them coming back when they're still economically active, not when they're in their 60s and not really being that strong on the economic activity front. So I think there are challenges, I think there is the opportunity though and I think if we can actually work together as a Convention with the partners around the table, we can certainly meet those challenges.

Graeme Dey 

Thank you. Malcolm?

Malcolm Chrisp 

Yes, thanks. I'll just pick up a couple of points. In relation to the delivery models, for me the word that kind of connects a number of what the comments have been made is all about flexibility and allowing that flexible nature for the future employees. We did through COVID learn quite a lot about hybrid learning, whether that was actually in person or online and allowed students to progress and get through. I'm not for one minute suggesting you can knock a nail in over the internet, but you can actually build cohorts and build communities.

So for me, flexibility's important and equally from the comments that the SFC made earlier around having a mixed economy, that is absolutely essential. We need to make sure that this isn't a career for life that the students are necessarily looking for, these are going to be adaptable careers and our educational system has to be that adaptable. The funding system also has to be that adaptable, whether it's at the microcredit level or how we do that needs to be thought through.

Picking up a couple of the more recent comments around what Euan said and the previous colleague there about where does our startup happen, how do we actually attract new people into the area. Just off the back of an ATS thing helping Highlands and Islands in our Orkney campus at Heriot-Watt and seeing how we can actually deliver the key thing that attracted startups, what we had is a whole lot of students coming in from all around the world, but then staying and making their knowledge - starting up small businesses in the area, employing people together, making their family life there.

It's about how you do that and for me, the key here is about having a very clear purpose, a real key mission. Things that actually define what the Borders region is and what makes it distinctive. Why would somebody from an international country come and want to locate and start up their business here? Because they will be aligning themselves with world leaders in the field of forestry or agri-tech or tourism or whatever it is, we need those clear messages. Deputy First Minister, you said before where can we speak with one voice? There it is, we have a clear vision, a clear mission and everybody then can align to that.

Graeme Dey

Thank you. Mary, Pete and then we'll finish with Andy.

Mary Thomson 

Thank you. Just wanted to comment on the industry training point and the fact that it's not always easy to do, but it is absolutely possible to work together across the training providers, educators and industry. A specific example I would state is that it would not be possible for SRUC to buy equipment with the level of technology that is now available for, for example, the agriculture and forestry sectors.

We already have an established approach to working in partnership, for example, in agricultural land-based engineering with the likes of CLAAS, Case New Holland and AGCO. These are international businesses, they bring the sector technologies, we bring the quality and accreditation expertise and the experienced assessors and we work in partnership and we seek partnership funding to support that. Similarly with entry level apprenticeships, we need to collaborate and to be as flexible as possible. But we can make it work as education providers working with industry and we're open to more of that.

Graeme Dey

That's reassuring, thank you. Pete, Andy and then finally Jane. She's squeezing in last.

Pete Smith

Thanks, Minister. Just to reassure the Convention that I can say that Scottish Borders Council does make a contribution towards its schools academy delivery in the Scottish Borders, so thanks very much for that, as I look towards the Chief Executive. A couple of other brief points, actually SCHLOSS are a great example of a large business doing their part, I would say, for the visitor economy.

I think Councillor Hamilton's point around so many small businesses being unable to do that in the same way is absolutely key. We as a college visit as many schools as often as we can, they're probably fed up seeing us there all the time at all their careers fairs, whenever they're doing their course choices. But what we need is actually the industry around that table as well, so we can sell it as a wonderful career opportunity, which for many people it is, but until they actually see businesses round the table it's a little bit more difficult for the young people to do that.

The thing I maybe want to just close with actually, Minister, is you spoke earlier on about regional skills planning and we haven't really spoken about regional skills planning around this table. We've talked about some of the issues, but I think until we can see some real progress in that coordinated approach, I don't think we're going to solve the problems that we're all describing this afternoon. Because there is a place for private training providers, there is a place for colleges, there is a place for regional universities, but we need to agree what the overall quantum of what we want delivered and where we want it delivered is and how much we're willing to pay for that as well. I think until we've got our head around that, I'm not sure we're going to be able to get across that hump that we're at just now.

Graeme Dey 

That's a very good point and Scott, it was remiss of me not to come back to you on the point about SMEs. All for a bit of reassurance, one of the things we're very much alive to is the challenge for SMEs in taking on apprentices, for example. There were a number of pilots around some years ago on shared apprenticeships, which essentially all failed for the same reason, which was the pressure it placed on SMEs to do all the HR work, et cetera. So we are looking at that, as we redevelop the apprenticeship model, how we address that issue, so it is on our radar. Andy?

Andy Leitch 

Thanks, Graeme. Firstly, I'd welcome what you’ve just said there about supporting shared apprenticeships, because as you’ve heard the forest industry has a long, long tail and it's all microbusinesses and they just cannot afford to carry apprentices. I'm going to kind of weave around in the questions you asked, to then get the chance to respond.

You talked about improving the kind of skills planning process. For me, what I would be looking for is when we do actually find a suitable and successful model, please let's retain it for a while, with a consistent approach and make it sustainable. We've had one or two in the past in South of Scotland, we had a thing called Growing Rural Talent, where the forest industry fully engaged. It got kicked to touch a little bit because of COVID, but then funding ran dry and it's lost. The people that we had signed up to support it and they were full of enthusiasm, we lost that overnight. So if we do find something, let's support it and keep it sustainable.

You talked about using private training provision, certainly in the forest industry we do a lot of that. We talked about, Mary's talked about scale, it's a small-scale industry so some of our very important CPD and training that can't be done with these private sector training providers because they don't have the money. As an industry we've just made a decision, we've created our own new company, Forestry Training Service, and that'll be a collaboration between the training providers, the college and the industry to actually address this market failure, so just to give an update on that.

Graeme Dey 

Jane?

Jane Morrison-Ross

Thank you, two very brief points. One, Euan, your concern around young people and how we target them at school age, to encourage them to become entrepreneurs in their own right is a good one. SoSE's working DYW again on the real models initiative, which is bringing in entrepreneurs from across the South of Scotland into schools so that they can see people that have been successful, who have come from the same areas as them and they can tell a story that really hooks them in and shows them the art of the possible.

We've also, as part of the broader work we've been doing in entrepreneurship in SoSE, recruited specialist coaches to work with young people. We're carrying out the pathways pilot at the moment, the first phase of that's focused on women entrepreneurs as a group of underrepresented founders. We are looking at how we extend that into other areas, including a greater focus on young people too.

Secondly, Malcolm's points I think were really interesting. Since we have been quietly promoting the South of Scotland as the natural capital innovation zone for Scotland and launched the Invest in South of Scotland website, working in partnership with all of the organisations around the table and SDI, we have seen a really significant increase in inward investment opportunities, triaged active significant ones. We need to think about the skills that we will need in the future, as well as the ones that we have now.

I think Joanna's points there about how we focus, how we prioritise, how we fund those future skills is going to be incredibly significant. Those inward investment opportunities are going to create supply chains for both our SMEs and our future entrepreneurs. We are working with SRUC, for instance, on how we create an entrepreneurial campus, we are working with the colleges, but there's a lot more that we can do to capitalise on that. But it does bring us back again to that unholy trinity of housing, skills and transport, because we need also to be able to house those students that we bring into the region, et cetera.

