Chamber and committees

Yes—absolutely. I do not blame any community for having consultation fatigue, but that does not mean that we should not do it. We have to do it. As you say, we have to be able to demonstrate fairly early on tangible ways in which views have been listened to and reflected upon.

I go back to my initial point about phasing. It is not going to take long. We are talking about publishing a plan in spring next year. By the middle of this year, we will be able to set out the economic baseline work that we have done, and we will have set out the vision for 2045, taking into account what we have heard from the consultations that we have undertaken. By the time we get to spring next year, there will be a tangible plan for the community, for workers and for industry, and for us and the public sector bodies that are involved in the future industry board to reflect on.

I will hand over to Andy McCall on the point about when and what we will publish.

It is right to say that the experience of the community can be independent of what happens at the cluster or deeply connected to it. Both have to be borne in mind.

We are at the beginning of the process, and I have talked about the desire for, and my intention that there will be, close engagement with the community. I expect that the issues relating to transport in and around the area and to the quality of housing and living experience in and around Grangemouth—how it is now and what it might be like as we move to the decarbonised cluster of the future—will come to the fore. Our community engagement officer will be able to feed in those views as they arise in the community. I do not want to pre-empt things by saying that those are the subjects that will come up, but I think that we are right that they will.

On transport, I know that there was an appraisal for a new station at Grangemouth as part of the second strategic transport projects review, but it was not recommended because of the current movements of people in and around the area, with people coming into the area from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling and elsewhere. However, that is not the only transport issue. We need to think about how well communities are served by bus and by other means, and I expect that all that will form part of the feedback that we get from the community and will inform our thinking as we develop the plan.

Absolutely. My colleagues can come in if they wish to add anything about the planning for this, but all that I can say is that I expect such issues to be born out of the discussions that we have with communities and that, when that happens, I expect to be able to demonstrate how they have been taken into account in the plan.

Indeed, through the Grangemouth future industry board—which, again, represents a novel approach with regard to the public sector coming together over something of such importance as Grangemouth—there has already been close working with Falkirk Council on, for example, road issues such as congestion and the movement of heavy goods. Work is on-going. I am very open to hearing the communities’ priorities, and I want to demonstrate how those views are being taken into account.

I absolutely take the point that people should be able to expect staging posts and tangible outcomes at various points along the way.

I agree that Grangemouth—the cluster, the people who live there and the public sector bodies—is much greater than the sum of its parts, although I broke it down in that way in order to demonstrate the way in which we are engaging.

I take on board the point about co-ownership and co-leadership. Those are important because change can be frightening, and the more the people who are involved in or impacted by that change are empowered to lead it, design it and be responsible for its working, the more sustainable and successful it will be. To me, that is a core concept that applies equally to the just transition and to a lot of the work that we seek to do across Government in order to rise to the challenge of the climate emergency. We can all think of a few examples that are pertinent to that just now.

I have talked before about the fact that I need to have the feedback from all the interested parties, be that on transport, housing, flooding or employment, including the industry’s views, before I can say with the surety that I would want to give the committee exactly how that will be taken forward into the plan.

I come back to the phase 1 work that is very much under way, which is about working towards the vision for 2045 on the basis of close consideration of the economic and social issues. At the moment, it is difficult for me to say exactly what the issues will be and how they will be built in.

From what I can see, and from my experience of speaking to Ineos and other companies, funding is available. Oil and gas companies are increasingly referring to themselves as energy companies, because they are diversifying.

For our part, the Government can set the direction of travel and the regulatory environment, and give companies confidence. As Liam Middleton rightly pointed out, we can also provide a small amount of funding; it is not seed funding, but it can back up what companies are seeking to do.

I am sorry—are you asking about the SNIB’s role or that of the oil and gas industry?

This is up to local authorities, and we do not want to fetter their discretion when it comes to deciding how to operate. Instead, what we do is provide guidance on the backdrop of the Environment Act 1995 and supplement that with funding. In response to ESS’s recommendations, we have agreed to update or clarify the guidance in a number of ways, and it is all to do with how local authorities produce their own air quality action plans and, I suppose, operate within the system itself. In short, we are providing support through funding and guidance, especially the most recently updated guidance in response to ESS.

Please be assured that all that you have mentioned—the speed at which things happen and the speed at which things change—was taken into account when we considered ESS’s recommendations. However, we reached the same conclusion that we reached when considering the best monitoring period for CAFS2, which was that five years was an appropriate period to give us the opportunity to implement the changes, to see their implications and to monitor them.

I do not know whether Andrew Taylor can add anything helpful to that. That is how we made the assessment.

In response to your specific question about the triggering of a review, I would point out that, as a result of the updates to the guidance that we have made following ESS’s recommendations, a significant change of circumstances in an air quality management area will trigger an automatic review of the air quality action plan to ensure that it remains able to achieve compliance in

“as short a time as possible”,

per the recommendations of ESS.