Energy Secretary Gillian Martin on a visit to Forth Valley College, Falkirk Campus announces extra funding for skills intervention expansion.
Workers directly impacted by the cessation of refining at Grangemouth are to receive additional targeted support to help them transition into new jobs.
INEOS O&P employees who were part of shared services for Grangemouth oil refinery and are directly affected by its closure will be able to receive support from Forth Valley College to develop skills for emerging sectors.
00:00I'm visiting Forest Valley College today to announce the extension of the skills
00:03intervention that we made when the announcement was made about the
00:07refinery closure, where we have got skills pathways for those that have been
00:12affected by redundancy to either upskill, reskill or indeed look at the skills
00:17that they have and have assistance on how to actually apply for other work.
00:21We've extended that to INEOS OMP as well because there's a number of
00:25personnel there that have been directly affected with the closure of the
00:30refinery, so it was only fair that we extended it to those people so they can
00:34have the opportunity of engaging with Forest Valley College and getting what
00:37they need in order to find alternative employment.
00:41And with the refinery closing, that has an expanded issue in terms of
00:46employment in the wider area of Falkirk, is there any support for individuals that
00:51might be affected there?
00:52So there are a number of streams of support. We've got the Just Transition
00:55Funds associated with Grangemouth in general. We've also got the Falkirk and
01:01Grangemouth growth deal as well, which is a tranche of money that will be able to
01:06be deployed on a range of interventions. Obviously, Forest Valley College is very,
01:11very well placed to service the needs of people affected by this. But more widely,
01:17what we're doing as a government is we're working very hard with the Enterprise
01:20Agency, the Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Development International to attract
01:24new companies to come into the cluster as a whole. The Grangemouth Industrial Cluster is
01:30well placed in terms of geography, infrastructure, and with the very strongly skilled personnel
01:36that are available in the local area. And we are working hard to attract that investment
01:40to come in. We've had some very good announcements recently that will help that. We've had companies
01:45that are applying for the hydrogen allocation round funding been successful, who may base themselves
01:50in the Grangemouth Industrial Cluster. And we have the ACORN project green light effectively
01:56been given. So we are hoping that we'll be able to maximise the amount of varying options for workers
02:05that comes in, not just as a result of what we're doing with Project Willow and the refinery site, but the wider cluster as a whole.
02:12When can we expect to see some evidence of results from Project Willow?
02:18Very soon we will be making, I imagine, quite significant public announcements about what's been happening over the summer in terms of triage-ing the options that have come forward.
02:32Scottish Enterprise has been working very hard with a number of projects, a number of companies that have come forward to us with propositions, and I hope to be in a position to talk about them more publicly.
02:43Obviously, a lot of it's commercially sensitive at the moment, but that work has been done at pace and very thoroughly, and I'm very excited about some of these projects.
02:51Thank you. We're coming up to the anniversary of the £20 million, now £25 million, funding announcement.
02:59When can Grangemouth employees, former employees, or the wider Falkett community see that money actually hitting the ground?
03:08Well, a lot of that money is going to be very important when it comes to actually getting these projects associated with Project Willow off the ground and starting to look at them becoming commercial,
03:19applying for national wealth fund money associated with the £200 million that the UK government have promised to the area as a result of this.
03:30So, we're working in the early stage of the Scottish Government with the money that we have pledged in order to get them to a commercial point,
03:38and then you'll start to see the fruits of that coming forward in the coming months.
03:43Thank you. There's other employment issues in the Falker-Cailor, namely Alexander Dennis. Where's the government support? Where are we at with the government support there?
03:52Well, the Deputy First Minister is working very closely with Alexander Dennis on a decision that's been made there,
03:58and obviously PACE has been involved with regards to the potential for redundancies there.
04:04But in terms of the wider area, we need to say to the rest of Europe, indeed, how well-placed Grangemouth is as an industrial cluster.
04:16Encourage them to invest in Scotland and encourage Scottish companies to look at Grangemouth as a base for their operations as well.
04:24So, we're doing a number of things in that area associated with the cluster and making sure that it's ready for the transition
04:33and making sure that we are replacing as many of those jobs that we're seeing going with new jobs that are going to be sustainable well into the future.
04:42And, I mean, Alexander Dennis is renowned, obviously, for the technology and its innovations in electric buses.
04:50I know the Scottish Government have their hands tied in terms of how the purchasing of electric buses happen,
04:56but do you have any views on that?
04:58That's the sort of thing that the Transport Secretary is looking into all the time.
05:03And we want to be making sure that whenever we're putting public money that is engendering the growth of the Scottish economy,
05:13it is assisting Scottish companies to make the most of the opportunities that net zero affords them.
05:18The bus operators in Falkirk have recently taken stock of electric buses, but they're from China.
05:24So, there's lots of areas in which there's a lot of opportunities for Scottish companies,
05:30and we need to make sure that they are fit and ready to take those opportunities as possible.
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