Convention of the South of Scotland minutes: January 2026

Attendees and apologies

• Kate Forbes, Scottish Government
• Mike Andrews, Scottish Government
• Anne Ashton, Scottish Government
• Chris Brodie, Skills Development Scotland
• Isabel Conway, South of Scotland Enterprise
• Mark Cook, NHS Dumfries and Galloway
• Gary Cox, Scottish Government
• Jenni Craig, Scottish Borders Council
• Anna Densham, Scottish Government
• Douglas Dickson, Dumfries and Galloway College
• Rob Dickson, VisitScotland
• Cllr Andy Ferguson, Dumfries and Galloway Council
• Gillian Good , South of Scotland Enterprise
• Prof Fiona Grant, Heriot-Watt University
• Prof Russel Griggs, South of Scotland Enterprise
• Cllr Scott Hamilton, Scottish Borders Council
• Louise Hann, South of Scotland Enterprise
• Lisa Hawkin, Dumfries and Galloway Council
• Alison Irvine, Transport Scotland
• Karen Jackson, South of Scotland Enterprise
• Cllr Euan Jardine, Scottish Borders Council
• Sarah-Jane Laing,   Scottish Land and Estates
• Stuart McMillan, Dumfries and Galloway Council
• Jane Morrison-Ross, South of Scotland Enterprise
• Neil Murray, Scottish Forestry
• Daniel Paterson, Scottish Government
• Andrew Reed, Dumfries and Galloway Council
• Claire Renton, Scottish Government
• Greig Robson, Skills Development Scotland
• David Robertson, Scottish Borders Council
• Fiona Sandford, NHS borders
• Pete Smith, Borders College
• Sam Smith, Scottish Borders Council
• Gordon Smith, VisitScotland
• Cllr Stephen Thompson, Dumfries and Galloway Council
• Chris Thomson, Scottish Government
• Ralph Throp, Scottish Government

Apologies:  Cara Aitchison, Ray McCowan, Francesca Osowska, Julie White

Items and actions

Start of Transcript

Euan Jardine

Good afternoon. Good afternoon and welcome, everybody, to today's Convention of the South of Scotland. My name is Councillor Euan Jardine and I'm the Leader of Scottish Borders Council. It's obviously a great pleasure to welcome the Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, here this morning and this afternoon. She's also been in Galashiels this morning, which we call the heartland of the Borders. But she's now here in the South of Scotland to discuss that, which we call the heartland of the UK, which I think is a really vital point because, without the South of Scotland, Scotland does not work. We believe we have a real opportunity. We've got a real powerhouse here. I've been quoted many times saying that we do not punch above our weight in this region, we are a heavyweight region. We have opportunity to excel and we already excel. We excel in many things.

But one key thing for us now, as you'll see throughout here, is our population. Depopulation is an issue here. This is why we're having this convention. This is why we're discussing that. Skills play a very major part in that. Tourism plays a major part in it. Housing plays a major part in it. The economy plays a major part in that. It all comes together, so it's great to welcome so many partners here at the table to discuss this, to get this through and to talk about it.

When I talk about the south, I don't talk about the Scottish Borders, I don't talk about Dumfries and Galloway as separate entities. We are together and it's key that we work together. We don't go off in factions, we don't go off in solo activities, because to make both of us stronger, we need to work together. We have the Highlands. We have the Central Belt. But you know what? The south is where it really can happen. We can be that energy. We can be the real nucleus for this country. So it is obviously a delight that Kate Forbes is here to hear from us, to listen to us. Everyone in this room, I want to say that your voice is heard today, your voice will be heard today, so don't be shy in coming forward. Please don't feel you need to stick to a script. Please don't feel that you can be shy. Push the button and talk, because that is why you're here, because you are key partners, you are key strategic partners in this room.

But over from me, I am going to pass now over to the Deputy First Minister, but thank you, everyone, for attending. Remember, the South of Scotland does not punch above its weight. It is a heavyweight region and let that continue. Thank you.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much, Councillor Jardine. I have to say that that ambition builds on his comments this morning in Galashiels which he said was the centre of the world, so being only the heart of the UK does seem to be a slight demotion. But I jest.

Thank you so much to Scottish Borders Council for hosting us. It's great that we were able to reschedule the autumn convention. Huge apologies that we had to reschedule that convention. Sorry, I'm going to take a - it's not that I'm emotional about the idea. Yeah, huge apologies for rescheduling the autumn convention following the weather warning in October. I know there's a lot of comments about the fact that post-COVID, probably, we look at the weather and make quick decisions, but the purpose of that was just to ensure that everybody could actually attend. I think that's in the spirit of what Councillor Jardine set out, which is that we really value your voice.

So if you're here today and you've given up a day that you might otherwise be doing other things on, then we really want to hear from you. These conventions are only as valuable as the diversity of voices that we hear, so I guess my approach is that if I don't hear from you, I might pick on you. So please, please indicate to me. I'll be looking out for people who want to come in, so just grab my attention. Officials on both sides of me will also try and spot you and let me know that you are keen to come in.

Having said all that, it's always important to remind you that the convention is being live streamed and recorded for transcription. So if you do want to mutter something unpleasant and unpalatable under your breath about what somebody else has said, just bear in mind it might make it into the transcript, so maybe just keep it to yourself. A link to the transcript will be circulated before the next meeting. We do need you to use the mics, so please just remember to switch them on and then switch them off when you are finished.

We had a number of visits this morning, which have really set the scene for our discussion this afternoon, some very inspiring meetings, both with organisations that are committed to supporting the revitalisation and regeneration of towns and villages in the Borderlands area as well as some individuals, individuals entrepreneurs that have benefited from Pathways programme support, whether that's funding or coaching and mentoring. I think that's very much in the spirit of what we're seeking to do this afternoon, which is all being on one page to invest in the future of the South of Scotland and the opportunities in the South of Scotland. You'll see that our agenda very much reflects - those opportunities very much reflect the focus in on the regional elements of this, how we work together, as well as the people elements of this around skills in particular. We'll get on to that in due course.

So that's all I needed to say in terms of housekeeping. We'll move on, I think, to the first agenda item, which is a review of previous actions. So you'll have the first paper here, which is about outcomes from spring 2025. That paper just includes some of the agreed actions and progress on that. I just want to see if there's any comments on any element of those actions. If not, that's fine. So I think unless there's anybody - no. Obviously if anything comes to mind following the meeting, please let the secretariat know. Does secretariat want to put their hands up just so that everybody knows where you're sitting? Over there. So if anything springs to mind in terms of actions, please just ask.

So let's move on then to item number 2. That's an update from the Regional Economic Partnership. You'll find the material for that in paper 2. I am going to hand back over to Councillor Jardine to update on the Regional Economic Partnership work. Thank you.

Euan Jardine

Thank you very much, Deputy First Minister. Obviously it's a delight to be the Chair of the Regional Economic Partnership, again an opportunity for the south to come together and collaborate and push forward in a lot of endeavours. So I've got some speaking notes here. I'm actually going to keep to the speaking notes, because there's no point going off course and adlibbing this, because there's so much good work and I want to make sure that is highlighted. It has been a busy and productive year for the South of Scotland Regional Economic Partnership, because we have also shared a paper to you, which you can see outlined and what we've been doing [since March]. But the focus has been about progress in our three key priorities of housing, transport and skills. We've made good progress in each of these areas.

Firstly, on housing, on the REP's housing strategic action group, has continued to take forward the actions into the South of Scotland Housing Action Plan. The REP has made great progress since our last convention in [March] and has since launched a marketing and engagement campaign which has been developed with industry and partners and targets all trades and sizes of business, ranging from sole traders to bigger businesses, and highlights areas where help is available to grow their business. This supports both the region's housebuilding needs and wider construction demand for retrofit and industrial and commercial development.

Also published a study into keyworker housing demand in the region, which was launched in May 2025. This partnership project was led by a group from local councils, SOSE, South of Scotland Community Housing and Scottish Futures Trust. The report has provided data-driven evidence which has been used to identify priorities for the delivery of more keyworker homes where there are most needed. The REP's strategic action group for housing are now looking at developing an action plan to take forward the report's recommendations.

Additionally, the South of Scotland Housing Prospectus was launched in June 2025 to showcase the significant opportunity and the strategic demand for more private sector housing development in the region. This has generated good interest with 70 people attending the launch event, including from housebuilders and construction businesses. Ongoing communications are planned to continue to promote opportunities and stimulate private sector housing investment in the south.

Secondly, on transport, the REP's strategic action group on transport has been focused on progressing actions agreed at previous conventions. Progress on each action has been recorded in a separate summary of action document, as discussed earlier, to improve regional transport connectivity.

Thirdly, on skills, which we will talk on later today, is Strategic Co-ordination Group, the ESSCG, is exploring key skills, issues and priorities for the region, building on actions at the previous convention on the South of Scotland. This includes reviewing the skills implications of the energy transition and latest net zero developments, considering findings from the visitor economy survey carried out by the South of Scotland Destination Alliance, SSDA, and assessing how we can use intelligence, such as the Young People's Career Ambitions research, to inform services. During May and June, five sectoral evidence workshops were held around health, social care, early years, creative industry, and food and drink manufacturing. These workshops were designed to promote better understanding of the evidence for skills and needs and develop a consensus around responses to these needs. The ESSCG has also overseen the development of the skills update paper and endorsed a key headline in that paper on today's agenda.

Finally, in wider work, the partnership has also welcomed new members representing private sector, communities and social enterprises in March. Heard about the South of Scotland's green strategy and annual reviews of the South of Scotland's cycle partnerships and the Responsible Tourism Strategy. Welcomed, engaged on the potential for regional empowerment through the Programme for Government. Worked with regional partners and National Energy System Operator, NESO, SP Energy Networks, SPEN, to input into the transitional Regional Energy Strategic Plan, the RESP, in July. Updating and strengthening grid infrastructure is critical to wider economic development in the south. Through the Regional Land Use Partnership, we fed into the National Framework which has been developed to assist the transition of RLUPs from pilot to national initiative.

More recently, we have developed key strategic messages for attracting investment into the region. We recognised the need to carry out some myth busting and promote the region's many qualities. The south is very diverse with a strong culture of innovation, enviable tourism offering, entrepreneurial drive towards net zero and other technologies, and further development of our Natural Capital Innovation Zone. However, infrastructure challenges still need to be addressed as highlighted by the three key priorities of housing, transport and skills.

There's more. We also are talking about regional funding. We welcomed the First Minister's announcement at the end of November on empowering regional economic economies and looking at supporting the development of REPs to expand their strategic capacities and roles and take on additional devolved competencies. We look forward to the detailed work required to ensure that REPs across Scotland, including in its rural areas, contribute to Scotland's success with additional funding and powers.

However, we were disappointed to hear the recent announcement by the UK Government on the new Local Growth Fund, which will be targeted towards five city-based REPs in Scotland and excludes large areas of rural Scotland with no investment planned for the next three years in the most remote rural areas of Scotland, including Dumfries and Galloway. This is a major shift away from previous investment from the Shared Prosperity Fund and previous European Union regional development and social funds, which targeted the most economically disadvantaged communities. This threatens to leave rural Scotland even further behind.

So today the convention is invited to welcome the progress made on the three key priorities of housing, transport and skills as well as wider priorities and actions, which will collectively deliver on the ambition and [the RES] and commit to actively supporting delivery and collaboration on the three key priorities. Thank you.

Kate Forbes

Thank you so much, Councillor. I'll take some comments in a moment. I just wanted to make three quick comments. Councillor Jardine has just talked about the announcement by the First Minister about legislation that will be taken forward just after the election on - essentially putting the regional partnerships on a more legal statutory footing. That's obviously great, I think. It recognises the importance of that regional work. Obviously really important not to duplicate work that already happens. But I guess as a rural non-Central Belter, my interest here is ensuring that you all, and other areas which are not urban centres as it were, have the opportunity to shape that in a way that is useful to the South of Scotland.

So there's a lot of talk at the moment I think, I'm certainly hearing it, about big cities in England and where they have a mayor and/or a mayoral approach and so that should be the standard to which we all aspire. That just does not work for rural areas. I think my encouragement to the Highlands and Islands is the same encouragement to the South of Scotland, which is what does a good model of Regional Economic Partnership look like that is decentralised, that is statutory and that genuinely incentivises collaboration around shared objectives and aims? But you can imagine or you can assume that post-election that will be a big feature of debate because of that commitment to legislate. So I think it's time - it's important right now, there's time, for all interested parties here to think through, what do you want out of that on a regional basis?

