CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held in the The Malt Loft Room, Glen­liv­et Dis­til­lery, Glen­liv­et on Fri­day 14^th June 2019 at 11.00am

PRESENT

• Peter Argyle
• Anne Rae Macdonald
• Geva Black­ett (Deputy Convener)
• Elean­or Mackintosh
• Car­o­lyn Caddick
• Xan­der McDade (Con­vener)
• Deirdre Fal­con­er
• Wil­lie McKenna
• Pippa Had­ley
• Ian McLar­en
• Janet Hunter
• Dr Fiona McLean
• John Kirk
• Dr Gaen­er Rodger
• John Lath­am
• Derek Ross
• Douglas McAdam
• 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
• Andy Ford, Cairngorms Nature Manager
• Mar­garet Smith, PA to CEO, Con­vener and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services
• Dee Straw, Plan­ning Admin­is­tra­tion and Sys­tems Officer
• Nick Half­hide, Dir­ect­or of Sus­tain­able Growth, Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age Items 1- 7 only
• John Risby, Con­ser­vat­or High­lands and Islands, Scot­tish Forestry Items 1- 7 only
• Jan­elle Clark, Area Man­ager (Marr), Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil Items 1- 7 only
• Chris Taylor, Region­al Part­ner­ships Dir­ect­or, Vis­itScot­land Items 1- 7 only
• Rhona Fraser, Head of Strength­en­ing Com­munit­ies and Region­al Devel­op­ment – Inner Moray Firth, High­lands and Islands Enter­prise Items 1- 7 only

Apo­lo­gies:

• Wil­li­am Munro

Wel­come and Introduction

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

2. Apo­lo­gies were noted for Wil­li­am Munro.

Declar­a­tions of Interest

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

Minutes of Last Meet­ing held on 29 March 2019 – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 29 March 2019 were agreed with the fol­low­ing amendments:

   a) At Para 11(e) – Word ​“Chair” should be deleted and not left with a strike through. b) Con­fid­en­tial minutes were agreed as accurate.

Mat­ters Arising

1. None.

2. Action Points Arising: None

CEO Report and Con­vener Update (Paper 1)

1. Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive, intro­duced Paper 1 which high­lights the main stra­tegic work streams that are being dir­ec­ted by Man­age­ment Team. He high­lighted the fol­low­ing 3 areas:

   a) Cairngorms Nature Big Week­end — num­ber up again this year. b) Vista Pro­ject by SSE – pylons to be taken out over next couple of years. c) Wild­cat Pro­ject — good news regard­ing more fund­ing com­ing into Park for this project.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail of the paper and dis­cussed the fol­low­ing points:

   a) Act­ive Aviemore – ques­tion was raised regard­ing what was being done in terms of explain­ing to pub­lic how the funds were being spent. CEO respon­ded that lots of drop in ses­sions for pub­lic had been and will con­tin­ue to be held. b) Resources – a mem­ber brought up the fact that there were struck and very impressed with regard to just how many dif­fer­ent pro­jects involving staff were being done, and asked if this was sus­tain­able. CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices respon­ded that staff are try­ing to deliv­er against the NPPP and not over­stretch too much. Seni­or man­agers are also rein­for­cing through Man­age­ment Team that staff must pri­or­it­ise pro­jects to make room for the more import­ant ones, drop­ping or delay­ing some if neces­sary. c) Upland Advis­ory Group – the ques­tion of All Ter­rain Vehicle use was raised, with response that this sub­ject is included in the Wild Deer Best Prac­tice Group. A sub-group has been set up to look at this and try to bring all the best prac­tice togeth­er. d) Stake­hold­er Engage­ment – dis­cus­sions held with Police Scot­land on Rap­tor track­er pro­ject, wild­life crime and spe­cial con­stables. Meet­ing with Scot­tish Land and Estates who have had many staff changes so try­ing to re-estab­lish link with them. e) Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Link – meet­ing held with the new CEO to estab­lish what their pri­or­it­ies are for the com­ing year. f) Cli­mate change – In dis­cus­sion around the Authority’s response to the cli­mate emer­gency, the Board con­sidered wheth­er a paper go to the Septem­ber Board regard­ing the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Cli­mate Change agenda. It was noted that this paper may be more feas­ible for present­a­tion to the Decem­ber Board.

