CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held in the Ball­room, Blair Castle, Blair Atholl on Fri­day 29 March 2019 at 10.00am

PRESENT

Peter Argyle Geva Black­ett (Deputy Con­vener) Car­o­lyn Cad­dick Deirdre Fal­con­er Pippa Had­ley Janet Hunter John Lath­am Douglas McAdam Elean­or Mackintosh

Xan­der McDade (Con­vener) Wil­lie McK­enna lan McLar­en Dr Fiona McLean Wil­li­am Mun­ro Dr Gaen­er Rodger Derek Ross Judith Webb

In Attend­ance:

Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive, Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment, Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, Pete May­hew, Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion & Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence, Pete Crane, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices, Gav­in Miles, Head of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment, Item 6 only Fran­coise van Buuren, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment, Heath­er Trench, Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Officer, Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies: Anne Rae Mac­don­ald John Kirk

Wel­come and Introduction

1. Xan­der McDade the Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing in Blair Atholl.

2. Apo­lo­gies were noted for Anne Rae Mac­don­ald and John Kirk.

Declar­a­tions of Interest

1. Declar­a­tions of interest were invited. There were no interests declared.

Minutes of Last Meet­ing held on 7 Decem­ber 2018 – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 7 Decem­ber 2018 were agreed with the fol­low­ing amend­ments: a) At Para 9b: His­tor­ic Scot­land to be replaced with His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment Scot­land. b) At Present: Judith Webb’s doc­tor­ate title was inaccurate.

Mat­ters Arising

1. The Con­vener provided an update on the Action points from the minutes of the meet­ing on 7 Decem­ber 2018: a) Action Point at Para 36 (i. & ii.) – Closed – Pic­ture on front cov­er of Cairngorms Nature Action Plan had been changed and ref­er­ence to the East Cairngorm Moor­land Part­ner­ship was added to page 36. b) Action Point at Para 40 (i) – Closed – Elec­tron­ic copy of CNP Youth Coun­cil paper had been emailed to Peter Argyle. c) Action Point at Para 52 (i) – Closed – Ref­er­ence to Elean­or Mack­in­tosh in groups 16 and 20 replaced with Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener. d) Action Point at Para 54 (i) – Closed- All Board Mem­bers Home Work­ing Health and Safety Assess­ments com­pleted and returned.

2. John Lath­am briefly left the room to answer a tele­phone call and then returned shortly after.

3. The Con­vener provided an update on the Action points from the minutes of the meet­ing on 28 Septem­ber 2018: a) Action Point at Para 38 (i.) – In Hand – Board Con­vener, Plan­ning Con­vener and CEO met with LINK Hill­tracks Groups. Hill­tracks and All-ter­rain vehicle (ATV) use was dis­cussed at first Cairngorms Upland Action Group meet­ing. Best prac­tise guid­ance for ATV use is to be developed. b) Action Point at Para 20 (i.) – In hand – Present­a­tion­al format of Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2017 – 2022 Deliv­ery Update will be reviewed for the June Form­al Board meeting.

4. Action Points Arising: None

CEO Report and Con­vener Update (Paper 1)

1. Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive intro­duced Paper I which high­lights the main stra­tegic work streams that are being dir­ec­ted by Man­age­ment Team. The CEO explained that these are areas where sig­ni­fic­ant staff resources are being dir­ec­ted to deliv­er Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan pri­or­it­ies. He high­lighted the fol­low­ing areas: a) Forest Strategy and Nature Action Plan event was atten­ded by 150 people. By the begin­ning of Feb­ru­ary 2019 242 people had been spoken with on this sub­ject. b) Cairngorms Nature cel­eb­ra­tion held at Holyrood in Feb­ru­ary, Board mem­bers are encour­aged to attend at least one of the events as part of this year’s Cairngorms Nature Week­end tak­ing place 10 – 13 May. c) 36 applic­a­tions to the volun­teer­ing posts had been received, 12 people would under­go the train­ing and it was the inten­tion to take a second group of volun­teers through train­ing later this year. d) Writers in Res­id­ence: classes in Aviemore were full and classes would be start­ing in Tomin­toul shortly. e) Strengthen Com­munit­ies con­fer­ence in May in Aviemore would involve the youth coun­cil people from Fin­land. f) Office exten­sion had been short­l­is­ted as one of 19 devel­op­ments by the Roy­al Incor­por­a­tion of Archi­tects in Scot­land (RIAS) for the 2019 design award – and would be decided on 30^th May 2019. g) At the recent Fam­ily friendly awards, the Author­ity was recog­nised as an impress­ive small organ­isa­tion with an ​“Above and Bey­ond” award recog­nising the range of our policy devel­op­ment sup­port­ing flex­ible and fam­ily friendly work­ing goes well bey­ond the levels of expec­ted of an organ­isa­tion our size.