I think the second point I was going to make on that is just how we can't always do everything. So the objectives of the Regional Economic Partnership here are really important. There'll be an appetite for doing lots of things and there's lots of public bodies around the room who are tasked with doing lots of different things. But to have a real priority list for what this Regional Economic Partnership does in particular...

Then the last one is that there is some funding in the budget for next year. We're proud to have - certainly my portfolio, which is never - you could always spend more money than you have, but there is funding safeguarded to provide some capacity to the regional partnerships to help identify priority areas and opportunities. That increases - that's this year and that increases next year as well to set up that programme, so thinking quite carefully about how you create that distinct identity.

So I'll see if anybody else has any comments, either on what Councillor has said or on how this august body of people might be able to inform the future Regional Economic Partnerships. Russel.

Russel Griggs

Yeah, I think Euan's explained it well, but we had a good session on it with colleagues from Scottish Government who did a really good presentation of when the regionalisation goes on. But I think what we said was, let's not get lost in the detail of putting together a piece of legislation that does this. What is it we want to get out of our regional partnerships? As you said, we focus very clearly in our one on housing, transport and skills. That's where we spend most of our time, not ignoring the other bits.

But it's one of these things, you could get lost in the detail. Whereas, in many ways, I think the plea we had made some time ago to Scottish Government when we set up the Regional Economic Partnership down here - which is a really strong one, we all work closely together - is it's about status more than legislation. So it's about having people listen to you as a body. I think when we do this, we just have to be careful that we don't get lost in the detail. We all have our own ways of doing things and things we have to do. You're right, we shouldn't collide into each other by trying to make it more complicated.

Kate Forbes

I think that's very fair, Russel. I guess you are almost further ahead than many other regions, because you've got the unique blessing of an economic enterprise agency that almost perfectly overlaps with the geographic area of our Regional Economic Partnership. So it will, I would hope, make it a lot more efficient and avoid risks of duplication. Please.

Stephen Thompson

Thank you. So just on the back of Councillor Jardine's comments which I think are probably shared and welcomed around the room and understood, it does matter to us in Dumfries and Galloway as well as the South of Scotland in terms of the Local Growth Fund news, because that's a material impact. I know there's a bit about status, which Russel talked about there. But ultimately it comes down to delivery as well, because that's where the impact meets people. I think it's helpful and certainly welcome that the Scottish Government's paying attention to that.

I know we've always pushed and are certainly more recently pushing, through COSLA and other vehicles, to get a rural impact assessment type approach, similar to the islands, which you'll probably be aware of. But that would recognise, I think, not just in terms of status but also the deliverability of national policies and initiatives has to meet the rural conditions, if you like, so it can actually land well with the people it's meant to affect. So I think that would be good to take onboard. Thank you.

Kate Forbes

I think that sounds like a bit of an action there to record. The other thing is Chris Thomson, put your hand up, is doing the work for us from a Scottish Government perspective on the regional partnerships. So again if in the coffee break you want to lobby anybody, I'm the has-been, these officials are the future. They'll outlast any elections, so yeah, feel free to have a chat. But that point around funding I think is very important. Any other comments before I hand over to the Councillor, just to add - no. Councillor Euan Jardine, do you want to say anything in summary and then we'll close this item?

Euan Jardine

No, I think it's just obviously welcome, the work the REP's been doing. Again it's due to partners working together across the south and I think that's the important part. But yeah, it's taking what was said today as well that we continue to push forward and we'll continue to lobby government as best we can. Thank you.

Kate Forbes

Thanks so much. Okay. Well, we're hurtling through this, so that's good. We'll move on to the first of the very substantive items on skills. Before I hand over to Greig Robson from Skills Development Scotland to speak to the paper, this follows an action that was taken away from the last autumn convention to develop a paper detailing the granular skills that would be required in the region over the next 10 years and to set out proposals of how these could be delivered, the point being that there was a lot of conversation at that meeting, as you will recall, about the general need for particular skills. But it's one thing to have a general anecdotal basis on which to make decisions, but to try and drill into that and to get more granular information - so very grateful for the opportunity to reflect on this important paper.

There's a number of cross-cutting themes that I think speak to the heart of our ambitions for a more agile, responsive, inclusive and future-ready skills system. Firstly, the paper highlights the need to develop more flexible and sustainable funding models. Secondly, there's a clear call for greater agility in curriculum development. Thirdly, the paper reinforces the importance of regional responsiveness, which I have to say is the one that always makes me most interested for an event like this. What do we need to do to ensure that there is regional responsiveness? Who has a stake in that and who can deliver on it? Do we have the ability within ourselves to make a difference? Then of course, there's lastly the emphasis on equity, inclusion and fair work and so on. Greig, I'll ask you to give us a brief overview of the paper.

Greig Robson

Thank you very much, Chair. Good afternoon, all. My name is Greig Robson of Skills Development Scotland. I've had the pleasure of holding the pen on the paper in front of you and would like to take you through some of the headlines quickly today. I think firstly I should note that it's been quite an enjoyable piece of work. There's lots of passionate experts in South of Scotland, lots of ideas and views. But I think the slightly surprising thing for me is that despite the diversity of the partnership there was actually more recurring themes and consistency than I was expecting. The paper is designed to bring those recurring themes forward.

So I won't dwell on the background and methodology too long. As the Chair alluded to, following the discussion at convention last year, we were asked to come back with a 10-year view of the labour market and skills system. To do that, we were not starting from scratch. There's been various pieces of work, in the main commissioned through the Education and Skills Group in South of Scotland, which became the building blocks, essentially, to inform the paper. But what essentially I've been challenging partners with over the past few months is to take the learning and evidence from all of those pieces of work and look at them through a 10-year lens, considering what are the recurring themes? Where is there consensus? What would an effective skills system look like in 10 years' time? So worth noting this paper is not an SDS view of the world. I'm trying to represent the partnership views round that table, and the paper was endorsed through the South of Scotland Education and Skills Group.

Our first headline attempts to explain why we are excited by the next decade but also slightly concerned. This is the forecast that is in the SDS publication, the Regional Skills Assessment. There's slight growth forecast there but a flat headcount. I suppose if you then compare that to what we're about to talk about later on in terms of population challenges, there is a slight worry that will we have the labour and workforce to respond to that potential at what's coming over the hill.

So we always say to people that Regional Skills Assessments are policy and investment neutral, so there is a view that the forecast there could be too pessimistic. What we ask partners to consider is what's coming over the hill in terms of economic investments. So Center Parcs is probably the most current and stark example of that - actually the Regional Skills Assessment doesn't really consider that, because it's not hit the ground yet. So the forecast there may be too pessimistic, so that concern around availability of workforce may become a bigger concern as hopefully those economic investments land. So in conclusion, we have a worry that we don't have enough people to fill roles. If we are successful in generating new opportunities, then this challenge could be exacerbated.

Headline 2 is around our sectoral analysis, so the Education and Skills Group has spent a lot of time over the last two years - and the leader talked about sectoral workshops we had over the summer as well. So we know that there is demand across a number of sectors. The difficulty is how do you prioritise somehow within that, as we know that obviously public funding is extremely tight. It's vital that we understand the evidence and it's vital that we build some consensus, where we can, about where priorities lie. Our skills planning work in the region has given us this. From analysis started in 2023, three sectors jumped out as in need of urgent expansion in terms of the volume of places available. Those were construction, engineering and forestry. Unfortunately expansion of provision in terms of volume, in particular with these sectors, will involve capital investment. That's extremely challenging as I'm sure people understand round the table. It's extremely challenging to pull together capital investment at this point in time.

So in conclusion, we have developed priorities in the past few years. We have moved forward with some of that capital investment. So looking towards Borderlands, we have been lucky enough that there's capital funds within Borderlands focused on the skills system, so we have been working towards making full use of that. But I suppose I can't sugarcoat the final bit of this message is that resources are really, really challenging in terms of doing that agile response that we all do and particularly that challenge with the sectors that I talked about that are very hands-on sectors that need facilities and equipment. The facilities and equipment in themselves can be very expensive. So a resource challenge which I'm sure doesn't come as a huge surprise to anybody in the room.

Headline 3, again this message comes from the work we've been doing to establish skills demands from our key sectors. As I said, we identified construction, engineering and forestry as priorities for volume increase in provision, but we also note that there are other sectors with just as pressing concerns. But they involve big, thorny issues. The answer is not a simple message around expansion of skills provision. It's slightly more complicated than that.

So sectors such as visitor economy and social care jump out in that category as vitally important, but a mixture of what I would call labour shortages and skills shortages, so a shortage of people wanting to work in those sectors. I suppose what we talked about a lot was a need for a more holistic approach to deal with that. The problem wouldn't be solved just by provision alone. There's real fundamental issues around sector attractiveness and people wanting to pursue careers in those sectors. Also a recognition that you don't fix that overnight. We need to address that over a longer term. We need to really do that hand in hand with industry in terms of making certain sectors more attractive to people, particularly when pay and conditions is a fundamental barrier in some of these sectors. We need industry to work with us.

So we are by no means, as a system, washing our hands of those sectors that face sector attractiveness issues. I would hope that our ongoing work with South of Scotland Destination Alliance hopefully illustrates that. But the skills system really needs to work with industries to say, this isn't just about a skills shortage, there is a sector attractiveness issue and we need to work, as I said, in conjunction with industry to address that as best we can.

Headline 4 covers some of the big drivers of change that partners feel we will need to respond to in the coming decade. Shorter pathways and flexible work. Integrated pathways are not seen as a luxury to be developed. They're essential because of the constraints in labour supply mentioned in headline 1. Our pressures mean that we need to get people into productive work quicker from education and then upskill and reskill them without removing them from the workforce.

Another massive aspect that we talked about was demographics, obviously covered in more detail today, but the skills system in South of Scotland is acutely aware of what's coming over the hill. A system that delivers for older workers will be key. The Regional Skills Assessment points to the bulk of demand being at SCQF level 7 and above. Partners believe that is a direction of travel that we again must respond to. Pathways to high-level qualifications and collaboration between FE and HE is quite clearly the future. The paper details some of the FE, HE collaboration and pathway development work of the past year. I think, in some ways, we've been leading the way in that, but partners were clear that we needed more of that.

Finally, worth noting here that when I asked partners to envisage what kind of skills offering would be needed to respond to these drivers, nobody thought that the current system or approaches would or should be maintained over the coming decade. The vision is by no means we need more of the same. The vision is for something fundamentally different.

Headline number 5, collaboration between industry and the system might seem like a no-brainer, but the sectoral workshops we facilitated evidenced the variation across sectors can be quite stark. Some sectors are relatively homogenous and well organised within themselves and almost easier to engage with. Some sectors, that is more of a challenge. I think that word collaboration with industry, it's about more than engagement and consultation. It's about a deeper relationship with industry to address some of those sector attractiveness issues particularly. I would say it's about codesign of provision. We need to recognise that the development of work-based learning, particularly, will be reliant on the buy-in of employers, a real need to have a deeper relationship with industry.

Headline number 6 is an interesting one that bubbled up through different pieces of work informing the paper. I think it's as much about language as anything else, but I think again it's a useful reminder of the balance we need to find when doing skills planning. Partners felt that much of the language around reform of the skills system had talked about responding to needs of the economy and industry. There was just that slight pushback of we can't forget the people within this and the needs of learners within this. So I had a very interesting and candid conversation with a director of education who is very worried about the wellbeing of some of our young people and how they could drift off within the system if we're not careful and responsive to their needs. So again I think it was just partners were keen that we need to get the balance right between the needs of industry and the needs of our residents and particularly young people, that we need to nurture that asset as we move forward.

Headline number 7, again a recurring theme of discussions was the pace of change. It can become a bit of a cliché to say it's all moving so fast, but it is true. I suppose think about artificial intelligence in the last two years and it then becomes obvious that the system will over the next decade need to be more agile and responding. Partners believe the solution is to have core provision that provides people with transferable skills and you then rapidly supplement that on a regular basis with the specialist skills. The need to accelerate curriculum development was recognised by partners. It is clearly speeding up but probably needs to do so again. A final plea from partners, an agile system needs to be supported by funding and policy that supports this.

