CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

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:

a) Cairngorms Nation­al Park Forest Strategy: The chal­lenge now is to encour­age more landown­ers to pick up on the strategy’s vis­ion and object­ives and to fol­low the guid­ance it provides. With this in mind we are devel­op­ing a ​‘chal­lenge fund’ to help encour­age more wood­land cre­ation in the Nation­al Park. The fund­ing would help to cov­er the costs of bird, peat depth sur­veys etc that would inform a grant applic­a­tion to Scot­tish Forestry.

b) Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Frame­work: See Caper Update Paper

c) East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship: Col­lect­ively pro­gress is being made. We had a very pos­it­ive dis­cus­sion with game­keep­ers from the six estates along with rep­res­ent­at­ives from the Heath­er Trust and Game and Wild­life Con­ser­va­tion Trust to observe and dis­cuss muir­burn on Del­nadamph Estate. Cur­rently we are nego­ti­at­ing dis­cus­sions on achiev­ing more detailed rap­tor mon­it­or­ing across all of the estates.

d) Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship: 2019 is set to the busiest year of all for TGLP with a num­ber of very chal­len­ging major pro­jects set to be car­ried out. Work has star­ted on sta­bil­ising Blairfindy Castle. The Scalan mills pro­ject has received plan­ning per­mis­sion and work has star­ted on site. The Spey­side Way Spur work has also star­ted. Already we are see­ing loc­al eco­nom­ic bene­fits from the Dark Sky Park des­ig­na­tion. The river res­tor­a­tion pro­jects (slow­ing the flow and water mar­gin man­age­ment, both rely­ing on the sup­port and com­plex fund­ing require­ments of a num­ber of part­ners) con­tin­ue to be chal­len­ging but we are con­fid­ent, based on suc­cesses to date that we will see more excit­ing pro­jects in place in the next few months. Over­all there are 20 pro­jects being under­taken by the Partnership.

e) Cairngorms Nature: The launch of the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2019 – 2024 was cel­eb­rated at a Holyrood recep­tion on 21^st Feb­ru­ary, hos­ted by Graeme

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

Dey and atten­ded by 30 seni­or staff from NPPP part­ners. This fol­lowed three days of pro­mo­tion at a stand in the garden lobby when over 30 MSPs came and chat­ted to CNPA staff about con­ser­va­tion and sus­tain­able land man­age­ment in the Park. The Holyrood recep­tion was fol­lowed up with a loc­al launch, shared with the launch of the Forest Strategy, on 1^st March. It was well atten­ded by pro­ject staff from part­ner agen­cies and organ­isa­tions with dir­ect respons­ib­il­ity for deliv­ery. A bid for fund­ing Cairngorms Nature activ­ity has been sub­mit­ted to the SNH Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund. The wild­life track­er pro­ject is ongo­ing but has been delayed to winter 2019 to ensure the tech­no­logy is robust.

f) Peat­land Action: The Cairngorms Peat­land Action Pro­ject Officers con­tin­ue to deliv­er res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment across the Nation­al Park with 13 pro­jects tar­get­ing over 1100 hec­tares of peat­land with a budget of £1.48 mil­lion in ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉. Eight of these pro­jects will com­plete by the end of March, with weath­er and con­tract­or capa­city delay­ing the oth­er five. Fund­ing has been applied for to get 2500 hec­tares of degraded peat­land across 9 sites into res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment this year. The nation­al budget for Peat­land Action is £3m so com­pet­i­tion will be high for funds.

g) Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group: The group met for the first time in March. The meet­ing set out the group’s pur­pose and a num­ber of key top­ics were lightly touched upon. It was agreed future meet­ings would focus on only two or three top­ics so that they could be more fully covered. It was agreed that a small sub-group would look into pulling togeth­er best prac­tice guid­ance on ATV use in the Nation­al Park to be covered in more detail at the next meet­ing in Sept/​Oct 2019.