2. The Con­vener thanked staff for all their work around the dir­ect mem­ber elec­tions and to the Head of Plan­ning and Com­munit­ies and his team for the work on the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan Con­sulta­tion. The Con­vener wel­comed Deirdre Fal­con­er to her first meet­ing on the Board.

3. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Was any lob­by­ing done to encour­age Sus­trans to fund tar­mack­ing foot­paths along the Deeside Way? The CEO advised that Sus­trans fund­ing was for short links and there­fore an unlikely source of fund­ing for the Deeside Way. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices explained that the state of policy is for paths of 3 meters in width. He added that Sus­trans would not fund the Sev­en Bridges path in Bal­later because of the slopes.

b) A Board Mem­ber repor­ted that he had atten­ded the launch of the forest strategy and nature action plan and was dis­ap­poin­ted with the lack of land own­ers or estate work­ers in attend­ance. c) In rela­tion to Kin­veachy moun­tain bike trails, the CEO explained that the Authority’s Con­ser­va­tion and Access teams were work­ing with them and Moun­tain Bik­ing Scot­land to see what could be done. d) Cla­ri­fic­a­tion sought as to why there did not appear to be any budget for sus­tain­ing the Peat­land Action pro­ject. The CEO explained that fund­ing to date had been on an annu­al basis and they were con­fid­ent more fund­ing would be alloc­ated over the course of the year from SNH. e) Judith Webb, mem­ber of the Cairngorms Nature Strategy Group encour­aged mem­bers to attend one or more events at the Cairngorm Nature Big Week­end on 10^th-13^th May 2019 as Board sup­port was vital. She invited mem­bers to provide her dir­ectly with any feed­back after the event.

1. The Board noted the Paper.

2. Actions: i. Board Mem­bers to attend at least one event dur­ing the Cairngorms Nature Big Week­end and to provide feed­back dir­ect to Judith Webb.

2019 – 20 Budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan (Paper 2)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced Paper 2 which sets out the Authority’s fin­an­cial pos­i­tion for the ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ fin­an­cial year. The paper presents the pro­posed fin­an­cial alloc­a­tions for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ for core income and expendit­ure, togeth­er with inten­ded oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ment. The paper seeks Board endorse­ment of the budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ as an appro­pri­ate deploy­ment of resources to work towards deliv­ery of the Authority’s adop­ted Cor­por­ate Plan objectives.

2. The Con­vener high­lighted Annex 2 of the paper which illus­trates the lever­age of extern­al funds by the Author­ity and advised that a press release would be issued today on that.

3. The Board con­sidered the detail of the paper and dis­cussed the fol­low­ing points: a) Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed that the paper sought to com­mu­nic­ate the cros­sov­ers of work being car­ried out across the dif­fer­ent NPPP pri­or­it­ies, high­light­ing that budget head­ings were a neces­sary ele­ment of man­age­ment accounts organ­isa­tions. How­ever, work in Land Man­age­ment for example often had cros­sov­er into Com­munity and Rur­al Devel­op­ment, while work on Access may often have bene­fi­cial impacts on eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and