Headline 8 comes from the end of discussions from partners where I'm asking them, well, how do we get the skills system we think we need in 10 years' time? I hope I've made it clear that partners are getting on with it, developing plans, allocating resources, making hard choices, at times a real resource challenge, but there has been a consensus, as I stated earlier on, that the status quo isn't fit for purpose and eyes turn to reform of the skills system in terms of how to change that. So a final plea from partners around reform of the skills system, they need reforms to provide the support that providers are calling for in this paper. I think it's fair to say that partners are slightly impatient and would want to work with government to get on with changing the system.

So how would I summarise all of that? We see the next decade as a massive transformational opportunity if we can unlock the potential of our human capital. We think there is a real challenge around providing a supply of skilled labour aligned to these opportunities, but there is no shortage of vision or collective effort. But there are, within that, challenges, challenges such as resources and also challenges around this combined impact of skills and labour shortages and sector attractiveness issues.

But as I said previously, there is a vision for what the skills system should look like in 2035 in South of Scotland. That vision is around more flexible part-time and work-based options, combined with a shift to upskilling and reskilling. That vision's about more effective collaboration between FE and HE to deliver coherent pathways. That vision's about enhanced collaboration with industry. That vision's also about partners being hungry for change and keen to pilot new approaches supported by funding and policy innovations.

The issue of funding models came up over and over again. I should be clear. Of course, providers are always looking for more resources within that and we all know the challenges around that. But changing funding models is not just about the quantum. It's also about how the funding models work and have worked in the past. So the need to change those funding models, to support the vision we had, came out time and time again in discussion.

So what now for Scotland's skills system? I hope the paper has conveyed a message that the partnership are getting on with delivering change and responding to the needs of employers and learners, but we're conscious there's barriers to progress, which are challenging. That doesn't mean we wait for change to happen. We're committed to getting on with it, pushing for every last bit of efficiency within current resources whilst making the case for change. As detailed in the paper, partners are keen to play an active part in reform.

We will continue to develop our investment plans and seek to address gaps. Responding to the needs of Center Parcs is going to be a great case study and example of the challenges that we face in responding to that, and hopefully that's one of many opportunities which we will collaborate around in the coming years. We will continue with our sector-focused support and collaboration with industry. We'll move forward. I think the work with South of Scotland Destination Alliance is a good example, but we need more of that kind of working hand in hand with industry. We will continue to develop our understanding of demand. We think we've got a decent understanding of what's coming over the hill, but we need to keep on top of that.

Finally, the paper makes mention of the Workforce North initiative and its potential value as an example of good practice that we could learn and adopt from. We can have a look at that as the regional partnership and assess whether the Workforce North approach offers added value to be adopted in South of Scotland. I'm sure the Chair will offer some thoughts on that as she has watched that develop over the years. I will now pass back to the Chair to manage that discussion.

Kate Forbes

Perfectly cued. I love that model. I think it's a very interesting model that could be taken as a base and then adapted for the South of Scotland. I am very keen to hear both from the demand side and the supply side, as it were, on this approach. I wondered if I could start with our wonderful colleges. I know we've got chief execs I think on both sides of the table, so I don't which - who wants to go first? Yes, please.

Pete Smith

Thank you, Deputy First Minister. Pete Smith from Borders College, just to get the differentiation. I don't know if there's any reason that I'm on this side of the table and my other skills colleagues are on that side of the table. I don't know if there's something everybody else knows that I don't know. I think Greig has summed up the position and I think the proposition from the South of Scotland very, very well. I think just one brief point I would want to add to that. I know one of the words that you mentioned frequently there, Greig, was resource. We all know how tight that is just now and how tight that is going to be going forward. While the draft budget has announced a significant investment in colleges in particular, we know that comes on the back of many years of decline. Until we work through the process with the Scottish Funding Council, we don't actually know what that's going to mean in the short, medium and longer term, but I won't dwell on that.

One thing that I wanted to actually mention was we spoke about the flexibility the skills system has to have going forward and that we need to look at providing those skills differently through flexible learning, through shorter qualifications, et cetera. One thing I don't want us to lose track of is I believe there is a right that young people have to go on and study full-time qualifications, be it at university or at college, for the vocation or the academic subject that they want to study. So I don't want to lose sight of that.

I don't think we're looking at replacing the full-time qualifications at HNC, HND, degree level with shorter, sharper skills. These need to be in addition to that and targeted to the industry sectors that we're talking about and to the employers that we need to work with. That said, we do work very, very closely with our employers, with our industry sector and with our schools to make some of the propositions far more attractive than perhaps they have been recently, talking particularly about care and the visitor economy. So I don't want us to lose sight of that, but I think there is a huge opportunity as part of the TET Bill if that is to be taken forward in the way that I think Colleges Scotland has foreseen, and Colleges Scotland was broadly supportive of that, in the way that we utilise the resources that we have. Going back to the start of the meeting, if we're able to then build that into a devolved framework to a region, then I think we will be a lot more flexible, a lot more able to target those resources where they are.

So broadly supportive of everything that Greig's talking about, with one or two caveats that I don't want people to forget about.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much. Douglas.

Douglas Dickson

Good afternoon. I'm Douglas Dickson. I'm Principal of Dumfries and Galloway College. I think in terms of looking at the paper, I think it makes some particularly good points in terms of the actual ecosystem that we operate in. I think one of my main observations would be the current model of funding, that actually whilst it enables, it also does not enable us to deliver what's necessarily required by industry on the ground. An example would be, for instance, Scotland has a need of welders. The funding model doesn't best support examples like that, because they're short, sharp qualifications and the funding model is devised around long qualifications. So actually there is a need to be able to rebalance to meet employer demand, albeit we do recognise in the model that we currently have, there is a need to look forward.

I think for my own college, one of the things we did within the last three years was we took our portfolio and, whilst we have a broad portfolio, we actually subdivided it into three main categories, which was based around the 10-year of the Regional Skills Analysis. So we looked at it in terms of there are volume sectors that are critical to the heart of the South of Scotland economy. Those are the ones that we would immediately recognise, health and social care, early years, sustainable construction, engineering. In terms of looking at those, those are the ones we get significant numbers of young people wishing to choose. Within them, some are really quite easy to flex. Say within health and social care and early years, you can take more of those young people. But in areas such as sustainable construction, engineering, it's more difficult and challenging, because you're already at capacity. So there is a capacity issue in the system, but there is also the ability to currently flex.

We also have seen that we created, within our curriculum, the opportunity sectors. Those are the ones, there's promise. We're not necessarily always getting high numbers, although some of them just now, you will recognise business and enterprise, digital and cybersecurity. What I think is interesting is the approach to curriculum planning can be very quick. In cybersecurity, we created a pathway within one year, which led from further education within our school sector through to higher education and actual degree provision. In fact, in this academic year, the pressure from the young people who have chosen the cybersecurity has led us to actually offer it at honours degree. So there is, without doubt, areas where we can start to see opportunity for the South of Scotland that will be critical to the future.

But there are also, within the South of Scotland, areas that we would see as stability sectors. Those are the sectors we're not going to increase in demand, but they are also a challenge. For instance, in terms of hair and beauty, the number of young people who choose hair and beauty within a school setting is significant, but what we've done is we've limited, because we've made the choice to offer - according to the Regional Skills Analysis, we've chosen the volume sectors and the opportunity sectors. That's the kind of choices that we're having to make on the ground.

So in terms of where we are, we are in the situation we're about to open our application portal. Last academic year, we interviewed just over 500 young people that we could not place in college provision, which is not just about Dumfries and Galloway. It's a story within Borders and within other colleges. We have a desire to be able to deal with this but also a desire to be able to access funding. So we currently have a bid in through Borderlands to be able to create the capacity, to be able to create more and an active discussion with Scottish Funding Council around, if we build it, can we fit them in?

Within the skills system, there is real opportunity. But critically the employers are key within what we do. One of the core things that we've done in all our subject sector areas is we've created industry panels so that every subject area is supported by industry to actively input to qualifications and actually be able to change qualifications to make sure that they've got key things within them. For instance, in our wind turbine, one of the things that's actually not in the qualification is working at height, you can't maintain a wind turbine if you don't work at height, so actually being able to introduce things like that. Brickwork, the first task an apprentice does is actually create stairs and ramps because of access to buildings. We've introduced that into our qualification based around employer demand. I think that's the thing. Qualifications have got to be created in response to industry but also have the right content. That's one of the things we're committed to. Thank you.

Kate Forbes

Thank you so much. Yes, please, Professor.

Fiona Grant

Hello. I'm pressing the wrong button, sorry [laughs]. Hi, I'm Professor Fiona Grant. I'm from Heriot-Watt University and I've recently taken over the role as the Executive Dean there. I think one of the important things to say is there is a commitment from us to commit to the Borders. We're investing in the High Mill. We've got two-and-a-half million going into that to make sure that we've got a fit-for-purpose building.

I come on the back of the comments both from Peter and Douglas. I agree with everything that you've said coming forward. There is definitely a need to have a connection through from school to college education to higher and further education. I think we forget about postgraduate-level study when we start talking about things. It's important to say that that's an opportunity for people to upskill as well as taking from what they've done in their early career and maybe even changing career or re-establishing themselves in a later career, because the world is changing, technology is changing and the skillset is needing to be updating. I think we need to be thinking about all levels of education there.

The other thing I would say is I really enjoyed reading this paper. I thought it was a really good way of summarising what it is that we're trying to achieve. But I would throw a challenge in as well, I think. The challenge is, what is it we want to look like in 10 years' time? Because what we're looking at now, I think, is what we've currently got and how we're meeting the demand of what we're currently needing as opposed to saying, what do we want the region to be known for in 10 years' time? Do we want to be the global leaders in X, Y or Z? Do we want to be the European leaders in X, Y and Z? What is it that we want to do? Because we need to start now building the skillset in order to deliver that.

I don't know if we just need to challenge ourselves a little bit to push that conversation a bit further. I say that with the experience of other campuses we've got. At Heriot-Watt, we have a campus in Orkney. Our Orkney campus flourishes. They are very into renewable energy, wave technology. They've set themselves up as the global experts. Their location obviously helps. But I think there is an opportunity for us to say, where do we want to be and how are we going to get there? Is it forestry? Is it tourism? Is it robotics? Is it AI? What is it that we're going to become known as the best at in the world? Thank you.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much. So that's exactly it. I'll see if anybody else wants to come in, but my two reflections are, first and foremost, that where this works, it starts with that future demand. So I will come on to anybody that wants to speak about demand in terms of industry in a moment around the future, but it does need a very clear sense of demand over the next 10 years. But the second thing I would challenge is that there's always going to be some reason why this is difficult. Generally it's money. There's always going to be some reason.

But industry's not going to stand still, so industry will either create their own training opportunities, rediverting funding in a different way, or they'll work with the public sector and colleges and universities because they see an opportunity for collaboration. There's just a big opportunity, I think, for public sector in that at a time where there could always be more cash to do things. It's either work with them or feel like we can't adapt quick enough for a whole host of different reasons, because employers will find their own solutions or they'll leave. So they've got two options. They'll find their own solution or they'll leave. So I think where the Workforce North point has come in is that it's now in a sort of co-investment phase of public sector funding, private sector funding to create solutions working with local universities and colleges. So I think that's where the opportunity is.

I'm open to what people think the next steps are here, and I will go back to Greig and others. But to my mind, the next step is, well, how do you almost formalise this question around future granular data and evidence on what's required and also opportunities that you just want to create, as you said, that may not be present right now? Then secondly, what is the formal approach? Maybe there already is one. Forgive me. But what is the formal approach for the colleges and universities to collaborate with these employers or with the South of Scotland Enterprise or whatever? I think, Douglas, you talked about basically building a new facility. So all these ideas and questions, what is it that's required in order to do that? I'll go to Russel.

Russel Griggs

Thank you, Deputy First Minister. I think, [Rebecca], we do have that. We already know what the future looks like. We've got [18 now] inward investment enquiries in the South of Scotland, which is up, as I keep telling people, 440 per cent from the day we started. So we have a good view and it's across a whole wide range, so I think we can be much more specific about that. Jane, I know, would be happy to talk a bit more in a second about what those are. But I think we have that. I think we can focus down.

