Examination of Witness (Questions 505-519)
Thursday 22 May 2003
MR RUSSELL
FOSTER
Q505 Chairman: Good morning and welcome,
Mr Foster. I think you have been able to sit through the previous
sessions we have had.
Mr Foster: Yes. I found it very
interesting.
Q506 Chairman: So did we, and I think
what has gone before brings us naturally to the stage in our inquiry
when we want to look at the role of professionals and the role
of management in a little more detail. Is there anything you want
to say to us by way of an opening remark?
Mr Foster: Yes. First of all,
I am not quite sure how much you know about our Institute and
I am quite happy to take questions about the Institute if you
want to set the scene. I would like to remark on what I heard
previously from the other witnesses. First of all, with regard
to the Open University, we accredit some of their courses in the
environmental field to the level of our associate membership,
so it is quite important. A lot of the work we do under the training
heading is with universities like the Open University and once
they have set their courses up they can come to us to get them
accredited. Also, we are in a very new profession here in the
environment—it is only really twenty years old if you want
to give it any history at all—and I think the things we
are developing now are very much the foundations for the future.
It is interesting that when the previous gentleman talked about
the geography areas these are old, learned areas, whereas the
environment is much newer and, indeed, sustainability is even
newer as a subject, and it is very important that we have to get
the groundwork and foundations right now because everybody is
going to jump on this sustainability bandwagon and we are not
going to be able to set standards, if we are not careful, for
the people working in those areas. That is really the crux of
what I wanted to say. I am quite happy to talk about the Institute
and lead on to that if you wish.
Q507 Chairman: I think we want to
try and get to the bottom of exactly what are the policy changes
that sustainable development is bringing to the role of the professional.
You touched just now on standards and clearly it is important
that we do have the standards that are recognisable and so on.
Can you perhaps enlighten us as to what your organisation and
institute is doing in changing the role of the practice of professionals
as a result of this greater understanding that we have to take
sustainable development on board?
Mr Foster: Yes. It is indicative
of the growth of our Institute in the last three or four years
where we have gone from 4,000 to over 7,000 members that it is
not just what the Institute is doing that appeals to our members
but the fact they are able to get accreditation with their own
profession which is recognised outside. If people are going for
a job, if they are full members of our Institute and have reached
that level, then this is a licence to operate, if you like, so
I think it is important to have that. We realised that sustainable
development was also an area that needed to have a set of standards,
and in the information sheet I sent you I showed you that we worked
with sustainability first and with Professor Shirley Ali Khan
at the beginning of 2001, where we identified there was a need
to have a set of standards for sustainable professionals to adhere
to. We had a conference in February and also straw polled all
our members to get their opinion, and we had about 5500 members
at the time. We also did research by talking to a large amount
of post-graduates from environmental courses to see what they
felt about going down the sustainability stream. We pulled together
all the findings and sent the findings to the Parliamentary Undersecretary
of State for adult skills back in February 2002—
Q508 Chairman: What was his response?
Mr Foster: I was going to say
we got a letter back thanking us and saying they were in a bit
of a quandary and once things were sorted out they would come
back. To be perfectly frank, we have not heard anything since,
so we have parked this which is a great shame because we have
a set of standards for sustainable development professionals to
adhere to and it was going to be a staged approach where they
could work their way up through the different stages and they
would get different accreditations at those stages; there would
be a series of exams and peer reviews, etc, to allow them to work
up through those stages. Now, we have not pushed this any further
because we have so many other things on the go, and it is really
watching all the other things going on around us, and the worry
I have is that people are now coming into this area who really
do not understand the full ins and outs of sustainable development,
and there is a worry that people will start practising and auditing
in this particular area and they do not have the right qualifications
for it. It is not high agenda for me but it is a worry for me.
Chairman: I can assure you we have taken
very careful note that you are waiting for a response from the
Department on that.
Q509 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the
other professional bodies, how do you rate their level of seriousness
in doing this? We have just heard that the engineers were the
first of a few.
Mr Foster: To be perfectly blunt
there are lot of other disciplines out there that see from a commercial
point of view that there is a great opportunity within the environment
and sustainability—that if they can get on to that bandwagon
there is a great opportunity. I am not saying they are not doing
good for the right reasons but that perhaps they have not got
the expertise in that area to do that. The engineering institutes
and the architect institutes are getting into this area because
they realise that there is a large amount of kudos to be gained
but also that a lot of members are doing this type of work as
part of their jobs. What I think we should do is try and get all
of these interested parties together to talk about this—which
is what really the sustainable alliance is about.
Q510 Mr Chaytor: And you still think
your Institute is the vanguard of the professional institutions?
Mr Foster: Within the environment,
yes.
Q511 Mr Chaytor: And did you work
with the government's panel for sustainable development when it
was in existence?
Mr Foster: No.