com­munity devel­op­ment pri­or­it­ies. Hence invest­ment in one area will have mul­tiple bene­fits across a range of work­streams. b) With ref­er­ence to table I on page 9, why did it appear that the office costs would be lower than last year? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that while it was a pres­sure point in budget­ing, he explained that they look for 3% annu­al effi­ciency sav­ings tar­get in response to Gov­ern­ment budget object­ives. He explained that this is typ­ic­ally sought from office run­ning costs, pro­cure­ment of facil­it­ies, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices in order to pro­tect Oper­a­tion­al Plan invest­ment levels and that he is rel­at­ively con­fid­ent that sav­ings can be found there. He added that addi­tion­al fund­ing had been budgeted last year for the office open­ing earli­er than it did and there­fore com­par­is­ons were slightly skewed by this. c) Com­ment made that the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment alloc­a­tion of £4.805m reflects well on the Author­ity and deserves being acknow­ledged. d) Could the rationale for using the aver­age full time equi­val­ent for staff costs and val­ues be explained? The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that this approach is used to sum­mar­ise the total value of the Oper­a­tion­al Plan. He explained that the full time equi­val­ent is used to cal­cu­late the total cost absorp­tion value and apply this across each line of activ­ity to give a sense of total value of invest­ment in each line of Oper­a­tion­al Plan activ­ity while doing so in a rel­at­ively admin­is­trat­ively light man­ner. While it would be pos­sible to drill down to look at staff hours and fur­ther levels of detail, addi­tion­al work would be required. e) With ref­er­ence to para­graph 13 in the sup­port­ing inform­a­tion relat­ing to the cov­er paper, could the per­cent­age of staff costs versus the oper­a­tion plan be built into the paper in the future? The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that it was already detailed in the paper at table I, Core Budget Sum­mary on page 9. He agreed to make it more expli­cit in the man­age­ment accounts reports. f) Com­ment made that great cost sav­ings had been made in refil­ing posts but warned of the danger espe­cially in the plan­ning depart­ment. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that 15 – 18 posts (Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject and Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Part­ner­ship) in the Author­ity were fun­ded by extern­al pro­ject fund­ing sources and there would be a three-year dom­ino effect at the end of those pro­jects whereby the Author­ity would have to man­age those staff in the organ­isa­tion who are deliv­er­ing pro­jects care­fully at the begin­ning of the trans­ition phase of pro­jects com­ing to an end and com­plet­ing final reports. Vacan­cies would have to be used care­fully in man­aging staff trans­itions. He provided reas­sur­ance that any vacan­cies in the Plan­ning depart­ment would con­tin­ue to be filled as required. g) Appre­ci­ation of the dif­fi­culties in provid­ing per­man­ent posts and hav­ing the bal­ance to ensure vacan­cies arise when staff mem­bers return to the Authority.

Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices provided reas­sur­ance that the Man­age­ment Team had the focus on deliv­ery of Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives front and centre to all delib­er­a­tions where mak­ing decisions around vacan­cies, staff­ing and resource deploy­ment. h) Mem­bers noted it was also import­ant in deliv­er­ing effect­ive resource deploy­ment that they also took steps to keep their costs down.

1. The Board: a) Reviewed the pro­posed budget and resource alloc­a­tions for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀; b) Con­sidered wheth­er the pro­posed deploy­ment of resources poses any per­ceived risks to the achieve­ment of the Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives by 2022 and agree any risks posed for sub­sequent action by the Chief Exec­ut­ive and Man­age­ment Team; c) Endorsed the budget and oper­a­tion­al plan pro­pos­als for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀.

2. Action Points arising: i. Per­cent­age of staff costs versus the Oper­a­tion Plan to be made expli­cit in the man­age­ment accounts.

