Okay, here is the con­tent of the doc­u­ment con­ver­ted to Mark­down format:

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 10/12/2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: MAN­AGING FOR VIS­IT­ORS IN 2021

Pre­pared by: Pete Crane, Head of Vis­it­or Services

            Olly Davies, Head of Communications
           Murray Ferguson, Director: Planning and Place

Pur­pose:

1. To provide Board mem­bers with an over­view of the part­ner­ship work under­taken on the man­age­ment for vis­it­ors in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park dur­ing 2021, the feed­back received from loc­al part­ners at the end of the main vis­it­or sea­son and to pro­mote dis­cus­sion about plans for 2022.

Recom­mend­a­tions

1. That the Board: a) Note the wide-ran­ging, part­ner­ship work which has been under­taken across the Nation­al Park to encour­age vis­it­ors to respect, pro­tect and enjoy the Cairngorms; b) Note the feed­back received from loc­al part­ners; and c) Dis­cuss the pro­pos­als for man­aging for vis­it­ors in 2022, all of which are sub­ject to the con­firm­a­tion of CNPA budget.

Sum­mary

1. This paper sum­mar­ises the range of work under­taken dur­ing 2021 to encour­age vis­it­ors to respect, pro­tect and enjoy the Cairngorms. The work of the fam­ily of Cairngorms rangers is out­lined, along with the part­ner­ship work on com­mu­nic­a­tions and on plan­ning for improved vis­it­or infra­struc­ture. The feed­back received from part­ners at the end of the main vis­it­or sea­son is sum­mar­ised and the pri­or­it­ies for work to be under­taken in 2022 are set out.

An over­view of part­ner­ship activity

1. In response to the addi­tion­al pres­sures on the Park arising from Cov­id 19, CNPA set up sev­er­al new part­ner­ship groups in Spring 2020 to address the new chal­lenges and to com­ple­ment exist­ing groups: a) Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group: This was the main oper­a­tion­al group for the man­age­ment for vis­it­ors and involved the prin­cip­al land man­agers from pub­lic, private and third sec­tor, loc­al author­it­ies, NatureScot and emer­gency ser­vices. The group gen­er­ally met every two weeks and was chaired by CNPA CEO or

2. Dir­ect­or and over­saw the devel­op­ment of the vis­it­or man­age­ment plans described below. b) Cairngorms Tour­ism Response Group: a sub-group of the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship com­pris­ing CNPA, Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship (CBP), Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire, Vis­it MoraySpey­side, Vis­itScot­land, loc­al author­it­ies and High­lands and Island Enter­prise. The Group was chaired by CNPA Board mem­ber, Janet Hunter and focussed largely on issues asso­ci­ated with busi­nesses, mar­ket­ing and the over­all man­age­ment of tour­ism in the des­tin­a­tion. c) Com­mu­nic­a­tions Group: An officer group to agree the focus of com­mu­nic­a­tion with vis­it­ors with CBP, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen, Vis­it­MoraySpey­side, Forestry and Land Scot­land and Cairngorms Connect.

3. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park was iden­ti­fied by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment as one of six hot­spot areas in Scot­land which led to CNPA staff par­ti­cip­a­tion in the Nation­al Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Steer­ing Group and dir­ect staff involve­ment in the three sub-groups on Com­mu­nic­a­tion, Enforce­ment and Infra­struc­ture – the lat­ter was chaired by CEOs of Cairngorms and Loch Lomond and Trossachs NPA). This nation­al work also involved par­ti­cip­a­tion in emer­gency plan­ning exer­cises; routine report­ing on status on a two-weekly basis; par­ti­cip­a­tion in two nation­al vis­it­or man­age­ment sum­mits; and present­a­tions about our work at nation­al and inter­na­tion­al events organ­ised by Scot­tish Land and Estates, the Out­door Recre­ation Net­work and Europarc.

4. Dur­ing the year CNPA and CBP hos­ted vir­tu­al meet­ings to update and engage with elec­ted mem­bers and com­munity lead­ers – involving loc­al author­ity Coun­cil­lors, Com­munity Coun­cil Chairs and inter­ested residents.