Q512 Mr Chaytor: One of the recommendations
of its first report was that sustainable development should be
incorporated at all levels of professional training. How far do
you feel that is starting to take place, and are there examples
of particularly good practice in professional qualifications that
you could quote?
Mr Foster: You mean on the sustainable
side or the environmental side?
Q513 Mr Chaytor: Both.
Mr Foster: If we could say that
the environment came before sustainability, companies now are
addressing and understanding the environmental needs and starting
to intertwine that within their normal operations, but there is
still a large way to go and it tends to be the larger companies
and multinationals leading the way. This is also the case with
sustainability: you have the larger companies, especially the
multinationals, realising the need for this and a lot of their
annual reports also include a sustainability report. This has
yet to filter down and certainly the SMEs are miles away from
doing this—not all of them but certainly a lot of them.
There are some companies out there taking this approach, and the
automotive industry is a classic example where they really do
understand the need for both good environmental practice and good
sustainability practice—not just in the factories that manufacture
the cars but in the whole supply chain, which is so important.
So I think there are good examples but it is very slow progress.
Q514 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the
large companies who are setting the pace for this, is that having
an influence on the other professional bodies in terms of the
qualifications they accredit?
Mr Foster: I think it is because
you have to attain a certain level to receive a certain job level
within a company, and if you decide to change companies—let's
say you wanted to be an environmental manager at whatever company—you
will need to have a certain accreditation in order even to get
through the door of an interview. We are starting to see our full
membership and our fellowship and, indeed, our associate membership
opening doors for the ambitious in the industrial field.
Q515 Mr Chaytor: And are the other
professional bodies looking to you for advice specifically on
sustainability issues? Do you sense that this is happening?
Mr Foster: No, I am sorry. I think
it is a free-for-all at the minute.
Q516 Mr Chaytor: A complete free-for-all?
Mr Foster: Completely, to be perfectly
honest.
Q517 Mr Chaytor: In terms of your
Institute, where do you think the specific skill shortages are?
You talked earlier about the desperate need to increase the level
of understanding about sustainability issues, but which particular
skills do we need to strengthen?
Mr Foster: Generally there is
not enough emphasis to encourage people to progress through the
ranks, if you like. For example, of our 7,000 members we have
3,000 at the moment who sit there as associate members. They have
no real incentive to go on to become full members of our Institute
because it is not going to do an awful lot for them within their
work environment. However, if there were some driver, whether
governmental or by the company itself, to ensure that people doing
this work at this level were at a certain level within professional
bodies like ours, then that would be a driver for them to do it.
Q518 Mr Chaytor: But is not this
something that the Institute could be proactive about?
Mr Foster: Very much so, and it
is. One of the initiatives was that we have created the Society
for the Environment which is eight constituent bodies of environmental
institutes, and there are about 8-10 of them out there, some of
them with only 800 members and some of them with thousands of
members, but we have got together with them and created this society
and put an application into the Privy Council for chartership
for the society. Once that is granted we will then be able to
bestow chartered environmentalists on those people who aspire
to that level, and that roughly equates to full membership of
our Institute. So two or three years from now, if you will excuse
the phrase, you will see chartered environmentalists rolling off
the production line and they will be the cre"me de la cre"me
of the environmental field, and you will be able as a chartered
environmentalist to hold your head up high like the chartered
accountant or chartered engineer and say "I am at the top
of my profession". These are very exciting times in the environmental
field to have that coming down the track within the next 18 months.
Now, it is that sort of thing that will inspire people to move
on. One of the reasons there is a frustration in the universities
is the fact that they can teach all these good things but then
the student who gets their degree goes out in the big wide world
and finds there are no jobs in the environmental field, because
what has happened is the jobs the companies have had for the environmental
person have been given to the safety manager or the security manager
or the line manager—whatever. This will all change, I think,
and there will be a need in the future to ensure that the person
looking after the environmental legislation in companies is the
one that has gone through the higher education system, got the
degree, got the MSC and also has become chartered within their
profession.
Q519 Mr Chaytor: And in terms of
achieving the status of chartered environmentalists, what extra
skills will the individual require? What extra process will they
have to go through?
Mr Foster: If you look at the
criteria that has been set now for chartered environmentalists
submitted to the Privy Council it is a 12-point system, where
you will get six of those points through academia and six through
hands-on environmental practice, and the yardstick will be the
seven years. You will have to get whatever qualifications you
want and then you will have to do seven years of hands-on environmental
practice in order to get twelve points in order to get chartered
environmentalists. This is to safeguard a situation where, if
somebody came out of further education at 25 or 26, they could
not immediately apply for chartership. We want to see them doing
practical environmental work in order to do that so you are probably
looking at somebody of 32 or 35 at the very minimum to go for
chartership. This is a safeguard for our profession so we do not
get a whole load of very clever people coming out of university
immediately going for chartership. We need to see that practical
side as well.
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