Graeme Dey 

Thanks for that. I think Pete hit the nail on the head a moment ago when he talked about getting back to the original question about skills planning and how we actually determine what the skills shortages are. I would encourage you, if I may, as you talk forward the excellent work you’ve done up until now, to really drill down into where the shortages are and what specifically they are.

I did a meeting with the offshore wind sector a few weeks ago. They presented a paper which was incredibly detailed. Now it is just one sector, but it went into their shortages from welders, installers, right the way back to project managers, IT specialists. They actually looked at the sector and I would encourage you across the South of Scotland to really get in about the specific detail of what your shortages are and particularly to go beyond.

This is one of the challenges I and my officials have faced in the skills planning work so far. We get a lot of information about, for example, we're short of 3,000 welders. My question is well what kind of welders and where in the country are we short? What are the shortages, specific localities? It's the same with engineering, I hear a lot about engineering shortages, but what specific engineering sectors are affected here?

I think for skills planning, not just in the South of Scotland, but right across the country and for us at a national level, we are now committed or we have to be committed to really getting into that level of detail if we're going to be serious and we are serious about tackling this issue. Thank you so much for that, I'm conscious of time. I'll hand over to the DFM, who's I think moving on to a session on employers.

Kate Forbes 

Wonderful, thank you very much. Can I just round up, we are going to drift into similar territory with the next session, but I am keen that we nail down some actions from those conversations. It's just really to paraphrase I think what Graeme Dey has said in paraphrasing Pete, so it's all on you, that that was a good conversation, there was a lot of detail.

It was very broad and I was struggling, not to diminish the importance of it, but I was struggling to follow the threads of answering the question okay, what next? I think that question is hanging in the air, okay, that's interesting, so what next? To my mind, the action here is that we need one paper that is owned jointly by employers and the public sector, particularly colleges and Skills Development Scotland, that says this is our expectations over the next 10 years of what will be required and this is how we're going to deliver it, in that kind of level of granularity.

Now you may think that that has already been done and perhaps it's just bringing that together at the level of granularity that Graeme was talking about. I think it's taking that work and probably finessing it and honing it and sharing it prior to the next South of Scotland Enterprise, we probably want to be sharing it considerably in advance, a couple of months in advance, for employers in particular to look at it and say it doesn’t answer my question, or for colleges to say well I can't deliver it. Judith, how does that sound as an action?

Judith Young 

Absolutely and we've been talking about putting in some additional checkpoints through the senior officer groups that meet in between the Conventions, so we could pick that up in that scope.

Kate Forbes 

Okay, great. The two other asks I have about that is the more South of Scotland Enterprise does to attract inwards investment and they’ve got a brilliant track record already, the more that that is going to be out of date. Because none of us want to be in a position where we are just recycling. I know that Russell's going to speak to the next item, so he may want to address this then, but every successful inward investment has to take into account skills.

The second part is just on thinking - just making sure we think long term. I guess I want the test to be coming back in presumably spring and for David and other employers to tell me we've got a plan. You know, we might not have fully staffed SMEs, to Scott's point, right now, but we reckon next year we'll be 50 per cent closer and in five years' time, if we get this plan, we'll be 100 per cent of the way. That would be my hope. Any disagreement with that action? Great, wonderful. Sorry, Graeme.

Graeme Dey 

Just one point and I don't want to give the impression that I'm pushing private training providers, but I think they need to be involved in that conversation about what's available and what's going to be available. I think the other thing is that if we design a system for the South of Scotland, for the rest of the country, it has to be agile and responsive. It's not for the now, it's for five years' time and if there's a big change then, how we pivot to address that.

Kate Forbes

Great, wonderful, thanks very much. Sorry, Euan?

Euan Jardine 

Yes, I just to come in also, we're talking about the college, et cetera, but I think schools do play a very vital role in this. Because like I say, not everybody wants to go to college or university, I think we need to remember those pathways are open. So I think we need schools collaborating on this as much as possible, thank you.

Kate Forbes 

Yes, very good point. Okay, great, we're going to move on then to the next agenda item, which dovetails into that agenda item. Euan set it up quite neatly because it's about how employers feel embedded really in and having a stake in the education and the skills system. Particularly when it comes to reform around education and skills, but more generally, how do we support employers to engage with the system? Russell, over to you to introduce the paper.

Russell Griggs 

Thank you, Deputy First Minister. Before I get to that, I should say, Graeme, that I think - and I'm looking down the table at Greig - we've got a lot of that detail already from our little schools group on the REP about numbers, et cetera, especially in some of the key sectors.

If I can just take up the Deputy First Minister's view, we've got over 30 active inward investment cases, with several thousand jobs on the back of them, so they're not little ones. Going back to the point you made, Graeme, about private, a lot of them want to set up their own training academies because some of them are new skills that we haven't brought into the area before. It's about how we support them to do that.

If somebody comes in and wants to employ 1,200 people in a skill that's a piece of technology that hasn’t come here before, which we do have, then we'll have to think about how we help them to do that. Whether they put them on another site to do that, or do it here and we're moving into areas that we don't really understand the future. Like in climate change, we all guess what it might be like but we are guessing, so we don't really know what it is.

I would just like to say thank you to our online colleagues and friends from the business community that have come across this afternoon. They really do represent the cross-section that we have in the South of Scotland currently. Everything from international consultancy to engineering, to dairy, to construction, to as Billy Wilson will tell you from Jas P Wilson, what he calls his business make do and mend, which is forestry engineering, so it's that diversity.

I think the point that Euan and Scott and others have made, most of our businesses are small. Not only are they small, they live in small communities, so we don't necessarily have a school in every community or indeed easy access to a college in our community. Borders College started to put some of its teachers into Eyemouth, if you wanted to come to Borders College from Eyemouth it was a four-hour return bus journey every time you did it and we won't get into the transport issues that that brings up as well.

So you’ve got to remember that we're operating in a piece of infrastructure that is unusual and how we do that. That's why we've always said - I'm going to leave my friends in the business community to leave my remarks in a minute. That's why it is very local, some of our demand. We've got little clusters of engineering companies, we've got a big cluster of textile companies in Hawick who all know each other and work together. How do we help them to do things on their own? Heriot-Watt does an awful lot of good work in that area as well.

I guess all I would say before I ask them to perhaps come in and say a few words, is we're not complacent in what we're doing, a lot of us are growing and we're growing our businesses. But all our people are finding - some companies have found it quite difficult to engage in the system and it is if you're a small business, it is really difficult sometimes to engage some cohort sizes, different types of very specific education you want. You maybe don't want it for a year, you maybe only want it for six months. You don't want to send somebody up to Glasgow to do it. So it's about how do you deal with all those things that a small, rural area gives you. It's about how you can do that and it is different to urban Scotland. The skills challenges there you can solve in a different way than you can do in rural areas.

I guess if I could give that example of the college, I was Chair of Dumfries and Galloway College for a long time and how it changes. When we built the new college we didn’t put a hospitality section into it because there was no demand, absolutely no demand. We did surveys at the time when we built the college and it was only post we started that that it's changed again. That's because people like David and others started to do a lot of work in the hospitality section, tourism started to become more prevalent. Therefore we had to go back and retrofit our kitchen into the college as it grew. The infrastructure that we have needs to develop over time as well as we move through.

