Okay, here’s the Mark­down con­ver­sion of the doc­u­ment. I’ve pre­served the document’s struc­ture, includ­ing head­ings, sub­head­ings, bul­let points, and even image cap­tions. Note that the image of the maps on page 13 couldn’t be dir­ectly con­ver­ted into Mark­down. You’ll need to manu­ally insert images if needed.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 Annex 2 10^th June 2022

Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan con­sulta­tion report

Res­ults from the form­al con­sulta­tion peri­od, held between 23 Septem­ber and 17 Decem­ber 2021

Con­tents

1. Sum­mary of engage­ment activ­ity … 3

2. Intro­duc­tion … 4

   2.1 Back­ground to the part­ner­ship plan … 4 2.2 Over­view of the con­sulta­tion … 4 2.3 How the con­sulta­tion was pro­moted … 5 2.4 Organ­isa­tion­al and group responses … 6

3. Demo­graph­ic inform­a­tion … 7

   3.1 Ques­tions asked dur­ing the con­sulta­tion … 7 3.2 Gender … 7 3.3 Sexu­al­ity … 8 3.4 Eth­ni­city … 9 3.5 Dis­ab­il­ity … 10 3.6 Con­nec­tion to the Nation­al Park … 11 3.7 Age range … 12 3.8 Geo­graphy … 13 3.9 Employ­ment status … 15

4. Nature … 16

   4.1 Num­ber and type of response … 16 4.2 Sum­mary of feed­back … 16 4.3 Ana­lys­is of responses … 17 4.4 Con­clu­sion … 23

5. People … 24

   5.1 Num­ber and type of response … 24 5.2 Sum­mary of feed­back … 24 5.3 Ana­lys­is of responses … 25 5.4 Con­clu­sion … 29

6. Place … 30

   6.1 Num­ber and type of response … 30 6.2 Sum­mary of feed­back … 30 6.3 Ana­lys­is of responses … 31 6.4 Con­clu­sion … 35

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1. Sum­mary of engage­ment activity

• 85 days of form­al consultation
• 13 coun­tries rep­res­en­ted in the final results
• 250,000 reached via social media channels
• 12,163 post­cards sent to residents
• 11,080 vis­its to the Com­mon­place site
• 501 est. attendees at nearly 40 events
• 3,673 social likes, shares and comments
• 50+ responses from part­ner organisations
• 1,453 responses to form­al consultation
• 17 in-depth inter­views with tar­get groups

Cov­er image: Ross Eld­er. Icons by Alex Martyn­ov, Cha­nut is Indus­tries, Col­ourCreatype, Fasil, MD Bad­sha Meah, Muhammad Haq, Raj Dev and Reda on freeicons​.io.

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2. Intro­duc­tion

2.1 Back­ground to the part­ner­ship plan

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity is in the pro­cess of pro­du­cing a new Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan for the peri­od 2023 – 2027. The part­ner­ship plan is the man­age­ment plan for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park and sets out how all those with a respons­ib­il­ity for the Nation­al Park will co-ordin­ate their work to tackle the most import­ant issues. In par­tic­u­lar, the plan:

• Sets out the vis­ion and over­arch­ing strategy for man­aging the Nation­al Park.
• Guides the work of all pub­lic bod­ies and oth­er part­ners to deliv­er the aims of the Nation­al Park.
• Provides the stra­tegic con­text for the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan.
• Is the Stra­tegic Region­al Land Use Frame­work and Region­al Spa­tial Strategy for the Nation­al Park.
• Is the Eco­nom­ic and Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Strategy for the Nation­al Park.

The doc­u­ment is arranged in three sec­tions: Nature, People and Place. In each sec­tion, we set out on over­all out­come that we want to achieve by 2045 (the year Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted to achiev­ing net zero), plus a series of long-term object­ives and key tar­gets or indic­at­ors of pro­gress. Each of these tar­gets is sup­por­ted by a set of actions and policies for the next five years.

2.2 Over­view of the consultation

In order to inform the devel­op­ment of the new part­ner­ship plan, two phases of con­sulta­tion were planned for the second half of 2021: an inform­al phase to estab­lish key themes and talk­ing points, and a form­al phase for stake­hold­ers to feed­back on a draft part­ner­ship document.

The inform­al con­sulta­tion launched on 15 June and ran until Septem­ber. It was built around a ded­ic­ated micros­ite using the Com­mon­place plat­form, and was sup­por­ted by a vari­ety of media, web­site and social media pro­mo­tion. In total, 279 detailed responses were received, plus a fur­ther 185 com­ments gathered through social media activ­ity, and a smal­ler num­ber (c. 20) of face-to-face qual­it­at­ive interviews.

Fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the inform­al phase – and util­ising feed­back from par­ti­cipants — a draft con­sulta­tion doc­u­ment was pro­duced in mid-Septem­ber to seek views on:

• The big chal­lenges that need to be addressed with­in the Nation­al Park across each of the Nature, People and Place themes.
• The extent to which people agreed or dis­agreed with the pro­pos­als as outlined.
• The actions and pro­posed policy dir­ec­tion required to help deliv­er on these objectives.
• Wheth­er there was any­thing miss­ing from the draft plan as outlined.

The form­al phase of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan con­sulta­tion launched on Thursday 23 Septem­ber and ran until 17 Decem­ber 2021, with the draft plan made avail­able via a ded­ic­ated Com­mon­place web­site, long-format pdf, print and screen read­er-friendly ver­sions. In total, 1,453 responses were received online, via email and by post, as com­pared with a total of 319 for the equi­val­ent con­sulta­tion five years ago.

This report was pro­duced by mem­bers of the Park Author­ity Plan­ning and Com­mu­nic­a­tions teams, who read through all 1,400+ responses in full between Decem­ber and Janu­ary 2022. The report provides an ana­lys­is of responses to the form­al con­sulta­tion, sum­mar­ises over­all responses as well as the demo­graph­ics of those who took part, and attempts to identi­fy key trends and issues that were raised by par­ti­cipants. This doc­u­ment was designed to inform dis­cus­sions around the final ver­sion of the part­ner­ship plan, which was due to be agreed by the Park Author­ity board and by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters in sum­mer 2022.

2.3 How the con­sulta­tion was promoted

The draft part­ner­ship plan was pro­moted extens­ively both on and off­line dur­ing the con­sulta­tion, with ded­ic­ated press releases and videos cre­ated, includ­ing a part­ner­ship with the Press and Journ­al and Inverness Cour­i­er, and paid advert­ising in the Deeside and Don­side Piper, Strath­spey Her­ald and the Dun­dee Cour­i­er. This was accom­pan­ied by a paid social media advert­ising cam­paign, tar­get­ing a range of audi­ences includ­ing loc­al res­id­ents, work­ers and vis­it­ors to the Nation­al Park.

A toolkit with resources for e‑newsletters, social media and print pub­lic­a­tions was cir­cu­lated to hun­dreds of part­ner organ­isa­tions, posters and fly­ers were dis­trib­uted to com­munit­ies and busi­nesses across the Nation­al Park, and a leaf­let was sent to every house­hold in the area, explain­ing how people could get involved.

Although the ongo­ing impact of Cov­id-19 lim­ited the num­ber of face-to-face ses­sions car­ried out, around 40 events did take place with a range of audi­ences, includ­ing com­munity groups, schools, farm­ers and oth­er land man­agers, and loc­al busi­nesses. Over 500 people and 50+ organ­isa­tions were engaged through these activities.

Along­side the Park Authority’s own engage­ment activ­it­ies, an inde­pend­ent mar­ket research agency (Scot­in­form) was com­mis­sioned to con­duct 17 one-to-one inter­views with audi­ences that were under-rep­res­en­ted in the last con­sulta­tion exer­cise five years

2.4 Organ­isa­tion­al and group responses

Responses to the draft plan were received from the fol­low­ing organ­isa­tions and groups: Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil, Alford Academy, Alvie Estate, Angus Coun­cil, Asso­ci­ation of Deer Man­age­ment Groups, Atholl Estates, Aviemore and Glen­more Com­munity Trust, Avoch­ie Estate, Back­bone CIC, Badenoch and Strath­spey Con­ser­va­tion Group, Badenoch Her­it­age, Bòrd na Gàidh­lig, Cairngorm Moun­tain, Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, The Cairngorms Cam­paign, Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el, Cairngorms Out­door Access For­um, Cawdor Estate, Crown Estate Scot­land, Dal­housie Estate, Dee Dis­trict Sal­mon Fish­ery Board, Dun­echt Estates, Game and Wild­life Con­ser­va­tion Trust, Grampi­an Moor­land Group, Grant­own and Vicin­ity Com­munity Coun­cil, The High­land Coun­cil, His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment Scot­land, John Muir Trust, Kin­gussie and Vicin­ity Com­munity Coun­cil, Kin­gussie Com­munity Devel­op­ment Com­pany, Nation­al Trust for Scot­land (Mar Lodge Estate), NatureScot, Nes­trans, North East Moun­tain Trust, Paths for All, Plant Link Scot­land (incor­por­at­ing Plant­life Scot­land, the Botan­ic­al Soci­ety of Bri­tain and Ire­land and the Brit­ish Bry­olo­gic­al Soci­ety), Ram­blers Scot­land, Rewild­ing Bri­tain, River South Esk Catch­ment Part­ner­ship, Rothiemurchus, Roy­al Zoolo­gic­al Soci­ety of Scot­land, RSPB Scot­land, Scot­tish Enter­prise, Scot­tish Envir­on­ment LINK, Scot­tish Game­keep­ers’ Asso­ci­ation, Scot­tish Land and Estates, South Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group, Strat­hearn and Spey­side Moor­land Group, Upper Deeside and Don­side Land Man­age­ment Group, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire, Vis­itScot­land, West Grampi­an Moor­land Group, and the Wood­land Crofts Partnership.