Stand­ing Orders (Paper 3)

1. Dav­id Camer­on Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced the paper which presents a revi­sion to the Authority’s Stand­ing Orders. Fol­low­ing recent dis­cus­sions on gov­ernance arrange­ments with Board mem­bers, the oppor­tun­ity has been taken to revise the Stand­ing Orders last reviewed in 2014, based on both feed­back from mem­bers and obser­va­tions by the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices as Prop­er Officer. The paper also presents a review of Audit and Risk, Staff­ing and Recruit­ment and Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tees’ Terms of Reference.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing issues: a) Secret bal­lots and how they should be retained for 48 hours. It was agreed that secret bal­lots be retained for 7 days. (AI) b) The bene­fits of hav­ing a show of hands which demon­strates col­lect­ive respons­ib­il­ity against doing a roll call that then moves away from cor­por­ate decision. It was agreed to move to a roll call for votes (A2). c) Elec­tion pro­cess for the Con­vener role and sug­ges­tion made that it is moved to the end of a meet­ing as opposed to being taken at the begin­ning of the meet­ing, then if and when a new Con­vener is elec­ted the cur­rent con­vener is not made to feel uncom­fort­able hav­ing to con­vene the remainder of the meeting.

d) Sug­ges­tion made that in the elec­tion pro­cess for the Con­vener could be taken at a sep­ar­ate spe­cial meet­ing in advance of nor­mal a Board meet­ing where busi­ness is dis­cussed. This was agreed (A3). e) Ques­tion of clar­ity sur­round­ing wheth­er there was a time lim­it for the chairs of Board Committee’s? The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed that there was 3 years. This length of time was con­sidered long enough to give the Board Committee’s con­tinu­ity whilst allow­ing the chair to stand down soon if they wanted to. f) Sug­ges­tion made to amend the pro­cess in para­graph 4b of the stand­ing orders to decree that writ­ten sub­mis­sions from can­did­ates are to be provided and cir­cu­lated in advance of the meet­ing. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that he was happy to incor­por­ate that sug­ges­tion. g) Sug­ges­tion made that para­graphs 10 and 25 of the draft stand­ing orders are con­nec­ted to ensure clar­ity that a mem­ber attend­ing a meet­ing via video con­fer­en­cing link would help towards mak­ing the meet­ing quor­ate how­ever should a mem­ber make con­tri­bu­tions via email this would not count towards quor­um. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed to make this expli­cit (A4). h) With ref­er­ence to draw­ing lots and tie break pro­ced­ures sug­ges­tion made to make it clear the Prop­er Officer would toss the coin. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed. i) The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener reminded mem­bers that the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee had a sep­ar­ate set of Stand­ing Orders that were to be read in con­junc­tion with the Board Stand­ing Orders and asked why they had not been re-draf­ted? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that the Board Stand­ing Orders would be final­ised first then he would review the implic­a­tions on the Plan­ning Stand­ing orders which would then be taken before the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee for review before being taken back to the Board for form­al adop­tion. j) How would a mem­ber par­ti­cip­at­ing in a meet­ing via video con­fer­en­cing then take part in a secret bal­lot? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that he had not thought about this but advised that there would have to be staff at the oth­er CNPA office (where the mem­ber would be video con­fer­en­cing from) to col­lect the secret bal­lot. The Con­vener advised that it would need to be restric­ted to mem­ber who were phys­ic­ally present at the meet­ing. Sug­ges­tion was made to revise the word­ing in para­graph 10 to reflect this. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed this and agreed he would make it expli­cit that video con­fer­en­cing would not be avail­able for mem­bers for the elec­tion of Board Con­vener and Board Deputy Con­vener (A5). k) Sug­ges­tion made that the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee remit in the Terms of Ref­er­ence link back to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment guid­ance which states that the role of the Com­mit­tee is to give assur­ance to the account­able officer. The Con­vener agreed to del­eg­ate any revi­sions to the Terms of Ref­er­ence of the

Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee to the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee so long as they were not sub­stant­ive (A6). l) Sug­ges­tion made that anoth­er lay­er of detail with regards to the scheme of del­eg­a­tion would be use­ful (A7). m) Agree­ment that quor­um for Plan­ning Com­mit­tee would be 13 mem­bers present (A8). n) Agree­ment that the amend­ments would be made in track changes for clarity.