h) Deer Man­age­ment: The effect­ive­ness of deer man­age­ment plan­ning by Deer Man­age­ment Groups across Scot­land has been assessed by SNH with a report due later this year. Deer man­age­ment in import­ant des­ig­nated sites in the Nation­al Park is being espe­cially closely scru­tin­ised. The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Deer Work­ing Group is due to report soon. We can expect deer man­age­ment in the news again later this summer.

i) Moor­land Man­age­ment: The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment grouse moor man­age­ment group has examined the envir­on­ment­al impact of grouse moor man­age­ment prac­tices such as muir­burn, use of med­ic­ated grit and moun­tain hare culls, and will be advising on the option of licens­ing grouse shoot­ing busi­nesses in the near future.

j) Wild­life Estates Scot­land: CNPA is a strong sup­port­er of this ini­ti­at­ive which aims to pro­mote best prac­tice and give cred­it where cred­it is due. Any accred­it­a­tion pro­cess is com­plex and with all the part­ners involved, we are doing our best to help ensure that WES becomes a very clear, recog­nis­able and mean­ing­ful brand.

k) Cli­mate Change: The 1^st phase report of his­tor­ic­al snow pat­terns in the Cairngorms has been received from JHI. The second phase look­ing at future trends is being worked on with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, JHI and the Cli­ma­teX­Change, Edin­burgh Centre for car­bon Innov­a­tion as part of RESAS fund­ing secured by CNPA.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

Vis­it­or Experience:

a) Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um: First meet­ing of the ​‘restruc­tured’ group will be late June early July focus­sing on our 2019 Tread Lightly cam­paign that focuses on key access issues; dogs, fires &camping, bik­ing and lit­ter. The autumn meet­ing will invite a wider range of part­ners to con­sider how we bet­ter pro­mote respons­ible access to both users and managers.

b) Long Dis­tance Routes:

i. **Speyside Way:** Planning consent & funding is in now in place from Low Carbon Travel and Transport (LCTT) Challenge Fund to complete the 'new build' to Newtonmore by Autumn 2019. The route is now built, signed and in use from Kincraig to Drumuish and with finical support from SNH the section between Aviemore and Boat of Garten was improved in March 2019. In addition to path construction in 2019 work on signage, interpretation and creating a start/finish point at Newtonmore will be undertaken. The route development is being led by CNPA with support from Highland and Moray Councils.
ii. **Deeside Way:** Planning consent for the path line from Braemar to Invercauld Bridge has been granted. However, our principle community link funding support Sustrans are now only funding multi-use tarmac paths so other sources of funding will need to be secured to build this section.

c) Moun­tains and People Pro­ject: The five year Moun­tains and People pro­ject with­in both Nation­al Parks in Scot­land is approach­ing its final year. Some 35.4 km of moun­tain path upgrades are com­plete com­pris­ing 67% of 53km total sched­uled in the pro­ject. The most notice­able path being rebuilt in this final stage is that climb­ing Beinn a Ghlo seen from A9 at Blair Atholl. CNPA are work­ing with OATS to main­tain a sus­tain­able leg­acy at the end of the pro­ject in both path main­ten­ance and pub­lic involve­ment through volunteering.

d) Act­ive Aviemore: The first phase of detailed, cos­ted, designs for the mul­ti­use path will be pro­duced for the area in and around the new hos­pit­al. These will be under­taken in 2019 and will include loc­al con­sulta­tion. In addi­tion Kin­gussie and Dul­nain com­munit­ies have secured Sus­trans fund­ing to devel­op pro­pos­als for improv­ing multi-use access in and around the com­munit­ies. The Kin­gussie work is link­ing to Spey­side Way and NCN7 and Dul­nain look­ing for a mul­ti­use path link to Grant­own that also embraces the poten­tial to link with the pro­posed new dis­til­lery and any exten­sion of the Steam Rail­way. Lag­gan is at the early stage of look­ing at options to improve access to New­ton­more. The com­munit­ies of west­ern Cairngorms met earli­er this year to make sure that these pro­jects and work on A9 dualling are linked.

