Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:00 pm on 17 January 2023.
I thank Jenny Rathbone for those questions. I did highlight South Point Primary School because it's the first net-zero school in Wales, in the constituency of my Government colleague, Jane Hutt. I think it's probably fair to say—and I hope that they wouldn't mind me putting it in this way—it must be amongst the most visited schools, to look at what they've done there, and I thank them for their generosity and the welcome that you get. I fear that many of us have tested that welcome very frequently. So, they have been very, very proactive about being open to sharing that, and I know that the council very much supports and extends that as well.
More broadly, I think the point the Member makes is very important, though, about how we rapidly universalise best practice and learning in what is a developing area in some ways, isn't it? So, there is a sectoral buildings decarbonisation task and finish group, which the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in Wales has developed and that is aligned to our decarbonisation commitments. They've created a toolkit that can support the development of these projects, both in terms of being carbon neutral in operational terms but also in terms of the embodied carbon. So, there's a body of expertise now being built up that we can make sure is understood and shared.
The point that she makes on identifying the skill set and local labour is really important. One of the principles in the sustainable schools challenge fund was to prioritise the use of local skills and the foundational economy local to the location of the school, for reasons that I know she shares my commitment and passion about. But, we are working at the moment to identify what is clearly some level of skills gap in this area, and we heard Vaughan Gething speak a little bit about this earlier. So, officials are working very closely with the sector to identify what needs to happen in that space.
In relation to active travel, about a year or so ago, we asked the chair of the active travel board to look at the stipulations that we make in the sustainable communities for learning funding conditions to make sure that they were stretching. And so, there have been some developments since then. But, we're also looking at the work of the committee that Huw Irranca-Davies was involved in, looking at active travel more broadly, and they've had some challenging things to say to us about the extent to which we can and should go further in relation to investment in new schools around active travel. And the point that she makes I'm sure is one of those that we shall be taking into account, so thank you for raising that today.