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3. Demo­graph­ic information

3.1 Ques­tions asked dur­ing the consultation

Over the course of the three-month con­sulta­tion, demo­graph­ic inform­a­tion was col­lec­ted via Com­mon­place (in line with GDPR reg­u­la­tions) to ensure we reached as rep­res­ent­at­ive an audi­ence pos­sible. We also com­mit­ted to cap­tur­ing and report­ing on this inform­a­tion as part of our pub­lic sec­tor equal­it­ies duty.

The Park Authority’s Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el fed into what type of inform­a­tion would be col­lec­ted, and the fol­low­ing ques­tions were taken forward:

• What is your gender?
• Which of the fol­low­ing best describes your sexu­al orientation?
• What is your eth­nic group?
• Do you have any phys­ic­al or men­tal health con­di­tions or ill­nesses last­ing, or expec­ted to last, 12 months or more?
• What is your con­nec­tion to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park?
• What is your age group?
• Where do you cur­rently live?
• What is your home post­code (if applicable)?
• What is your employ­ment status?

3.2 Gender

570 people chose to answer this ques­tion, out of a total of just under 1,300 responses received via Com­mon­place (around 44%). Responses broke down as follows:

• Female 38%
• Oth­er 3%
• Prefer not to say 2%
• Male 57%

Fig­ure 1 — Break­down of responses to gender ques­tion, n=570

Accord­ing to Scotland’s Census (from 27 March 2011) – which only provided two gender options (male or female) – women made up 51% of the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion and men 49%. The equi­val­ent fig­ures for the Nation­al Park area were 50% female and 50% male, sug­gest­ing that responses to the con­sulta­tion skewed male.

Whilst not included in the last census, an NHS report pub­lished in May 2018 cited an estim­ate of 0.5% of the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion identi­fy­ing as trans­gender; mean­while, 6.9% of respond­ents to the UK Government’s Nation­al LGBT Sur­vey iden­ti­fied as non-bin­ary, and a fur­ther 0.9% as oth­er. The fig­ure for part­ner­ship plan responses sits some­where between these vari­ous estimates.

3.3 Sexu­al­ity

343 people chose to answer this ques­tion, out of a total of just under 1,300 responses received via Com­mon­place (around 27%). Responses broke down as follows:

• Gay or les­bi­an 3%
• Bisexu­al 3%
• Prefer not to say 10%
• Het­ero­sexu­al 84%

Fig­ure 2 — Break­down of responses to sexu­al­ity ques­tion, n=343

By way of com­par­is­on, a 2015 report from the Office of Nation­al Stat­ist­ics (ONS) sug­ges­ted that 95% of the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion iden­ti­fied as het­ero­sexu­al, 1.0% as gay or les­bi­an, 0.6% as bisexu­al, 0.4% oth­er, and 2.8% prefer not to say.

3.4 Eth­ni­city

542 people chose to answer this ques­tion, out of a total of just under 1,300 responses received via Com­mon­place (around 42%). Responses broke down as follows:

• Mixed / mul­tiple eth­nic group 1.5%
• White – Oth­er 6%
• Prefer not to say 0.5%
• White — Oth­er Brit­ish 41%
• White — Scot­tish 51%

Fig­ure 3 — Break­down of responses to eth­ni­city ques­tion, n=542

The 2011 census repor­ted that 96% of Scotland’s pop­u­la­tion was White, with 91.8% identi­fy­ing as either White – Scot­tish or White – Oth­er Brit­ish. 4.2% of people iden­ti­fied as Pol­ish, Irish, Gypsy/​Traveller or White – Oth­er. The pop­u­la­tion of Asi­an, Afric­an, Carib­bean or Black, Mixed or Oth­er eth­nic groups was 4%.