I'd just like to make one point on - I think Greig raised it. The group, as we've been going through, doing this work over the last two or three years - the point he made about the director of education talking to us about what young people want today was one of the most moving and, I suppose, exacting pieces of work we did. I'm going to come on to my friends in Dumfries and Galloway Council in a minute, who have been doing some excellent work about this. It's undoubtedly that what young people want now in themselves coming out of school is very different than they wanted before COVID. There is a change in the way they think about life. There's a change in the way they look at the world and what they want. We have to recognise that. That's even more poignant when you get down to children in poverty, who have grown up in poverty.

I'm going to ask one of my friends in Dumfries and Galloway Council to circulate to you all the link to a film that the Youth Council at Dumfries and Galloway Council did on growing up in poverty by young people. It's by them and it's for them. What you find out for that is that they want to aspire but they don't think there's anything to aspire to. It's about opportunity. It's about ambition. It was one of the most moving things I watched in about two years, just listening to the young people talking about their own views on where the future is.

So in terms of where we go - but I think we really do have to remember that the young people that we're trying to get - and Greig was also right. We need to teach the whole population for some of the new skills we need. But in a lot of the stuff, it is about understanding what the challenges and needs of those young people, especially that come from poor backgrounds, do. Some of the stuff in there is quite straightforward, very hard hitting, but is about, I can't see a future, and it's about how you make that future seem possible and put forward the opportunities. That's what we're here to do as South of Scotland Enterprise and others. But Jane, do you want to tackle Rebecca's point, please?

Jane Morrison-Ross

Thank you. I think that one of the things that you've just highlighted as well is that partnership approach that's needed in all of this. I think it's a partnership approach not just between academic partners and commercial or industry partners, but it's other organisations, whether that's local authority education departments, groups that work with parents, DYW, et cetera. Young people need to be shown the art of the possible and role models they can aspire to. I think that's why some of the projects, like Real Models, worked so well. Getting entrepreneurs into schools, getting people that have grown up in those areas into schools is key.

But as Russel said, we have a huge increase in inward investment opportunities at the moment. I think we're sitting with around 60 live opportunities on the books just now. Obviously that will be triaged. I'd said yesterday we have seen a shift and a growth in some of the sectors that we're looking at. Yes, we have a really solid core of energy transition, hydrogen, high tech opportunities with a number of significant investors coming in in those areas. We obviously have the Center Parcs investment that a number of people round this table have been working on. Pete, I know you've had very early meetings with their Head of People to start to look at that skills pipeline now. So it's not displacement, but we're actually starting to build the workforce for two, three years hence, outside of the construction supply chain needs.

We are seeing a growth in life sciences enquiries as well and life sciences investments that are coming in. Those range from organisations like Breathe Life Sciences to potential organisations coming in with new - I'm trying to think of - not giving away anything I shouldn't.

Russel Griggs

Medicinal cannabis.

Jane Morrison-Ross

Yeah, medicinal cannabis but also new pharmaceutical manufacturing processes as well. So there is an increase in quite niche opportunities in those sectors. Digital skills, technology skills underpin a lot of that. I think there's multiple layers of this, so there's the foundational skills that we've talked about and then there are those more specialised ones. Pete, though, I agree wholeheartedly we can't lose sight of the opportunity for young people to study something that is their passion too. I think a number of us ending up studying something that you would never think would end up in a job like mine, for instance. But these other degrees also teach lateral thinking. They teach problem solving. They teach transferable skills that then those specialist skills that Greig mentioned can be layered onto.

Russel has just reminded me as well we have two, possibly three very significant, huge inward investment opportunities coming at the moment that have datacentre components. Now these are closed loop. These are green. These are not energy intensive. These are very, very carefully curated. But they will have specialist skillsets, AI skillsets, et cetera, et cetera, for those too. Each one of them will have a significant number of people that are needed for it.

So we've got the traditional skills sectors. We can't forget about agriculture, food and drink. All of these are absolutely important to us. They are evolving, so all of those have a need for AI skills and technology skills and agritech skills and geospatial analytics. I think there's a real intersection between traditional sectors in the south and the emerging sectors. Innovation is at the heart of that area of intersection too.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much. Pete.

Pete Smith

Thanks again, Chair. I think Russel actually started to touch on what I was going to mention just now. But overall I think everyone seems to be of the view that there is a bottleneck to our skills provision in the South of Scotland for one reason or another. I think it's testament to the success of South of Scotland Enterprise that Greig is now acknowledging - I was going to say that your statistics might be a little bit inaccurate, but they're not your statistics. The way that we have projected the skills requirements over the next 10 years might be short of reality. That's, as you pointed out, DFM, that we are blessed with South of Scotland Enterprise in the south.

The thing that I wanted to actually mention, and Russel was touching on it, was about the role of our skills providers in eradicating or reducing poverty, let's put it that way. We know that young people have a variety of different motivations for going into the skills system, but it's not just about the young people. It's about adult learners, about those that are furthest removed from education and from the economy that we need to think about and how we can enable them to contribute better to their own lives and to our communities. I think it's something, as you will well know, that is often missed, is rural poverty. It's not nearly as obvious as urban poverty is.

So I think recognising that role that all our skills providers can carry out is really, really important. We don't want to forget that, because we have been talking about our interaction with large and small industry and employers across the region. Yes, absolutely, Center Parcs is absolutely key to that. I think the work that we want to do when we're encouraging that inward investment is think about how we can meet the requirements of our wider society as well.

Kate Forbes

Thanks so much, Pete. To summarise, I basically see two outputs here that need to be delivered. I'm very open for constructive challenge and disagreement after I set this out. The first is for a centralised, accepted dataset of the skills needs over the next 10 years. So Pete's point around maybe the figures needing to be updated for the brilliant work that South of Scotland are doing, I think the first starting place is needing to know - it's what Fiona set out. We need to know what the demand is over the next 10 years. That will always be a forecast, but it's that level of granularity.

Now I know there's variations on that, but for everybody around the table to say, right, that is the expectation that we have and we're all agreed on that - we've got some great sectors represented around the table, visitor economy, we've got Scottish Land & Estates, we've got forestry, never mind the public sector who also need to hire. Therefore having that seems to me to be the starting place before you decide to do anything else, because all these conversations are really, really interesting about how you deal with poverty and how you deal with inactivity and all the rest of it, but actually if you're dealing with poverty, how do we know where we're feeding people into in terms of that?

Also I am assuming that South of Scotland Enterprise quite rightly - there'll be some commercial sensitivity to those 60 live opportunities, so actually we need you to tell us what sectors those are in, which ones are dominant and all the rest of it. Now forgive me if this is already happening, but I think that for the next convention, obviously in advance of that convention but for the next convention, there needs to be an accepted dataset on what is required at the most granular level that is possible in terms of through survey.

That was output 1. Russel wants to come in on that...

Russel Griggs

I was just going to comment.

Kate Forbes

...hopefully for some constructive challenge.

Russel Griggs

It is, but I think we've done a lot of that. I can't remember, Greig, which meeting we had. Our inward investment team went along to the skills group and went through what was coming in, what it looked like. So we've already started to do that, I think, Greig.

Greig Robson

Yeah.

Kate Forbes

So Greig, is there any - just on that first output, where would you like to see this work go next in terms of just that first output? Because there's a second output I want to come back to in terms of the response to it.

Greig Robson

The centralised, accepted dataset is - I think we can certainly overlay. So as we alluded to that the RSA has put out as a starting point is it's policy and investment neutral, so you can start to overlay investments as they get over the hill, I suppose. The tricky bit is always when does an investment turn to reality. So Jane and Russel have talked about 50 or 60 potential investments. It's difficult to base plans on all of those coming off to be quite honest, so it's where they are in the pipeline that becomes the tricky bit of it. But I'll maybe - to you.

Kate Forbes

Jane.

Jane Morrison-Ross

Yes, we are triaging, so we do have a good idea of that. Also, as everybody around the table will know, things come in not immediately. Some of these things take one, three, five, 10 years' work to land properly, so there is a pipeline of that nature. But we are also having regular meetings looking at that inward investment pipeline with partners. We regularly meet with the colleges and with some of our university partners to look at where those skills are. Actually the work that we're doing with the Accelerator Hub, the Deep Tech Hub is about bringing in those partners now, so Edinburgh Napier University bringing data and AI, the National Robotarium bringing those skills, [BE-ST] bringing the construction skills, the colleges being part of that, et cetera, et cetera. So there are a number of things here that are generally coordinated, but we can make sure that we are joining them up to the nth degree.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much. So I maybe misunderstood, Pete, but my understanding from what you said was maybe just a need to make sure that the figures are in a place that you recognise as the most accurate set.

Pete Smith

Accuracy is probably the wrong word. As Greig said, I think it's overlaying what we do know and perhaps, yeah, just working a little bit more closely with South of Scotland Enterprise, because in the triage process Jane talks about, we know we must have a hit rate. So even just extrapolating that into what we're talking about with Greig would work, I think, a little bit better.

Kate Forbes

Thank you very much.

Pete Smith

Thank you.

Kate Forbes

Chris?

Chris Brodie

I think the challenge is less about the data but about having a clear picture on where we want to take action. I've heard conversation around a range of opportunities ranging from forestry, public sector, engineering, energy. I think it's about us picking one, two, three real transformational opportunities and saying, how are we going to get the collective wisdom, knowledge, influence that we've got in this room around mobilising the workforce to meet those needs? I think we do a good job within the constraints that we're all operating in about aligning investment behind where we see broad opportunities. I think there's a case to be made for us picking off two or three things and really going after them quite hard.

Kate Forbes

Absolutely superb. You perfectly captured what I was going to say as output number 2. The only reason I mentioned output number 1 is that if you spend all your time just debating whose figures are accurate, then you never move on to that, which is why I think just before next time, we just need to all make sure everybody gives a thumbs up, this is what we're working to. But I do think that pulling out from that, it's not just the figures. It's what are we going to actually really focus on in terms of sector.

You're absolutely right. In terms of action number 2, I think there just needs to be - sorry, there needs to be an understanding of who owns what element of this, so what do the colleges own and how can you progress that? What does Heriot-Watt own in this? What does South of Scotland own? What does the public sector own? I think that's for me the next part. It's active ownership of action that can be reviewed on a regular basis and see how we are progressing against that. I appreciate that sounds really simplistic, but I think that is the only way we're going to keep it moving forward and building on the great work that Greig has done.

I'll go over here. Stephen.

Stephen Thompson

Thanks, DFM. Forgive me for not addressing you as such the first time I came in. So I'm taken with headline 3, I think it was, in the report. The bit that sticks out for me - and it's maybe back to a bit about the poverty video, which I spoke to Russel earlier about and would welcome that being shared, but it occurs to me that from a people point of view sometimes people in the region aren't even aware of the opportunities that are actually on their own doorstep. So there's a little bit of work about that.

The other thing is when we talk about the supply and demand side, often we forget to look at the fact that - and it's maybe down to sector attractiveness is the way it's framed in the piece. The business may say we need these skills. The colleges may be set up to deliver other skills that are yet to catch up with that. But the flock, if you like, who are entering one end of the pipeline, are not interested in either. I think that's maybe something that's captured in the nature of where young people want to go or where they think they want to go, so I'm minded - and forgive me for being a bit agricultural, but is there a role for a shepherd to start going, well, actually this is where you are and this is where you can get to. You might be interested in this, because it leads to that.

So there's something about - on the one hand, we talk about bringing skills in to meet the demand of the businesses that might want to come here, while we figure out our skills system to bring young people through that. Then on the other hand, we've got so many assets already here, they're just not connected with the opportunities that might be right next to them. So it's an observation. But I don't know if that's worth considering, because the people themselves going into the skills system are part of the supply, not just what the business wants or what the colleges and educational institutions want to be able to align themselves to.

