CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 10^th June 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR INFORM­A­TION

Title: CEO REPORT AND CON­VENER UPDATE

Pre­pared by: GRANT MOIR, CHIEF EXECUTIVE

Pur­pose

1. To high­light to Board Mem­bers the main stra­tegic areas of work that are being dir­ec­ted by Man­age­ment Team. These are areas where sig­ni­fic­ant staff resources are being dir­ec­ted to deliv­er with part­ners the aspir­a­tions of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.

Con­ser­va­tion

1. Cairngorms Nature: The first Cairngorms Nature Big Week­end post Cov­id was a huge suc­cess, it was a demon­stra­tion of bril­liant col­lab­or­at­ive work­ing as col­leagues and part­ners came togeth­er to deliv­er over 70 events across the CNP, with the launch and clos­ing flag­ship events as the high­lights of the weekend.

   The events ranged in format from self-guided trails to spe­cial­ist activ­it­ies with experts, includ­ing behind the scenes tours of estates, tree climb­ing, dis­cus­sion events, ceilidhs and ded­ic­ated events for young people with dis­ab­il­it­ies. We are cur­rently gath­er­ing feed­back from attendees and event pro­viders, and early insights show that approx. 30% of attendees trav­elled from out­side the Park and over two thirds are residents.

2. Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: Pos­it­ive pro­gress has been made against all of the project’s approved pur­poses. The quarterly report to Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund high­lights the pro­gramme is well advanced and on track to deliv­er pro­ject out­comes. The com­munity action plans are all under­way and at vari­ous stages of deliv­ery. Hab­it­at works and pred­at­or man­age­ment con­tin­ue to improve con­di­tions and the genet­ic sur­vey work remains on track. The Pro­ject Board will con­sider at their June Meet­ing if a pro­ject exten­sion request is appro­pri­ate, primar­ily to accom­mod­ate delays brought about by work­ing through Cov­id. The Board will also con­sider at that meet­ing how the pro­ject can dove­tail with emer­ging work from the SAC review.
3. Wood­land Cre­ation: Since 1^st March we have been con­sul­ted by Scot­tish Forestry about wood­land cre­ation pro­pos­als of vary­ing scale at Mar Lodge and Dunachton estates and we anti­cip­ate form­al con­sulta­tions soon relat­ing to Inver­cauld and Glen­ban­chor estates. We have also been inform­ally con­sul­ted about poten­tial wood­land cre­ation pro­pos­als at Atholl, Glen Clova, Inch­mar­noch, Del­nabo and Ard­verikie estates.
4. Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion: A total of 730ha of peat­land were put under res­tor­a­tion in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ which exceeded the tar­get of 570ha. In ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ the tar­get for res­tor­a­tion is 905ha. Cap­it­al and resource fund­ing has been con­firmed at 2.8million and 0.5 mil­lion respect­ively for this fin­an­cial year. Steph­en Corcor­an has left CNPA for a new chal­lenge and we are grate­ful for the enorm­ous con­tri­bu­tion he made to Peat­land Action. We will take this oppor­tun­ity to restruc­ture the Peat­land Team with the aim of increas­ing capa­city to meet the demands of an expand­ing port­fo­lio of works and asso­ci­ated pro­cesses and stra­tegic issues. In the short term this re-struc­tur­ing will increase the work­load on an already stretched team. For this reas­on much of the res­tor­a­tion focus this year will be on drain block­ing which is easi­er to plan and manage.

5. Moor­land Man­age­ment: Lor­na Slater, Min­is­ter for Green Skills, Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy and Biod­iversity, atten­ded a meet­ing in April with mem­bers of the East Cairngorm Moor­land Part­ner­ship to dis­cuss moor­land man­age­ment, peat­land res­tor­a­tion and deer man­age­ment. We are work­ing with estates in the ECMP on com­mu­nic­a­tions to high­light where moor­land man­age­ment deliv­ers the object­ives in the NPPP and to agree an action plan for this year and beyond.

   At a nation­al level CNPA are rep­res­en­ted on the Grouse Moor Licens­ing Board which is devel­op­ing new legis­la­tion which will cov­er grouse shoot­ing and muir­burn. We have held inform­al dis­cus­sions with numer­ous grouse estates on how best to make licens­ing work. This work is pro­gress­ing rap­idly and the aim is for pro­pos­als to be sub­ject to a pub­lic con­sulta­tion in the autumn.

