Chamber and committees

Did you want to come in on that, Dr Jackson?

I understood you as saying that the apprenticeship model is not the right one financially. Can you give us a bit more detail about that? Where are the pinch points? Are they with the colleges or the employers? Why does the model not quite work?

Do you subcontract all your work or do you have skilled people who work directly for your organisation?

Yes, absolutely. I am sure that my local college would be delighted to have a visit from you to look at some of those options.

Good morning, and a very warm welcome to the 33rd meeting in 2023 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee.

Our first item is to continue to take evidence on “Our Past, Our Future: The Strategy for Scotland’s Historic Environment”. We are delighted to be joined by Alex Paterson, chief executive of Historic Environment Scotland, and Dr Adam Jackson, head of strategy and policy at Historic Environment Scotland. I ask Mr Paterson to make a short opening statement.

I think that we have exhausted the questions. I thank the witnesses for their attendance. The session has been really interesting and we look forward to finding out where the Lookaboutye tower ends up down the line.

This might seem a bit off the wall, but I recently visited my local college, New College Lanarkshire Motherwell campus, and I saw its robotics hub, where cobots are being used to do skilled sanding and welding work to repair turbines. That is partly about taking the risk factor away from people who would otherwise have to abseil on the machines. Instead, the robot can be hoisted up to do the work, so the skill comes from the person directing the robot. Have you considered that sort of technology for some of the work that you are doing to see if it is more commercially viable, given the skills shortage. If you could get some tasks on to a different platform, would that work?

That is another example of the screen industry’s success in Scotland at the moment. The fact that it all requires carpenters, builders and electricians, however, places a squeeze on the sector.

As soon as you started talking about volunteers, I reflected on our visit to Orkney, where the message was that everybody wears 10 hats. There was volunteer fatigue and issues with capacity, because it tended to fall on the same people over and over again.

Caroline Warburton, do you want to come in on that?