Kate Forbes

Fantastic. It's great stuff. I think, Greig, your paper's absolutely superb. It's a great paper. I think ideas like that should all be part of basically an action plan. Who's going to do what and what can we do faster? My own personal view is that skills reform is great and it's brilliant and it's important and it sits here, meanwhile people are making decisions right now. How do you support them to make better decisions or different decisions by making them aware or supporting them into some of those opportunities? So I think that strikes me as next steps on this. Does that sound okay? Greig, are you up for that?

Greig Robson

Yeah.

Kate Forbes

Yeah? Great. I won't be here, so someone else can keep him accountable.

[Laughter]

Kate Forbes

Right, so somebody's really keen for a comfort break for the last 15 minutes, because I've seen that slide up there for the last 15 minutes. But it is a comfort break now, so there's hopefully still some coffee and the restrooms. I think we'll reconvene at 1:35. So the first person to the coffee gets to drink the most.

Break in Proceedings

Kate Forbes

Great. I think we will make a start on the second part of our session this afternoon. Great.

Kate Forbes

Great. I'm very excited about this next section, because it fits very nicely with the first session about skills. I suppose the point was alluded to by Greig, which is that when it comes to skills, it's not just the skillset of your population, but it's also the size of your population and the age of your population too. The prospect of that population changing quite significantly in the coming years. I do think this is one of the biggest, greatest challenges that Scotland faces in particular areas and a key objective of all the investment activity that goes on.

So we'll move on to this paper which has been very helpfully drafted for us. It's a very thoughtful and wide-ranging paper. It doesn't shy away from the big issues. I think there's a dynamic set of proposals in it as well. I'm keen to see where we end up here in terms of actions. Without further ado, I'll ask Councillor Scott Hamilton, who's the economy spokesperson for Scottish Borders Council, and Andy Reed from Dumfries and Galloway Council - and I think, Scott, you'll bring in Sarah-Jane at the right point as well. So over to you.

Scott Hamilton

Thank you very much, Deputy First Minister. Thank you, I suppose, for the opportunity to speak to this report and paper today. I think, as you say, it's very exciting. Population demographic is not just about an outcome. It's not just about a catalyst. It's about a goal and how do we achieve that. We have met as a convention now for many years. We've discussed topics, wide ranging, all important to the South of Scotland, but none so important as the demographic and the population change. The people that make up the South of Scotland are so vitally important.

As an area and region as Councillor Jardine said at the beginning, we have so much potential here. We've got tourism, tech companies, farming, fishing, energy and really a quality of life which I think is really worth noting. I think when we re-evaluate our lives, particularly after COVID, that access to the countryside, that way of life was our fundamental goal. So that is what we have here in the South of Scotland. We aren't just about being at the edge of Scotland. We're actually the centre of the United Kingdom. But for that centre of the United Kingdom, what do we have? We have one motorway. The rest of it is supported by poor-quality roads, quite frankly, between east and west. We have an incomplete railway. That is hampering our growth. That is holding us back. What we want to see here in the south is us pushing forward on that delivery.

We know that in the South of Scotland we have an ageing population. That has an impact not just on your local councils and the services that we have to provide, but it also has an impact on our economy too. This morning when we were in Galashiels, we had the pleasure of hearing from so many projects that are talking about economy, talking about culture, talking about history. All these aspects that we want to bring together, they all require volunteers. Their work is huge across the South of Scotland, but as we get a more ageing population, we have to recognise that skill gap grows. That issue of getting people round the table, engaging with their community, that becomes more of a challenge. In order for us to meet the challenge not just of today but the challenge we know that's coming - because in the South of Scotland, I think we're all quite aware that dependency ratios by 2043 are going to be 20 per cent higher than the rest of Scotland. So we know we've got a challenge coming.

We're on about where the data fits in when it comes to skills. We can point to this data. But we have to be bold in what we do next, because if we don't do these actions, if we don't be strong in our points, we're going to face an issue which is irreversible. We're at a point and a crossroads now that we can make a reversal change to that. We can grow our economy and we can ensure that the South of Scotland leads our economy in so many areas from environment to the just transition. All these parts can come forward in this. This paper, I think, gives us that recommendation, some of the areas that we can work on, but it does - as you say, Deputy First Minister, it needs us to be bold.

So I hope that we have a really good discussion on this. I think there are some action points. I think probably at that, I'd like to bring in Sarah-Jane from SLE just to emphasise some of those points in the paper.

Sarah-Jane Laing

Thanks very much and thanks for the opportunity to join you today. For those of you who are not familiar with our organisation, we're a membership body which represents rural landowners, rural businesses, people who want to see rural Scotland thrive, who want to create opportunities for others as well as making sure that our traditional industries are valued and continue to grow across Scotland. I also speak as a Borderer and as a mother of a number of young people who I want to see either return or stay in the Borders.

We built on the work that was carried out by the Scottish Government, the work that the Deputy First Minister is very familiar with, looking at depopulation in rural Scotland. One of the recommendations that came out of that work in 2024 was to start testing solutions across our rural communities. But Scottish Land & Estates thought, why don't we try to accelerate that work and carried out a piece of research into repopulating rural Scotland where we looked to Scandinavia, to some other European countries and indeed to Canada and back to what's happened in Scotland before, to see if we could identify any interventions which had a strong evidence of effectiveness and indeed with the resource implications in mind.

As the Deputy First Minister said earlier, we can't always do everything, so we said, let's focus on doing the right things. What are the things where we have a proven track record of success in terms of tackling depopulation? But we also wanted to try and retain that importance of place, looking at the regional approach, the ability for flexibility which I think is important to areas such as the South of Scotland. We wanted to build on existing structures, evolving these or refining their objectives to deliver these focused interventions.

When we met with Scottish Borders Council, we were delighted to find that the themes of interventions that we had identified aligned not just with the grand challenges that Councillor Jardine referred to earlier but with the emerging recommendations contained within the paper that has been tabled today. I'm also delighted to say that they also align very heavily with some of the new emerging policies from Scottish Government, such as the welcome announcement about the creation of the national housing agency which will have a focused look at how we enable housing development in the South of Scotland and other rural areas, harking back to, if I'm honest, the success of Scottish Homes and Communities Scotland, which I think did great things for both Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders.

So what are we suggesting in terms of the interventions? We've tried to seam these in a number of ways, but we do think there's a need to look at the foundations. How do we build on the model of Regional Economic Partnerships? How do we re-establish repopulation priority areas? How do we turn those into focal points for the targeting of policies? We are suggesting we go as bold as local repopulation boards, bringing together enterprise agencies, local authorities and others. The good news is South of Scotland already has that framework in place as was highlighted before. We think that allows us to move at pace. We don't have to wait to try to pilot tailored solutions.

I mentioned the housing agency. We had suggested in November that we create a rural homes accelerator programme. I think that fits very well with the announcement from the First Minister in terms of the national housing agency I talked about.

But we do want to be really key as to how we attract and retain our young people and how we ensure that businesses can work with the skills providers and training providers. The reality is that we have a lot of small SMEs in the South of Scotland within the sectors that I support. They don't have the capacity to get involved in the big codesign, the big investment. So how do we allow them to offset the cost of doing business with creating new opportunity? What can we do in terms of employer allowances to help rural businesses create year-round, high-quality jobs? How do we encourage the potential, looking to Canada and others, for things like student loan write-downs for the priority professions that we've identified for the South of Scotland?

Connectivity and mobility was mentioned. We will share a link to a report in full. But as a rural membership body, our members are quite clear that one of the main barriers they have in terms of recruiting a young workforce, and indeed retaining those who live on rural estates and farms in Scotland, is connectivity and mobility. We have to take a really serious look at our mobility and connectivity aims within the South of Scotland. It's not enough to have done the great things we've done already. We have to continue that journey in terms of demand-responsive transport and workforce-aligned services. All too often, we do actually look at where our transport services are in place just do not align with the practices of modern work. That's something that I really would encourage the convention to look at in terms of the recommendations we take forward in this area. But thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Kate Forbes

Do you want to pick up after that or will I hand over to Andy Reed?

Scott Hamilton

No, I think Andy needs to ...

Kate Forbes

Yeah. Please, thank you.

Andrew Reed

Thank you, DFM. I'll pick up on a few of the points as we go through, because our research that we've done with the support of Scottish Government and the funding, specifically for Dumfries and Galloway, does align with the comments that both the Councillor and Sarah-Jane mentioned. We recognised when the opportunity for funding was there that Dumfries and Galloway is a large region, very diverse and different communities. It wasn't a matter of just saying one size fits all and one implementation of one model will achieve everything for every different community. The reasons why people are moving away from communities that are coastal, rural or small towns are different for each individual.

I'm just going to run through just briefly a bit of the challenge that is faced in Dumfries and Galloway and highlight where we are. I think since 2011 that there's been a decline in births and increase in deaths, which is the natural loss of population. However, migration to the region, from rest of UK and rest of Scotland, has increased. You'll see that spiked just there at the end of - just after COVID where people moved away for that more rural lifestyle, either for work or for retirement. But the challenge which has been picked up, and people are fully aware around these tables, it's the migration away of young people. You'll see that there. It's the 15 to 29 that people finish education, move away, move to the cities for university, for employment, for other reasons. So whilst we have in the last three years a net plateau of population with our births and deaths and migration in, the decline has been significant with 3,000-plus decline in the last five years.

What I wanted to do was utilise this chart which highlights that the population is ageing. We're aware of that one. We have a reducing working age population. That therefore also is having an impact on the number of children within the region, so there is a decline in number of children, young families within the area. Therefore that is only going to - as we continue over the next 10 years, the forecast is that 65 to 69 will be our highest population age group.

So in relation to the project, we were looking at four areas specifically. This was housing, one of the challenges we wanted to engage with our communities. Find out why people came to the area, stay in the area, why young people, some don't leave. What were the positives that people felt? Because sometimes the story around - the rural story and people, it's a negative story about why people left. We wanted to understand why people stayed. We've done a piece of work in relation to best interventions, and Sarah-Jane's picked up on some of those in relation. We've got similar sort of outputs in relation to that part. Then also looking at appropriate migration, and that's the migration in of working age people.

Andrew Reed 

I'm just going to talk briefly about housing. We've recently just completed our new local housing strategy. That's got a specific focus on tackling depopulation and that there is a shortage of housing within our region. There's specifically a shortage of rental, private rental housing within the region, so therefore people moving to the area or young people looking to move out of home are challenged about finding housing to go into. Now what we've understood from the research there is that there are sometimes negative consequences to policy interventions, which has seen our rural sort of private landlords, because we're all small scale, or majority - small scale private landlords are leaving the market, a 12 per cent reduction in the number over the last five years. That's down to the increased pressure that they feel with meeting the heating - the new environment protections, the rental right. That might be okay for larger scale, but smaller scale ones are struggling.

Our home occupancy is changing significantly in the region. There's a greater demand for smaller numbers, but we've got large houses with one person in it and vice versa, the demand. So it's reducing stock of availability.

Then there's a real variability of house pricing across the region, depending on where you are. That's impacted in part by second-home short-term lets where people have employment, how you access. So it's very variable, but it remains a low average house price. However, we are a low average wage economy in Dumfries and Galloway and so therefore those local people looking to move will be finding and experiencing challenges.

I just wanted to run through just a couple of things in second homes and short-term lets. Sometimes the map enables us to demonstrate the impact. We have two per cent of our homes in Dumfries and Galloway which are second homes. Your general percentage for the rest of Scotland is one per cent for other local authorities, so we're double in relation to that. You'll see, just from the graphic there, it's mainly the coastal towns. The bubbles demonstrate where the locality is. In relation to the short-term lets, that's a similar thing where two per cent of our properties are short-term lets. What that means is that technically, whilst short-term lets do help the tourism industry, that's 6,000 homes across the homes that aren't available for living. That's a challenge for us.

So when we did the community engagement, I mentioned earlier just briefly about that we wanted to try and get the positive stories, that we wanted to focus on those communities that we've got and recognise the different diverse region that we have, which is the rural community which is the Glenkens there at the top, the Rhins which is very much a coastal, very tourist community, and then we looked at Newton Stewart which is a small town. That's where we undertook our engagement with the University of the West of Scotland and CoDeL on our behalf.

What came out of it - and this is the bit about why it's positive to live in the region and why people have stayed and those people who have left, why they wanted to come back. So in relation to housing, I've touched on this briefly already that housing - it's a lack of housing, a lack of appropriate housing and a lack of housing that they can get into.