e) Glen­more: In part­ner­ship with Forestry and Land Scot­land we have sub­mit­ted a suc­cess­ful bid to the Vis­it Scot­land Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund to con­struct a multi-use path through Glen­more link­ing car parks, vis­it­or attrac­tions and the path net­work. Detailed design is being dealt with by the roads author­ity and does not require to go through the plan­ning per­mis­sion pro­cess. Build is sched­uled for

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

autumn 2019 and will be man­aged by FLS. FLS are still redevel­op­ing their ​‘vis­it­or man­age­ment’ plan with pub­lic con­sulta­tion planned for 2019.

f) Volun­teer­ing: To date 14 trained volun­teer rangers are con­tinu­ing to sup­port the work of six part­ner ranger ser­vices and have con­trib­uted 425 days of very valu­able volun­teer­ing. Train­ing for 12 new volun­teer rangers star­ted in May 2019 aim­ing to have then ready to volun­teer this sum­mer. A fur­ther train­ing is sched­uled for early spring 2020. An aware­ness rais­ing day in Carr-bridge in Feb­ru­ary attrac­ted nearly a hun­dred par­ti­cipants link­ing volun­teers with some 20 pro­viders across the Nation­al Park. Over­all this sig­ni­fic­ant out­put helped secure an addi­tion­al 10 months fund­ing from Lead­er+ to take ini­tial pro­ject to nearly four years.

g) Edu­ca­tion and Inclu­sion: Fol­low­ing Board decision in Decem­ber work devel­op­ing the Euro­parc Youth Mani­festo into sus­tain­able engage­ment with young people is under­way. Lead­er+ fund­ing sup­port part­ner­ship with Fin­ish young people has already lead to two fur­ther work­shops; one in Fin­land in April and Cairngorms in May. How we sup­port and effect­ively use the Cairngorms Youth Action Team will be com­ing to Board in Septem­ber 2019. ​‘Into the Moun­tain’ and ​‘Writer in Res­id­ence’ pro­jects are encour­aging people to cre­at­ively cel­eb­rate the out­stand­ing cul­ture of Cairngorms. Both pro­jects are sup­por­ted by Cre­at­ive Scot­land, with Wood­land Trust sup­port­ing the ​‘Writer’ pro­gramme. Sup­por­ted by both CNPA and SNH Back­bone is apply­ing Her­it­age Lot­tery sup­port for an ​‘Our Nat­ur­al Her­it­age’ pro­ject to encour­age refugees and migrants to enjoy Cairngorms.

h) Inform­a­tion and Inter­pret­a­tion: Nation­al Park inter­pret­a­tion is being installed in two key vis­it­or attrac­tions; Land­mark in Carr-Bridge and Spey­side Centre in Dul­nain Bridge. New, 2019 ver­sions of Wel­come, Tread Lightly and Explore for A Day leaf­lets & sponsored tear off map are being pro­duced and Gael­ic Place Names, Hill Paths widely circulated.

i) Snow Roads Scen­ic Route: CBP has secured Vis­it Scot­land Growth Fund sup­port to deliv­er an £80k pro­ject that uses the SnowRoads to tar­get inter­na­tion­al buy­ers in France, Ger­many, Scand­inavia and North Amer­ica for the first time, encour­aging them to list the Cairngorms for trav­el­lers who design their own itin­er­ar­ies and arrange their own travel plans. Staff and Board mem­bers atten­ded CBP Spring Con­fer­ence which was themed on Snow Roads.