Across the five loc­al author­ity areas of the Nation­al Park, 81.8% iden­ti­fied as Scot­tish, 12.8% as Oth­er Brit­ish, 4.0% as Pol­ish, Irish, Gypsy/​Traveller or White – Oth­er, and 1.5% as Asi­an, Afric­an, Carib­bean or Black, Mixed or Oth­er eth­nic groups. Whilst the fig­ures above do not include indi­vidu­als engaged through Scotinform’s depth inter­views, or from organ­isa­tions such as Back­bone, Equal Adven­ture and All The Ele­ments, it is clear that more work is required to fully engage a range of eth­nic minor­ity com­munit­ies in future con­sulta­tions, some­thing we are explor­ing as part of a nation­al part­ner­ship between Nation­al Parks UK and All The Elements.

3.5 Dis­ab­il­ity

539 people chose to answer this ques­tion, out of a total of just under 1,300 responses received via Com­mon­place (around 42%). Responses broke down as follows:

• Prefer not to say 4%
• Has a dis­ab­il­ity 13%
• No dis­ab­il­ity 83%

Fig­ure 4 — Break­down of responses to eth­ni­city ques­tion, n=539

The word­ing of this ques­tion var­ied slightly from the last census in terms of the options avail­able to par­ti­cipants. Where­as Scotland’s Census 2011 had the option of ​‘Yes, limited

3.6 Con­nec­tion to the Nation­al Park

661 people chose to answer this ques­tion, out of a total of just under 1,300 responses received via Com­mon­place (around 52%). Responses broke down as follows:

• Busi­ness 5.4%
• Com­munity group 3.0%
• Land man­ager 13.0%
• Res­id­ent 35.1%
• Part­ner org 2.0%
• Vis­it­or 35.7%
• Oth­er 5.7%

Fig­ure 5 — Break­down of responses to con­nec­tion to Nation­al Park ques­tion, n=661

It is not­able that over 50% of respond­ents (35.1% res­id­ents, 13.0% land man­agers and 5.4% busi­nesses) come from with­in the Nation­al Park, and that the pro­por­tion of res­id­ents and vis­it­ors is broadly sim­il­ar, mak­ing com­par­is­ons of their respect­ive responses slightly easier.

The num­ber of busi­nesses respond­ing may have been impacted by the recent con­sulta­tion on the Nation­al Park’s Eco­nom­ic Strategy, and it should be noted that the above fig­ures do not include organ­isa­tion­al responses eg from Cham­bers of Com­merce and oth­er busi­ness groups. The num­ber of land man­agers respond­ing has ris­en from around 13 in Decem­ber 2016 to 13% in Decem­ber 2021, reflect­ing both the increased amount of engage­ment activ­ity with this audi­ence, and the strength of reac­tion to some of the draft plan con­tents (see below).

3.7 Age range

642 people chose to answer this ques­tion, out of a total of just under 1,300 responses received via Com­mon­place (around 50%). Responses broke down as follows:

• 16 – 24 — 3.1%
• 25 – 34 — 12.0%
• 35 – 44 — 12.3%
• 45 – 54 — 22.4%
• 55 – 64 — 27.7%
• 65 or over — 20.9%
• Prefer not to say — 1.4%

Fig­ure 6 — Break­down of responses to age ques­tion, n=642

The 2011 census repor­ted that 11.9% of Scotland’s pop­u­la­tion was aged 16 – 24, 12.6% between 25 – 34, 13.9% between 35 – 44, 14.9% between 45 and 54, 12.6% between 55 – 64, and 16.8% over 65. How­ever, the pop­u­la­tion of the Nation­al Park skews older as com­pared to the rest of Scot­land, and there has been a decline in the num­ber of 16 – 24-year-olds since the last census was com­pleted (eg the UK fig­ure declined by 20,000 last year alone).

The data in fig­ure 6 sug­gests the con­sulta­tion response was broadly rep­res­ent­at­ive of pop­u­la­tions in and around the Nation­al Park, with the excep­tion of those aged 16 – 24 respond­ing via Com­mon­place, which was below the Scot­tish aver­age. It should be noted, how­ever, that we received a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber (over 200) of inform­al responses via social media — espe­cially Ins­tagram – which would sug­gest that this age group pre­ferred to respond via altern­at­ive meth­ods. We will need to bear this in mind for any stake­hold­er con­sulta­tion in future.

3.8 Geo­graphy

667 people chose to answer this ques­tion, out of a total of just under 1,300 responses received via Com­mon­place (around 52%). The lion share of responses came from Scot­land, Eng­land and Wales; how­ever, we did receive cor­res­pond­ence from Afgh­anistan, Bel­gi­um, Canada, Ger­many, Ire­land, the Neth­er­lands, Spain, Taiwan and the USA.