The second aspect, transport. These were, as I said, the six factors which we've combined. There was much conversation, but six factors to make life easier for [summary]. Transport, rural transport, but I think we discussed it at the last COSS. I'm just checking for notes on that one. The challenge that exists is it's infrequent, it's not consistent. If you're looking to go and access services, you've got to take out most of your day and therefore that's a challenge that exists. It is expensive at times. So we end up being a car-dominant region.

Education and young people, so there's a couple of things in education. It's about access to education. It's not on the doorstep, but it is access, where they can access it, being at primary school, secondary school. What we got feedback from in relation to the higher education and further education is that people sometimes have to move away to access the courses that they want to do. They don't stay in the region or they can't stay in the region, because the course isn't available. With Edinburgh and University Glasgow set-ups, they are the highest at retaining students when they stay within there. So students will go to Glasgow and Edinburgh universities, half of them will not return. They will stay there, because they've got themselves - in three, four years of consistent living, they've got themselves a part-time job and that gives them a career step and moving forward to the industries that they're looking for, which brings me on to the employment.

The region, as mentioned earlier, has a limited mix. It was pleasing to get the feedback about the inward investment and diversifying, but sometimes it is only agriculture and tourism. That's a perception of people that that's the only industries in the region and therefore no new industries coming in because that perception retains and there's a challenge moving forward to that.

There's also an element from employment and industry about infrastructure. I know it was mentioned previously in the papers before about there is very little gas network. Well, in the west of the region, it's private supply. The lack of electricity grid, when liaising with companies and the type of industries, is unlikely in the west of the region. It's very much a set employment sort of category. I think Councillor Thompson mentioned earlier about these are the jobs that people have to move into, maybe not the jobs that they want to move into.

In relation to health, we actually got a fairly positive response in relation to health and access and appointments with the - sorry, the invention, yeah, the introduction of digital, telephone and not having to go - however, when someone does have to go to appointments, that's a challenge in the region, because specialist services, mental health, maternity are not located. Varying times of access of services. So that's a challenge that exists, aligned with the transport.

Finally, the strongest point that came through in relation to the social interactions, this was one that probably was a bit more surprising that we didn't expect to see. But where do people meet people? Where do they meet their partner? Where do they meet families, friends? Where's the local pub, the local café, the local shop, the opportunity to engage to meet people? Also it's people that make people stay. It was their connection to family, connection to friends, connections to associates. So that was the underlying thread that came through, that link to social interactions and how we can look at that.

I've just painted a picture of pretty negative and I want to apologise for that. Through the research, we did find some positives, so there is progress happening. Leswalt and Crossmichael, two communities that are growing. Primary schools, prosperous. Leswalt has just has a housing development there. You can see the change in the region, and the local community welcomed that. Therefore the GP surgery's a busy surgery and a very popular sort of one.

So I'm just going to finish off with a couple of points. The perception of rural, challenging the perception of rural, people enjoy living in a rural setting. They're not wanting to go away from that. However, sometimes people who don't live in a rural setting think that it is all the negatives that I've just mentioned. I don't want to be putting a negative spin on it. The next step forward is, how do we paint the positive picture of living rurally is good? Living in inner regions, positive. We've undertaken that sort of research and I picked up from Sarah-Jane - we've got similar examples of reviewing the current policy and changes that they've implemented.

What we'll now do from our own piece of work is look at what local controls we have, which ones from a council point of view that we can make changes on, which ones are a national change, and I know some of those will be challenging, what ones require investment, and emphasising that it's a 10-year programme of change. We can't just invest in one year and wait for that change to happen. Whatever plans that go forward need to be a continuous plan. If I just take the example of transport, you can't invest in transport and say everyone should be on a bus tomorrow if you invest that money now. So it's that long term. People need that reliability and connection.

Just finally, in relation to the appropriate migration in, that's about attracting 25- to 35-year-olds from specific targeted locations which are the cities. That'll be looking at those people who live in a city who want a rural lifestyle. We're not trying to compete with the city in that aspect.

Just my final points - I think I've covered everything - there was just the bit in relation to place planning. There's a lot of alignment to place planning that we come through. Whilst we've identified six factors, there's 14 factors when place planning. The work going forward will have to look at what the gaps are and where we can make small change, i.e. which ones are missing one of the six factors that we think we can make a difference in? Thank you.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much. That was incredibly comprehensive. That was absolutely brilliant, including I think a bit of a dating service there about where people meet their partners, so was not expecting that. Great. So looking for general comment on that, there's a number of different themes. In terms of chairing this part, we could go through the different themes, but I think that might be just a little bit too prescriptive. So if we look at greater empowerment questions, embedding demographic resilience, supporting place-based case development to maximise investment, regional pilot for age-friendly infrastructure, expanding tertiary education provision, amplifying regional investment. I wonder if anybody wants to jump in in terms of what your reflections on - particularly in terms of what you see there and agree with and areas where you think you or your organisation might have a solution to it. Mark.

Mark Cook

Thank you, DFM. I was just reflecting on the demographic shift. The issues that we're already aware of in health and social care in that 20-year time period have the potential to become even more challenging. In a way, it's a burning platform for all of us. But if we reflect that back into skills and the work that SOSE is doing, that also gives us a specialism and a way of attracting the world's best to come and say, okay, come here because we would like this solved, we will offer you the facilities, the data, the access to health and other things, that we could build our nascent industries. But ultimately we have to find a way of looking after people as they get older. So rather than looking at it as a problem, which of course it is, it's an opportunity that if we set out now we may be able to make a significant difference to it.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much. Fiona.

Fiona Grant

Thank you, Deputy First Minister. Sorry, I forgot that the last time. I really like what you've just said there, because I think it's really important that we could see ourselves as a region where we could be, and I don't mean this in the way that it might come out, as a testbed or a lab or a living lab or whatever, to be where people can come and try new things, be entrepreneurial, move into different areas, think about how they're going to use the land in a different way. Are there things that we could do to support that? Are there things that we could do - because we've got a large coastal area, are there things that we could do there?

I'm sure that if we were to offer our region as an area to different people to say come and use it, come and use us and find out what - it draws people to come in and then they discover it from a completely different direction. They're not being forced to come. They're coming because they want to come. Then that means that you might then end up with people saying, actually this is the best place for me to undertake the work that I need to undertake, and it then starts the flow of people coming in. So it might be we switch it round and offer ourselves as opposed to trying to draw people in.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much. I'll go Jane and then - plenty hands, that's great.

Jane Morrison-Ross

Interestingly, Professor, that's exactly what we're trying to do with the Natural Capital Innovation Zone designation for the South of Scotland. We have positioned that as a living lab across the south. Natural capital is one of those things that has many different definitions, quite deliberately so. So our rural economy, natural capital. Our visitor economy, natural capital. Agriculture, natural capital. Energy transition, definitely natural capital.

But, Mark, I think what you said is something very close to my heart. I think, recognising the work that Scottish Government is already doing around the Rural Delivery Plan - I know there have been many calls over the years and I was on Uist when we did the work for the Islands Act that became the Islands Bill. I think something that gave us a genuine rural proofing lens would be really valuable so that we had that applied to every decision made at a national level for rural areas in Scotland. Obviously the islands have that now, but large swathes of the Highlands and the South of Scotland don't. I think that would add incredible value.

I think just to pick up on another point somebody made, we have hooks here in the South of Scotland that we are not making the most of now. Young people will leave. I have three sons. One's off in Edinburgh doing astrophysics. He probably won't come back. But we have things like the Crichton Campus. We have universities there. There is an opportunity to develop that into a world-class academic campus so we are attracting young people from Edinburgh, from London, from Manchester to come and study in Dumfries, because they will not find a campus like that anywhere else in the world. Obviously we need to do something equivalent over in the Borders too, but we can do that.

We have a number of hooks like that, the Region of the Bike designation, all of the work that's happened there. Innerleithen I think is a microcosm that we can look at to see how it works when there is one specific hook that then drives that social regeneration, that economic regeneration, that commercial regeneration. We just need to be able to channel that. I think the presentation, Sarah-Jane, that you gave was excellent, as is the paper. But let's find those hooks and actually collaboratively work to make the most of them as well.

Kate Forbes

Thank you so much. I think the presentation's so good that everybody else is going to be stealing it from all the other regions. It's absolutely excellent. I've got Fiona, Rob, Chris, Pete, Euan in that order. Fiona first.

Fiona Sandford

Thank you. Really building on all those points, particularly my colleague, Mark. I think we should be grasping this opportunity to ensure that we are a lab that allows people to age well. That's not a health issue. That's everybody's issue. Innerleithen is a wonderful example, thank you for naming that, where one sport has engaged the whole community, no matter who they are. I think looking at people working way beyond retirement age, better housing, transport, all those issues to enable people here - because we are the lab that's going to see how the population changes and the impacts of that. If we can prove that we can help people age well here with our lovely outdoors and our various sports, then I think that would be a terrific aim. Thank you.

Kate Forbes

Rob.

Rob Dickson

Yeah, some of what I was going to say has just been said, but let me try and build on it. This is a perplexing issue and the Scottish Borders sits at the most perplexing end of the scale in relation to this perplexing issue in Scotland. I think the paper speaks very honestly about that. I think the ability to focus on that is something that we certainly find challenging in our sector because of the predominance of employment needs for younger people, not just middle aged and older people. As somebody who lives in the Borders as well, I have a vested interest, I suppose. But I do not think the region consistently, and this echoes Jane's point, makes the most of the opportunities that it has.

I've reached the age and stage where as I get on the train at 6:50 in the morning to go to Edinburgh, I frequently meet people who are coming back from Edinburgh, having enjoyed the nightlife in Edinburgh. I'm not going to venture to try and do that myself any longer. But the point is that that train line, within the decade that it has been there, has opened up economic opportunity in a way that many said wouldn't happen and in a way which gives us, I think, the confidence that we should have to use the strengths that the region has. The strengths in the region are, of course I'm going to say this, the visitor economy, both the tourism bit and the events bit. Both councils have invested heavily in trying to grow the visitor economy and the events that they're trying to bring to the South of Scotland. I completely echo Jane's point that we have got to make the most of those opportunities in exposing not just the beauty but actually the reality of the economic prosperity that's in the South of Scotland to allow people to see what the potential is that is here.

From VisitScotland's perspective, we see the benefit, yes, of course, of holidays to the visitor economy, but we see longer-term benefit as well. If people come and stay in Scotland and invest in Scotland and forever then have their jobs in Scotland, then that's the most desirable outcome. But I don't think we've yet crossed the bridge to being confident that we are doing that in all the opportunities that exist across the whole of the region from east to west. We'll do what we can to help support all of that. Of course, we sit with increasing budgets potentially this year - thank you very much, Deputy First Minister - for international aviation development and international marketing. That is a powerful pull to a region like this.

Kate Forbes

Thank you so much, Rob. I'm going to go to Chris next. I'm just going to warn Andy and Scott that I am going to come to you and ask, what is it that you want us to do next here? So Chris.

Chris Thomson

Thanks very much, DFM. That's perfect, because that's what I'm going to do as well. I think noting the action in the paper about regional empowerment and conversations that we're having about making the most of opportunities, it's probably worthwhile to give an update on where we are on regional empowerment. Grateful, DFM, for your support throughout this, but also for really early engagement from South of Scotland Enterprise on this and VisitScotland who've actually developed regional structures to match the regional partnerships already.

The speech that FM made to announce regional empowerment in November used the word enabling, which is a key word that we're using around regional empowerment. It's not a one-size-fits-all model. We want to hear from you what you think works for South of Scotland. What works in Glasgow City Region will not work here necessarily, so you need to tell us what's going to work. We are developing plans with COSLA to do some consultation work. That's for legislation. That takes time. But we want to know what works now as well. What can we do without legislation? What can we do today, tomorrow, next year that'll make a difference in the South of Scotland? We'll be setting up sessions with all of the regional partnerships across Scotland really soon and we'll be looking to hear directly from them.

On the skills point that was made earlier on, system change takes time. It's not my remit, so I'll not go into it too much. But we've shown that we can be responsive where there are opportunities. Glasgow City Region, the maritime skills project we have there was developed by the regional partnership with SDS's support and with industry, which was a key point. It was one of the things that got us over the line with that. We can do similar things in the rest of Scotland. We need to hear what the opportunities are, and what the challenges are, from our partners.