3. The Board noted the paper.

4. Action Point arising:

   i. Paper on response to cli­mate change emer­gency to Decem­ber Board meeting.

Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan Pro­gress Report ¹⁸⁄₁₉ (Paper 2)

1. Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive intro­duced Paper 2 which sets out the Authority’s vis­ion and over­arch­ing strategy for man­aging the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. He high­lighted the following:

   a) Peat­land res­tor­a­tion – just applied for a fur­ther 1000 ha to be added, should hear about res­ults with­in the next few weeks. b) Des­ig­nated sites – slight increase in sites in favour­able con­di­tion. c) Vis­it­or exper­i­ence tar­gets – vis­it­or num­bers increased for east side of the Park. Snow roads pro­mo­tions and invest­ment into Bal­later increas­ing as a res­ult. d) Vis­it­or data — should have good data by next year. e) Volun­teer rangers — will meet tar­get eas­ily by next year. f) Rur­al devel­op­ment – per­mis­sion for 108 afford­able houses – should reach the tar­get by end of plan­ning peri­od. g) Broad­band – Cairngorms com­munity broad­band pro­ject was shelved but Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment work­ing on the new ​“Reach­ing 100% / R100” broad­band infra­struc­ture pro­ject. Fur­ther details updat­ing on pro­gress with R100 deliv­ery will fol­low in due course.

2. Present­a­tions were giv­en by:

   a) Nick Half­ide, SNH gave a short present­a­tion on SHN deliv­ery of the Park Plan part­ner­ship. b) John Risby, Scot­tish Forestry. Repor­ted on forestry in Scot­land and forestry tar­gets con­trib­ut­ing pos­it­ively to deliv­ery of NPP Plan. c) Jan­elle Clark, Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil gave a short present­a­tion on actions taken by AC on the deliv­ery of the NPP Plan. d) Rhona Fraser, HIE gave a short present­a­tion on what HIE and Inner Moray Firth do in the Park. HIE’s new strategy has now been released. e) Chris Taylor, Vis­itScot­land gave a short present­a­tion on where the NP fits in with tour­ism around Scot­land and wider, and how Vist­Scot­land strategy fits in the NPP Plan.

3. Xan­der McDade thanked all the presenters and opened the floor to the Board for any ques­tions. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and asked for some of the points in the present­a­tions to be clarified.

   a) Ques­tion was asked about afford­able hous­ing and in par­tic­u­lar empty rur­al hous­ing. Gov­ern­ment state­ment came out yes­ter­day regard­ing fund­ing to take for­ward rur­al hous­ing pro­jects. This is a very dif­fi­cult area espe­cially tak­ing into account hol­i­day let­ting which take in more money. Should rur­al prop­er­ties be looked at dif­fer­ently to hous­ing in towns and vil­lages? Work with part­ners needs to be done to resolve this. b) Wood­land Car­bon units – would this have a great­er role in the future? In dis­cus­sion it was noted that hope­fully this would be the case, but still some issues round the mech­an­isms and how it is delivered. Could this be facil­it­ated by the Park to help unlock the money which is avail­able for fund­ing? c) Dif­fi­cult for upland estates to get fund­ing – what options are avail­able to help them to get grants. Tar­get grant is help­ing an intro­duc­tion of a high­er rate for deer fen­cing which helps with the cost. Park needs to look into how the new Forestry Strategy can be used to imple­ment the CNPA Forest Strategy.

Stra­tegic Risk Man­age­ment and Mon­it­or­ing Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance (Paper 3)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced the paper which presents an update on the Authority’s per­form­ance to date in work­ing towards deliv­ery of stra­tegic object­ives estab­lished in the 2018 to 2022 Cor­por­ate Plan. The paper focuses on deliv­ery against the Key Per­form­ance Indic­at­ors and also presents the latest ver­sion of the Stra­tegic Risk Register.

