CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

APPROVED MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held in the Albert Hall, Bal­later on Fri­day 16 August 2019 at 10.45am

PRESENT

• Xan­der McDade (Con­vener)
• Car­o­lyn Caddick
• Deirdre Fal­con­er
• Pippa Had­ley
• Janet Hunter
• John Kirk
• John Lath­am
• Douglas McAdam

• Elean­or Mackintosh

• Peter Argyle

• Wil­lie McKenna
• Ian McLar­en
• Dr Fiona McLean
• Wil­li­am Munro
• Anne Rae Macdonald
• Dr Gaen­er Rodger
• Derek Ross
• Judith Webb

In Attend­ance:

• Grant Moir, Chief Executive
• Gav­in Miles, Head of Plan­ning & Communities
• Dan Har­ris, Plan­ning Man­ager (For­ward Plan­ning & Ser­vice Improvement)
• Deirdre Straw, Plan­ning Admin­is­tra­tion and Sys­tems Officer
• Dot Har­ris, Plan­ning Sup­port Officer

Apo­lo­gies:

• Geva Black­ett

Wel­come and Introduction

1. Xan­der McDade, Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing in Ballater.
2. Con­grat­u­la­tions were expressed to Peter Argyle and his new wife Anna.
3. Apo­lo­gies were noted from Geva Blackett.

Mat­ters Arising

1. There were no mat­ters arising.
2. Action Points Arising: None

Declar­a­tions of Interest

1. Xan­der McDade declared an indir­ect interest in:

   • Paper 1 Reas­on: Coun­cil­lor with Perth & Kinross Coun­cil who had respon­ded to earli­er Con­sulta­tion, owns small area of land at Pit­agown that has not been zoned and is a Trust­ee of the John Muir Trust. The Con­vener did not feel it was appro­pri­ate to Chair dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, so del­eg­ated his chair­ing duties to Elean­or Mack­in­tosh for this paper.

2. Peter Argyle declared an indir­ect interest in:

   • Paper 1 Reas­on: Coun­cil­lor with Aber­deen­shire Council.

3. Derek Ross declared an indir­ect interest in:

   • Paper 1 Reas­on: Coun­cil­lor with Moray Council.

4. John Lath­am declared an indir­ect interest in:

   • Paper 1 Reas­on: Coun­cil­lor with Aber­deen­shire Council.

5. Pippa Had­ley declared an indir­ect interest in:

   • Paper 1 Reas­on: Coun­cil­lor with the High­land Council.

6. Deirdre Fal­con­er declared an indir­ect interest in:

   • Paper 1 Reas­on: Chair of Kin­craig and Vicin­ity Com­munity Council.

Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020 Sub­mis­sion for Exam­in­a­tion (Paper 1)

1. Xan­der McDade handed over to Elean­or Mack­in­tosh to con­vene the meeting.

2. Dan Har­ris, Plan­ning Man­ager intro­duced Paper 1 which seeks the Board’s agree­ment to sub­mit the Pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020 and asso­ci­ated doc­u­ments to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for their form­al con­sid­er­a­tion in accord­ance with sec­tions 18(4) and 19(1) of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Scot­land) Act 1997.

3. The Plan­ning Man­ager made the fol­low­ing points: a) This is a key mile­stone in Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (LDP) pro­cess, fol­low­ing on from con­sulta­tions on the Main Issues Report (MIR) and the pro­posed plan. b) The exam­in­a­tion will be focused on pro­posed plan and unre­solved responses to its con­sulta­tion. c) Three options are avail­able to the Board at this point:

   i. Submit the Proposed Plan for examination
   ii. Modify parts of the Proposed Plan and repeat consultation
   iii. Start again and create a new Plan
   

   d) As the Pro­posed Plan rep­res­ents the settled view of the Author­ity on what the adop­ted LDP should look like along with the time and resources spent, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment expects the first route to be taken in all but the most excep­tion­al of cir­cum­stances. e) Sup­port­ing doc­u­ments that need to be sub­mit­ted as part of exam­in­a­tion include:

   i. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)
   ii. Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA)
   iii. Participation statement
   iv. Statement of conformity with the participation statement
   v. Proposed Action Programme
   vi. And any supporting material that supports the case of the Authority or representees.
   

   f) The recom­mend­a­tions is that the Board:

   i. Approves the Schedule 4 documents;
   ii. Approves the Statement of Conformity with the Participation Statement;
   iii. Agree to submit the Proposed Local Development Plan 2020 and associated supporting documents to Scottish Ministers for their formal consideration.
   

   g) Sub­ject to Board approv­al staff will:

   i. Finalise formatting of the Schedule 4 documents;
   ii. Finalise the compilation of the necessary core and supporting documents needed for the examination; and
   iii. Submit Proposed LDP and all other material to Scottish Ministers for consideration.
   

   h) Sub­ject to Board approv­al an indic­at­ive timeline will be to sub­mit Septem­ber 2019 for exam­in­a­tion in Autumn/​Winter ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ and aim for adop­tion in spring 2020.

4. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Elean­or asked the board to remem­ber that although this is a late stage they will need to be com­fort­able with LDP as it will be basis for decisions over 5 years. b) A mem­ber quer­ied wheth­er we are required to include anonym­ous feed­back, the Plan­ning Man­ager cla­ri­fied that while this is not required and the report­er is also not required to con­sider anonym­ous com­ments, includ­ing them does not cause any issues. c) A mem­ber quer­ied how we com­mu­nic­ate with people who took the time to respond and had objec­tions to the plan, but whose com­ments we rejec­ted. The Head of Plan­ning agreed that there will be ongo­ing dis­cus­sions with mem­bers of the pub­lic, how­ever some will have altern­at­ive ideo­lo­gies and their view of what the plan should achieve does not match that of the CNPA, and we will not be able to reach agree­ment. A mem­ber com­men­ted that the Sched­ule 4 pre­pared by the Policy team gave a clear view on each of the responses received, although may in some cases be fur­ther con­ver­sa­tions to be had with mem­bers of pub­lic. The thor­ough and com­pre­hens­ive nature of the Sched­ule 4 was com­pli­men­ted, not­ing that it provided reasoned argu­ments as to why com­ments have been accep­ted or not. d) A mem­ber quer­ied what occurs if the report­er decides there should be a change to any areas of the LDP. It was cla­ri­fied that once the report­er decision are final and any changes they make are not open to nego­ti­ation. e) A mem­ber high­lighted that the roads and ways policy ​‘seeks to deliv­er net bene­fit’ and quer­ied how this is to be cal­cu­lated. It was respon­ded that we would use the advice of our land­scape and eco­logy team, and would seek remov­al of a track where a new one approved such that the over­all land­scape and eco­logy impact is an improve­ment. f) A mem­ber high­lighted that the new plan­ning legis­la­tion uses the ter­min­o­logy ​‘equit­able eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment’ in place of ​‘sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment’, and quer­ied wheth­er this should this be changed and if not changed could it cause a col­li­sion between legis­la­tion and policy. The Head of Plan­ning respon­ded that this change in ter­min­o­logy would not cause any con­flict; the report­er could choose to replace sus­tain­able with equit­able but this is unlikely to make any dif­fer­ence. g) Could it be con­firmed that the Plan­ning Man­ager felt that the SEA, HRA and Equal­it­ies Assess­ment were all as good as they could be for sub­mis­sion. The Plan­ning Man­ager con­firmed that they are ready for sub­mis­sion and also that they would not be under scru­tiny dur­ing the examination.

5. The Board: a) Approved the Sched­ule 4 doc­u­ments; b) Approved the State­ment of Con­form­ity with the Par­ti­cip­a­tion State­ment; c) Agreed to sub­mit the Pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020 and asso­ci­ated sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for their form­al consideration.

6. Elean­or Mack­in­tosh com­men­ded the out­stand­ing work of the Plan­ning Policy Team, and wel­comed new Plan­ning Policy team staff mem­bers Nina Caudrey and Andrew Teece then handed back to Xan­der McDade as Convener.

7. The Con­vener com­men­ded the work of the Plan­ning Policy Team.

8. Actions: i. Plan­ning Policy Team to final­ise format­ting of the Sched­ule 4 doc­u­ments. ii. Plan­ning Policy Team to final­ise the com­pil­a­tion of the neces­sary core and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments needed for the exam­in­a­tion. iii. Plan­ning Policy Team to sub­mit Pro­posed LDP and all oth­er mater­i­al to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for consideration.

AOCB

1. A mem­ber relayed con­cerns received at com­munity meet­ings in Glen­liv­et and Tomin­toul over the increas­ing pres­sure of tour­ism on infra­struc­ture and increas­ing lit­ter at key areas; inform­al camper­van stops were high­lighted as being of par­tic­u­lar con­cern. It was high­lighted that loc­al coun­cils are doing less to tackle these issues and ask­ing com­munit­ies to do more, and the Board was asked to con­sider wheth­er there are actions they can take to sup­port these communities.

2. A brief dis­cus­sion took place with regards to work car­ried over the recent months with oth­er agen­cies over the ​‘Tread Lightly’ cam­paign and oth­er pro­jects; it was agreed that this issue and related pro­jects was some­thing the Board should con­sider at future meetings.

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 20 Septem­ber 2019, Dee & Spey Meet­ing rooms, CNPA HQ.

2. This meet­ing con­cluded at 11.15am.