You need the intelligence to do that. You need the regional intelligence. We talked about the job numbers and what skills we're going to need. That's why we're providing some capacity funding, the DFM mentioned, this year. Subject to the budget all going through as planned, there should be increased capacity funding next year as well to support people to do that. We're also working with South of Scotland Enterprise to develop a pilot study to look at what intelligence hubs can look like for regions across Scotland so the decision making, at a regional level, is really well informed and can produce the high-value outcomes that we're looking for.

So that's all moving now. It's open for the South of Scotland to tell us what they want. Our door is open. We wrote to regional partnerships this week, I think it might have went out last night or this morning, to start that dialogue. That's about enabling you guys. We want to hear more. We want to continue to work with regional partners and shape what it looks like, not just for Scotland but for the South of Scotland.

Kate Forbes

Brilliant. Thank you so much. I'll go Pete, Euan, Lisa.

Pete Smith

Thanks again. At the risk of saying what other people have said, it's only because I'm obviously on the same page as everybody else. As usual, somebody from SOSE has stolen most of what I was going to say in advance.

[Laughter]

Pete Smith

It wasn't explicit in Andrew's presentation, but you can extrapolate exactly what was said about Dumfries and Galloway, I think, to the whole of the South of Scotland. So I think it's worth remembering that.

I was going to just reflect briefly on some of the things that Jane mentioned about the Natural Capital Innovation Zone, about us being a cycling region, but also a little bit about, I think, how we invest in our communities. I think some of the examples that you would have seen today, DFM, in Galashiels were the right way of doing things, being community-led investment, and I think some of the examples that Andrew also gave were where it's been successful. So I think we need to think about the differentiation of our communities across the South of Scotland.

That brings me to - so one of my other thoughts there about what do we see the region as. I think we're almost teasing it. We see it as a lot of things. It's almost like one region, countless experiences, because we talked about Innerleithen which has been hugely successful in community regeneration. It's been led by the community. But that's entirely different to what I think we will see in Eyemouth if that's successful there and what's - and that'll be completely different to Dumfries and Galloway, of course, which I'm not quite so familiar with.

Unsurprisingly, I will touch on skills just to finish off my wee bit here, because Jane mentioned the successes that we have in the Crichton Campus and the way that works there. We don't have the equivalent in the east part of the South of Scotland. But one of the key parts of my colleges strategy, which has just been reset, is to work as closely as possible with our university partners.

We mentioned earlier on the Pathways project with SRUC. We're working closely with Napier University, Edinburgh and Queen Margaret University with the intention of bringing degree-level qualifications into the Borders. That's explicitly to address the issue that we have with depopulation of young people, because we know they quite rightly make decisions for the subjects and the academic areas that they want to go study. They will quite often move away from the Borders and they often won't come back. We're noting from the statistics earlier on that they come back in their 30s. Well, we would like them to stay if at all possible and to attract people to study in the Borders for their own specialism.

So that is a key part of what we're trying to do. Again it's about capacity there. At the minute, it would mean displacing something else. We don't want to do that. What we want to do is enhance what we're doing to meet all the challenges that we're talking about this afternoon. Thank you.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much for that. Euan.

Euan Jardine

Yeah, thank you very much, Deputy First Minister. Obviously a lot of the stuff has been covered, but I'm at an age where a lot of the people I went to school with went away to the city to live. Now they're all coming back. Now they're all coming back to have their family here, grow up here, because they know this is the best place, in the South of Scotland, to live, to grow old. But some of them can't come back. Again going back to that cycling part, they want to come back to Peebles where they grew up, but there is no housing. Eleven times one of the families I've spoken to was outpriced for a house, 11 times. They tried to come back and they've ended up having to settle in Midlothian. So this goes back to our key ask for the REP, housing. That is one of the key things.

Why do they leave the region as well? For the skills, to go to university, to learn, to get different jobs, which they think is a bigger experience. The social value, I think there's difference there. But also one of the fundamental things, maybe not in the Gala area and Hawick, but also in the rural areas, transport, there is no public transport for a lot of young people. If they can't drive, they feel they have to go to the city if they want to thrive and go round. So we need to go back to our key asks.

Really interestingly I just heard just the other day from people who have never lived in the Scottish Borders, never lived in the South of Scotland, they're all telling their friends, sit your driving test in Galashiels because you'll pass and it's easier. So how many people are we getting from Edinburgh into our driving tests? Nobody in our rural areas can get their driving test, because the city are utilising Galashiels as a testing area. So I think that's maybe something we need to look at and make it a postcode embargo, so we’ll look at there.

But yeah, so these are the little things where we have great benefits that the city are utilising, but how can we start actually maximising what we've got? Again it all goes back to that REP's fundamental key objectives, housing, skills and transport. That's what helps shape a region. That's what helps move forward this region.

Lisa Hawkin

Thanks, Deputy First Minister. So I guess I wanted to reiterate Jane's point in terms of looking at things through a rural lens. I think there is absolutely something there in us developing our policy, legislations, decisions with that rural lens, because I think it's not only ensuring that we're not making decisions that are detrimentally impactful to our rural communities, but actually there's also something about ensuring that we're not missing opportunities as well, because if we don't put that rural lens on it, things get missed and we're not able to maximise so many of the opportunities that our region brings. So I think there's something really important in that and would help us progress on the three key challenges of the REP as well, because they're exacerbated by the rurality and the challenges, particularly around the cost of things in terms of improving some of that infrastructure that we know about.

Kate Forbes

Thanks. Russel, then Stephen.

Russel Griggs

Okay. Just before I make my point, if I may, Deputy First Minister, [Rob Carn] who's sitting beside me and I will remember as he went round every townhall, just about, in the South of Scotland when we were setting up South of Scotland Enterprise, that nightclubs did come up as something that each of the communities wanted quite often. It was to do with the, where do we go? It's one of the things. We've seen in Stranraer people know that a lot of people go up [there] to do it, but that's not the point I want to make.

I know you like evidence. I know you like action. I have a thought. We know now that Center Parcs are going to come and open. We know they're going to bring in 1,200 jobs. But the big bit about it - and when Euan and I were at the council talking about this recently, we know they should have over £25 million a year in economic benefit to that little bit around [unclear]. We said, our job only starts here. So maybe we should have somewhere in our measurement devices that we check over the - as we do with every inward investment, do - it's easy to get [unclear] [we’ve] then got to make out of it - [that] we do get the £25 million worth of benefit into the economy and not just assume it will happen but work away at making sure that we get that. If we did that, using Jane's point, for every hook we have, I think that would take us quite a long way to getting to where we want to be.

Kate Forbes

Thank you very much. Stephen.

Stephen Thompson

Thank you, DFM. So I was thinking about attraction and retention. If I was writing Dear Santa, I would probably say, please can we have a multi-policy integrated approach combining economic and skills, social and infrastructure investment, and I don't mean just rail and trunk roads but also including housing and health and digital infrastructure, all looked at through a rural impact assessment lens which allows and encourages granular place innovation and solutions at a community level, please?

Kate Forbes

I don't know what Santa would say to that. I think he'd question the age of the person who wrote it. But no, absolutely, thank you for that. Any last comments on this?

[Pause]

Okay, great, fantastic. Go back to Andy and Scott just to distil down maybe some responses to what you've heard, but perhaps even more interestingly, what do you want us all to do?

Scott Hamilton

Thank you very much. Thank you. I think that was a really positive discussion, I think, overall. As I started the comments when I spoke, demographic links into a number of topics that we've all discussed, so I think seeing that come out in the discussion was really important. I suppose I could do the politician's trick and actually put it back to the Scottish Government and ask, how interventionalist do you want to be? Because I think what you'll see here is all your partners really want to do change. They really want to have action and they really want to see that. We've talked about Rural Visa Pilots. Actually that's something this region could lend itself to do. That's something that I think many of us would be up for looking at.

I don't think what we want is to manage the decline. I think we want to be very interventionalist here. I think looking at it from a government lens, anything legislative-wise that comes down we are willing to work with to ensure that it enhances the region. I think probably linking it back to the previous discussion around skills, particularly education and tertiary education provision, I think that's really important. I asked to be bold. Well, what about a University of the South of Scotland? That is the age bracket that we were really after there, I think in the presentation 25 to 35. That could actually be the one way in which we bring in that age demographic back to the Borders, back to Dumfries and Galloway, and really enhance the South of Scotland.

So I think we've got positive starting points. I think everybody wants to see it happen. I think where we need to see now is a clear roadmap of where the government wants us to go, what you're prepared to do and how then we can help you, because I don't think we can work in isolation on this. I think it needs to be everybody working together on a clear roadmap on that one.

Kate Forbes

Thanks. Andy.

Andrew Reed

Thank you, DFM. I have a tendency to agree. There are both national interventions which can take place and local interventions. I say that, local, down to Dumfries and Galloway Council, South of Scotland and nationally. So it's been picked up a number of times already and I've emphasised it in many of my previous conversations with Scottish Government about that, that rural and depopulation impact assessment of policy decisions at national level and investments, so where you invest in large number of jobs or economic drivers and so forth, bang for buck is in the Central Belt and we understand that from an announcement point of view. It's less so from investments at a local, sort of rural region. So we'd like the case for our own region, specifically sing what's good about South of Scotland and say, this is the best place to go and invest actually. It might not bring about the number of jobs, but it'll bring about an economic change in the rural region. So that's just on that one there.

There are nine things within the report. I think there's an element of responsibility at convention, South of Scotland and the local authorities that we go back and have a look at those and say which ones are our local controls, which ones do we need to lobby on for further investment and that we come back with that element of what is costed. I know from the Scottish Land & Estates that they put an element of costings to the programmes. I think it's important that we understand that those interventions, which is partly why we did the research - to understand that money is well spent, that we'll make a change, because we can't testbed for a year and then say that didn't work and move on. We've got to testbed for a 10-year period and a long period. So it's that long-term investment and commitment, but from our point of view or from - my point of view is that we need to be clear about what that costs and what that will likely bring about as a turnaround.

The final one that I was just going to mention is that understanding [unclear] about the impact assessment, understand that policy impacts, there are both positives and negatives. I refer back to the landlord aspects. Really good tenant protective policies that were implemented. However, that's had a negative impact. So we need to really consider, what will the negative impact be from our regions? Thank you.

Kate Forbes

Brilliant. So my own thoughts to Scott's question around how interventionalist, I think on this issue we all collectively, including the Scottish Government, need to be really quite interventionalist. I think that otherwise you are maintaining the decline essentially. I guess our history has indicated over the last few decades that where there is no intervention you go from a bad situation to an awful situation, so it doesn't pick up on its own. I have also been of the view that it is much more difficult to recover an area that you've completely lost demographically than it is to try and go from where we are right now and rebuild.

Clearly there are some areas that are currently progressing relatively well, so if you were starting here, maybe 10 years ago, you would have suggested an enterprise agency might be a good idea, which we now have. We might not have Center Parcs without that really interventionist approach of attracting and securing a major inward investor that has scope to create hundreds of jobs. I think for all of us, it's what contribution can we make to the next equivalent of Center Parcs which creates those opportunities for particularly the working age population.

On things like the Rural Visa Pilot, I'm very sympathetic to that. It is a reminder though that there are some areas that are outside the control of everyone here assembled. We can therefore speak with one voice on those matters, so our main contribution is speaking with one voice rather than having direct control over doing it. So I wonder - there is something there. There may even be value of us - in a relatively neutral way, but just sharing some of the commentary from this meeting, maybe some of the high-level actions that need to be taken with the UK Government just in reflecting on some of the data that we have and the work that's been done and asking for a response there. We could include something like the Rural Visa Pilot there.

There are other areas which are a lot easier to do that wouldn't take terribly much hard work. So promotional material is actually in that category, I would suggest, so in theme 4 in terms of migration in. I know that there's some work that's been done on that, and South of Scotland have been doing a lot. I wonder whether there's scope to maybe again rethink, what is the collective opportunity here to do that? That could also connect quite closely with the skills stuff that was talked about earlier. I think it was Stephen talked about it and others talked about it in terms of bringing to people's awareness what's available. There might be something that we could do around that. I don't know what scope there is with the Brand Scotland stuff where we could pitch a regional element to some of that advertising that goes out across the UK and across Europe and across North America. Anybody that's looking for a new home might find one here. So there's areas where we could take that as a bit of an action.