6. Deer Man­age­ment: Open range red deer were coun­ted across most of the Park in March 2022. Res­ults provide an up to date estim­ate of deer num­bers for both estates and agen­cies and will feed into the Stra­tegic Land Use Plans (SLUP) being developed across three Deer Man­age­ment Groups (DMGs). Work has now begun on devel­op­ing the SLUPs for the West Grampi­ans DMG and for South Deeside and North Angus DMG. The ten­der­ing pro­cess for work with the South Grampi­ans DMG was unsuc­cess­ful and we are cur­rently try­ing to devel­op an altern­at­ive solu­tion. CNPA staff are dir­ectly involved in the tak­ing for­ward the recom­mend­a­tions of the Deer Work­ing Group and the CNPA CEO chairs the work­stream to devel­op incent­ives for bet­ter deer man­age­ment as well as sit­ting on the Stra­tegic Board.
7. Man­aging for Vis­it­ors: The Man­aging for Vis­it­ors group is now meet­ing fort­nightly and will do so until the end of Octo­ber. Over­all feed­back from key hot­spots sites remains pos­it­ive with staff and infra­struc­ture largely able to cope with the vis­it­or num­bers and pres­sures. This reflects the nation­al pic­ture with most hot­spot areas in Scot­land, such as East Lothi­an, North West High­lands and High­land Perth­shire, being busy but able to cope with demands. RSPB Scot­land are recruit­ing addi­tion­al ranger staff at Aber­nethy NNR.
8. Tread Lightly in the Park: The gen­er­al Tread Lightly in the Park leaf­let has been updated and is being dis­trib­uted to loc­a­tions around the Park and sur­round­ing areas via Land­mark Press. Two new Tread Lightly in the Park posters have been developed with mes­saging around dogs in the coun­tryside using the ​‘Take the Lead’ strap­line (live­stock and ground nest­ing birds). These have been prin­ted and are avail­able to land man­agers and ranger ser­vices on request.

9. Long Dis­tance Routes: Spey­side Way improve­ments con­tin­ue to be pro­gressed fol­low­ing delays res­ult­ing from Cov­id restric­tions with repairs to the path at Insh vil­lage car­ried out suc­cess­fully late last year and more recently a full sur­face upgrade to the exist­ing path at Drumguish was com­pleted in late Feb­ru­ary. Sig­nage upgrades to be com­pleted between Insh and Ruthven Bar­racks over the next few months. Addi­tion­al sig­nage will be installed along Grampi­an Road in Aviemore over the sum­mer to improve nav­ig­a­tion between the north­ern and south­ern ends of the town with work also being car­ried out to design and imple­ment gradi­ent reduc­tion meas­ures at two loc­a­tions south of Aviemore near Spey­bank and Kinrara.

   Works have com­menced on the Brae­mar to Kei­loch path the main focus being hand build­ing the middle sec­tion that tra­verses steep ground next to the road­side. A review is about to start at the sec­tion on the north side of the Dee at the Kei­loch to find the best line. Dis­cus­sions with the estate and plan­ning author­ity will be under­taken over the next few months to final­ise that new line.

10. Act­ive Cairngorms: A new com­munity path leaf­let has been pro­duced and prin­ted for Kin­craig. The path leaf­lets for Aviemore, Grant­own-on-Spey and Kin­gussie have also been updated, re-prin­ted and dis­trib­uted. Over the sum­mer month’s staff will be work­ing with the com­munit­ies of Strath­don and New­ton­more to update their path leaflets.
11. Ranger Ser­vices: The CNPA Ranger Ser­vice is fully oper­a­tion­al this sea­son. We have recruited 4 train­ee rangers who will begin on 20^th June and we are recruit­ing two more sea­son­al Rangers for Deeside. Col­lab­or­a­tion with part­ner Ranger Ser­vices is going very well with pro­cesses and pro­ced­ures now well-known after two years of operation.
12. Volun­teer­ing and Health Walks: Becky Wilson has joined us as Volun­teer­ing Man­ager filling in for Mike Woolv­in. We are increas­ing the num­ber of oppor­tun­it­ies for volun­teers and for Volun­teer Rangers through con­tin­ued col­lab­or­a­tion with partners.