2. KPI regard­ing Com­munity work­ing has been achieved early. This is due to the LEAD­ER pro­gramme, which deliv­ers the major­ity of new entrants to com­munity led devel­op­ment action, com­ing toward a con­clu­sion and data being avail­able at a rel­at­ively early stage of the Cor­por­ate Plan period.

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

   a) Annex 2 page 2 – John Muir Awards – do we know if the 20% of those from dis­ad­vant­aged back­ground had been achieved – this inform­a­tion to be cir­cu­lated to Mem­bers. b) Annex 2 – busi­ness sat­is­fac­tion with CNPA – com­ments geared towards how CNPA does against oth­er busi­ness bod­ies but not our own sat­is­fac­tions. Quarterly trend is avail­able which will can be giv­en to Board regard­ing our CNPA busi­ness sat­is­fac­tion. MF will be send­ing this round when it is avail­able. c) KPI No 1 – should this be green or should it be amber. Feel­ing is that as half way through the year we are on tar­get but acknow­ledged this might change over the com­ing years. Staff are asked to make a com­mit­ment and go with green if they real­ist­ic­ally believe they are on track and will deliv­er against tar­get. d) Annex 2 – noted staff turnover high. Mem­bers recog­nised a degree of turnover was good to allow fresh ideas and skills to come into the organ­isa­tion while recog­nising poten­tial ser­vice dis­rup­tion of high turnover is main­tained over a longer peri­od of time. More widely, mem­bers noted from Chair of Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee that health and safety issues to be brought to S&R Com­mit­tee who will then inform the Board as appro­pri­ate. e) Wild­life Crime Incid­ents still red – does the num­bers include birds which have dis­ap­peared as well as those involving crime? This cov­ers those where a bird has dis­ap­peared in sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances. f) Busi­ness sat­is­fac­tion – inform­a­tion gathered from CBP but not all busi­nesses mem­bers of CBP. Is there anoth­er way of gath­er­ing more inform­a­tion? Not at the moment without deploy­ing sig­ni­fic­ant addi­tion­al resources, but this is believed to be an example of sat­is­fac­tion which is reas­on­ably rep­res­ent­at­ive of sen­ti­ment with an accept­able sur­vey response rate, so val­id to be used for our per­man­ence man­age­ment data. A busi­ness baro­met­er is avail­able from Vis­itScot­land. g) Moun­tains and People – moun­tain path pro­gress – sug­ges­tion made to look at Nor­way Pro­ject regard­ing Sher­pas help­ing with sort­ing paths. This could be util­ised in CNPA. Gap in the fund­ing is being looked at by OATS Board to ensure that it is plugged before the end of the pro­ject. h) Wild­life crime – A mem­ber asked about the resources to attend a wild­life crime incid­ent. Officers present respon­ded that speed and vis­ib­il­ity of response from police is some­thing which is import­ant. Work­ing really closely with the police on this sub­ject. New Track­er will hope­fully help to pin­point when crime takes place.

4. The Board noted the paper.

5. Action point arising:

   i. Cir­cu­late inform­a­tion on socio-eco­nom­ic back­ground of John Muir Award participants

Stand­ing Orders (Paper 4)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced the paper which presents fur­ther revi­sions to the Author­ity’ Stand­ing Orders fol­low­ing the Board’s con­sid­er­a­tion of a revised draft at its meet­ing in March 2019.

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

   a) Plan­ning Stand­ing Orders will need to be looked at regard­ing tying up to ensure effect­ive inter­ac­tion with the Board Stand­ing Orders. b) Para­graph 9 – regard­ing quor­um – this needs to be tied up with the Plan­ning Stand­ing Orders.

3. The Board agreed the paper.

4. Action point arising:

   i. Review Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders

Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme Update (Paper 5)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced the paper which presents an update on the deliv­ery of the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme, fol­low­ing the Cairngorms Loc­al Action Group’s (CLAG’s) full com­mit­ment of the LEAD­ER grant fund­ing alloc­a­tion made avail­able to it by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. The team will give a present­a­tion to a future meeting.