1. The Board: a) Reviewed the draft revised Stand­ing Orders set out at Annex I to the paper; b) Reviewed the Com­mit­tees’ Terms of Ref­er­ence set out at Annex 2 to the paper; and c) Sub­ject to amend­ments numbered Al to A8 in para­graph 20 above, agreed that the revised and final­ised doc­u­ments should be approved by the Con­vener, Deputy Con­vener and Chief Exec­ut­ive for endorse­ment and pub­lic­a­tion, to be effect­ive from that pub­lic­a­tion date.

2. Action: i. Amend­ments as numbered Al to A8 in para­graph 20 above to be made to the Board Stand­ing Orders.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment Strategy 2018 – 2022 Pro­gress Report (Paper 4)

1. Fran­coise van Buuren, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment intro­duced Paper 4 which presents the pro­gress made against the Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment Strategy 2018 – 2022 dur­ing ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ and sets out the pri­or­ity areas of work for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀. The strategy sup­ports the deliv­ery of the Cor­por­ate Plan and involves all Board and staff mem­bers in its deliv­ery. It con­tains the stra­tegic com­mu­nic­a­tions pri­or­it­ies, aims and out­comes for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (CNPA).

2. The Con­vener repor­ted that there had been a lot of social media pres­ence and feed­back on the loc­al elections.

3. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the following:

a) Dir­ectly Elec­ted mem­bers were encour­aged to sub­mit blogs in their loc­al areas just as the Board Con­vener does in the Strath­spey & Badenoch Her­ald as the Cairngorms Nation­al Park is more than just the Strath­spey area. b) Con­cern raised that 57% of Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment were unfa­vour­able towards the aware­ness of the exist­ence of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The CEO repor­ted that 43% were favour­able but 57% did not have an opin­ion either way. c) With ref­er­ence to Annex I, the head­line stat­ing that the Authority’s social media reach was slightly lar­ger than Mon­go­lia, how had that been meas­ured? Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment advised that it was meas­ured through google ana­lyt­ics, which provides inform­a­tion on the num­ber of people reached and where they are loc­ated. d) Praise for dis­play­ing the stat­ist­ics in pic­ture form as it clearly shows that people are com­ing to the web­site for prac­tic­al inform­a­tion. e) Hav­ing a Board buddy sys­tem was one of the pri­or­it­ies for 2019 and raised mixed con­cerns sur­round­ing this, was this more for dir­ectly elec­ted board mem­bers? Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment advised that this had yet to be agreed how­ever that in order to raise the Authority’s pro­file more reg­u­lar con­tact with res­id­ents was needed. Agreed that a board dis­cus­sion to agree approach on this, should be sched­uled. f) Sug­ges­tion made that Board are sighted with what events are com­ing up and any issues and any lines to take if approached for com­ment. Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment advised that there is an issues brief­ing that is pre­pared by the Press Officer quarterly, any­thing out with this comes out as and when. Should Board mem­bers receive dir­ect ques­tions they should dir­ect the enquirer to the Com­mu­nic­a­tions team. It was agreed to cir­cu­late the Board For­ward Look to mem­bers. g) Sug­ges­tion made to increase busi­ness and land manager’s engage­ment in our cam­paigns. Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment explained that the Make it Yours cam­paign was vis­it­or facing busi­nesses sup­port­ing our brand and had proved suc­cess­ful. h) Had any fur­ther work been under­taken to encour­age non vis­it­or facing busi­nesses to relo­cate their busi­nesses to the Nation­al Park? The CEO explained that HIE have an attrac­tions group that cov­ers part of the High­land and Moray loc­al author­ity area parts of the Nation­al Park how­ever the Author­ity do not have enough resource to be influ­en­tial on that. Once the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan is adop­ted, the Author­ity will have more of an idea of the num­ber of sites zoned for eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and the Board can think about how to best invite invest­ment on those sites. i) A query sur­round­ing web­site usage being 174,000 vis­its, what was that meas­ured against? Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment explained that it is meas­ured against oth­er Nation­al Parks, des­pite the Cairngorms being in a more