Plans for Man­aging for Visitors

1. Dur­ing the last year, plans for the key vis­it­or areas of the Nation­al Park were pro­duced. These plans identi­fy the key work areas that need to be under­taken to encour­age safe, respons­ible and enjoy­able access to the Cairngorms and were reg­u­larly dis­cussed at part­ner­ship meet­ings. The Plans cov­er the West­ern Cairngorms, the Deeside area and the Angus Glen and are avail­able on CNPA web­site at: [Man­aging for Vis­it­ors — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority](Managing for Vis­it­ors — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority)

Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Vis­it­or messaging

1. A con­sid­er­able amount of work was under­taken by CNPA, the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship and oth­ers on com­mu­nic­a­tions for vis­it­ors and a sum­mary is provided at Annex 1.

Ranger Ser­vices

1. Build­ing on our exper­i­ence of increased vis­it­or pres­sures in 2020, CNPA under­took a num­ber of sig­ni­fic­ant meas­ures to strengthen the pres­ence of rangers in the Park.

2. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment fund­ing was secured to employ, train and man­age sea­son­al rangers again in 2021 but also employ a fur­ther four, full-time CNPA rangers. Annex 2 con­tains a sum­mary of the key vis­it­or engage­ment work under­taken by the CNPA rangers.

3. CNPA also secured addi­tion­al fund­ing to train and employ four Kick­start Youth Place­ment oppor­tun­it­ies for train­ee rangers – offer­ing a start in this career for young adults aged 18 – 24 who are on Uni­ver­sal Cred­it. Annex 3 sum­mar­ies this pro­gramme of work.

4. Dur­ing the peri­od CNPA increased by 10% the grant aid offered to six part­ner ranger ser­vices (gen­er­ally privately man­aged estates and char­it­able trusts with sig­ni­fic­ant vis­it­or pres­sure) to fur­ther sup­port part­ners in man­aging for visitors.

5. A num­ber of land man­agers (includ­ing Forestry and Land Scot­land, Nation­al Trust for Scot­land, RSPB Loch Garten and Bal­mor­al Estates) employed addi­tion­al rangers/​visitor staff this year with wel­come addi­tion­al sup­port from the NatureScot Bet­ter Places Green Recov­ery Fund. The Nation­al Park had nearly twice as many rangers on the ground to meet vis­it­ors this sum­mer com­pared with 2019.

6. CNPA, Forestry and Land Scot­land and High­land Coun­cil fun­ded Police Scot­land to provide ded­ic­ated staff cov­er to sup­port the rangers and stew­ards in and around the Glen­more Forest Park on Fri­day and Sat­urday even­ings dur­ing the school sum­mer hol­i­day. Their remit was, with the rangers, to encour­age respons­ible access and enforce if only if required. This work was espe­cially wel­comed by loc­al residents.

7. CNPA has con­tin­ued to sup­port the Cairngorms Volun­teer Rangers (38 trained volun­teers) dur­ing ​‘lock­down’ with mem­bers return­ing to volun­teer­ing when they felt ​‘safe’. Through the Green Recov­ery Fund we facil­it­ated sev­en com­munity groups to pur­chase lit­ter-pick­ing equip­ment as a focus for volun­teer activ­ity and to look after the Park.

8. The fam­ily of Cairngorms Rangers (14 ranger ser­vices, includ­ing CNPA) are in reg­u­lar oper­a­tion­al con­tact with each oth­er, com­mu­nic­at­ing and shar­ing exper­i­ences, and chal­lenges, via mobile phone groups as well as meet­ing reg­u­larly (see Annex 3).

9. The Park has also been a focus for nation­al net­work­ing events in recent months – the Scot­tish Coun­tryside Ranger Asso­ci­ation and the UK Nation­al Parks Edu­ca­tion Net­work both hos­ted their annu­al nation­al gath­er­ings in the Cairngorms in November.

Vis­it­or Infrastructure

1. Since Septem­ber 2020 a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of key coun­tryside sites have bene­fit­ted from infra­struc­ture invest­ment to help improve the vis­it­or exper­i­ence. The CNPA

2. budget made spe­cif­ic allow­ance for Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture Improve­ment Pro­gramme and a Stra­tegic Infra­struc­ture Devel­op­ment Plan is in preparation.

3. Improve­ments in and around Deeside included: a) Upgrade and expan­sion of Linn of Dee car park – Nation­al Trust for Scot­land (NTS) with CNPA sup­port b) Upgrade and expan­sion Linn of Quoi­ch car park – NTS with CNPA sup­port c) Loch Muick car park expan­sion (autumn 2021) d) Cam­bus O May bridge repaired and open – Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil e) Din­net a new car park west of vil­lage is planned (Spring 2022) – Din­net Estate

4. Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil issued traffic orders in sum­mer of 2021 so that when they reached capa­city, the minor coun­try roads to Loch Muick and Linn of Dee could be tem­por­ar­ily closed. Staff and res­id­ents and key busi­ness retain neces­sary access.