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

   a) Annex I Page 13 – Mem­bers asked how the CLAG might tar­get deliv­ery of the mon­it­or­ing indic­at­ors that are red and not being delivered at the moment. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices respon­ded that it is the applic­ant that picks the most appro­pri­ate KPIs for their pro­ject to deliv­er and while the team encour­ages applic­ants to pick on par­tic­u­lar rel­ev­ant KPIs this is ulti­mately for the pro­ject applic­ant. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices high­lighted that there is still some scope for the red KPI to be addressed through a cooper­a­tion pro­ject being worked on and for which the CLAG may seek addi­tion­al fund­ing from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. The CLAG also has an oppor­tun­ity to seek to vary its Loc­al Devel­op­ment Strategy and the asso­ci­ated KPIs pri­or to the final con­clu­sion and audit of the pro­gramme, and may there­fore be able to adjust cer­tain KPIs which pro­jects com­ing for­ward have not been able to deliv­er against. b) Rur­al Trans­port in Cairngorms and Kilkenny – how is this pro­ject going? Rur­al trans­port very dif­fi­cult in lots of areas. How can bet­ter links be achieved? Applic­ants were asked to come for­ward to pro­pose an applic­a­tion with­in the theme of trans­port and con­nectiv­ity but none came for­ward, so Cairngorms Trust now work­ing with Kilkenny LEAD­ER to try to get ideas to help alle­vi­ate this. Fund­ing has now been secured to look into this and work is being done to try to get part­ners to take part in this as well. c) Acknow­ledge­ment made of how well the LEAD­ER pro­ject was being done and this should work and achieve­ment should be com­men­ded and the Board’s pos­i­tion on this update should be changed accord­ingly. d) No applic­a­tions from the Angus Glens – is this due to lack of pro­mo­tion of the pro­cess. Dav­id respon­ded that the Chair of Group is from the Angus Glens area and the CLAG had been try­ing to encour­age applic­a­tions from this area, in addi­tion to under­tak­ing anim­a­tion work in the early stages of the pro­gramme to encour­age applic­a­tions to come for­ward. Con­tact also made with Angus LEAD­ER Group on poten­tial for cooper­a­tion pro­jects, how­ever there were insuf­fi­cient com­mon pri­or­ity areas to allow an effect­ive pro­ject to be identified.

3. The Board agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions as set out in the paper, com­mend­ing the work of the Cairngorms LEAD­ER team and Cairngorms Loc­al Action Group for their deliv­ery and man­age­ment of fund­ing alloc­a­tion with­in the Cairngorms.

4. Action Point Arising: None.

Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject Update (Paper 6)

1. Andy Ford, Head of Con­ser­va­tion, intro­duced the paper which updated the Board on the Pro­gress of the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject. Lot­tery fund­ing is not the only part of this pro­ject as there are lots of factors at play. Too simplist­ic to stay that there is only one prob­lem and one solution.

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

   a) Staff are keen to inter­act with Board Mem­bers more and so would encour­age Mem­bers to con­tact staff to dis­cuss this top­ic fur­ther. b) Car­rbridge Caper News is some­thing that Mem­bers might look at. Dur­ing the Big Week­end there was a lot of engage­ment with the people of Car­rbridge. Lot of work done with chil­dren on this top­ic which was com­men­ded. c) Sig­nage man­age­ment – some landown­ers have their own caper sens­it­ive sites and have sig­nage around this. Is this some­thing which is man­aged by the Park? A Park-wide sig­nage sys­tem developed by the Access Team in con­sulta­tion with stake­hold­ers is in place, not all estates sign up to it but they are encour­aged to do so. a) How is pro­ject going in Car­rbridge and what pred­at­or con­trol is being done – pro­ject has turned a sig­ni­fic­ant corner in Car­rbridge. A com­munity con­sulta­tion and all res­id­ent sur­vey will be car­ried out in the Autumn to estab­lish what the res­id­ents of car­rbridge feel about caper­cail­lie issues. There is still a lot of work to do but things are mov­ing in the right dir­ec­tion. The pred­at­or con­trol pro­posed is to sup­ple­ment the leg­al con­trol already being done by some estates in areas where SRDP grants do not apply. b) Com­munity engage­ment and agree­ment is essen­tial. A Board mem­ber noted that there is still some oppos­i­tion to this pro­ject with­in the com­munity. This was acknow­ledged, and the pro­ject team are con­tinu­ally review­ing their com­mu­nic­a­tion and engage­ment approaches. That said, it some­times needs to be accep­ted that it is impossible to win over every­one with pro­jects of this type.