I am going to just pass now over to my friends from other to say what are the positives and negatives please that you’ve had with the training sector for any places. Because this afternoon what we hear about is we should be doing this warts and all and you're the only guys who deal with this on a day-to-day basis. My view is that everybody wants - you can't run a business without people and we want good people to do that.

We're small businesses, we need to get them all in. Schools are critically important in doing all that, but in the end - and that's why I do believe genuinely in the end it has to be businesses that lead, especially in rural areas, that lead on skills development, because it's only them that know what the future looks like. We can help them do that with where we see it going in the future, but it's really only them that can do that.

The last thing and you mentioned at the beginning, DFM, if I'm to fulfil my objective to your predecessor of solving the housing problem in the South of Scotland, I need a lot of construction workers to go and build houses. But I only need them maybe for a short period of time, because once that's done then we want to move on to something else. We have to remember that that skill cycle is in a cycle as well. Okay, so without…

Kate Forbes

Can I just jump in and say that Russell's obviously set out what he would like to hear from yourselves. Can I push even further and say, going back to my earlier comments, that our time here has been spent well and there's something tangible that comes out. What I'm thinking of is right, what is the South of Scotland pilot that we pioneer that no one else does? So what is the pilot? What is it that we could do here with employers that isn't happening elsewhere, to solve the challenge? I know you're all in business because you're problem solvers, so we're just outsourcing the advice to tell us what would it look like to have a distinctive local employer-led engagement with every part of our skills system that creates the pipeline that you need to keep your businesses staffed. No biggie.

Russell Griggs 

Drew, do you want to kick off? Because we've talked about it many times.

Drew Easton 

Recruitment, development and retention continues to be an issue, I believe that for all employers. In my view, a collective response is the correct response. Employers have got an important role to play, but there's a huge cost for employers. The resources that Jas P Wilson have put behind supporting schools, supporting colleges is considerable and it's unsustainable. Would there be a prospect to put together a model for the benefit of the young people or the returners to work where they can actually get the best of all resources?

The college sector, we've got a good relationship with both of the colleges. Curriculum could probably do to be refreshed, from an employer point of view there's probably a need to refresh the curriculum more regularly than it actually is. We can collectively do that through discussion with employer groups and we'd be very willing to actually do that.

But looking at it more radically, is there an active role that an employer or employers could actually play in the development and training of a young person? That would only be sustainable if the employer element could be paid for. We have developed a number of mentors, but if you take mentors out of key areas of the business there's a real cost. Now from an employer's point of view, I would really like to do it, but there's actually a board of managers that are saying no, you can't do it because we can't afford it.

Kate Forbes

Thanks. Other thoughts?

John Wordsworth-Goodram 

John Wordsworth-Goodram, I represent CGI. We're a very large global outfit, Canadian IT outsourcing organisation, but we've got a heavy presence within the Scottish Borders specifically. We've set up in Tweedbank and we very much want to get as much high quality jobs and roles within there. It's been a very interesting discussion that we've had this afternoon and in effect, I'm going to split this into three areas where I'm looking at it.

One is around new entrants to the market I'm talking about, so this is coming through whether it's modern apprentices, graduates, where the STEM learner's gone. We are finding a big challenge around some of the, shall I say not the technical skills but more the soft behavioural skills of people now coming into the workplace which is something, to Drew's point, we could potentially help with through mentoring to make sure that they are work ready. They may have the technical skills but do they have the behavioural skills, something we can help from there.

We've got a big change now into this market around the hybrid approach, there's a lot more remote working. Now that's a threat and an opportunity, we in CGI see that as an opportunity within the South of Scotland, there's a way to go through that. What we want to be able to do is find out how can we get the new entrants coming into the workplace and how do we keep them in the South of Scotland, so they're not migrating out as their career develops. How do we keep them in the South of Scotland.

In addition, what we also need is the experience, so whilst it's critically important we get the new blood coming through, we also need the experience to deliver on a day-to-day basis. So how do we make the South of Scotland appealing for people to relocate and that's a lot of the conversations that we've had. Now it's a very appealing region to people I speak to. Councillor Jardine spoke very eloquently about all the good stuff that can be done in the South of Scotland, it's a very attractive place to live. Are we as employers seeing that? No, it needs to be marketed, it needs to be presented better so that people go through that.

Then the final element is around the economic inactivity, I would say, within the South of Scotland region. How can us as employers support you through the region of retraining? People will have the softer skills, maybe not the technical skills, how can we reverse engineer that? There's a number of elements that we as in business can help support that. Ultimately what business wants to be able to do is generate return. To generate that return we need to provide high quality jobs that are providing sustainable careers for people within the region so they stay in the region.

Kate Forbes

Thanks. It may sound simplistic and maybe it's not of primary interest, but something really simple like a joint public sector, private sector, massive international marketing campaign to come and work specifically in the South of Scotland. You're doing that already, there we go, brilliant. Okay, yes?

Kate Fox-Male 

I was going to say that from our perspective we do a lot of our training inhouse and we use the experience of our more experienced managers to do so. We do use local private providers like SDConsultancy to do SQAs and modern apprenticeships and work with Borders College as well. But a lot of what we do is on the job training and it has to be and it's all practical. There's only so much you can learn in a classroom or you can learn online.

For example, chefs, we know that is a very - COVID really, really put it - I can't even find the words because it's really kind of destroyed the cheffing world and they're so in demand. In fact we've had two of our employees who started off as kitchen porters and who are now training to be a chef and they're doing their SQAs and they're doing apprenticeships. But a lot of that on the job training comes from the people that we already hire, the managers, et cetera.

So it's about I think having other opportunities, more formulised opportunities that are supporting the - like we've said, supporting the companies and supporting the businesses so that they're not completely self-reliant. Because it does take up a lot of time and we're talking about mentorship and I think that's really important. A lot of the more management side that we have are not necessarily from the local area, some of them are and they've gone away and trained and come back, which is fantastic. Particularly, for example, our Economic Director's from Duns. He went away and spent time in London, did all his training there and has come back.

We're also trying to promote the local area too, like you said, John, as a relocation area. I think somebody alluded to it with regard to housing. We as a company have invested £1.2 million in building our own staff accommodation so that we can bring talented, skilled workers within hospitality to us and relocate. Because the housing in the local area is an issue and it is in high demand, we spent that much to provide our own accommodation. Even now we're getting to the point where that's full, so we kind of have to think again. Can we spend another £1.2 million on staff accommodation? That's the debate.

So yes, I think it is about having something more structured to support the business, so we don't have to be self-reliant and we don't have to rely on ourselves to provide that training. But it is about having that experience and that's the crux, I guess.

Kate Forbes 

Thanks. Yes?

Laura Middlemass 

Getting back to what Joanna said about the plethora of support services available and we've mentioned it multiple times, but having that centralised support structure for employers. If they need to contact DYW or they want to talk about apprenticeships, or they want to talk about work experience, et cetera, at the moment employers are having to go to all these different places which is duplicating effort. We find certainly at Plexus there's a lot of kids that want to do work experience, but because it's not structured and planned we're having to turn them away because it's the wrong time of the month or that type of thing.

