Chamber and committees

Yes. Thank you very much, convener.

Craig McLaren has covered quite a bit of this. He talked about ideas for the future and the young cohort of planners, accelerated mentors, apprenticeships and so on. The Scottish Government has bursary funding for planning postgraduates. Has progress been made in attracting people into planning education? Do you want to say anything else about recruiting people directly into the profession?

Good morning.

I am interested in resourcing of local authority and national planning departments. Has there been any improvement in resourcing? What impacts are the proposed changes to planning fees and available resources expected to have?

You have spoken about accessibility. Robert Burns or Walter Scott can be quite difficult for us all. The bill is really about the language that people use in the playground and at home. How can that be supported through teacher training and professional development, and how can it be embedded in our education agencies? I am also interested in how we can address young people’s stigma about how they speak.

I would be quite interested in following that up with a question on education.

What changes, if any, would you expect to see? You are talking about awards and units. Would there be an expectation of changes to those?

I will stick with you, Michael Dempster. You have talked about having an agreed written form of Scots. How realistic is that, given that, for example, Doric can be so different from the dialect in Lanarkshire, where I come from? I remember staying with my friend’s family up in Aberdeen over the summer holidays and my mum phoning up and no being able tae understand a word that was said. How do we actually get back to the sort of situation that you have just been talking about?

I will do that, too.

As far as what goes in the classroom and in schools is concerned, is this a matter of children learning about and having a wider understanding of the different dialects across Scotland? Robert McColl Millar talked about empowering teachers. Is that partly about embedding understanding through looking at, say, history, locations, place names and so on? Is that what you are talking about? That question is for Robert McColl Millar and Michael Dempster.

Yes—I am sorry.

Has part of that been about supporting the building of capacity in communities themselves? Has that been a factor?

The Scottish Government is looking for rural community housing bodies to become self-sufficient. How realistic do people think that aim is, and if it is realistic, how could it be achieved?