Rur­al Development:

a) Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020: Con­sulta­tion on the Pro­posed LDP fin­ished on 5 April 2019. We received 207 form­al responses to the pro­posed Plan. The use of videos and pho­to­graphs along­side social media as part of the con­sulta­tion, gen­er­ated sig­ni­fic­antly more interest than any oth­er CNPA cam­paign yet. The level of par­ti­cip­a­tion and inter­ac­tion with mater­i­al should have helped dis­pel myths and provide facts about the Plan that might oth­er­wise lead to objec­tions. The responses are now being ana­lysed and will be repor­ted to the Board in August before sub­mis­sion to the Dir­ect­or­ate for Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment­al Appeals (DPEA) for exam­in­a­tion by a Reporter.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

b) Plan­ning case­work: The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee have approved plan­ning applic­a­tions to fur­ther extend the Spey­side Way towards Kin­gussie, redevel­op the site of the former Spit­tal of Glen­shee Hotel, new health­care facil­ity in Aviemore and, recently, new tour­ism accom­mod­a­tion in Strath­don. Dur­ing Feb­ru­ary, Speymalt Whisky Dis­trib­uters, the par­ent com­pany of Gor­don and Macphail, held a pub­lic exhib­i­tion in Grant­own-on-Spey for their pro­posed new dis­til­lery south of the town. CNPA drew togeth­er the pro­moters of four poten­tially pos­it­ive devel­op­ments near Grant­own — the steam rail­way exten­sion, the A95 trunk road upgrade, the new dis­til­lery and the com­munity path link to Dul­nain Bridge.

c) Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er: The Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er for Q4 for 2018 showed a reduc­tion in cus­tom­ers and turnover com­pared to pre­vi­ous quar­ters. There was also a decrease in busi­ness con­fid­ence com­pared to pre­vi­ous quar­ters and many busi­nesses were con­cerned about being unable to fill vacan­cies. CBP noted that the funicu­lar clos­ure and con­sequent neg­at­ive nation­al pub­li­city about the area was likely to have played a sig­ni­fic­ant role. Mean­while the over­all level of sup­port provided to busi­nesses from a range of organ­isa­tions was well above aver­age for recent peri­ods. Report is avail­able here https://​vis​it​cairngorms​.com/​b​a​r​o​meter.

d) Eco­nom­ic Action Plan: The Board approved the Action Plan in Decem­ber and we are due to go out to con­sulta­tion in June. This has been delayed to refine the actions with part­ners and to avoid over­lap and poten­tial for con­fu­sion with the LDP consultation.

e) Tour­ism Action Plan: The Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship met in late May and dis­cussed the work of High­lands and Islands Enter­prise, plans to devel­op a Tour­ism Busi­ness Improve­ment Dis­trict in Moray and early ideas for a new long dis­tance route link­ing Deeside and Strath­spey. Over­all good pro­gress is being made with deliv­ery of the Action Plan. The vis­it­or sur­vey ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ is now under­way with inter­im res­ults expec­ted at the end of the year. CNPA now has 10 agree­ments with Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres across the Nation­al Park. The centres are all pro­moted on our web­site, maps and appro­pri­ate pub­lic­a­tions and we are work­ing with them to install the brand, inform­a­tion and inter­pret­a­tion. All have par­ti­cip­ated in ​‘Make it Yours’ training.

f) Afford­able Hous­ing Deliv­ery: Staff and Board mem­bers atten­ded the Rur­al Hous­ing Con­fer­ence in Birnam in early March. The fol­low­ing week a pos­it­ive meet­ing took place of our Com­munity-led Hous­ing Group, involving rep­res­ent­at­ives from Aviemore, Dul­nain Bridge, Boat of Garten, Car­rbridge, Tomin­toul, Kin­craig, Brae­mar and Bal­later. A num­ber of those com­munit­ies are act­ively scop­ing com­munity hous­ing pro­jects with the sup­port of CNPA, High­land Small Com­munit­ies Hous­ing Trust and Rur­al Hous­ing Scot­land, all mak­ing use of the Scot­tish Government’s Rur­al Hous­ing Fund to pro­gress their plans.