Rur­al Development

1. Plan­ning Guid­ance: The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee recently approved Devel­op Oblig­a­tions and design and Place­mak­ing Sup­ple­ment­ary Guid­ance for sub­mis­sion to Scot­tish Min­is­ters and will be asked to approve Hous­ing Sup­ple­ment­ary Guid­ance in June 2022 as the final ele­ment of guid­ance to accom­pany the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2021.
2. Plan­ning Case­work: Over the past three months, the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee has approved hous­ing in Kil­liecrankie, estate/​farm work­ers hous­ing on Bal­avil Estate and the redevel­op­ment of the Stru­an Hotel in Car­rbridge as afford­able hous­ing by High­land Coun­cil. The Com­mit­tee also approved short sec­tions of vehicle access track and a small net­work of moun­tain bike tracks on Cairngorm Moun­tain and refused an applic­a­tion for chalet accom­mod­a­tion asso­ci­ated with the Clova Hotel in Glen Clova. We expect an applic­a­tion for com­munity-led afford­able hous­ing in Brae­mar to be presen­ted to the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee in June 2022.
3. Hous­ing Deliv­ery: The Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Com­munit­ies team has wel­comed Kirsty Part­ridge into post this quarter, with a back­ground in hous­ing and rur­al devel­op­ment, pre­vi­ously work­ing with the Com­munit­ies Hous­ing Trust (CHT). We will con­tin­ue to work with com­munit­ies iden­ti­fied through our ongo­ing work with Cairngorm Busi­ness Part­ner­ship and those iden­ti­fied through Com­munity Action Plan­ning who are look­ing to devel­op afford­able hous­ing. Glen­liv­et and Tomin­toul Devel­op­ment Trust (GTDT) are in the pro­cess of apply­ing for Stage I feas­ib­il­ity Rur­al Hous­ing Fund for the former High­land Spring site in Braes of Glen­liv­et. We are in sup­port of this applic­a­tion for fund­ing. Their con­struc­tion of 12 new afford­able houses, delivered by TGDT are slightly delayed, and likely to be avail­able by August 2022 in the former school site.

4. Well­being Eco­nomy: WEAll Scot­land are con­tinu­ing to pro­gress the devel­op­ment stage of this work as part of Her­it­age Hori­zons: Cairngorms 2030. Ques­tions were included in Cairngorm Busi­ness Part­ner­ship Busi­ness Baro­met­er for QI to invest­ig­ate levels of under­stand­ing and atti­tudes to a well­being eco­nomy, which sug­gest cur­rently a low level of know­ledge amongst busi­nesses but a high level of interest to learn more and get to be involved.

   Key stake­hold­ers have been iden­ti­fied, and the mon­it­or­ing, eval­u­ation and learn­ing approach has been agreed between CNPA and WEAll Pro­ject lead. The work is pro­gress­ing to estab­lish a work­ing group and an update to be provided to the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group on 6^th June.

5. Tour­ism Action Plan: Our 4^th sub­mis­sion for Charter accred­it­a­tion is due to take place in Decem­ber 2022, plan­ning for the peri­od 2023 – 2027. In the pre­vi­ous sub­mis­sion, for the peri­od 2017 – 2022, the main strategy doc­u­ment sub­mit­ted was the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan for that peri­od. This reflec­ted a hol­ist­ic view of sus­tain­able tourism’s links to, and inter­de­pend­ence with, oth­er areas of policy with­in the plan. A more focused and tar­geted action plan for tour­ism is cur­rently being developed to set out deliv­ery pri­or­it­ies. A work­shop to devel­op this fur­ther will take place at the 15^th June Cairngorm Tour­ism Part­ner­ship to devel­op the TAP fur­ther and will come back to the CNPA Board dur­ing Autumn, pri­or to EURO­PARC sub­mis­sion dur­ing December.
6. Tour­ism and Busi­ness Data: BB Sum­mary The Quarter I sum­mary from the Cairngorm Busi­ness Baro­met­er is avail­able [here](available here). Key high­lights high­light that most busi­nesses are able to oper­ate at nor­mal levels, with ³⁄₅ busi­nesses report­ing high­er num­bers of cus­tom­ers and turnover than the same peri­od in 2021, or Q4 in 2021 for com­par­is­on. There are con­cerns over bar­ri­ers to growth, which are hav­ing a neg­at­ive impact on busi­nesses, primar­ily staff costs, sup­pli­er costs, and suit­able hous­ing for staff to live in.