remote loc­a­tion and hav­ing less res­id­ents the web­site per­forms well in com­par­is­on to them. j) Sug­ges­tion to use former board mem­bers to work as ambas­sad­ors for the Nation­al Park and attend Cairngorms Nature BIG week­end. The Con­vener agreed and advised that he planned to write to the can­did­ates who lost on the elec­tions about the oth­er oppor­tun­it­ies. Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment advised that the quarterly e‑bulletin is sent out to former Board mem­bers. k) The need to bet­ter inform the gen­er­al pub­lic as to the role of Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Board mem­bers. The Con­vener advised that he and anoth­er Board Mem­ber had done a video which was on the Authority’s web­site. The CEO high­lighted that he, the Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment and the Digit­al Cam­paigns Officer had been hav­ing dis­cus­sions on cre­at­ing short one minute videos and that the role of Board Mem­bers could be included in that. l) Dis­cus­sion on how to pro­mote the role of Board Mem­bers to oth­er coun­cil­lors. The CEO reminded mem­bers that they could use the quarterly CEO Report and the 6 monthly Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan & Cor­por­ate Plan update papers as their crib sheets of things to talk about with­in their coun­cils. m) Com­ment made that the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment On Board train­ing day had been very use­ful and one of its key mes­sages was around enga­ging with oth­er pub­lic boards.

1. The Board noted the pro­gress made against the CNPA Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment Strategy 2018 – 2022 dur­ing ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ and the pro­posed pri­or­ity areas of work for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀.

2. Actions: i. Board dis­cus­sion on the Board Buddy sys­tem and how it could work to be sched­uled. ii. Board For­ward Look to be cir­cu­lated to Board Members.

Cairngorms Tour­ism Action Plan: Annu­al Update (Paper 5)

1. Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Pete Crane, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices, intro­duced Paper 6 which reviews the annu­al pro­gress with deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Tour­ism Action Plan and look for­wards to pri­or­it­ies in the year ahead. Heath­er Trench, Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Officer was avail­able to answer any ques­tions relat­ing to the vis­it­or surveys.

2. There was a pause for a two minute com­fort break.

3. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Would the Scot­tish Government’s pro­posed tour­ism tax impact on pro­pos­als to estab­lish a Vis­it­or Giv­ing Scheme? Dir­ect­or of Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Plan­ning explained that the main ele­ments of the scheme were approved by the Board in June 2018. The Cairngorms Trust are now lead­ing the ini­ti­at­ive and a paper had been taken to the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee to review the draft Memor­andum of Under­stand­ing between the Trust and CNPA. Since that time there had been the gov­ern­ment announce­ment on the intro­duc­tion of the tran­si­ent tour­ism levy but this would take a few years to be imple­men­ted. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices added that the Cairngorms Trust are look­ing to take it for­ward with indi­vidu­al busi­nesses but look­ing for vol­un­tary dona­tions made from vis­it­ors to the Trust to help sup­port the work of the Cairngorms. He added that this was much more of a vol­un­tary mutu­al bene­fit and part­ner­ship. b) With ref­er­ence to point k on page 6, was this a new vis­it­or man­age­ment plan that was planned? Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices explained that the need to devel­op a new vis­it­or man­age­ment plan was iden­ti­fied before the decision to restruc­ture Forest Enter­prise Scot­land came about. He explained that they had inten­ded to carry out the first pub­lic sur­vey of this before East­er 2019 how­ever this had slipped as a res­ult of the name change to Forest and Land Scot­land. c) The Con­vener repor­ted that he had received a response to his let­ter from Kate For­bes who had advised that the gov­ern­ment are con­sult­ing on a tran­si­ent vis­it­or levy at present but that would not be imple­men­ted this year. A Board Mem­ber added that the Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary had made it clear that it would not be imple­men­ted in 2019 – 2020 or 2020 – 2021. d) The need to ini­ti­ate joint work with neigh­bour­ing region­al des­tin­a­tion Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire. Sug­ges­tion made from Peter Argyle, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire Board Mem­ber that the Author­ity take a present­a­tion to one of their meet­ings. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices advised that by the next con­fer­ence, data from the next vis­it­or sur­vey would be ready and would be good to share. e) Where are the Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centre’s? Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices said they were Glen­shee café, Bal­mor­al, Brae­mar, Tomin­toul, Grant­own on Spey, the Heath­er Centre, Nethy­bridge, Kin­gussie, Lag­gan café and Lag­gan moun­tain-bike centre and at Blair Atholl. He explained that the Author­ity provide them with the inform­a­tion and train­ing through the Make it Yours scheme and get them to meet with each oth­er on an area by areas basis.