g) A9 Dualling pro­ject: CNPA removed its objec­tion to the pro­pos­als at Kil­liecrankie where addi­tion­al sur­vey inform­a­tion had been col­lec­ted and His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment Scot­land were sat­is­fied. On the Dalraddy to Slo­chd sec­tion CNPA con­siders the pro­vi­sion for non-motor­ised users between Aviemore and Carrbridge

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

is insuf­fi­cient and has objec­ted. Trans­port Scot­land are cur­rently lead­ing a study to look at route options for new path pro­vi­sion although the meet­ings to take this for­wards have been delayed.

h) Com­munity-led devel­op­ment: Staff con­tin­ue to sup­port com­munity-led pro­ject devel­op­ment through­out the Park. The High­land Wild­life Park and Brae­mar Castle have been suc­cess­ful in their NLHF bids but Am Fas­gah were not suc­cess­ful on this occa­sion. Staff con­tin­ue to sup­port Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey and the Marr Area Part­ner­ship in their CDO roles and sup­por­ted recent Com­munity Action Plan­ning work in Kin­gussie. CNPA facil­it­ated meet­ings to assist Lag­gan Forest Trust take for­wards their plans to expand their role in recre­ation and forest man­age­ment. The Asso­ci­ation of Cairngorms Com­munit­ies, and their asso­ci­ated Plan­ning Rep­res­ent­at­ives Net­work, met earli­er in March.

i) Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject: Pro­ject is now well estab­lished and mul­tiple pro­ject lines are being pro­gressed. Work on the Inter­pret­a­tion & Mar­ket­ing Strategy is well under way and pro­pos­als are emer­ging for stronger place-based brand­ing of the area based on the poten­tial to tell stor­ies about her­it­age a con­nec­tions to the land. The work to scope an altern­at­ive tour­ist route for Badenoch has been slightly delayed but is also pro­gress­ing well. Arts com­pet­i­tion has star­ted and Gael­ic place-names pro­ject due to start very soon. Pro­ject staff also par­ti­cip­ated in a gath­er­ing of all nine pro­jects in Scot­land to share exper­i­ence and best prac­tice in her­it­age-based place-making

j) Nat­ur­al and Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Fund: Four applic­a­tions have been sub­mit­ted with­in the Park for this fund that is man­aged by SNH: by RSPB for vis­it­or facil­it­ies at Aber­nethy; by High­life High­land for youth facil­it­ies at Folk Park, by RZSS for vis­it­or facil­it­ies at Wild­life park and by a loc­al com­munity group for an obser­vat­ory near Tomin­toul. Decision should be made by Septem­ber 2019.

k) Strength­en­ing Com­munit­ies Con­fer­ence, 27 to 28 May in Aviemore: CNPA Board mem­bers and staff atten­ded the con­fer­ence where the Nation­al Park had a high pro­file with pres­ence at mar­ket­place, sev­er­al speak­ers (includ­ing Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey and Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject) and the Con­vener wel­com­ing guests at din­ner. CNPA also organ­ised two very suc­cess­ful sig­ni­fic­ant Fringe Events for loc­al stake­hold­ers focused on key rur­al devel­op­ment issues in the Park: Involving young people, rur­al broad­band (R100 pro­ject), com­munity-led hous­ing deliv­ery and com­munity engage­ment in land management.

Stake­hold­er Engagement:

a) There has been a range of stake­hold­er engage­ment meet­ings includ­ing meet­ings with Vince Tough — Police Scot­land, Sarah Jane Laing — SLE, Jim Valentine – P&K Coun­cil, Steph­en Arch­er – Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil, Donna Man­son – High­land Coun­cil, Debbie Long — SE LINK, SG RESAS, James Hut­ton Insti­tute & OATS Board members

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

b) The Board even­ing in Aviemore attrac­ted about 20 people to come along and dis­cuss issues in the area.

c) The CEO has atten­ded EELG, CoHI Chief Officers Group, NPPP Deliv­ery Group Scot­tish Lead­ers For­um, ENFOR Away­day, PAW Scot­land Plen­ary Group and Funicu­lar Response Group.