7. Glen­more Sus­tain­able Trans­port Plan: Traffic mon­it­or­ing took place around Aviemore and Glen­more over the East­er week­end. This traffic inform­a­tion will help inform fur­ther work that seeks to change the way people travel along the road between Aviemore and Cairngorm Moun­tain. At the end of April, Grant Moir and Gav­in Miles intro­duced the wider Plan to loc­al res­id­ents and busi­nesses in Glen­more, at Glen­more Lodge.

   Pro­ject plan­ning is under­way for the major­ity of the Her­it­age Hori­zons: Cairngorms 2030 sus­tain­able and act­ive travel projects.

   The team have begun early stake­hold­er engage­ment, includ­ing set­ting up a Park-wide steer­ing group (next meet­ing on 8^th June).

   Con­sult­ants have been appoin­ted for the Act­ive Aviemore and Cairngorm Act­ive Travel Plan pro­jects who will work with the CNPA team in the devel­op­ment phase.

Stake­hold­er Engagement

1. Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan: Work is ongo­ing to pull togeth­er final mater­i­als for NPPP4, includ­ing a com­pre­hens­ive pdf/​print ver­sion, access­ible Word doc­u­ment, update­able micros­ite, NPPP3 sum­mary report, con­sulta­tion response report and a doordrop sum­mar­ising the final plan and out­lining next steps. A draft of the main pdf doc­u­ment and con­sulta­tion response report are being pulled togeth­er, and once these are signed off post-board meet­ing on 10 June we will con­vert them into online / doordrop resources for dis­tri­bu­tion later in the summer.

   To keep people in the loop with devel­op­ments on the Park Plan, we have been drip-feed­ing a series of infograph­ics and case stud­ies ([see a Nature example here](see a Nature example here)), which have also been shared with the 900+ sub­scribers we’ve engaged through the Com­mon­place plat­form. Con­tent has included a timeline of what hap­pens next, sum­mar­ies of key find­ings from each of the Nature, People and Place sec­tions, and a couple of thought pieces from third parties on themes emer­ging from the con­sulta­tion pro­cess ([see Clare Cooper example here](see Clare Cooper example here)).

   Fol­low­ing an online protest by Grampi­an Moor­land Group / SGA on 20 April, we [pub­lished a full statement](published a full state­ment) respond­ing to key issues raised and cir­cu­lated it to the media. We also [pub­lished a series of FAQs](published a series of FAQs) to address a num­ber of ques­tions that had raised, pro­duced a 500-word art­icle for SLE’s Land Busi­ness magazine, and reached out off­line to rep­res­ent­at­ives from a num­ber of the parties involved.

2. Min­is­teri­al vis­it: In April we coordin­ated a vis­it from Lor­na Slater MSP, Min­is­ter for Green Skills, Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy and Biod­iversity to the east of the Park. Dur­ing her vis­it Ms Slater met up with mem­bers of the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship, took in river res­tor­a­tion work on the River Dee and eco­sys­tem res­tor­a­tion at Mar Lodge Estate, and dis­cussed efforts to tackle rap­tor per­se­cu­tion with the North East Rap­tor Study Group.

3. NLHF vis­it: We wel­comed a del­eg­a­tion from the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund at the end of April, to hear more about the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­gramme and to see work on the ground as part of the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject. Feed­back from the group was over­whelm­ingly pos­it­ive, with our pro­gress to date in line with or ahead of oth­ers who have received Her­it­age Hori­zons funding.

   We held a num­ber of stake­hold­er engage­ment work­shops for Her­it­age Hori­zons, bring­ing togeth­er rep­res­ent­at­ives from all 24 pro­jects to ensure our work with com­munit­ies is fully coordin­ated. A month-by-month timeline of activ­ity has been cre­ated, broken down by audi­ence and engage­ment type, along­side an inter­act­ive map of where activ­ity is due to take place. We are now explor­ing ways to com­bine / move stake­hold­er engage­ment activ­ity to avoid con­sulta­tion fatigue and ensure our mes­sage is clearly understood.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions

1. Act­ive Cairngorms: We are work­ing with the Leith Agency to pull togeth­er a digit­al advert­ising cam­paign on vis­it­or man­age­ment, spe­cific­ally tar­get­ing those audi­ences we don’t reach through our stand­ard chan­nels. The cam­paign, which is due to go live in June, will mostly be driv­en through Face­book and Ins­tagram, and will focus on areas includ­ing respons­ible dog walk­ing, wild­fires, lit­ter, toi­let­ing and wild camp­ing. The cam­paign will take a pos­it­ive approach from the out­set, build­ing on the premise that people want to do the right thing but don’t always know how. We are also work­ing with CBP to revis­it #Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er frame­work as part of this pro­cess as, whilst much of the frame­work is still val­id, our approach needs a bit of updat­ing post-lockdown.