But if we had a structured approach, I think the opportunities for kids to go out to employers and to industries would be more beneficial for them as well and for employers to be able to showcase their business and the sectors. I think at the schools at the moment, you’ve got the local schools, you’ve got Kelso, Selkirk, Hawick, et cetera, they’ve all got a different approach in how the kids get into work, or how they go to further education. I think having that standardised approach within the South of Scotland would make it clearer for everybody and everybody understands the same approach.

Kate Forbes 

Thanks very much. Alan?

Alan Baxter 

I've written a few notes just to answer some of the questions, because for me, I came up from school into a local factory, did a couple of years' training, day release at college and now I run a business. I think it can be done, people can progress from where they start, but I think it's getting people to see there is a starting point. I'm listening to the colleges and we're in the dairy industry, we don't have a training course in the region, in fact I don't think there's a training course in Scotland for the dairy industry. We're in the biggest milk pool in Britain, so there's obvious gaps in training.

But I think it starts personally and we've tried a few things in two years, we've only been running for two years and we're genuine about young people. We really do want to invest in young people, because without young people we've no future. We have tried foundation apprenticeships with one of the local schools, we had three young people in, they were fantastic people, really clever, enthusiastic. We'd have loved to have taken the whole three of them on but actually of the three of them, two of them didn’t even want to work in the food industry. One of them did but couldn’t get the training, so we're going to lose them out the region.

As a small business - and Scott mentioned it earlier - we wear a lot of hats, we do a lot of different things. To try and spend time it has to be worthwhile, it has to be targeted. We can't bring in people on a foundation apprenticeship that don't even want to work in the food industry, that to me is just not going to work. I think it's key that it's very targeted and it has to be relevant for what we're trying to achieve.

We have also tried three modern apprentices in the first two years of running a business, one of which is very successful and I think has got a very strong future. That's more in the admin side of running the business, so supply chain, ordering raw materials, packaging and that type of stuff. Maybe a slightly more interesting role or certainly in the eyes of the young people. We tried two modern apprentices in the factory and those didn’t work, they lasted I think between them four weeks, which was really disappointing.

I think there is a bit of a gap from - we engaged with DYW and I think they were going through a few changes at the time and there's probably a bit of change to come there. But it was almost like once you’ve recruited the staff come back and see us and I thought I don't know where to start recruitment, I don't know where to go, I don't know who to talk to, I've no contact with the schools. I think the support for a small business needs to be very much at the start of the whole process and keep us right, because we don't really know. We're not recruiters, we're not trainers, we're not HR people, we don't really know all about all that stuff but we're very keen to make it work. I think that's really all I would like to say on that point, to be honest with you.

Kate Forbes

Alistair?

Alistair Fell 

Hi, I'm Alistair from Iron and Pine, we are a modular construction company based in Dalbeattie. Luke, my business partner, and I are a good example of leaving the area and coming back to start a business on the basis that we wanted to create jobs in the area. We've had tremendous support from SoSE which has been great and we've had really good support from the college. There's a couple of things, fundamentally we need welders and we need construction industry people. The colleges are turning them away because they haven't got enough resources, so that's pretty black and white in my eyes.

Throughout our business we need all sorts of different people, from welders, fabricators, joiners, we need CAD designers, we need production managers. We're actually pushing the boundary in terms of trying to disrupt the traditional construction industry by looking at a lean manufacturing and modern methods of manufacturing approach. There's no one really in the area with that skillset, we've got to get them here. I had someone turn down a really good job with us last week because their wife couldn’t come to the area, because there wasn’t any suitable jobs for them and they were looking in housing and that was an issue. So we're a great example of a business that is tackling the rural housing issues. We're providing a lot of high quality accommodation for venues like Roxburghe and dairy farmers and we can't get staff.

We're looking at doubling our workforce in the next year and it's a really strategic issues for us. There's all sorts to be done, but I think everything Malcolm said in terms of a cohesive approach, getting people here and making sure that we're promoting ourselves is the place to go and being ambitious with it. We are hellish ambitious, we want to be pushing the boundaries, we want to be forward thinking. We're disrupters, we're going places and we want those people working with us and it's really, really hard to get them here.

I was up at the National Robotarium last week and it was phenomenal what they're doing there, really exciting, really great people. They're the people I want in Dalbeattie and how the hell do I get them there? So there's that fundamental ground floor we need the skills. The other thing is if we're going to grow exponentially over the next three years, apprenticeships, yes, we want them, we want as many as we can get. That's a four-year period. I need a skills workforce that can mentor those guys and train them now. Where are they? So they're the issues we've got in terms of skills.

Kate Forbes 

Thanks. I know Pete wanted to come in and then I'm looking for any other private employers that are here and then David. So we'll go Pete, David, anybody else before I come to - no? Okay, Pete and David.

Pete Smith 

Thanks, DFM. I'll be relatively quick. Laura's point about the sort of multiple or somewhat confused access to skills delivery is well made. It actually goes some way to what Joanna said earlier on about the - I don't like using the word confused, but the complex landscape we have in the South of Scotland, which maybe doesn’t help us when we're engaging with industry. Because what we can assure you as providers is that we can be incredibly flexible, but what we can't be is all things to all men.

Where it works really, really well is where we have industry forums that we're able to engage with and we currently effectively manage the construction industry for the Scottish Borders, funded by SoSE for the next wee while. That works really, really well and I know that's really difficult to get for a number of other industries. But if we were to try to take some actions away, I would advocate for that sort of engagement, whether it's with visitor economy or other sectors, if we can get that coordinated approach.

But what it really comes down to is the point I made at my last intervention, was progressing the skills planning landscape in the South. The ESSCG I think has gone some way to identifying at a slightly more granular level the demands and requirements that we have. But what we don't have is something that matches that in terms of the resources to meet that demand. It's how we can get those two things together, because from the regional skills assessment and the work of the ESSCG we know there are huge gaps. We've gone a good way to quantifying what those gaps are, but if we were to meet them all you would need to triple the budget for education and skills provision in the Scottish Borders and Dumfries and Galloway.

My last point - and it goes back to what a number of colleagues have said - is how do we ensure that we can meet some of the employer demand and perhaps have employers take a bit of the burden, but without it being a cost to the business. Let's see if we can work out a model that is more like an investment for the business, rather than them taking away a resource from frontline delivery, again particularly pertinent to very small businesses.

Kate Forbes

Thanks. David, Dawn and then I'll come to Graeme.

David Hope-Jones

Thanks very much, DFM. I share your enthusiasm of taking all the good bits from a good discussion and ending up with clear actions and timescales and responsibilities. In that spirit, an offer I suppose from our perspective, the visitor economy perspective in this discussion, I'd be really happy to go away and bring together again the sectors, share the video from today and say we've had a really good discussion. All of these organisations are looking at the sector and asking this question. For us to come up with a really short and crisp and concise and clear workforce development and your skills gap analysis, that we're able to say, as Mr Dey you were saying for construction, what type of welders.

For us to come back by the end of January, this is exactly what the South of Scotland needs. But also a school card matrix that's able to say we can use this to be able to assess is it getting better in 12 months, 24 months, is it getting better? Maybe a sort of representative pool of 50 businesses that we're going back to and asking them that question, are we making progress on this issue? Because for many businesses who have been around, these are the same discussions that have been had many times before.