5. Sev­er­al vari­able mes­sage, elec­tron­ic road-signs have been installed in Deeside. Fur­ther part­ner­ship work on coordin­a­tion of mes­sages on these signs is required, par­tic­u­larly at weekends.

6. Improve­ments in Angus and Glen Shee included: a) Upgrade to Glen Shee loc­al inform­a­tion centre (Cairngorms Green Recov­ery Fund) b) Glen Shee pub­lic toi­lets to be upgraded by Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil fun­ded by Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund (winter 2021)

7. Improve­ments in West of the Park included: a) Loch an Eilean car park upgraded & enlarged 2021, with toi­let improve­ments in 2022 — Rothiemurchus Estate with CNPA sup­port b) Loch Garten vis­it­or centre upgraded includ­ing car park improve­ments 2021, with fur­ther improve­ments includ­ing all abil­it­ies toi­let in 2022– RSPB c) Plans are in place to improve car park­ing near Beinn a Ghlo in Perth and Kinross to fol­low on from the Moun­tains the People pro­ject which sig­ni­fic­antly improved moun­tain paths (Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land) d) Moun­tain paths have been main­tained and improved and sec­tions of the Spey­side way improved (OATS) – e) Plans are in place for fur­ther path improve­ments in and around Car­rbridge and on sec­tions of the Spey­side Way.

8. Improve­ments to Cairngorm and Glen­more area: a) New road­side path link­ing vis­it­or centre & camp­site to beach and traffic speed reduc­tion meas­ures fun­ded through the Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund (RTIF) with CNPA sup­port b) Beach Car park improved & expan­ded – FLS with CNPA sup­port c) Beach Toi­lets upgraded — FLS with CNPA sup­port d) Speed lim­it in Glen­more to be reduced 30 mph & double yel­low lines installed along vil­lage road – High­land Council.

9. e) Vari­able mes­sage elec­tron­ic road sign fun­ded by CNPA and man­aged by FLS installed on the approach road to Glen­more f) High­land Coun­cil, with CNPA, sup­port to improve loch-side park­ing (winter/​spring ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂) g) High­land Coun­cil, with CNPA sup­port, are devel­op­ing pro­pos­als for a replace­ment pub­lic toi­let in Glen­more h) CairnGorm Moun­tain, with CNPA sup­port, has installed camper van site at Ciste car Park i) Cairngorm Moun­tain and HIE are work­ing to repair the funicu­lar and invest­ing sig­ni­fic­antly to deliv­er Mas­ter-plan which was approved in June 2021. j) Plans are in place to devel­op new vis­it­or and vehicle coun­ters in the area using sensors and tech­no­logy based on the ​“Inter­net of Things”

End of Sea­son Review

1. At the end of the main vis­it­or sea­son, feed­back was reques­ted from part­ners on any les­sons learned and sug­ges­tions for oper­a­tion­al improve­ments for the year ahead. The feed­back from rangers is sum­mar­ised in Annex 4 and from mem­bers of the Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group and Com­munity Coun­cils in Annex 5.

Pri­or­it­ies for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃

1. The con­sulta­tion about the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan is ongo­ing until 17 Decem­ber and the Plan will, once approved by Min­is­ters, set out the stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies for tour­ism and vis­it­or man­age­ment with­in the Park in the medi­um to long term. Based on the feed­back received to date, and recog­nising that the CNPA budget still has to be approved, the pri­or­it­ies for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ are likely to be: a) Keep­ing our plans rel­ev­ant and dynam­ic: The Plans for Man­aging for Vis­it­ors require to be updated as work is com­pleted. The new Tour­ism Action Plan and the new Out­door Access Strategy also require to be renewed in the near future. As the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­ject devel­ops momentum, a num­ber of strands of work, espe­cially around act­ive travel, will become rel­ev­ant to this theme. b) Part­ner­ship groups: We will work to ration­al­ise the num­ber of part­ner­ship groups that meet to man­age this area of work and make sure they con­tin­ue to be effect­ive as cir­cum­stances change. The Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group will con­tin­ue to meet monthly over winter and every two weeks over the main vis­it­or sea­son with an emphas­is on oper­a­tion­al coordin­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion with vis­it­ors. The Cairngorms Tour­ism Response Group prob­ably requires to meet less fre­quently, per­haps once between each full meet­ing on the Tour­ism Part­ner­ship. Com­mu­nic­a­tion issues should be on every agenda. The Loc­al Out­door Access For­um will be fully involved in plan­ning and man­aging all this work. c) Infra­struc­ture plan­ning and invest­ment: Con­sid­er­able fur­ther work is required to devel­op our stra­tegic plan for tourism/​visitor infra­struc­ture and the alloc­a­tion of funds to see the infra­struc­ture well-main­tained and pri­or­ity projects