   Along­side the cam­paign, we con­tin­ue to pro­duce reg­u­lar man­aging for vis­it­ors’ con­tent, includ­ing a recent blog about respons­ible dog walk­ing (and ground-nest­ing bird impacts), an intro­duc­tion to our new CNPA ranger team, and reg­u­lar wild­fire warn­ings in light of the recent peri­od of dry weather.

   A spe­cif­ic man­aging for vis­it­ors’ comms rota con­tin­ues to prove use­ful at week­ends, with updates from part­ner estates and ranger ser­vices being col­lated and triaged via a cent­ral ranger What­s­App group and flagged to the Comms team for post­ing across our social media and web­site channels.

2. Cairngorms Nature: The Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end has dom­in­ated pub­lic engage­ment activ­ity over recent months, with the team pre­par­ing for the first in-per­son fest­iv­al for two years. Kick­ing off the week­end (on Thursday 12 May) was a pan­el event called Land­scape and Live­li­hoods, hos­ted by TV Nat­ur­al­ist and wild­life film­maker Gor­don Buchanan. The event looked at how we should approach nature recov­ery in a liv­ing, work­ing Nation­al Park, achiev­ing our cli­mate and biod­iversity com­mit­ments whilst also sup­port­ing rur­al jobs and employment.

   In addi­tion to a [brand new website](brand new web­site) and paid social media activ­ity, we pro­moted the BIG Week­end through a part­ner­ship with Scotland4Kids magazine, posters in key com­munity hot­spots, a part­ner toolkit of resources, and a doordrop to thou­sands of house­holds with­in and just out­side the Park boundary.

3. Press and media: We have been work­ing with CBP and Janice Forsyth’s The Big Light on a four-part pod­cast series called Cairngorms Char­ac­ters. The series show­cases the con­nec­tion our res­id­ents have with the Cairngorm Nation­al Park and the influ­ence the land­scape has on them and their busi­nesses. The series fea­tures 12 ​‘voices of the Nation­al Park’ – inspired in part by the Year of Scotland’s Stor­ies 2022 – cov­er­ing themes such as nature and the out­doors, food and drink, storytelling and sports.

   The first epis­ode launched in time for the Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end on 12 May and you can now [down­load all of the epis­odes here](download all of the epis­odes here). We plan to use the pod­cast as a proof of concept, and to inform dis­cus­sions with BBC Scot­land over a longer-term broad­cast plus pod­cast series on the people of the Nation­al Park.

4. Her­it­age Hori­zons: With the major­ity of the staff team now in place and vari­ous con­sult­ants appoin­ted across the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­gramme, we are now able to provide more detail on how the 24 pro­jects will pro­ceed over the next 12 months. Cent­ral to this is the cre­ation of a new three-minute film – pro­duced by the team behind our ori­gin­al promo video – which explains how the pro­ject hangs togeth­er and provides more detail about the indi­vidu­al pro­jects involved. You can [view the new film here](view the new film here), along­side the ori­gin­al film we sub­mit­ted to NLHF last year.

   Along­side this, we have fully updated the [Her­it­age Hori­zons page](Heritage Hori­zons page) of the web­site; cre­ated a new [over­view presentation](overview present­a­tion) for use with intern­al and extern­al audi­ences; and cre­ated short, medi­um and long-format descrip­tions and key mes­sages to be used by HH staff, part­ners and con­sult­ants. This should help stand­ard­ise both the look and feel, and the over­all storyline of the pro­gramme going forward.