That's my proposal, that by the end of January the SSDA has come back with a really clear for the visitor economy, this is the skills that are needed. With clear proposals of this is what we think can be done on making that positive perceptions point around working with schools and the education systems to have really employment ready young people coming out. Working with the colleges around practical courses that are needed and maybe what support is also needed for businesses as well to be able to bring those 22 per cent back in.

To come back with a proposal by the end of January and then to come back to it every year thereafter and say is this really working? Are we on the right approach? Keen to put that on the table as a proposal and if we did that by the next CoSS, there would be something and we've really delivered against that from the visitor economy perspective.

Kate Forbes 

Thanks very much.

Dawn Roberts 

Thank you, Deputy First Minister and Minister. I'm Dawn Roberts, I'm the Chief Executive of Dumfries and Galloway Council. I'm just struck by the conversation from employers and the contributions made. There are so many parallels with the public sector in terms of the challenges that we face in terms of skills, recruitment.

I think it's just really important that we don't lose the importance of the public sector as employers in this region across the South of Scotland and how we can apply the same sorts of principles and the same approach for public sector. One of the appendices within the papers relates to the great work between Dumfries and Galloway College and the NHS and we're having conversations about social care and some of our regulatory functions, where we are really challenged as a council.

Some of the key functions and key areas of the Council's work where we struggle in terms of recruitment, retention, capacity, are enablers for the economy. Planning, environmental health, trading standards, building control, all of the key regulatory functions that are so important to support a thriving economy, support local businesses. I think there's just something about making that connection with the public sector.

Workforce challenges, Solace, the local authority chief execs network, has recently published an important report from our perspective around the challenges across local government and that's opened up opportunities for discussion with Skills Funding Agency, with Universities Scotland, with Colleges Scotland. All really important conversations, but some of the solutions will only be possible at local level.

Whilst we're having those national conversations, some of the solutions and some of the pathways into jobs that local government have now and the jobs for the future, will lie locally. The connection I think with the public sector challenges is really important that we don't lose that focus as we move forward. Thank you, Deputy First Minister.

Graeme Dey 

Thanks, DFM. Trust me, the complexity of the landscape is not confined to the South of Scotland. It's one of the major challenges of reform and it's become that way through the best of intention. Everybody's wanted to do something to help to address a problem, but what we've ended up with is an unbelievably congested system. Congested for employers, difficult to understand for young people and we've touched on this a couple of times earlier, their parents, those who are encouraging in career paths that they may be thinking about, that's on our to-do list.

Laura, to perhaps best address your plea, I would return to that suggestion about an all singing, all dancing foundation apprenticeship model. That's what I'd love to deliver for the whole of Scotland, because I think if you get that right and picking up Alan's point, as long as it's square pegs for square holes and not what we currently have at times, I think that can deliver big change for us.

n the absolute long term I would like a careers offering that includes - and it's an ask of employers, public and private sector - an ask around meaningful work experience somewhere in amongst that career offering. That will help the employers get the square pegs for the square holes hopefully, but it will also help our young people make their minds up about the right career path. Because right now the attrition rates in colleges, universities and apprenticeships are far too high.

Kate, I was struck listening to you about your chefs problem. I attended an event in Edinburgh hosted by I think it's the Master Chefs of Great Britain. It was them putting back into the system that they'd come through, it was a wonderful event. The room was packed full of college lecturers and students and I think one of the things that resonated most for them that day was that one of the people making that fantastic presentation explained he'd begun his career as a student at Dundee and Angus College. So they could see where this was taking them and it certainly excited people, it excited me.

On the point about curriculum and how we improve the offering and make it fit for purpose, we're looking currently on, for example, the apprenticeship frameworks. Are they fit for purpose as they current exist and is the process for addressing that sometimes too clunky, it doesn't really work for employers. That's one area that we're looking at.

On curriculum, I hosted a round table with employers in the college and university sector, Joanna was the college representative there, a few months ago. It was an interesting discussion because it started off at one point with an employer complaining that the chemistry graduates that were coming into his business weren’t ready to work. They weren’t lab ready and this was no use to him. My challenge to him was well what are you going to do about it?

As the discussion developed, where we got to was well the universities were quite open to the idea of changing their degree offering a little bit so that six months of it involved lab work, if the employers were going to provide that for them. That would have taken away the issue the employer had of a year that followed taking on the graduate they felt they were just bringing them up to speed. So there's a lot of work we can do in that space.

I think we touched on a little bit earlier about graduate apprenticeships. The principal at Glasgow Caledonian University is doing a piece of work for me just now, looking at the whole graduate apprenticeship model and where we can take that. Now I'm not going to sit here today and say suddenly we're going to have a massively improved offer. But we're looking very closely at where the demand is, how we meet that demand, bearing in mind it can take up to 18 months to develop a degree course.

Again something we've touched on earlier, we have to understand that for our colleges and our universities, a critical mass of students and a PIE point guaranteed is absolutely essential for them to move into a different type of provision. I think what that highlights for me is that this really has to be a collective effort, the employers, the training providers and if we get that buy-in - and I'm confident we can do - the Government's certainly behind facilitating that and delivering a different offering to the one we currently have.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much. That was a really helpful conversations, thanks very much, Russell, for kicking us off. I have recorded far too many actions there, I've got 11, but I'll throw them out. I think the first obvious one is around what's already happening, but the engagement with inward investors has got to include the skills conversation and almost linking in the further education and higher education providers as to how they're going to - so that there isn't a theft, as it were, and a recycling that goes on.

Secondly, hugely encouraged by this point that you are already doing that joint marketing of this being a great place to live and work. I wonder, this may be happening already but taking it a step further, which is that joint public-private sector jobs provision, because of the point Alistair made around being able to recruit but a spouse or a partner not being able to find employment. Actually they might be in a perfect position to work for one of the other employers, but they won't be able to link it up unless we do the hard work for them. So I don't know whether there is a forum, there is a pool, there's somewhere that you can say to the collective, right, the other half here is actually a brilliant dairy farmer, do you want one? I think that's something that we need to take forward.

Thirdly, it's not been mentioned and I was going to mention it in the previous conversation, it is slightly different but it's just this rural visa pilot, which I actually think enjoys cross-party support. So it's not a political point, but obviously industry did a lot of work a few years ago in terms of a visa pilot for rural jobs. Actually a lot of the jobs that we're talking about would be defined as rural jobs. There is ongoing engagement, I certainly have ongoing engagement with the Secretary of State for Scotland and I meet with him again tomorrow, just to try and move that ahead. Obviously the more that that can be depoliticised and non-political people can express support or ambitions for that to be progressed, the easier it is for that to happen.

Laura talked about - I think it is Laura. Yes, it is Laura, talked about the need for a centralised resource and that was similar to what I think Pete was talking about in terms of almost a forum. A place where an employer can get the advice they need and the colleges can get the evidence and the statistics that they need for doing that. That, I imagine, exists already, but if Laura doesn't know about it then we need to do more, so that's our communication point, I would suggest.

I'm actually quite taken aback and it's not a criticism, please don't read it as a criticism, that there isn't the training for the dairy industry that Alan talked about, considering this is literally the epicentre of milk. There we go, 950 dairy farms and clearly the best yoghurt on the planet. Don't tell my Highland constituents that. I will bring in comments maybe at the end, if that's okay just on that, because you may tell me that that's not true with SRUC. But where an employer feels that way, or an industry feels that way, how do you feed it in and it comes into that centralised resource.