The res­ults have been sum­mar­ised in heat­map form below:

[Note: Image of maps would go here. Can’t repro­duce the image dir­ectly in Markdown]

Fig­ure 7 — Break­down of responses to geo­graphy ques­tion, n=667. Copy­right: Google Maps, MapChart.

3.9 Employ­ment status

665 people chose to answer this ques­tion, out of a total of just under 1,300 responses received via Com­mon­place (around 52%). Responses broke down as follows:

• Oth­er
• Work­ing part-time
• Work­ing full-time.
• Retired
• Self-employed
• Unem­ployed
• Stu­dent 1%

Fig­ure 8 — Break­down of responses to employ­ment status ques­tion, n=665.

The Nation­al Park has a high­er pro­por­tion of part-time and self-employed people (both around 15%) than the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion (around 13%), and this is in part reflec­ted in the data above. The reas­on for this high­er pro­por­tion is likely to be the makeup of the main employ­ment sec­tors in the Nation­al Park (accom­mod­a­tion and food; arts, enter­tain­ment, recre­ation and oth­er; skilled trades), which tend to be ful­filled by part- time and self-employed workers.

Around 1.5 – 2% of Nation­al Park res­id­ents are full-time stu­dents and a sim­il­ar pro­por­tion are unem­ployed, with around 40% work­ing full-time. These fig­ures sug­gest the con­sulta­tion is broadly rep­res­ent­at­ive of the employ­ment pic­ture in the Nation­al Park.

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4. Nature

4.1 Num­ber and type of response

A total of 938 responses were received to the Nature sec­tion of the draft part­ner­ship plan. Of these, 823 people respon­ded to the con­sulta­tion ques­tions via the Com­mon­place plat­form, with an addi­tion­al 85 who emailed or pos­ted in writ­ten responses and 30 who used the Com­mon­place heat­map func­tion (either expli­citly stat­ing they were respond­ing about Nature or writ­ing about top­ics clearly asso­ci­ated with the Nature object­ives and tar­gets). Only com­ments relat­ing to the Nature theme have been included in this analysis.

The major­ity of those who emailed ten­ded not to answer the spe­cif­ic con­sulta­tion ques­tions, so can­not be included in the numer­ic­al fig­ures presen­ted. The heat­map func­tion did not ask the same ques­tions as the Com­mon­place con­sulta­tion, so it is not pos­sible to add heat­map data to the agree / dis­agree fig­ures. How­ever, the con­tent of the email and heat­map responses have been included in the ana­lys­is and text sum­mar­ies of points raised.

4.2 Sum­mary of feedback

• A large num­ber of people respon­ded to the Nature top­ic of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan from a broad range of ages, employ­ment and respon­der types.
• 66% of respon­ders agreed with the object­ives and tar­gets set out in the Plan, with 75% agree­ing with the over­all aim.
• While there was strong sup­port for the need for action to tackle cli­mate change and biod­iversity loss, there were a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of com­ments that the draft plan was not being ambi­tious enough / the times­cales are too long, with too many vague objectives.
• A com­mon con­cern run­ning through­out the ques­tion responses was about the poten­tial for gre­en­wash­ing in rela­tion to cor­por­ate / private invest­ment (both in terms of the nature of this invest­ment and its effects on people and nature).
• There were diver­gent opin­ions about the bene­fits or oth­er­wise of tra­di­tion­al land man­age­ment, par­tic­u­larly when asso­ci­ated with muir­burn, game birds and deer. How­ever, there was strong sup­port for great­er reg­u­la­tion or a ban of both muir­burn and game bird release and shooting.
• In rela­tion to wood­land expan­sion, con­cerns were raised about the neg­at­ive impacts of indis­crim­in­ate tree plant­ing versus sup­port for wood­land expansion.
• Tack­ling prob­lem tour­ism (eg park­ing, motorhomes, lit­ter, anti­so­cial beha­viour), man­aging human activ­ity (eg dogs, elec­tric and moun­tain bikes) and access also fea­tured in con­sulta­tion responses.
• A num­ber of respond­ents sug­ges­ted there was a need for the draft plan to take stronger action on wild­life crime.
• Aspects that were con­sidered to be miss­ing from the draft plan included more spe­cif­ic nature con­ser­va­tion object­ives and spe­cies reintroductions.