5. Web­site and social media: Work has star­ted on the web­site redevel­op­ment pro­ject, which will ulti­mately lead to the devel­op­ment of a full tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tion and suite of user jour­neys for a new web­site with­in the next six to 12 months. The work is due to be com­pleted by the end of the sum­mer. We will be hold­ing a series of audi­ence work­shops over the next month or so with a range of key user groups to help us bet­ter under­stand their exper­i­ences of the cur­rent site and expect­a­tions going for­ward. We have already held a work­shop with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, explor­ing how cairngorms​.co​.uk inter­acts (or doesn’t) with vis​it​cairngorms​.com from a vis­it­or and busi­ness per­spect­ive at present.

   We are cur­rently sourcing and cur­at­ing con­tent for our new [Cairngorms Voices](Cairngorms Voices) plat­form, in cel­eb­ra­tion of 2022’s Year of Scotland’s Stor­ies. The plat­form has been designed to show­case the many and var­ied voices of the Nation­al Park, from CNPA staff to res­id­ents, land man­agers, busi­nesses, con­ser­va­tion part­ners etc. In time, it will play host to blogs, photo stor­ies, audio and video record­ings etc., provid­ing a human snap­shot of the people of the Park. This will com­ple­ment the new pod­cast series we have been work­ing on with CBP and The Big Light (see above).

6. Pub­lic­a­tions and brand­ing: We appoin­ted cre­at­ive agency Bright Sig­nals to lead our brand­ing review pro­ject towards the end of March and have held a num­ber of intern­al work­shops to inform the devel­op­ment of a ​‘brand wheel’ and brand hier­archy pro­pos­al. We will bring these to the board to review in the Autumn. Along­side this, we have also con­duc­ted a review into cur­rent CNP pho­to­graphy and iden­ti­fied a lack of high qual­ity, up-to-date imagery of people with­in the Nation­al Park (includ­ing imagery that cel­eb­rates the diverse range of audi­ences we engage with). We are work­ing with a num­ber of pho­to­graph­ers to cap­ture spe­cif­ic imagery e.g. of land man­age­ment activ­it­ies, eth­nic minor­ity and dis­abled vis­it­ors / res­id­ents with­in the Park, urb­an envir­on­ments in the Park, fam­il­ies enjoy­ing nature, act­ive travel etc.

   We have scoped out the costs of design­ing, print­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing a reg­u­lar print news­let­ter for the Park and included this in the budget for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ on the basis of three issues per year. The first of these will take the form of the NPPP4 doordrop, but we plan to deliv­er a news­let­ter in the new format before the end of the year.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development

1. Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning (BCP) Increas­ing num­bers of staff are now access­ing the office and we have come to the end of the ini­tial 3 month phased return peri­od. From June, staff are expec­ted to work in the office for 50% of their con­trac­tu­al hours unless they have spe­cific­ally applied for addi­tion­al home working.

2. Staff­ing update: Since March, staff­ing updates to 31^st May are as fol­lows: a) Staff who left the organ­isa­tion were: i. Vicky Ander­son, Strath­spey Farm­land Wader Office. End of Fixed term con­tract. ii. Pete Crane retired as Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices. Colin Simpson appoin­ted to replace Pete, start­ing at the end of June. iii. Vicky Walk­er left as Gov­ernance, Data and Report­ing Man­ager. This post is cur­rently being recruited iv. Andy Dav­ies, Con­ser­va­tion Officer. End of fixed term con­tract v. Vanessa Alt­weck, Admin Intern. End of fixed term con­tract vi. Sian Jam­ieson, Digit­al Con­tent Man­ager. This post is cur­rently being recruited. vii. Steph­en Corcor­an, Peat­land Action Man­ager. This post has been re spe­cified into two posts which are cur­rently being recruited

   b) Extern­al appoint­ments, fol­low­ing a com­pet­it­ive extern­al recruit­ment pro­cess were as fol­lows: i. Sev­er­al Sea­son­al Rangers joined in March/​April – Blair John­ston, Gil­lian Gib­son, Tony Seivwright, Vicky Ing­lis, Craig Fraser and Scott Hast­ings were all re-appoin­ted after serving in the 2021 Sea­son, with Andy Kirk and Fiona Brewis newly appoin­ted. See Youth Employ­ment Update below ii. Fiona McIn­ally joined as Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Com­munit­ies Man­ager, repla­cing Liz Hende­r­son who moved into the Infra­struc­ture Man­ager post iii. Kirsty Part­ridge joined as Rur­al Devel­op­ment Officer, repla­cing Tania Alli­od who moved in to one of the Her­it­age Hori­zons posts iv. Becky Wilson joined as Volun­teer­ing Man­ager repla­cing Mike Woolv­in who moved into one of the Her­it­age Hori­zons posts v. Emma Green­lees joined as Plan­ning Sup­port Officer, repla­cing Dot Har­ris who moved to the Peat­land team vi. Elly Mil­ne joined as Payroll, Accounts and Fin­ance Officer. Replace­ment post fol­low­ing restruc­ture with­in the Fin­ance Team.