f) How do vis­it­ors find the Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres? Head of Ser­vices advised that they are there to com­ple­ment the VS Vis­it­or Inform­a­tion Centres and are shown on all maps pro­duced by the Author­ity. g) The growth of vis­it­ors since 2003 appears low and is chal­len­ging giv­en there isn’t any­thing to com­pare it against. Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Officer advised that it could be com­pared to Scot­land as a whole. She went on to explain that when they had applied for the European Charter this time round it showed slow steady growth with vis­it­ors stay­ing longer and out of sea­son. She added that STEAM data com­pare to oth­er Nation­al Parks. h) Recog­ni­tion of the wide range of tour­ism work going on. i) A Board Mem­ber raised the con­cern around the increase in second homes that are impact­ing on the lives of res­id­ents in the form of ​‘party houses’, request made to see work being done on that. The CEO advised that some work on that was under­way, look­ing at com­pil­ing stats on the num­ber of hol­i­day homes in Nation­al Park which is 22% in total which also includes those that are vacant. He added that amend­ments in the Plan­ning Bill may have implic­a­tions for example it may be that in the future if one wanted to change a house from per­man­ent use to hol­i­day home one may need per­mit. j) Hav­ing atten­ded a recent Scot­tish Tour­ism Alli­ance Con­fer­ence one of the top­ics of dis­cus­sion was the European Charter and the enhance­ment of sus­tain­ab­il­ity by pro­mot­ing the envir­on­ment­al focussed tour­ism busi­nesses to the vis­it­ors. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment referred to Annex 2 and explained that this issue had been dis­cussed with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship but that this was not seen as a sig­ni­fic­ant com­pet­it­ive advant­age for busi­nesses at this time. k) Sug­ges­tion made to explore the digit­al and vir­tu­al side of things tar­get­ing over­seas vis­it­ors and young people through use of goggles and 3D images. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment ran through some of the things that were under­way includ­ing the Snow Roads hav­ing developed and app and the Badenoch Great Place pro­ject plan­ning the same. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices advised that noth­ing on the vir­tu­al real­ity front had been done yet. He explained that 17 com­munity paths leaf­lets would be being made for view­ing on mobile phones this year and that the Author­ity were look­ing at doing work to make the inter­pret­a­tion of the Spey­side Way avail­able on mobile phones. Fur­ther sug­ges­tion made in build­ing vir­tu­al land­scapes to help patients such as those wait­ing on a car­di­ac oper­a­tion where read­ings could be taken when they are calm; the vir­tu­al land­scapes of the Cairngorms could be accessed via goggles and they could also receive inform­a­tion on how they might man­age their con­di­tions. l) Sug­ges­tion made to think stra­tegic­ally about rais­ing the pro­file of the Park by tap­ping into BBC Winter Watch and Spring Watch.

m) Sug­ges­tion made that more work could be done on the Snowroads app which tells the user the loc­a­tion of pub­lic toilets.

1. The Board agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions as set out in the paper.

2. Action Point Arising: None.

Cairngorm Moun­tain Update (Paper 6)

1. This item was taken in a closed ses­sion at the end of this meeting.

AOCB

1. There were no items of business.

2. Action Point Arising: None.

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 14 June 2019, Glen­liv­et Distillery.

2. The Pub­lic part of this meet­ing con­cluded at 12.50.