4.3 Ana­lys­is of responses

All of the responses were reviewed and ana­lysed. Some com­mon themes and sub-themes emerged dur­ing ana­lys­is of the com­ments with­in the responses, which com­ments could be grouped into. Some oth­er com­ments were received that did not fit into the themes and sub-themes and / or were raised too few times to war­rant a new theme or sub- theme. For com­plete­ness, these were col­lated as part of a sep­ar­ate annex.

i. Con­sulta­tion ques­tion: To what extent do you agree or dis­agree with the over­all out­come for Nature we have pro­posed? ​‘A car­bon neg­at­ive and biod­iversity rich Nation­al Park with bet­ter func­tion­ing, bet­ter con­nec­ted and more resi­li­ent ecosystems’

Around 78% of respond­ents answered the mul­tiple-choice ques­tion about the pro­posed out­come for Nature. As you can see from fig­ure 9, around 75% of respond­ents agreed that the over­all out­come for Nature was appro­pri­ate, with around 16% disagreeing.

• Dis­agree 8%
• Neither agree nor dis­agree 9%
• Strongly dis­agree 8%
• Agree 21%
• Strongly agree 54%

Fig­ure 9 — Level of agree­ment / dis­agree­ment with Nature out­come ques­tion, n=673.

ii. Con­sulta­tion ques­tion: To what extent do you agree or dis­agree that these are the right object­ives and tar­gets for the Nation­al Park?

Around 87% of respond­ents answered the mul­tiple-choice ques­tion about the pro­posed Nature object­ives. Com­ments in the text responses indic­ated that those who chose not to answer may have done so due to there being too many object­ives / tar­gets. Some did not feel they could defin­it­ively agree or dis­agree with all object­ives, and as such felt unable to answer.

As you can see from fig­ure 10, of the respond­ents who did answer, around 66% agreed that the object­ives and tar­gets for Nature were appro­pri­ate, with around 26% disagreeing.

• Dis­agree 12%
• Neither agree nor dis­agree 8%
• Strongly dis­agree 14%
• Strongly agree 36%
• Agree 30%

Fig­ure 10 — Level of agree­ment / dis­agree­ment with Nature object­ives ques­tion, n=748.

There was some vari­ation in response based on which audi­ence was respond­ing. Where­as 77% of res­id­ents (total sample size 201) and 78% of vis­it­ors (n=217) agreed or strongly agreed with the pro­posed Nature object­ives, only 21% of land man­agers (n=67) felt the same way, and 70% dis­agreed or strongly disagreed.

It should also be noted that from the text com­ments where respond­ents neither agreed or dis­agreed or did not answer, this ten­ded to be related to them agree­ing to some but not all object­ives and tar­gets. There was some cri­ti­cism of the ques­tion in that, with so many object­ives and tar­gets, it would have been bet­ter to ask the ques­tion of the indi­vidu­al object­ives, to allow respond­ents to more accur­ately record where their agree­ment / dis­agree­ment lay.

iii. Con­sulta­tion ques­tion: Why do you agree or dis­agree that these are the right object­ives and tar­gets for the Nation­al Park?

In response to this ques­tion, 11 com­mon themes emerged:

• About the plan
• Tra­di­tion­al land management
• Game birds
• Muir­burn
• Deer
• Wood­land expansion
• Sup­port and collaboration
• Human activ­ity issues
• Nature con­ser­va­tion
• Wild­life crime / control
• Spe­cies reintroductions

Many of the themes had diver­gent view­points with­in them; for example, some respon­ders pro­moted a par­tic­u­lar view­point and oth­ers opposed it. As a res­ult, with­in each theme sub-themes emerged. These sub-themes have been cap­tured in a sup­port­ing annex to this sum­mary report.

The key points to note in rela­tion to the extent of agree­ment with the pro­posed object­ives and tar­gets are:

• The greatest num­ber of com­ments were found in the ​‘about the plan’ theme, with around 51% of all the com­ments recor­ded men­tion­ing one or more of the sub- themes iden­ti­fied. 49% of those com­ments sup­por­ted the need for action due to cli­mate change and / or biod­iversity loss. How­ever, 31% of the com­ments in the ​‘about the plan’ theme (113 respond­ents) said the draft plan was not ambi­tious enough, or that times­cales were too long. 4% (13 respond­ents) felt that the draft plan was too vague / had too many object­ives, with 7% (26 respond­ents) identi­fy­ing a need for evid­ence to sup­port / jus­ti­fy / provide a baseline for the object­ives and tar­gets proposed.
• Of the oth­er areas, the com­bined themes of tra­di­tion­al land man­age­ment, muir­burn, deer and game birds gen­er­ated the most com­ments (45% of the total), often with oppos­ing views with­in each theme, as out­lined below.
• 16% of all com­ments recor­ded related to tra­di­tion­al land man­age­ment. With­in these com­ments, 61% (68 respond­ents in total) strongly sup­por­ted tra­di­tion­al land man­age­ment as being import­ant for cul­tur­al her­it­age, people and nature, while 34% (38 respond­ents) iden­ti­fied that tra­di­tion­al land man­age­ment as being bad for nature.
• Almost 15% of all com­ments recor­ded referred to muir­burn. Of these com­ments, there was strong sup­port for great­er reg­u­la­tion (95%), with some (40%) call­ing for it to be banned on peat >30cm rather than the 50cm pro­posed in the draft plan, or banned alto­geth­er (33%), as opposed to a small amount of com­ments arguing for muir­burn as a means to con­trol wild­fires (5%).
• Around 7% of all com­ments recor­ded referred to deer. Of these com­ments, 42% con­sidered that the deer dens­ity tar­get was too high and should be lower, with 17% con­sid­er­ing that the use of dens­ity was an unhelp­ful met­ric and that loc­al (herb­i­vore impact) assess­ments should be used to set tar­gets. 40% con­sidered that the use of deer fen­cing may be neces­sary in some situations.
• Around 6% of all com­ments recor­ded referred to the game bird sec­tor. Of these com­ments, 98% sup­por­ted great­er reg­u­la­tion or a ban on game bird release and shoot­ing. 2% called for a ban of lead shot.
• In the remain­ing themes, 5% of all the com­ments iden­ti­fied a need for col­lab­or­at­ive work­ing to get a bet­ter out­come for both nature and people, includ­ing encour­aging and sup­port­ing the cre­ation of more sus­tain­able rur­al employ­ment, such as nature-based tour­ism and regen­er­at­ive farming.
• Around 4% of all the com­ments raised con­cerns about gre­en­wash­ing and the effects of cor­por­ate / private invest­ment on nature (and people).
• Around 3% of all the com­ments related to wood­land expan­sion, with 36% sup­port­ing wood­land expan­sion but 64% con­cerned about the effects of indis­crim­in­ate tree planting.

iv. Con­sulta­tion ques­tion: Is there any­thing miss­ing that we should prioritise?

The key points to note in rela­tion to wheth­er any­thing is miss­ing from the draft plan are:

• The greatest num­ber of com­ments (18%) were found in the sup­port and col­lab­or­a­tion theme, with com­ments identi­fy­ing a need for the draft plan to include more on col­lab­or­at­ive work­ing to get a bet­ter out­come for both nature and people, includ­ing encour­aging and sup­port­ing the cre­ation of more sus­tain­able rur­al employ­ment, such as nature-based tour­ism and regen­er­at­ive farming.
• Nature con­ser­va­tion received a sim­il­ar pro­por­tion of the total com­ments (just over 17% of all com­ments recor­ded), with 39% of those con­sid­er­ing that con­ser­va­tion of spe­cif­ic spe­cies and hab­it­ats (eg caper­cail­lie, wild­cat, exist­ing wood­lands) was miss­ing from the draft plan, with 17% sep­ar­ately high­light­ing the fresh­wa­ter envir­on­ment as being in need of par­tic­u­lar atten­tion. 26% con­sidered that there is a need for the draft plan to provide great­er safe­guard­ing of loc­a­tions import­ant for nature out­side of areas pro­tec­ted for nature con­ser­va­tion, with 19% con­sid­er­ing that the draft plan should include the cre­ation of wild­life refuge areas with no human access.
• Enabling spe­cies rein­tro­duc­tions was also felt to be miss­ing from the draft plan in over 14% of all com­ments recorded.
• Around 10% of all com­ments recor­ded iden­ti­fied issues with human activ­ity, with 42% of those com­ments con­sid­er­ing that tour­ism and the issues it causes, and solu­tions, need acknow­ledging and address­ing in the final plan (toi­let pro­vi­sion, lit­ter, motorhomes, park­ing, tour­ist tax).
• Anoth­er issue that was felt to be miss­ing that was raised by 45% of com­ments was a need for edu­ca­tion and aware­ness rais­ing about envir­on­ment (for vis­it­ors and res­id­ents). Related to this but com­men­ted on sep­ar­ately, 12% felt that issues around access rights were miss­ing from the draft plan, such as bet­ter reg­u­la­tion of dogs and bikes and uphold­ing exist­ing rights when land use changes.

A small num­ber of respond­ents also made com­ments relat­ing to oth­er sub-themes. These have been cap­tured in a sup­port­ing annex to this sum­mary report.

v. Con­sulta­tion ques­tion: Do you have any oth­er comments?