2. delivered. Deliv­ery of such pro­jects is com­plex, often requir­ing a com­bin­a­tion of fund­ing streams and a num­ber of dif­fer­ent con­sents and agree­ments. There are sev­en over-lap­ping areas that require fur­ther invest­ment: i. Qual­ity and access­ib­il­ity of toi­lets (both cap­it­al and rev­en­ue) ii. Camper van waste dis­pos­al iii. Qual­ity and gen­er­al access­ib­il­ity of camper van sites iv. Qual­ity and access­ib­il­ity of easy-to-use, budget camp­sites v. Path devel­op­ment and main­ten­ance to pro­mote act­ive travel and dis­cour­age car use vi. Traffic man­age­ment and car-park­ing at key hot­spots vii. Pub­lic trans­port – link to the Her­it­age Hori­zons: Cairngorms 2030 pro­jects d) Ranger ser­vices: The col­lect­ive work of the 14 indi­vidu­al ranger employ­ers has been very widely appre­ci­ated by many vis­it­ors and loc­al res­id­ents; and the Site-based rangers appre­ci­ated being able to call on addi­tion­al sup­port when required. We will con­sol­id­ate the approach with a blend of Area and Site-based ser­vices, com­ple­men­ted by sea­son­al rangers in the main vis­it­or sea­son. This approach was gen­er­ally found to be highly flex­ible and mutu­ally sup­port­ive. CNPA will con­tin­ue to offer dis­cre­tion­ary grant-aid to ranger employ­ers when required to foster com­mon and high stand­ards in the pro­fes­sion. Fur­ther work is required with NatureScot and oth­ers on the devel­op­ment of com­mon stand­ards of report­ing (e.g. lit­ter, dogs not under close con­trol, etc.) so that trends can be iden­ti­fied and com­par­is­ons made between areas. There is some con­cern that the spe­cial fund­ing meas­ures that was avail­able for staff in the last two sea­sons may not be avail­able in future years. If resources allow, fund­ing of young train­ee, appren­tice rangers should be encour­aged along­side the sea­son­al ranger team. Con­tin­ued improve­ments to com­mu­nic­a­tion with land man­agers and vis­it­ors are required about the role and work of rangers in the Park and on intern­al com­mu­nic­a­tions with­in the wider ranger fam­ily. e) Com­mon mes­saging: Fur­ther work is required both in the Park and nation­ally on a clear and con­sist­ent approach to com­mu­nic­at­ing the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code and par­tic­u­larly in the areas of respons­ible wild and road­side camp­ing and fires. The need for com­mu­nic­a­tions with vis­it­ors to be pos­it­ive and con­sist­ent, whatever land they are on, is clear; provid­ing func­tion­al (what’s open?) and inspir­a­tion­al (why to vis­it?) inform­a­tion in ways that also encour­age respons­ible beha­viour. There is also a need to pro­mote areas of the Nation­al Park that have capa­city to take more vis­it­ors dur­ing busy peri­ods. f) Elec­tron­ic sig­nage and oth­er tech­no­logy: The man­age­ment of the elec­tron­ic sig­nage, espe­cially on Deeside, requires to be improved if it is to be effect­ive. The signs are gen­er­ally man­aged by oth­er bod­ies; CNPA will cla­ri­fy the man­age­ment of all signs before the start of the sea­son and update the com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­to­cols. New traffic sensors will be installed in the Cairngorm and Glen­more area and we will work with part­ners on devel­op­ment of new digit­al approaches to col­lec­tion, ana­lys­is and use of vis­it­or data.

Next Steps

1. CNPA will receive an indic­a­tion of budget set­tle­ment later in Decem­ber and detailed plans will be con­firmed. The Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group and Tour­ism Response Group will meet over winter as described above.