d) There has been a num­ber of oth­er stake­hold­er events covered in oth­er parts of this report

Com­mu­nic­a­tions:

a) Cairngorms Nature Cam­paign: The Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end took place 10 — 13 May with over 100 events across the Park. Eval­u­ation of the event is under­way and early signs are very pos­it­ive with over 3,000 people across the Park get­ting out into our amaz­ing land­scapes and nature, over 400 school chil­dren involved in the art com­pet­i­tion and the rur­al skills day, 6 private estates, 2 farms, 10 ranger ser­vices, 17 private busi­nesses and 18 organ­isa­tions and pro­jects involved.

b) Make It Yours Cam­paign: Some 360 vis­it­or facing staff across the Nation­al Park have par­ti­cip­ated in this train­ing pro­gramme that shares why the Cairngorms is des­ig­nated a Nation­al Park, its spe­cial qual­it­ies and, using the ²⁰¹⁴⁄₁₅ vis­it­or sur­vey data, looks at the exper­i­ences and inform­a­tion people are likely to want. The Gael­ic as an Asset online toolkit will be launched dur­ing the sum­mer to encour­age busi­nesses and com­munity groups to offer Gael­ic exper­i­ences in the Park.

c) Act­ive Cairngorms: The e‑trike ini­ti­at­ive was launched in May to be tri­alled ini­tially in Aviemore with the poten­tial for this to be increased in oth­er com­munit­ies across the Park. The Out­door Access Code was pro­moted through­out April with a spe­cif­ic focus on keep­ing dogs under con­trol dur­ing lamb­ing and bird nest­ing sea­son. In Septem­ber we will focus on pro­mot­ing recre­ation in the park and the con­tri­bu­tion it can make to people’s health and wellbeing.

d) Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions: Work is under­way to pre­pare the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan pro­gress report and the CNPA’s Annu­al Review due to be pub­lished in the sum­mer. The Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Action Plan is also being pre­pared to go out for con­sulta­tion from June – September.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development:

a) Office Exten­sion Pro­ject: Staff are still adapt­ing to the new work­ing envir­on­ment. There have been sev­er­al oppor­tun­it­ies for staff to com­ment on the exten­sion and these sug­ges­tions are cur­rently being con­sidered. With regards the old build­ing, archi­tects have been appoin­ted to review and redesign the meet­ing and inform­al space. We also have plans to redec­or­ate the building

b) Staff­ing update: Since March, staff turnover and recruit­ment has been as follows:

i. Ross Elder's internship in the Communications team came to an end.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

c) ii. Ryan Dziadowiec’s fixed term con­tract as Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan assist­ant ended on 31^st March. iii. Frances Thin (Land­scape Adviser) retired. iv. Gra­ham Saun­ders (Land­scape Adviser) resigned and recruit­ment for this post is cur­rently live

v. Viv Roach (Corporate Support Officer) resigned and recruitment for this post is currently live.

vi. Recruit­ment for the 4 Plan­ning Officer posts to replace staff pro­mo­tions, moves and mater­nity leave (2 x Plan­ning Officers Devel­op­ment Plan­ning; I x Plan­ning Officer Devel­op­ment Man­age­ment; I x Gradu­ate Plan­ner) has now closed and inter­views are being held in June. vii. We are recruit­ing a Strath­spey Farm­land Wader Officer, which is a new fixed term post, fun­ded through the Strath­spey Wet­lands and Wader Initiative.

