The Landscape Institute’s Skills for Greener Places report reviews the UK’s landscape sector workforce for the first time
Research from the Skills for Greener Places report has identified that the landscape sector is a significant one for the national economy, employing over 1% of the total workforce and worth £24.6bn in Gross Value Added terms.
However, while demand for sector skills is expected to increase in response to the UK’s plans for climate adaptation and nature recovery, the sector already has a skills gap, with hard-to-fill vacancies and an ageing and male-dominated workforce.
These are some of the findings of the Skills for Greener Places report, which reviewed the UK’s landscape workforce for the first time.
The research was led by the Landscape Institute with a cross-UK partnership from government agencies and industry, defining landscape for the first time as a distinct economic activity. Partners were the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI), Historic England, Historic Environment Scotland, Locri, Natural England, Natural Resource Wales, NatureScot, and the Northern Ireland Department for Communities. The research was undertaken by Metro Dynamics.
The research shows the diverse nature of the sector across the UK, which ranges across five main subsectors: planning, design, build, management and conservation.
Using this new understanding of the sector allows quantification of the landscape’s value to the economy and an understanding of the shape of the workforce. The methodology provides a standardised approach that can be used to track progress across time.
Green skills crunch
Landscape has a pivotal role to play in delivering against critical policy agendas, including climate change and nature recovery. The research shows that biodiversity and nature recovery are driving increasingly high demand for landscape skills across all sub-sectors, in part due to the implementation of mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain later this year.
However, the research also identifies that businesses are being forced to turn down contracts for creating greener places, with over 50% of businesses in the sector reporting a hard-to-fill vacancy and skills and training identified as pressing issues.
Meanwhile, the skills, resourcing and talent pipeline challenges are perceived to be particularly bad for the management, maintenance and monitoring of landscapes, areas which will be crucial for the delivery of long-term nature recovery.
Greener cities are also vital for halting climate change and adapting to its impacts, as well as being nicer, healthier places to live. Existing skills shortages, however, are presenting challenges on the supply side and preventing this demand from being met.
Within the landscape sector, the research shows that present and future expectations of work are dominated by discussions on climate and that climate mitigation and adaptation are increasingly at the heart of delivery practices, both in the private and public sectors. Climate change is also seen by some in the sector as an opportunity to revisit the quality of life in existing neighbourhoods.
Digital and procurement challenges in delivering greener skills for places
There are other business challenges faced by the sector, with the two most significant being changing to digital practice and procurement hurdles. Increased use of digital technology in landscape design and delivery is acting as an important driver of change in practice, prompted not just by the availability of technology but also by strong cost pressures from clients. It is also a driver of training, with Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Revise Instantly Software (RVIT) being among the key training needs highlighted.
Apprenticeships are an important pipeline for bringing talented workers into the sector. However, around half of businesses don’t have apprentices and do not plan to take on any in the future. As apprenticeships are more common in larger businesses, but so many of the sector’s businesses are small, this is a potential limiting factor for future expansion of the apprenticeship route into the landscape.
While there is general agreement that this is a moment of opportunity for landscape, the report identifies the scale of the challenge needed to respond. Organisations will need to work together to enable the landscape sector and its workforce to take a leading role in delivering a greener future for the UK.
As well as the report itself, the LI is publishing the data in an online dashboard for local areas to explore the issues that matter most to them –and so that others can collaborate on building the evidence base needed to overcome these challenges.
All data from the survey and report is now available online here.
The Landscape Institute
Tel: +44 (0) 330 808 2230
contact@landscapeinstitute.org