Pete Crane Olly Dav­ies Mur­ray Fer­guson Decem­ber 2021

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 Annex | 10/12/2021

Annex 1: Sum­mary of CNPA com­mu­nic­a­tions activ­ity rel­ev­ant to Man­aging for Visitors

1. We col­lab­or­ated with Vis­itScot­land and part­ners on a coordin­ated nation­al approach to vis­it­or man­age­ment, under­neath the over­all #Respect­Pro­tec­tEn­joy ban­ner. The nation­al cam­paign reached 83% of Scot­tish adults on at least one occa­sion, with 57% see­ing activ­ity three or more times. Accord­ing to VisitScotland’s research, 73% of all Scots agreed that the cam­paign motiv­ated people to be more respons­ible, with just 6% disagreeing.

2. We facil­it­ated a two-day pho­to­graphy ses­sion in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park to devel­op a suite of part­ner assets for use on social media, sig­nage and pub­lic­a­tions. From paddle board­ing to respons­ible dog walk­ing and the dangers of wild­fires, over 50 dif­fer­ent resources were cre­ated and shared with all Vis­itScot­land part­ners. CNPA alone reached over 85,000 people using these materials.

3. Our part­ner­ship with Vis­itScot­land allowed us to tri­al and roll out a num­ber of test activ­it­ies, includ­ing digit­al advert­ising vans loc­ated in high foot­fall loc­a­tions (main road in Aviemore and Pit­lo­chry town centre) rein­for­cing respons­ible beha­viour mes­saging, e.g. no lit­ter­ing, wild­fires, dogs on leads etc and provid­ing a warm wel­come to the area.

4. We con­vened a Cairngorms-spe­cif­ic comms group under the #Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er umbrella, with mem­bers includ­ing CBP, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire, Forestry and Land Scot­land and Cairngorms Con­nect. This helped us dis­sem­in­ate nation­al mes­saging seam­lessly amongst part­ners, and escal­ate any issues being exper­i­enced by part­ners to the nation­al steer­ing group. This was fur­ther sup­por­ted by a ded­ic­ated ranger comms What­s­App group, which ensured emer­ging issues (e.g. car parks being full, roads closed etc) were flagged to a Park-wide audi­ence with­in minutes.

5. Between March and Septem­ber, we shared 237 posts across social media, with a reach of 950,905. 33,944 people engaged dir­ectly with our posts, with Face­book and Ins­tagram being par­tic­u­larly suc­cess­ful in enga­ging our tar­get audi­ences. The post that reached and engaged the most people was a Man­aging for Vis­it­ors infograph­ic sum­mar­ising all the activ­ity tak­ing place across the Park. This reached over 30,000 people on Face­book alone.

6. Amongst the col­lab­or­at­ive activ­it­ies, we worked with Zero Waste Scot­land on an anti-lit­ter cam­paign, which reached over 2.8m people across social media. The icon­ic imagery, coupled with a more con­ver­sa­tion­al tone and less preachy mes­sage, was a big hit with audi­ences, with this post alone attract­ing over 600 likes.

7. The CNP web­site was updated with a range of Man­aging for Vis­it­ors con­tent through­out the peri­od. This included shar­ing updated SOAC mater­i­als on wild camp­ing, respons­ible dog own­er­ship, wild­fires etc, as well as the RNLI’s ​‘Float to Live’ cam­paign fol­low­ing the tra­gic incid­ents on Loch Lomond over the sum­mer peri­od. The site worked in con­cert with CBP’s Vis­it­Cairngorms resource, with the main Cov­id-19 plan­ning page and status web­site for busi­nesses and attrac­tions par­tic­u­larly effective.

8. Ten press releases were issued over the peri­od, cov­er­ing a range of top­ics includ­ing infra­struc­ture invest­ment, ranger recruit­ment, respons­ible dog own­er­ship, the dangers of wild­fires etc. These releases – plus a wide vari­ety of react­ive press state­ments and inter­views with key CNP per­son­nel – were covered by the BBC, STV, P&J, Scots­man, Her­ald, Daily Record and all our loc­al weekly papers. We also issued three web-only news items to sup­port social media and pro­duced five Park Talks or blogs fea­tur­ing man­aging for vis­it­ors messaging.

9. Region­al vs nation­al media cov­er­age split:

Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Coverage