Onto David's point, because I love accountability and statistics and evidence, on some form of survey or some form of identification. That to my mind is all wrapped up in what Pete's talking about, around the skills landscaping. It goes back to the point in the last discussion, what do we need in 10 years' time and how are we going to get it? Everybody has confidence that we know what we need roughly and we know how we're going to deliver it. I think there's something about the skills landscaping that starts with brilliant surveying work, that is as up-to-date as possible and that just happens consistently.

Welcome David's commitment around tourism and I think if other industries - there may be value in David engaging with other industries because of what you’ve done. There may be interest in other industries progressing that kind of format. Many will already do it.

On Dawn's point around public sector employment, absolutely and something simple like in the Programme for Government in September we announced considerable additional resource for apprentices in planning. Because there is such a scale of infrastructure required, particularly in energy, and the need for that consistent pipeline. So you're absolutely right and it always fills lots of people with joy at the thought that there'll be a lot more planners in the world.

Then the last two was just to double down on the fact that there is a lot of complexity nationally, so let's get South of Scotland on the road to prove to the rest of Scotland how to do it. Because you do have everything that you need in this area to solve the problem and this is where it starts, in terms of everybody being round the table. If we can get these meaningful actions and find a way of progressing them, let's be the first place in Scotland to actually have a brilliant matching service integrated in our schools and colleges, ensuring that there is clarity about the future. It was just to echo Dawn's point around that.

One of the most effective ways of forcing, as it were, that integration to happen is through meaningful work experience, because it's the first point usually that a young person has to engage with both the public sector and the private sector. The public sector can only do it if they have private sector employers and the private sector can only do it if they know what's available.

So actually it's a great acid test of whether it's working or not. I won't ask Laura for what she meant at this point, but the notion that you might have somebody wanting work experience but it's the wrong time of year just seems a little bit ridiculous, because I'm sure you can find the right time of year, you know what I mean? That was my very long list of actions, but we will tidy it up. But I will ask Mary just to come in on responding to that and then we'll move on.

Mary Thomson 

Thank you very much. Just for a point of clarify, but Alan, I can pick up with you outside. From a dairy sector perspective in the South of Scotland, SRUC is seeing record enrolments on agriculture and specifically livestock programmes. We do have a dairy focus, as you would expect, for the region from a primary producer perspective within those programmes. Also see increasing numbers of apprenticeship enrolments in that sector, where we are very aware of a challenge is with regards to some of the dairy processing course availability.

We're working on that at the moment and it comes back to I think a point that Pete made around making sure that we've got a sustainable cohort size and where necessary, working with partners. But really welcome an opportunity to pick that up outside this meeting. Thank you.

Kate Forbes 

Thanks, so we are on borrowed time, but Russell, you kicked off the session, do you want to conclude this session?

Russell Griggs 

Thank you, yes, and I'll conclude it in two ways by saying we've talked about construction and all sorts of other stuff. I remember somebody saying that I don't need a joiner, I just need somebody to put my kitchen unit up and I think that's something else as we do these skills is do we need everything done before they can do things. So it's about accrediting people as they go through this process to see where they are. Because a lot of builders and a lot of my builders who help me in my own life have started off as a joiner, but discovered they can be a brickie. They could then discover they could do plumbing, so it's about how we do all that within an accredited environment.

Just to say finally to Mary, Mary and I are good friends, it's not the production end. It's I think for Alan saying if you talk to that, the demands of their customers now are [unclear]. If you take Lactalis, which - was it 220 million a year-ish gallons of milk, 220 million gallons of milk a year goes through that in the Stranraer. The demands they're putting back on the dairy farmers to produce in such a way that's net zero, that's climate, so it's not just about getting the dairy process right. Alan will be exactly the same from his customers about what they want. So it's about remembering there are two sides to this training. It's not just about training the production, no [unclear] the production, but it's about doing the customer end as well. Jane was going to tell you about the Dairy Nexus.

Kate Forbes 

Okay, which is wonderful, £8 million, £4 million from the Scottish Government, £4 million from the UK Government. Talk about collaboration, it's beautiful, so thanks very much. Is that what you were going to say? Right, we have got - anybody that thinks we can talk about roads in 20 minutes is ambitious, but we do have a transport update which is critically important. Thank you so much to their REP for producing the transport paper. It was a substantive - it will, sorry, the substantive agenda item in February 2025. The whole aim of the sort of last agenda item in every single Convention is that we sort of tee it up and get you thinking for the next meeting, so we don't have to cover everything in this session. I will pass over to Jenny, I believe, from Scottish Borders Council, to introduce the paper and we'll keep tight to time, if that's okay.

Jenny Linehan

Thank you, Deputy First Minister. Clearly they saved the most important topic until last and indeed as you just stated, a critical one. I'm Councillor Jenny Linehan, just so that everyone who looked at my name and said they had no idea how it could be pronounced. I speak as portfolio holder for the environment, sustainability and transport at Scottish Borders Council and Chair of the South of Scotland Strategic Action Group for transport.

Deputy First Minister, you will know from your own rural locality that transport and connectivity is a constant and persuasive issue for our citizens, so it is in the South of Scotland. Transport is the predominant theme in our public engagements and consultations. I'd like to ask how many of you today have travelled by public transport, a show of hands? Now by my calculations we're over 50 in this room and two of you came by public transport. You do the maths.

It was not merely appropriate that the Regional Economic Partnership identified transport as one of its top three priorities, it is essential that it should be one of our priorities. After all, it is an issue that touches on practically all others. Whether we're thinking about access to skills, education, opportunity, whether we're focusing on business supply chains or planning active travel to keep us healthy.

The paper before you builds on previous discussions of transport at the Convention of the South of Scotland. It rehearses the importance of transport to the region, the key challenges faced and sets the scene for today's discussion. That discussion then looks forward to the Convention in February, when the issue of transport will be returned for in-depth consideration.

The task we face is how together we can deliver a transport system in the South of Scotland which unlocks the capability and capacity in our region and addresses the inequalities of access to transport and opportunity, which are too often regarded as unfortunate, an unchangeable feature of rural regions like ours. To quote the then Transport Cabinet Secretary's comments to CoSS in February 2022, we need a transport system that works for the people of the South of Scotland.

Today's report proposes that a task of such scale necessitates establishing an effective partnership between team South of Scotland, Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government. This partnership should take joint impactful steps through policy, action and resource, to make real the vision set out in the National Transport Strategy for the South of Scotland.

We suggest that there are three prerequisites to progress.

First, improved data. This is the foundation, without it we cannot plan effectively and optimise our limited resources. The workforce mobility project within Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region indicates what is possible through the interpretation of mobile data. For example, the matching of public transport provision to what it tells us.

(2) Integration. Twenty-minute neighbourhoods have been widely heralded as the answer to how we think about access to services within communities. We have not answered this challenge in relation to rural communities. We suggest this is something that we look at.

(3) Connectivity. The frustration of residents in our recent community conversations was tangible. They asked, what's the point of me using the train if I can't get to and from the station in time? So it's clear we need to improve connectivity between different transport modes, including better timetabling, ticketing and pricing alignment between nationally controlled transport systems, encouraging greater patronage and improving viability.

