We will engage with Shetland’s Business and Community Resilience Forums, to help sectors plan for changes arising from post-EU withdrawal trading arrangements, as well as manage post-pandemic recovery and renewal.
The past few years have been challenging for many sectors of our economy, with EU withdrawal just one of the issues being faced by local businesses. Some key sectors of Shetland’s economy, particularly construction and hospitality, are seeing staff shortages due to a reduction in migrant labour. It is also having an impact on our care sector, where workers from the EU added to our staffing pools. This is a problem that is shared with many parts of the UK. The Council has participated in work undertaken by the Scottish Government on establishing a rural visa pilot scheme, aimed at addressing migration challenges in rural areas, but to date this has not come to fruition.
As part of the Council’s COVID Framework, we established a Business Resilience Forum to help us to engage with the business community and to facilitate communication between industry groups, political representatives and public agencies. Although originally set up for pandemic response purposes, the forums proved to be a valuable way of hearing from industry representatives on a variety of matters which also relate to the impact of EU withdrawal. Meetings covered various topics featured in Our Ambition, including recruitment and retention of staff, developing the young workforce and COVID-19 recovery, as well as national policy initiatives such as the National Islands Plan and the Scottish Government’s Visitor Levy Bill.
Recognising the need for ongoing and structured industry engagement, the Council agreed in September 2022 to re-establish and appoint elected Members to the Fisheries and Aquaculture Working Group, Agricultural Working Group and Shetland Business Forum. These Groups meet on a regular basis and have proven particularly important for engaging with industry on the impacts of changes to national policy which impact on industry (e.g. Visitor Levy, HPMAs, Agriculture Bill).