Traditional Skills Strategy

Traditional Building Skills is a strategy for developing and sustaining traditional building skills in Scotland.

As the largest heritage body in the country, Historic Scotland has a responsibility to lead on ensuring skills, techniques and practices that are integral to the heritage sector are not only supported but encouraged to grow and develop.

The strategy provides for Historic Scotland to increase the work it does in developing stronger and better ways to teach traditional skills, with the aim of ensuring this expertise is readily available across Scotland for many years to come, making a positive contribution to the country’s economy.

Traditional Building Skills - A Strategy for Sustaining and Developing Traditional Building Skills in Scotland [pdf, 1.5mb]




In partnership with ConstructionSkills Scotland, Scottish Qualifications Authority and Scottish Enterprise, Historic Scotland initiated the Scottish Traditional Building Skills Audit Scoping Exercise (STBSASE) in 2009.

The project report aims to quantify training that is currently available for traditional building skills and to identify gaps in current qualification provision. From this report, a work programme of qualification development will be developed focusing on bolt-on units to supplement the existing Scottish Vocational Qualification provision. This is the first action in the Strategic Partnership Agreement between Historic Scotland, ConstructionSkills and the Scottish Qualifications Authority in identifying and addressing skills and knowledge gaps in traditional building skills and will build on the successful introduction in 2008 of the National Progression Award in Masonry Conservation. This project is part of the Traditional Building Skills Strategy for Historic Scotland.

Scottish Traditional Building Skills Audit Scoping Exercise (STBSASE) [pdf, 2.7mb]