So I think from these themes, it's building down. There are other areas that are harder to measure, aren't there, like perception of rural being a major challenge? But that will come with I think some of the direct actions.

So my sense of this is that we basically take the actions that have been discussed and look at what we can do to progress each of them for the Rural Worker Visa, raising it with the UK Government. Let's see if we could do some promotional activity and go forward in that way. Is there anything else that anybody thinks, as a direct solution off the back of this, we should look at actually doing? Yes.

Anna Densham

Thank you, Deputy First Minister. I just wonder if it might be helpful if I respond on the issue around the rural assessment and say a little bit more about that. So for those of you I haven't met, I'm Anna Densham. I'm Deputy Director for Land Reform, Rural and Islands Policy in Scottish Government.

So a number of you have raised the issue around rural assessment and also the Island Communities Impact Assessment. So on 1 April last year, 2025, we did introduce the rural assessment approach within Scottish Government. We've spent the last - well, the rest of 2025 helping to roll that out across a number of - well, across Scottish Government in general. So we've got training and advice behind it and also engaging with a number of specific policy teams, mainly the ones that you've highlighted as being part and parcel of this issue, so in particular skills, planning, childcare, transport. We've done some work on employability as well. So that's starting to happen.

What I've picked up from this conversation is that you don't know enough about it, so whilst we've communicated it in some circles, we've obviously not done enough of that. It's an approach that's evolving. It's informed by international best practice. We're still in touch with a number of other countries that are also trying to do the same thing, and the EU work on this as well. So we'd love to share it more. Also it's something that we will continue to evolve as we learn how it works and how it is embedded. You won't see results overnight, but it is work in progress. If it's acceptable, we will take away an action to make sure we do communicate much more about it. Thanks.

Kate Forbes

Thanks very much. Douglas.

Douglas Dickson

What struck me on this item was there was no shortage of solutions. I think, round the table, there's been really quite interesting discussions and really interesting data. When I was looking at it, if I was looking at one of the solutions in expanding tertiary education in the colleges - and I mean, any colleges, skills planning, you look at the surrounding data to do something like that and you then compare it to the resource. What struck me around the solutions was there's maybe a piece here on time horizons in short, medium and longer term. There is also, and it was already alluded to, a - there's a resource element. The short-term items are the ones you can get the quick one. Longer term, there's more resource required. I thought maybe bringing that lens to this was perhaps helpful.

Kate Forbes

Absolutely. Yes, Rob.

Rob Dickson

Yeah, thanks, DFM. I wonder if I might just make an observation and be bold enough to make a small suggestion. I think the observation is that - like a few officials in the room, I spend time travelling around Scotland and attending a range of different Regional Economic Partnership discussions as well as the Convention of the Highlands and Islands which, of course, mirrors COSS. Nobody is better placed than the South of Scotland in terms of the construct that you have and the policy position that you have and the common focus that you have, to work on these matters and to address the issues that you've had in the papers today. I say that, I suppose, with a degree of bias, which I accept. But nonetheless I think the South of Scotland is well placed to move on this.

I wonder, building on what Chris said, and this is the suggestion, whether actually the pilots and the opportunity of enabling legislation isn't the moment when the Regional Economic Partnership steps forward and takes ownership of some of the actions in the papers today and some of the actions elsewhere and tests, pilots how best for the South of Scotland the enabling legislation might accelerate and allow the South of Scotland to benefit immediately from that or more quickly from that, because it gets ahead of the curve in its own thinking and in the thinking that the government needs to do, which does mirror somewhat what we achieved in the Enterprise and Skills Review and why is there a South of Scotland Enterprise, because we did some of that thinking before the Enterprise and Skills Review came to light. So it's not an entirely original idea, DFM, but it might be useful.

Kate Forbes

Very much. Andy.

Andy Ferguson

Thanks, Deputy First Minister. I agree entirely about the rural impact assessments. But I would go a step further, because they should really be done on a place plan level. Okay, I'm born in Hawick, brought up in Kelso, married a Gala woman, but don't hold that against me, via Glasgow, now living in Dumfries. So I've been round about, let's put it that way. Just to emphasise, coming over today, 10 yards to the east of the boundary at Mosspaul is totally different from 10 yards west of the boundary. You're right. We can get a lot of things done here, but we're talking areas that have been foisted on local communities for generations upon generation upon generation. It's still the same. I've got a cousin who married somebody from Jedburgh. [God] [unclear] nobody talked to her for years. That's the kind of tribal nation we are. Right, so I think if we're going to do it, we need to actually do it on a...

[Over speaking]

Andy Ferguson

I think Stephen's word - granular I think was the word he used. We really need to do it on a granular basis and then see what the commonalities area to take it forward. We cannot just say, well, this is the Dumfries and Galloway's plan, this is the Scottish Borders plan and this is the joint plan, because it won't work. It just won't work. So we need to get right down to the nuts and bolts, into local communities. I can give you a better examples actually is if you go to Stranraer, town centre Stranraer, five miles down the road at Lochans, they don't even talk the same language.

Kate Forbes

I'll take your word for it. Jane, then Sarah-Jane and then we'll start to summarise.

Jane Morrison-Ross

I'm not sure how to follow that, Councillor Ferguson. I think just to say we welcome the interventions that Scottish Government are working on. I think there is a step change needed in approach. So it's great to hear that that work is happening, but I've had no visibility of that and I'm certainly not seeing any impact of it. We have to unpick some of the endemic approaches. For instance, when the Rural Housing Action Plan was being developed, we heard about that through somebody else and had to go knocking on the door for Scottish Government colleagues to say, we're rural, because up to that point they had Highlands and Islands as part of the consultation but nothing in the South of Scotland. They were very good and slightly embarrassed and brought us into the fold, but we should not have to knock on the doors.

I think an extension to the Islands Act that brought in that more formalised approach to rural proofing would mean that we were not constantly having to knock on doors and remind people that the South of Scotland is here, is rural and is, to steal Councillor Jardine's phrase, slap bang in the middle of the UK. I think the counterside of that for me is we want all of these things to come to fruition, but because we genuinely believe that there is a real opportunity regionally and nationally to leverage economic value from the rural areas, from the South of Scotland, we want to develop some of these hooks, but because we really think there is untapped value here, untapped resources and untapped potential that could change our economy at a national level - so there's a real reason for working with us, helping us with those interventions as well. I think we also look forward to seeing the outcome of the work that Scottish Government are doing on that Rural (sic - Addressing) Depopulation Action Plan as well. Things like that will be interventions that help enormously.

Kate Forbes

Sarah-Jane.

Sarah-Jane Laing

Thanks very much. One observation and then actually a commitment, I think, from my sector. We are very aware of the work that's been done in terms of the rural lens, rural impact assessment. In fact, it's one of the things that, as you know, Anna, we were pushing for. What we're not seeing is any tangible impact of that in the development of legislation and policies yet. I think it's starting to develop. We're getting there, but I think we've got lots of people to bring with us on that journey.

But just reflecting, DFM, on what you said about who's responsible for bringing these forward and we talked about - we talked very much about government and local government and agencies. There's another sector there that is ready and willing to play its part. From my members, we are the people who have the land for housing. We are the people who have land and property for new businesses and opportunities. We want to be part of that solution to addressing depopulation. So just a plea when we're thinking about, who are the people who can [unlock] these things happen? I know that this is how many of you already think, but can we make sure that when we're talking about the people who need to be at the table to unlock the potential levers to address these challenges, that businesses are at that table from the outset.

Kate Forbes

Thank you. I think to echo Douglas' point - I think I already mentioned I think it's a brilliant report and outline and it is full of solutions, so the next step really is this point around breaking them down. I take your point, Douglas, on what - it's a better way of putting it than I had, which is what can you deliver tomorrow, because there's some things there you can deliver tomorrow. What are the things that are medium term and what are the things that are longer term and are harder to do?

But then sitting alongside that has to be owners. I completely agree with Sarah-Jane that the temptation is always to look at government. I think we do have a role in terms of being interventionalist, but it does strike me as an interesting conversation where there's a big call for this rural proofing. We've got the rural proofing tools as it were, but you're looking for evidence. I'm a strong believer in the fact that developing the strategy is never sufficient. It's always the impact on the ground. We, I think, have an opportunity here to almost accelerate the impact on the ground with some of these very tangible actions and just owning them and moving them forward.

So the action I'm hearing from this is that everybody loves it, within reason, so fair play. Congratulations. Let's take this and build it into a little bit of a task list or an outcomes list, or an action plan I think is where I'm trying to get to, with a sense of timescales against it and who is best to [lead of] various elements of it, if everybody's happy with that, not to over-bureaucratise it but to just build it into a sense of who can do what in relation to that. Scottish Government officials will take ownership of the areas that we could do, so particularly the secretariat pulling together a bit of a letter to UK Government and other things. But we'll do a first stab at that and then share it for feedback if that's okay. We'll move forward with - and we'll capture all the points, too, and maybe try and weave that into the next session. Is everybody content with that?

[Pause]

Yeah. Okay. Thanks, folks. We can probably move on to the next slide then. As we come to the end of today's proceedings, there's been a lot of good discussion. I am going to ask if anybody has any other business that they would like to raise. The next meeting of the convention was due to be held in a few months, but you'll be aware of that pesky inconvenience that we all have to go through, which is Scottish Parliament elections. Well, all of you have to go through. I don't. The pre-election period begins at the end of March and so the convention will be later on in the year.

Just take a moment now to see if there's any issues that people think should most certainly be on the agenda for that next convention. I think what we've heard today is that we want to see the next iteration of a skills plan and we want to see the next iteration of an action plan on depopulation for your comfort and review. Are there any other issues that have struck you in the course of our discussions today that you really think we need to explore in some detail? [Pause] No? Okay. If you do have any epiphanies on your drive home, then let the secretariat know and we will bring that into another agenda. The actions from today will be also circulated by the secretariat.

I guess my last comment is that these meetings have got to be useful to you. So if at any point you're feeling that they're not useful but you still think there's value in meeting, then we'd really value your thoughts on how to make it useful to you so that you feel like this is the single most powerful voice, collaborative voice for the South of Scotland. That's the aim of it. It's so important that there are direct actions that flow from these meetings. So I just wanted to thank you, because it feels like that has been a really good, constructive meeting. I think that reflects both the thoughts that you bring with you but also the work that's gone in to prepare for these presentations.

It will be the last time I chair the convention and it's been an absolute delight. I don't know how or why you let a Highlander do it, but it's very good of you to allow that. I don't think you have any say in the matter, probably. I've absolutely loved the work that I've done in the South of Scotland over the last few years and I really hope that this goes from strength to strength. To do that, it really requires you to have that sense of ownership and for you to raise your thoughts if you feel like it ends up drifting, because sometimes these things do go through iterations. So thank you very much for your participation. I formally close, unless there's any other business, formally close this convention and wish you a very safe journey home. Thank you.

Euan Jardine

[Inaudible].

Kate Forbes

Sorry, Euan.

Euan Jardine

No problem, Deputy First Minister. I'll let you finish [unclear]. I just want to say thank you to yourself for chairing the meeting over the past couple of times. Obviously you didn't make the last one due to the weather, but you are here today. I think it's actually perfect timing that you're here at this time, because you obviously got to go to Galashiels this morning, which is great for yourself and Gala. But also we've had the Rural (sic - Regional) Land Use Partnership. Scottish Land & Estates have put out what they've put out. We've had an opportunity to be collective discussion here, but I do want to thank you for helping us here. I know you're a Highlander, but you know rural, rural areas and rural depopulation, rural populations more than a lot of people. We feel a lot of times at Holyrood things are centralised, they are urban-centric, but you're bringing that rural offer onto here and giving us that opportunity.

So on behalf of Scottish Borders Council, on behalf of Dumfries and Galloway Council - I'm sure they'll agree - we thank you for coming and we do wish you well in your future going forward. You will be missed by everyone, but thank you very much for coming here and appreciate you chairing this meeting many times. Thank you.

END OF TRANSCRIPT