For our communities, for our businesses, for our collective future, we really need a step change, don't we? Those of us assembled here today have a vital role in providing for that. I look forward to our discussion and now pass on to the Scottish Borders Council's Director for infrastructure and environment, John Curry, to take us more deeply into the report.

John Curry 

Thank you, Councillor Linehan. I guess the crux of the paper sets out the ambition of what we're trying to achieve, which is we want the South to be more effectively integrated into national and regional infrastructure to improve economic, social and sustainable opportunities, that delivers a proportionate and essential contribution to sustainable national wealth. We have a robust and diverse economic base, with strength in traditional industries as well as industries for the future. We're focusing on leveraging those assets to drive growth, innovation and sustainability, realising those benefits of our unique strategic location and the abundance of national resources, natural beauty and a rich heritage.

A well designed transport system could lead to transformative benefits. Improved health and happiness and prosperity that contributes to net zero, addresses inequality, stimulates inward investment, economic growth and resilience, raises attainment levels and closes skills gaps, realises the potential of our ports, addresses social isolation, strengthens tourism economy, improves safety and aligns the region more closely with the Scottish Government's key policy priorities.

In the South, collaboration with public, private and third and community sector partners is key to our effectiveness and expect the challenges each of us face we are already delivering. We are working to strengthen our rail network, bus services and our active transport infrastructure. We're pursuing opportunities to adopt low carbon fuels and expand the EV network. Community transport makes a key contribution towards combatting social isolation and enabling access to healthcare.

Leadership is crucial in realising a sustainable, inclusive, safe and accessible transport system and leadership is crucial for a collaborative, effective and productive partnerships that can take a joint intentional, meaningful action that makes positive impact and progress in maximising economic opportunities and contributes to addressing the distinct mobility challenges that the rural South of Scotland faces.

As Councillor Linehan explains, we have three key priorities identified. First is improved data. We'd like support to help build the revenue case for a continuation and expansion of the hugely beneficial workforce mobility project, which will cease in March 2027. We want to adopt the tools that they’ve developed for the continuation of our data-based approach to strategic decision-making and we want to identify how additional expertise can be funded and efficiently incorporated into the Regional Transport Partnerships, providing equitable benefits to our local authorities.

Second is integration and Jenny talked about this, about realising the opportunities for a rural 20-minute neighbourhood. That contributes to economic growth opportunities, reduces transport poverty, contributes to net zero and helps enable change to rural communities, strengthen tourism and unlock community capability.

Third is connectivity, improving connectivity between different transport modes, allowing timetabling, ticketing and pricing and potential to implement a mass transit mobility system that delivers and improves desirability, encourages greater use, improving viability and becoming more economically sustainable.

The Regional Economic Partnership's key priority here is to make the case for targeted transport investment to unlock economic opportunities for the rural South of Scotland. We've set out the three actions we'd like to progress in partnership with the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland ahead of the next meeting of the Convention that we believe will help contribute to deliver a healthier, fairer and more prosperous region for communities, businesses and visitors. It would be great to hear what Transport Scotland thinks, so I'll pass over to you, Alison.

Alison Irvine 

Good afternoon, checking you can all hear me? Good, I'm Alison Irvine, I'm the Chief Executive of Transport Scotland. I'm delighted to be here and delighted to be talking about transport because I fundamentally believe it is the golden thread that links everything that we've talked about so far this afternoon. I think the paper that John has set out for us does really well, I think, in setting out why transport is so important. It gets people to their jobs, it gets people to their education, it gets goods to market, it brings the visitors into the economy and those are all things that I think we can all agree are fundamentally important.

I wanted just to touch on some of the systemic challenges I think that we're facing within the transport sector, if I may, DFM. First of all, you won't be surprised to hear me say climate change and adaptation, so transport is the largest emitting sector in Scotland. In this part of the country you don't need me to tell you just how vulnerable some parts of our transport networks are in terms of the impacts that we're seeing already from climate change. But we have an opportunity, I think, in terms of setting out how we can support our transport system to deliver that just transition that is so important for ministers and about how we bring in innovative ways of funding that help to draw in funding from the private sector to meet some of the structural changes that we want to see.

If I look at our public transport system, however, the system that we have in Scotland is currently fiscally unsustainable and unaffordable. The way it is funded and paid for is unfair, costs are rising, we have not recovered from the impact of COVID and the changes that has had on demand. The place that we see it having the greatest impact is in our bus services, which particularly has an impact in rural areas such as this. This is a real systemic challenge for us. The state of our assets, again those of you who've got responsibility for maintaining assets, whether it's schools, farm buildings, roads, digital infrastructure, will know that we have an ageing asset and that we have to spend a lot of time and effort investing in that as well.

Then I thought it was probably worthwhile just finishing with systemic challenges talking about skills, because a lot of what we've talked about today in terms of the sectors that are important in this part of Scotland also affect the transport sector. We do not have a diverse workforce, I think 23 per cent of people that work in transport roles are female, just for an example. We have trouble recruiting in the construction sector, if we want to build anything in terms of new infrastructure or maintain our assets. We have trouble recruiting bus drivers because it's an antisocial job and lacks a career pathway, just in the same way as we talked about there. Again a lot of those same issues that translates through.

I wanted to finish on a positive, if I may, and then just talk about some of the opportunities. Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration is key. There is a lot of really good work and John and his team in terms of the Regional Partnership that they’ve set up here has done a lot to pull all the different strands together. The Regional Transport Partnerships that exist in this part of the world are also very strong and keen to be involved, so that's a really good base. I should say, just for the avoidance of doubt, as are Transport Scotland, but I'm here so I was hoping that was kind of taken as read.

In terms of the asks and the data, we've got some really good foundations in the transport sector, because we have a lot of data. I think the key thing for us to be thinking about is how we use that data and how we use that intelligently to help inform decision-making. We have a national transport strategy that sets out a vision, which I think is always a really good place to start. We also have from Scottish ministers the strategy transport projects review, which sets out investment recommendations from ministers.

Integration, integration, integration, another key point. The integration between transport and land use I think is absolutely pivotal. Transport is a derived demand so if land use is put in a place that is not accessible, then that starts to cause problems. Integration between modes, integration across ticketing systems, those are all again nationally important pieces of work that we will be taking forward, that we would want to be working as closely as possible with areas like this.

As I touched on before, the rural transport challenge is particularly key and that is one area where I think that bringing together the minds and the data that exist in this part of the world really give us an opportunity to test some things that work in particular in this area. On the 20-minute neighbourhoods, there is already some really good guidance there that published by the Scottish Government planning team, so let's have a look at that and see how we can build upon that to fill the gap.

Then let's not forget that this part of the country is actually supremely well connected to some of the wider strategic markets, et cetera, that you'll be wanting to get access to. It's got the M74 and the M6, it's got the A1, it's got the East Coast Main Line, access to the West Coast Main Line, as well as to the Borders Railway and the A75 as well, how could I forget that? Councillor Macgregor, looking at you there. But that link to Ireland as well, so there is a lot there in terms of that more strategic connectivity that we can really build on. I will rest there, DFM, and hand back to you.