Youth Employ­ment: : On-going com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing Youth Employ­ment, as follows:

i. Rhiannon Holden was appointed to the 3-month internship, to collate accurate information on where there are currently hill tracks across the National Park. This internship commenced in May.

ii. We have a Pro­ject Scot­land volun­teer join­ing our IT team for a 10 week place­ment over the sum­mer. iii. We are sup­port­ing UHI with two work place­ments as follows:

    * A B.Sc. (Hons) Geography student spent 4 weeks in April working with staff in the following teams: - Conservation, HLF project, Peatland project, Land Management advisers, Outdoor Access and Planning
  * A B.Sc. (Hons) Environmental Science student will spend 2 weeks in October doing a similar but contracted version of the above placement.

d) Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy 2: Fol­low­ing sev­er­al staff engage­ment events, includ­ing the Staff Away Day, Men­tal Health Train­ing, and Man­age­ment Train­ing, togeth­er with a review of recent SCF dis­cus­sions and organ­isa­tion­al change ana­lys­is, we have pulled togeth­er a draft for the next Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy (ODS3). This will be dis­cussed with the Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee and con­sul­ted with staff. Once com­pleted, the ODS3 will dir­ect organ­isa­tion­al change activ­ity over the com­ing 18 months.

e) Shared Ser­vices: Shared ser­vices as fol­lows: — i. Con­tin­ued work to provide HR sup­port the Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion has included the devel­op­ment of new policies, the devel­op­ment, staff con­sulta­tion and sub­mis­sion of the ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ pay remit, which has recently been approved. ii. We have also sup­por­ted SNH by provid­ing a mem­ber of staff on a short-term second­ment to sup­port their pen­sion data cleanse exercise.

f) UKNP: Cairngorms NPA con­tin­ues to lead on the estab­lish­ment of a nation­al char­ity to sup­port the work of Nation­al Park Part­ner­ships in seek­ing cor­por­ate sup­port for the activ­it­ies with­in Nation­al Parks. We have now secured the regis­tra­tion of the ​“UK Nation­al Parks Char­ity Found­a­tion” with the Char­it­ies Com­mis­sion for Eng­land and Wales. Work is ongo­ing to register the entity with the Office of the Char­it­ies Com­mis­sion in Scot­land as the final step in estab­lish­ing the

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

g) charity’s capa­city to work across Scot­land, Wales and Eng­land. A wider update on work with UK Nation­al Parks is set out in a sep­ar­ate update paper to this Board meeting.

LEAD­ER: Steps are now being taken by the Scot­tish Government’s LEAD­ER Deliv­ery Team to recov­er uncom­mit­ted resources from Loc­al Action Groups (LAGs), begin­ning with funds ear­marked for co-oper­a­tion pro­jects. Cairngorms LEAD­ER has exceeded min­im­um levels of co-oper­a­tion pro­ject sup­port. The Cairngorms LAG is likely to bid for addi­tion­al fund­ing to sup­port a co-oper­a­tion pro­ject under devel­op­ment with High­land Coun­cil. The Cairngorms LAG also con­tin­ues to con­sider ​“shovel ready” pipeline pro­jects developed by com­munity groups and is work­ing with com­munity net­works to identi­fy oth­er pro­jects, should addi­tion­al fund­ing become avail­able to fin­ance com­munity led pro­jects. The LAG has also entered a part­ner­ship with Kilkenny LAG in Ire­land to con­sider sus­tain­able rur­al trans­port ini­ti­at­ives and, through the Cairngorms Trust, intends to devel­op a stake­hold­er group to design and man­age a sus­tain­able rur­al trans­port pro­ject over the com­ing 18 months. Fur­ther inform­a­tion on LEAD­ER, in driv­ing com­munity led loc­al devel­op­ment in the Cairngorms, is set out in a sep­ar­ate update paper to this Board meeting.

Grant Moir June 2019 grantmoir@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

Board Con­vener Report – For Information

Since my last update, we have wel­comed Deirdre Fal­con­er and John Kirk to the Board fol­low­ing their elec­tion in wards I and 3 respect­ively. We have also wel­comed back Wil­lie McK­enna, Elean­or Mack­in­tosh and Geva Black­ett fol­low­ing their re-elec­tion to wards 2, 4 and 5. This will now bring a peri­od of sta­bil­ity to the Board for the next three and a half years.