For con­sist­ency, the same elev­en themes were used to group responses to this ques­tion. Heat­map responses were added to this ana­lys­is as the heat­map ques­tion was a best match for the ​‘do you have any oth­er com­ments’ ques­tion on Com­mon­place. The key points to note in rela­tion to the over­all aim are:

• The greatest num­ber of com­ments were found in the ​‘about the plan’ theme, with around 24% of the 199 over­all com­ments men­tion­ing one or more of the sub- themes iden­ti­fied. 60% (28 respond­ents) said the draft plan was not ambi­tious enough / times­cales were too long. 13% (6 respond­ents) felt that it was too vague / had too many object­ives, with 2% (one respond­ent) identi­fy­ing a need for evid­ence to sup­port / jus­ti­fy / provide a baseline for the object­ives and tar­gets proposed.
• In the oth­er themes, the sup­port and col­lab­or­a­tion (23%), tra­di­tion­al land man­age­ment (17%), muir­burn (13%) and game birds (12%) themes gen­er­ated the most com­ments, often with oppos­ing views as out­lined below.
• Out of the 46 com­ments about sup­port and col­lab­or­a­tion, 37% (17 respond­ents) iden­ti­fied a need for col­lab­or­at­ive work­ing to get a bet­ter out­come for both nature and people, with 32% (15 respond­ents) encour­aging and sup­port­ing the cre­ation of more sus­tain­able rur­al employ­ment, such as nature-based tour­ism and regen­er­at­ive farming.
• Around 71% of the 35 com­ments about tra­di­tion­al land man­age­ment con­sidered that tra­di­tion­al land man­age­ment is bad for nature, with 28% con­sid­er­ing tra­di­tion­al land man­age­ment as being import­ant for cul­tur­al her­it­age, people and nature.
• Of the 25 com­ments refer­ring to the game birds sec­tor, 88% called for a ban on game bird release and shoot­ing, with a fur­ther 12% sup­port­ing great­er regulation.
• Around 6% of all the com­ments recor­ded related to con­cerns about gre­en­wash­ing and the effects of cor­por­ate / private invest­ment on nature (and people).
• Around 4% of all the com­ments related to wood­land expan­sion, with one third of respond­ents sup­port­ive of wood­land expan­sion but two thirds being con­cerned about the effects of indis­crim­in­ate tree planting.

A small num­ber of respond­ents also made com­ments relat­ing to oth­er sub-themes and these have again been sum­mar­ised in a sup­port­ing annex.

4.4 Con­clu­sion

Com­ments were received from a good demo­graph­ic spread of people on a broad range of top­ics. There is a good level of sup­port for the Nature out­come and for the object­ives and tar­gets that sit along­side it (75% and 66% respect­ively). There are some polar­ised views, par­tic­u­larly in the tra­di­tion­al land man­age­ment, muir­burn and game bird themes, but over­all there was sup­port for the dir­ec­tion the draft plan is tak­ing in these areas.

How­ever, the com­ments indic­ate that there are some areas that would bene­fit from cla­ri­fic­a­tion in future iter­a­tions of the part­ner­ship plan, par­tic­u­larly around times­cales, wood­land expan­sion and safe­guards against gre­en­wash­ing from cor­por­ate / private invest­ment (raised in 11% of all comments).

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5. People

5.1 Num­ber and type of response

295 responses were received on the People theme. Of these, 186 people respon­ded to the con­sulta­tion ques­tions on People via the Com­mon­place plat­form, with an addi­tion­al 51 who emailed or pos­ted in writ­ten responses and 58 who used the Com­mon­place heat­map func­tion (either expli­citly stat­ing they were respond­ing about People or writ­ing about top­ics clearly asso­ci­ated with the People object­ives and tar­gets). Only com­ments relat­ing to the People theme have been included in this analysis.

The major­ity of those who emailed ten­ded not to answer the spe­cif­ic con­sulta­tion ques­tions, so can­not be included in the numer­ic­al fig­ures presen­ted. The heat­map func­tion did not ask the same ques­tions as the Com­mon­place con­sulta­tion, so it is not pos­sible to add heat­map data to the agree / dis­agree fig­ures. How­ever, the con­tent of the email and heat­map responses have been included in the ana­lys­is and text sum­mar­ies of points raised.

5.2 Sum­mary of feedback

• A good num­ber of people respon­ded to the People top­ic of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan from a broad range of ages, employ­ment and respon­der types.
• 83% of respon­ders agreed with the over­all out­come, with 74% agree­ing with the object­ives and tar­gets set out in the draft plan.
• While there was strong sup­port for the over­all approach, there were a num­ber of com­ments (27 respond­ents) that the draft plan had too many vague objectives.