Kate Forbes 

Great, thanks very much. That gives a flavour of what will be the substantive agenda item next time we meet. The two things I would like to act as sort of parameters for that discussion is very much solutions rather than documenting problems. I think it's been really helpful to hear what the systematic challenges are just now, which sets us up really nicely for the next session to say right, well if that is the problem then here's how we can solve it collectively. Then secondly, what's actually required to improve the picture for transport, create that sustainability and create that resilience in the network.

We've got a couple of minutes, is there anything that anybody wants to say in a couple of seconds that really must be part of the conversation in the spring, that you want to send us all away with? Yes, Euan.

Euan Jardine 

Thank you and thank you for that introduction to the transport. For me, it was touched on about the buses, the bus network. We pay a substantial amount out of our budgets for buses to maybe only take a couple of people around the region, but we have to do it because these are buses that connect into Edinburgh and to Midlothian.

The 101 bus that was the bus that goes from Dumfries all the way up, Dumfries and Galloway paid £100,000, South Lanarkshire paid £100,000, Scottish Borders Council paid £100,000. Our neighbouring people who had more patronages on it didn’t pay much at all, so as rural economies we are paying for people to go into Edinburgh, to go into Midlothian, taking their skills elsewhere, but we're not getting enough money back in terms of that. So I don't think that is a fair way, so I think we could maybe look at that, how we can be funded for our rural transport.

Also we talked about skills and people getting opportunities for employment. I know a man in Earlston, 29 years old, can't get into the area because he's unemployed. Well he's not unemployed, he's got employment, but it's an online job. He can't get in, he has to get taxis places and he's asking is it too expensive to drive, he can't have the money to drive, et cetera. He's stuck in this catch-22 position, there's no buses to get him to the centre of the Borders, so these are the sorts of thing. How many people have been left in rural poverty due to public transport. Thank you.

Kate Forbes 

Thanks very much, Euan. I think you make a really important point, which is that what is within the gift of a local authority and what is within the gift of Transport Scotland and actually there's a responsibility on all of us to make it work coherently. Scott?

Scott Hamilton 

Thank you very much, Deputy First Minister. Very briefly, in terms of this region and what we need is our capital investment, it's in our roads but it's also primarily in our railway infrastructure. You'll be aware via the Borderlands Growth Deal we have a feasibility study, £10 million allocated for this region to look into that opportunity of extending the Borders Railway.

We need to get on with that project. It's one of these solutions, it's one of these projects which could bring a huge amount of change to this region. I know you said you were meeting with the Scottish Secretary, please become our advocate for that project. We would get behind you, we would support you in every way that we can, but that is definitely the way in which we can unlock potential for this region.

Kate Forbes 

Thanks. I don't want us to get down a rabbit hole of just one project, but just go for it, Gail.

Gail Macgregor 

No, it's not about singular projects. I think there's actually a bigger message here that we've had commitments from UK Government, previous UK Governments, for feasibility funding for very, very substantial projects across the whole of the South of Scotland. All of those are in jeopardy at the moment, including a levelling up transport hub in our region. I suppose my collective plea was that we keep pressure on both yourselves, ourselves, but also UK Government, who are not at the table today, to ensure that that feasibility funding does come through,

Kate Forbes 

I think what'll be interesting, depending on the date of our next session, my experience currently of engaging with the UK Government is that Wednesday's budget is not being seen by them as the big moment for capital. It's the spring for capital, so things like a number of different projects which we are in discussions with them. What's happening in spring of course is the multiyear spending review and where there's just - so I just think in terms of managing that, we do have a representative from the UK Government here, I think Ken at the back.

Gail Macgregor 

My apologies.

Kate Forbes 

I'm sure he will be taking extensive notes on that point and feeding that back. But just the point I think we can all agree on is that - I've said it already actually - capital unlocks a lot and we all are very conscious of that. Where there are projects that are far in development, the existence of capital changes the world. I do not know what will happen on Wednesday, I'm sure we're all looking forward to Wednesday with great anticipation. We'll see what happens on Wednesday, that will then inform of course our own budget on 4 December.

Scott, you said at the - one of your early comments was about the fact that you need multiyear clarity. I think everybody round this table needs multiyear clarity on budgets and that allows us to plan for the future. We also need to see consistency of capital budgets. But it's also nice to finish perhaps with a positive in reflecting back on projects that have been delivered that have been a great success, like the Border Railway, delivered in collaboration.

Okay, thank you very much to Jenny for kicking that off, to John and to Alison for your comments. I'm sure there'll be much to prepare for, for the spring session. Jenny, did you want to close up with any brief comments?

Jenny Linehan 

Thank you. I think the only thing I would actually point out and it kind of hinges on what's already been said, is that as Alison said there is connectivity in the Borders and there's certainly no argument that it isn't there. The problem is the time it takes to use the transport. If you wanted to come from Stranraer to Eyemouth, it can take something in the region of six hours, well that's just not feasible.

So that takes me back to my first comment of really how many here had used public transport and it was next to none. What we need to do, how we need to progress, is we need to make transport accessible for everyone. Not just under 22s and over 65s, everyone and we need to put it in places where it's going to be useful.

Kate Forbes 

Absolutely. Dingwall to Melrose on the bus next time. Don't hold me to that. Okay, right, I think that's us coming into the home straight. Thank you for that session. It will be a substantive item and I just keep repeating let's spend some time - as long as the papers in advance can identify all the problems, timescales, so on, then let's have a conversation that's very much okay, let's fix it, I think, within the constraints that we operate.

That brings us to the last item, which is the forward look. As agreed at the last Convention, we will circulate outcomes for comment by the secretariat team. I've tried to go through after each session, each agenda item, what I think are the rough actions. I didn’t notice that much disagreement with those, so we'll make them more pithy, robust, clear, assign owners, which I won't do just now and assign deadlines. But obviously we want to see obvious progress on each of those before the next time we meet to discuss them, which will be in spring. The secretariat will be in touch to confirm the date and the location of the spring 2025 Convention.

I imagine we don't have a date for the spending review, but just because that's fresh in my mind, if there is any - I don't think we have a date for this, but anyway. If we do get a date for the spending review it may make sense to actually coordinate around that. We'll also develop an agenda and of course your input is always welcome on that. I really want you to feel like you own the Convention, that you’ve got a stake in the Convention and that the outcomes of the Convention actually matter. So in between our meetings, if you do have ideas, even if it's just a one-liner email to me saying actually I've just had a thought, please do share that.

The main actions will be around skills, and we will take on board some of the points that have been made around transport as well. The Convention secretariat love hearing about agenda proposals. As I close, and then I'll ask if there are any final comments, I just want to say thank you very much, I wouldn’t like to estimate the budget of an event like this in terms of time that you have each committed, including our colleagues from the private sector. But there is quite a considerable investment that is made in an event like today, not just around travel, not just in terms of time, but also in terms of the fact that you all have many other commitments.

The fact that we are all here, I hope, illustrates the importance that we place on the South of Scotland. Its importance to the communities who live here, but its importance to the nation and we want to see the South of Scotland prosper and flourish. We want communities to feel like they're valued and that they're important and the whole point of this Convention is to further those objectives and aims and very grateful as a result for your input on that.

Are there any final comments? Any things that you will forever kick yourself for not articulating at the Convention today? In which case, I always pride myself on finishing early and you’ve got five minutes back, so thank you very much.

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