Janet Hunter and I atten­ded the EURO­PARC Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Charter Net­work Con­fer­ence. The Cairngorm Nation­al Park was asked to present a case study on our work on plan­ning sus­tain­able vis­it­or num­bers and the unique chal­lenges we face in the Cairngorms. Janet did a great job lead­ing the present­a­tion and it cre­ated con­sid­er­able debate. I led the Q&A ses­sion after­wards which ran on bey­ond our time due to the level of interest there was in the way we approach not only tour­ism, but our part­ner­ship approach to work­ing. As well as being able to show­case the Cairngorms, the con­fer­ence also allowed us the oppor­tun­ity to hear about dif­fer­ent approaches being taken else­where to man­aging sig­ni­fic­ant tour­ist pres­sures or to attract­ing more in a sus­tain­able way. It also allowed us the oppor­tun­ity to dis­cuss European level envir­on­ment policy with col­leagues from across Europe.

I have con­tin­ued to engage with young people in the Park, and since my last report have addressed stu­dents from the Uni­ver­sity of the High­lands and Islands at their Land Use Con­fer­ence in Car­rbridge. I also met the Cairngorms Youth Steer­ing Group at Glen­more and dis­cussed with them dif­fer­ent ways the Board could engage with the group going for­ward. This will come for­ward as a paper at a future meeting.

Grant Moir and I met with rep­res­ent­at­ives of the Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land (OATS) to dis­cuss poten­tial pro­jects and our future work­ing rela­tion­ship. This was a pos­it­ive meet­ing and some fol­low-up actions have been taken away by both parties. Geva Black­ett and I met with Angus McNicol, Chair of the Cairngorm Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, to dis­cuss how the Park and the CBP can work closer togeth­er going for­ward on eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment matters.

Last week I atten­ded the Strength­en­ing Com­munit­ies Con­fer­ence along with Wil­lie Mun­ro and staff from our Rur­al Devel­op­ment and LEAD­ER teams. As part of the con­fer­ence the CNPA hos­ted two fringe events, one on the issues for young people in rur­al com­munit­ies and one on key rur­al issues includ­ing afford­able hous­ing, broad­band and com­munity own­er­ship of land. We had thirty young people along from the Cairngorm Youth Steer­ing Group who led the work­shop ses­sion and set out a num­ber of the key issues in the EURO­PARC Youth Mani­festo. Both work­shops led to pro­duct­ive dis­cus­sions about pos­it­ive action that could be taken both here in the Cairngorms and fur­ther afield to address some of these issues. I’m grate­ful to Wil­lie McK­enna and Derek Ross for com­ing along and help­ing sup­port the dis­cus­sions at our fringe events, and we were pleased to have com­munity rep­res­ent­at­ives from across the Park attend our rur­al issues fringe as well.

Xan­der McDade Board Convener

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper | 14^th June 2019

Extern­al Engage­ments (20^th March – 28^th May 2019)

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
20⁄3	Vis­it Aber­deen­shire Tour­ism Conference	Aber­deen
20⁄3	UHI Land Use Talk	Car­rbridge
21⁄3	High­land Com­munity Plan­ning Partnership	Inverness
21⁄3	CNPA Dir­ect Elec­tion Count	Aviemore
26⁄3	CNPA/CBP meet­ing	Grant­own-on-Spey
3⁄4	CNPA Staff Away Day	Glen­more
8−15÷4	EURO­PARC Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Charter Net­work Conference	Tzou­merka, Achel­oos, Agrafa and Met­eora Nation­al Park
25⁄4	Sus­tain­able House Renov­a­tions in Cairngorms	Boat of Garten
7⁄5	OATS meet­ing	Grant­own-on-Spey
10⁄5	Big Week­end – Cairngorms Con­nect Event	Boat of Garten
15⁄5	CNPA Com­munity Engage­ment Evening	Aviemore
17⁄5	CNPA/CBP Chairs Meeting	Bal­later
26⁄5	Cairngorm Youth Steer­ing Group	Glen­more
27−28÷5	Strength­en­ing Com­munit­ies Conference	Aviemore