3. Youth Employ­ment: a) Rangers: Danny O’Brien, one of last year’s Kick­start Train­ee Rangers suc­cess­fully applied for a Sea­son­al Ranger post this year. He was joined by Douglas Car­chrie who was one of last year’s interns. It is encour­aging to see our invest­ment in youth employ­ment reap­ing such pos­it­ive res­ults. b) Work Exper­i­ence: — Two young people (one from Grant­own Gram­mar and one from Kin­gussie High School) have been placed with the Author­ity dur­ing term time on work exper­i­ence oppor­tun­it­ies with­in the Ranger team.
4. Equal­it­ies: The Author­ity has signed up to the LGBT Charter. This is an award which recog­nises LGBT inclu­sion in every aspect of our work. The pro­gramme will sup­port us to under­take train­ing and review policies, prac­tice and resources to make sure we are meet­ing legis­lat­ive needs, but are also as inclus­ive as we can be,
5. LEADER/​Cairngorms Trust: Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment are rolling out fund­ing for Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) activ­ity to replace LEAD­ER. Around £7 mil­lion has been made avail­able for this nation­ally and Cairngorms has con­tin­ued to be recog­nised as a dis­tinct admin­is­trat­ive area for this fund­ing, which deliv­ers against pri­or­it­ies of our trans­ition­al stra­tegic plan and devel­op­ing Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. Cairngorms Trust act­ing as the Cairngorms Loc­al Actions Group (CLAG) has been offered an indic­at­ive alloc­a­tion of fund­ing for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ of £230,000. The cri­ter­ia for fund­ing deploy­ment on CLLD are yet to be agreed by Cairngorms Trust, and any con­di­tions to be estab­lished by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment for use of these funds are yet to be determined.
6. Cairngorms Trust: Char­ity activ­it­ies and vol­un­tary giv­ing: Cairngorms Trust are in the pro­cess of rein­vig­or­at­ing the evol­u­tion and imple­ment­a­tion of the vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme as we move fur­ther out of COV­ID restric­tions. Just under £2,000 was received from vari­ous dona­tions sources in the last quarter, con­tinu­ing the pat­tern seen over recent peri­ods. The char­ity has also of course been a valu­able part­ner in sup­port­ing the access to replace­ment CLLD fund­ing and wider grant giv­ing activities.

Grant Moir June 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 10^th June 2022

Board Con­vener Report – For Information

Extern­al Engage­ments (28 Feb­ru­ary 2022 – 31 May 2022)

In addi­tion to sched­uled Board meet­ings and intern­al meet­ings, I have atten­ded the fol­low­ing extern­al engage­ments in my capa­city as Con­vener of the Board since our last Board meeting.

Date	Engage­ment	Ven­ue
21/03/22	Con­ven­tion of the High­lands & Islands (CoHI) Spring meeting	Online
12/4/22	Upper Deeside Water Man­age­ment Group	Brae­mar
13/5/22	Min­is­teri­al Meet­ing with Lor­na Slater	Online
24/5/22	Alex Hogg, Scot­tish Game­keep­ers Association	Blair Atholl
24/5/22	Chair­man of Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship (CBP)	Blair Atholl
26/5/22	Chair­man of Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land (OATS)	Online

Xan­der McDade Board Convener

Oth­er Board Mem­ber Engage­ment Updates:

Car­o­lyn Cad­dick (Board Deputy Convener)

Date	Engage­ment	Ven­ue
13/5/22	Min­is­teri­al Meet­ing with Lor­na Slater	Bal­loch
2−6÷5÷22	Euro­parc Conference	Aus­tria
16/5/22	Open­ing of Aviemore Com­munity Hos­pit­al Ceremony	Aviemore
23/5/22	UKNP Chairs Forum	Online
24/5/22	Alex Hogg, Scot­tish Game­keep­ers Association	Blair Atholl
24/5/22	Chair­man of Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship (CBP)	Blair Atholl