CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 1 — 28^th June 2019

Title: BOARD FEES REVIEW RECOMMENDATION

Pre­pared by:

• XAN­DER MCDADE, BOARD CONVENER
• CAR­O­LYN CAD­DICK, CHAIR OF STAFF­ING & RECRUITMENT

Back­ground

1. The cur­rent policy was intro­duced in 2017. Under the cur­rent policy Board Mem­bers are paid for three days per month (36 days a year) minus any deduc­tions for meet­ings they miss. The Con­vener, Deputy Con­vener and Plan­ning Con­vener receive addi­tion­al days to account for their addi­tion­al duties, but are sub­ject to the same deduc­tions as oth­er Board Mem­bers for any meet­ings missed.

2. At their meet­ing on Fri­day 1^st Feb­ru­ary 2019, the Staff­ing & Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee agreed that the Board Con­vener and the Chair of Staff­ing & Recruit­ment would under­take a review of the cur­rent policy fol­low­ing two years of imple­ment­a­tion of this policy. This review was intim­ated to Board Mem­bers at the inform­al Board Busi­ness ses­sion the same day and all Board Mem­bers were writ­ten to by the Con­vener ask­ing for their feed­back on the cur­rent policy.

3. The Con­vener & Chair of Staff­ing & Recruit­ment draf­ted three key prin­ciples for the review: 

   • 1 — to review the effect­ive­ness of the policy as per the ori­gin­al agree­ment of the policy; 
   • 2 — to ensure Board Mem­bers remu­ner­a­tion is closely aligned to the time they’re giv­ing up in per­form­ing their role; 
   • 3 — Board Mem­bers con­tracts with the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment set out a min­im­um expec­ted com­mit­ment of 2 days per month, with recent adverts for the role pro­mot­ing it as 2 – 3 days a month.

4. Fol­low­ing receipt of the com­pre­hens­ive ini­tial feed­back, the Con­vener & Chair of Staff­ing & Recruit­ment scoped two pos­sible options based on Board Mem­bers feed­back. Board Mem­bers were then con­sul­ted on these options.

Out­come of Consultation

1. A clear major­ity of the Board expressed a pref­er­ence for Option B, with 12 mem­bers pre­fer­ring this option and a fur­ther two say­ing they would be happy with it. This equates to 85% of those who replied sup­port­ing Option B. On this basis the Staff­ing & Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee unan­im­ously agreed that Option B was the pre­ferred option and there­fore recom­mend it to the Board.

2. The key points of the recom­men­ded option are:

   • a) Using a 30 day base. Work was done to cal­cu­late the time Board Mem­bers com­mit if they attend all core meet­ings, includ­ing Board meet­ings, Board Busi­ness Days, Vis­it Days, Plan­ning meet­ings and are a mem­ber of a cor­por­ate com­mit­tee. This included time spent attend­ing meet­ings and pre­par­ing for them. As a res­ult of this ana­lys­is a 30 day base has been used, but with the option to top-up with an addi­tion­al 6 days to a max­im­um of 36 days per year.
   • b) As a flat rate sys­tem there will be an expect­a­tion that Board Mem­bers would ​“off­set” any days missed (due to hol­i­days for example) in oth­er ways e.g. attend­ance at an extern­al event on behalf of the Board. If the Mem­ber is not per­form­ing the min­im­um expec­ted 30 days a year or where their attend­ance at form­al CNPA meet­ings with­in a six month peri­od drops below 80% (exclud­ing absence due to ill­ness), this will trig­ger a review meet­ing with the Con­vener, who shall have the power to impose deduc­tions of a half day for every half day missed.
   • c) Top-up Sys­tem: Board Mem­bers car­ry­ing out addi­tion­al duties on behalf of the Board can receive up to an addi­tion­al 6 days each year for car­ry­ing out these duties. These will primar­ily be achieved through mem­ber­ship of extern­al groups and their value will be paid pro-rata across the year. Any addi­tion­al days from one off events e.g. con­fer­ence attend­ance would be paid at end of the quarter unless it is being used to off­set a missed core meeting.
   • d) Board Mem­bers are expec­ted to attend one com­munity even­ing engage­ment event dur­ing the year and be a mem­ber of a Cor­por­ate Committee/​Communications & Brand Group as part of their core 30 day commitment.

Pro­posed Implementation

1. It is pro­posed that the new Board Fees policy would be imple­men­ted from 1^st Octo­ber 2019.

   • a) The Com­mit­tee also agreed a num­ber of addi­tion­al imple­ment­a­tion actions. These addi­tion­al imple­ment­a­tion actions were as follows:
   • b) That year round com­mit­ments such as mem­ber­ship of an extern­al group should have their value paid pro-rata across the year and that where a conference/​event is not being used by a mem­ber to off­set a missed day, this should be paid at the next quarter end.
   • c) Ahead of the pro­posed imple­ment­a­tion date of 1^st Octo­ber 2019, all Board mem­bers who wish to gain the full 6 days top-up would be giv­en the oppor­tun­ity to dis­cuss mem­ber­ship of extern­al groups.
   • d) Ahead of 1^st Octo­ber 2019, all Board mem­bers would be informed what their monthly rate would from 1^st Octo­ber onwards based on their external/​internal group membership.
   • e) As part of this light touch approach to admin­is­tra­tion, top-ups for addi­tion­al conference/​events should be paid quarterly in the same way deduc­tions are cur­rently applied quarterly.
   • f) Ahead of the Board meet­ing that the alloc­a­tions for off­set­ting/top-up be reviewed fol­low­ing feed­back received. – This is now com­pleted and attached as Annex 1.

2. Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion the Staff­ing & Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee agreed an addi­tion­al recommendation:

   • a) That Board mem­bers who have a dual man­date e.g. are both a Board Mem­ber and a Loc­al Author­ity Coun­cil­lor shall be eli­gible for a reduced value for attend­ance at Com­munity Coun­cils. The reduced value would be set at 50% of the full value.

Alloc­a­tion of Top-Up/Off­set­ting

1. It is pro­posed that the full Board will still agree appoint­ments to extern­al groups annu­ally, but the meth­od for the selec­tion of Board Mem­bers to attend con­fer­ences and one off events is changed. Cur­rently the Con­vener asks for volun­teers to attend extern­al con­fer­ence or events and who is selec­ted it is entirely at their dis­cre­tion who is selected.

2. Going for­ward it is pro­posed that the Con­vener would ask for volun­teers, then make a recom­mend­a­tion to the Gov­ernance Group (either in per­son or by email) and a major­ity of the mem­bers of the Gov­ernance Group would be required to agree to the recom­mend­a­tion before it is approved. It is felt that this will provide increased trans­par­ency, but will be flex­ible enough to allow for Board Mem­bers to attend rel­ev­ant conferences/​events which may be advert­ised at fairly short notice.

3. When mak­ing their decision the Con­vener will take cog­nis­ance of the following:

   • a) if any Board Mem­bers who have put them­selves for­ward to attend have a pre-exist­ing rela­tion­ship with the organ­isa­tion e.g. the Chair of the Cairngorm Tour­ism Part­ner­ship would be a strong can­did­ate to attend a tour­ism con­fer­ence hos­ted by VisitScotland;
   • b) they shall con­sider if any of the Board Mem­bers have spe­cial­ist know­ledge in the sub­ject area which may give the CNPA an advant­age in them attending;
   • c) they shall con­sider pre­vi­ous attend­ance of the Board at the event (or sim­il­ar events) and try to ensure fair oppor­tun­it­ies for all members.

4. A list of oppor­tun­it­ies will be cir­cu­lated to Board Mem­bers on a six monthly basis with annu­al events lis­ted to ensure Board Mem­bers have sig­ni­fic­ant notice. After allow­ing a reas­on­able response time, the recom­mend­a­tion will be made to the Gov­ernance Group by the Con­vener. The Gov­ernance Group will be presen­ted with the full list of Board Mem­bers who have put them­selves for­ward as well as the Convener’s recommendation.

5. It is pro­posed that this change is imple­men­ted from the 1^st Octo­ber 2019 in line with the imple­ment­a­tion of the oth­er aspects of the policy

Pro­posed Changes to Meet­ing Calendar

1. As part of this review, how Board Mem­bers time is used has been con­sidered to ensure we are util­ising it to its fullest poten­tial. Fol­low­ing the ini­tial feed­back, a num­ber of pro­pos­als were made in rela­tion to the meet­ing cal­en­dar and in the fol­low­ing con­sulta­tion there was strong sup­port from Board Mem­bers for the pro­pos­als put for­ward. Based on the feed­back response, the Staff­ing & Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee unan­im­ously recom­men­ded that the Board adopt the pro­posed changes.

2. The key changes to the meet­ing cal­en­dar are:

   • a) There will be a reduc­tion in the num­ber of core meet­ings. There will still be: 4 Form­al Board meet­ings; 10 Form­al Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ings, but oth­er activ­it­ies will be redis­trib­uted to max­im­ise day usage. This will provide fin­an­cial sav­ings and reduce the Boards CO2 impact.
   • b) The pre-Board even­ing ses­sion for Board Mem­bers will be dis­con­tin­ued from 1^st Septem­ber 2019 and the dis­cus­sion with partner’s ses­sions will be sched­uled into Board vis­it days.
   • c) There will be an annu­al Board two day strategy away day.
   • d) To provide Board Mem­bers with cer­tainty and con­sist­ency we’re pro­pos­ing meet­ings should be held on the 2^nd & 4^th Fri­days of the month. This will allow Board Mem­bers to plan hol­i­days, child­care and oth­er engage­ments far in advance with cer­tainty of when meet­ings will be.
   • e) To make the Board/​organisation as fam­ily friendly as pos­sible, recess peri­ods have been built in for the East­er, sum­mer, Octo­ber & Christ­mas breaks.
   • f) As Mem­bers have already been issued diary dates until the end of March 2020, the new cal­en­dar would begin from 1^st April 2020.

Recom­mend­a­tion

1. That the Board approves:
   • a) The recom­mend­a­tions of the Staff­ing & Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee as set out in para­graphs two, three and four of this paper.
   • b) Minor mat­ters relat­ing to the imple­ment­a­tion of this policy shall be del­eg­ated to the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Chief Exec­ut­ive with the agree­ment of the Con­vener and Deputy Convener.

Xan­der McDade, Board Con­vener Car­o­lyn Cad­dick, Chair of Staff­ing & Recruit­ment 21^st June 2019