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

4. Action Point Arising: None.

Joint Work­ing with UK Nation­al Parks (Paper 7)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced the paper which updated the Board on joint work­ing activ­it­ies under­taken between the 15 Nation­al Park (NP) Author­it­ies in the UK. Cairngorms is lead­ing on estab­lish­ment of the Nation­al Parks Char­it­able organ­isa­tion. Work across 15 NPs is not easy, with vari­ations in cul­ture and pri­or­it­ies of each, but is very worth­while. Rur­al Skills pro­ject was recently sponsored by Forest Hol­i­days and Cliff Bar Part­ner­ship had also provid­ing spon­sor­ship over the 15 parks. Spon­sor­ship is tar­geted to increase in the future and has reached the point where NPs are expec­ted to at least break even in terms of levels of spon­sor­ship fund­ing sup­port received when com­pared with resource input to sup­port the fun­drais­ing activ­it­ies. A Joint Com­mu­nic­a­tions Team and its fund­ing has been agreed in order to deal with col­lect­ive mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion­al activities.

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

   a) Page 3 A15 Para 9 under repu­ta­tion – why is afford­able hous­ing show­ing as a risk. Dav­id explained that this sec­tion of the paper high­lighted the stra­tegic risks that our work in devel­op­ing joint work­ing across all 15 NPs helps to mit­ig­ate. Hous­ing was men­tioned as a part of a wider risk around one-off incid­ents impact­ing on the Authority’s repu­ta­tion. The wider pro­mo­tion­al cov­er­age through col­lect­ive action on the work of NPs, includ­ing the Cairngorms, could help sig­ni­fic­antly in mit­ig­at­ing repu­ta­tion­al impacts of one-off neg­at­ive, loc­al cov­er­age. b) Pro­cure­ment – has there been any work been done regard­ing pro­cur­ing IT etc. rather than just for spon­sor­ship between NPS. This had been done in some areas, espe­cially in bi-lat­er­al areas such as CNPA/​Loch Lomond and the Trossachs NP pro­cure­ment with­in Scot­land. Also look­ing into shared pro­cure­ment with oth­er part­ners rather than just oth­er NPs. The paper high­lighted that some joint pro­cure­ment had been under­taken through col­lab­or­at­ive activ­ity between all UK NPs. How­ever, this has been rel­at­ively lim­ited as a con­sequence of vari­ations in loc­al joint work­ing arrangements.

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

4. Action Point Arising: None.

Board Fees Policy (Paper 8)

1. This paper was deferred to dis­cuss on anoth­er day when more time was avail­able to allow a full discussion.

AOCB

1. Gov­ernance Group: Terms of Reference

   a) Com­pris­ing Chairs of Com­mit­tees to look at improve­ments to the way gov­ernance arrange­ments are handled, to meet as required. b) Quor­um – this to be changed to 4 from 3.

2. Plan­ning Bill – Grant Moir told the Board that the Plan­ning Bill was com­ing back to par­lia­ment shortly – 230 amend­ments at the moment but Gov­ern­ment are look­ing to bring this down. Need to keep an eye on call-in powers to see how this will affect the CNPA.

3. Action Point Arising: None.

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 20 Septem­ber 2019, CNPA Office, Grant­own on Spey.

2. The Pub­lic part of this meet­ing con­cluded at 13.45.