Manufacturing recovery plan: consultation analysis – March 2021

Summary Of Consultation

Profile of respondents

Over the 10 week period of the consultation, a total of 53 responses were received. The majority of responses (43) were submitted through the Scottish Government's Citizen Space consultation hub. The remaining were submitted via email. Where consent has been given to publish the response, they will be made available at the same time as the publication of a final Plan, scheduled for May 2021.

Organisational respondents were allocated to one of eight categories. A breakdown of the number of responses received by respondent type is set out in Table 1 below.

Quantitative results

Respondents participating through the Citizen Space consultation hub were asked to score the 13 proposed actions outlined in the draft Plan by importance (1 being low and 5 being highest priority). While pleased with the scale of the consultation response, we are conscious it is still a very small subset of those linked to manufacturing in Scotland. This should be noted when reviewing related quantitative analysis of the results. A list of all 13 proposed actions has been provided at Annex 2.

Across all 43 respondents, all 13 proposed actions were received favourably on average and considered to be of importance/priority. Two actions jointly scored the highest priority (CN5 and AT4) which emphasises the importance of promoting collaboration between companies and the alignment of support to enable companies to pilot and implement capital modernisation solutions respectively. It should also be noted that, from the perspective of a trade organisation, which represents the views of multiple businesses within their membership, both of these actions were scored the highest priorities along with SWF6 which proposes the development of a Skills Partnership Programme.

Although still received favourably, CN3, which puts forward the development of a manufacturing start-up accelerator facility, holds the lowest overall average score across all proposed actions. Trade organisations, Public and Third Sector were the only respondent types to score this as being low priority.

When considering each Priority Theme with proposed actions individually, the following is evidenced.

For Collaboration and networks, of the five proposed actions, CN4 which puts forward the establishment of a programme of activity to increase the use of external funding by Scottish manufacturing scored the highest priority with no respondent choosing to score this low (1).

For Adaptation and transformation, of the three proposed actions, AT5, which puts forward a plan to build on the expertise gained through Scottish clusters to support new supply chains and collaborative environmental and digital transformations, can be considered the highest priority and achieved the most 5s across all 13 proposed actions equally with SWF7.

SWF7, which proposed the establishment of fast-track employment models to address emerging skill shortages and jobs growth, also scored the highest of all five proposed actions within the Skills and workforce theme.

The next sections of this report provide a summary of key findings identified within each priority theme.