CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 1 | 20^th Septem­ber 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: New Chal­lenge fund (fun­ders: CNPA, Scot­tish Forestry, SNH, Wood­land Trust) has been launched to help with costs in pre­par­ing an applic­a­tion to Forestry Grant Scheme. Details here: https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​p​a​r​k​-​a​u​t​h​o​r​i​t​y​/​t​r​a​i​n​i​n​g​-​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​/​w​o​o​d​l​a​n​d​-​c​r​e​a​tion/

b) Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: The pro­ject con­tin­ues to pilot work in Carr bridge explor­ing ways in which people can play their part in caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion. Caper­cail­lie are crit­ic­ally endangered, largely depend­ent on healthy pine­woods and extremely sens­it­ive to dis­turb­ance, mak­ing them an excel­lent spe­cies to focus on in find­ing a way for people and nature to thrive togeth­er. Dr Alistair Bath has been com­mis­sioned by the pro­ject to tri­al a social sci­ence approach to wildlife/​human con­flict res­ol­u­tion. He has held over twenty 1 – 1 inter­views with key indi­vidu­als in the com­munity and is cur­rently dis­trib­ut­ing ques­tion­naires to the entire res­id­ent pop­u­la­tion and hold­ing work­shops to identi­fy the community’s con­cerns, com­mon ground and opportunities.

c) East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship: The Estate part­ners, with the help of Jos Mil­ner our pro­ject officer have all now pre­pared muir­burn plans which identi­fy burn free areas to increase hab­it­at diversity and pro­tect vul­ner­able hab­it­ats and spe­cies. The part­ner­ship has worked with the Scot­tish Rap­tor Study Group and employed a con­tract­or to improve our under­stand­ing of breed­ing rap­tor dis­tri­bu­tion with an over­all improv­ing pic­ture. Wader pro­ductiv­ity mon­it­or­ing has con­tin­ued this year with a report due soon. Areas for wood­land expan­sion and peat­land res­tor­a­tion are still being developed.

d) Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship: As we enter the final year of pro­ject deliv­ery there is still a huge amount of work on the go and the staff team have been amaz­ing. It is a cred­it to them and all the many volun­teers from the com­munity that the part­ner­ship is highly regarded loc­ally. There have been staff changes – we were sorry to see our Admin Officer Jen­nifer Fraser move on to become a teach­er, but delighted to now have Jenni McAl­lister in post. The TGLP Board are con­tinu­ing to meet reg­u­larly, mon­it­or­ing pro­gress, guid­ing budget spend and focus­ing on ensur­ing the part­ner­ship leads to a valu­able long term leg­acy. A very quick sum­mary of pro­gress on some of the projects:

i. Sta­bil­isa­tion work on Blairfindy Castle is going very well, with loc­al vis­it­ors allowed up the scaf­fold­ing for a sneak pre­view in early Septem­ber. ii. The Dis­cov­ery Centre is now a well-estab­lished focal point for vis­it­ors. iii. The Spey­side Way Spur has now been com­pleted with an open­ing event due on 22^nd Septem­ber. iv. Scalan Mills is pro­gress­ing well and on time. v. A very sig­ni­fic­ant amount of work on Inter­pret­a­tion of pro­jects across the part­ner­ship, includ­ing brand­ing for the Dark Sky Park is under­way. vi. Ripari­an wood­land pro­jects are still in the plan­ning stage. vii. A steady trickle of train­ing pro­jects are con­tinu­ing to be made avail­able through the part­ner­ship. viii. As you approach Tomin­toul from the North you may notice dig­gers oper­at­ing on the River Avon at Ford­mouth, this is part of a major innov­at­ive bank green engin­eer­ing works that has star­ted after many months of com­plic­ated pro­ject man­age­ment. ix. Hir­ing out the new rush cut­ter and cre­at­ing more ​‘wader scrapes’ are planned as part of the Peez­ie pro­ject. x. Plans are being developed to cre­ate a new area of nat­ive wood­land above the River Con­glass near the Lecht road. xi. Two bar­ri­ers to sal­mon migra­tion have been removed and replaced with soph­ist­ic­ated con­struc­ted chan­nels. xii. The nat­ur­al her­it­age grant for loc­al pro­jects help­ing wild­life and admin­istered with the help of loc­al volun­teers is very pop­u­lar and likely to be over­sub­scribed. xiii. A range of cul­tur­al her­it­age events have been tak­ing place. xiv. A suc­cess­ful ​‘Coun­try Fair’ was held with plans for a fur­ther one and a Wild in the Park event in 2020. xv. An amaz­ing film pro­jec­ted onto Dru­min Castle, cre­ated with the schools, is soon to go online.

e) Cairngorms Nature: The Cairngorms Nature Strategy Group will meet on 10^th Octo­ber to review pro­gress on the first 6 months’ deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2019 — 2024. Mem­ber­ship of the Strategy Group has been refreshed and rep­res­ent­at­ives from the ranger pro­fes­sion and from estates have been invited to join along­side the exist­ing membership.

f) Deer Man­age­ment and Moor­land Man­age­ment: SNH have com­pleted assess­ments of Deer Man­age­ment Groups and their deliv­ery of ​‘pub­lic bene­fits’. A report from SNH is due soon. We are still await­ing the out­come of the Scot­tish Government’s Deer Work­ing group and the Grouse Moor Man­age­ment Group; both expec­ted to report this Autumn. The Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group is meet­ing this October.

Vis­it­or Experience:

a) Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um: First meet­ing of the ​‘restruc­tured’ group took place in June focus­sing on our 2019 Tread Lightly in Cairngorms cam­paign that looks at com­mu­nic­at­ing respons­ible access on key issues; dogs, fires & camp­ing, bik­ing and lit­ter. Sub­sequent con­cern about the effect­ive­ness of con­sist­ent mes­saging around these issues has encour­aged us to dis­cuss this fur­ther with SNH and the Nation­al Access For­um to determ­ine wheth­er we can revis­it the pro­mo­tion of respons­ible out­door access and devel­op clear, simple and effect­ive nation­al mes­sages. We are also plan­ning a stake­hold­er meet­ing later this year bring­ing togeth­er out­door activ­ity organ­isa­tions, land man­agers and con­ser­va­tion groups to look at how we can bet­ter encour­age respons­ible out­door access that looks after our spe­cial sites and species.

b) Long Dis­tance Routes:

i. Spey­side Way: Plan­ning con­sent in place & with fund­ing from Low Car­bon Travel and Trans­port (LCTT) Chal­lenge Fund work star­ted in Septem­ber to com­plete the ​‘new build’ to New­ton­more. We are anti­cip­at­ing an ​‘offi­cial open­ing’ in spring 2020. Kin­gussie Com­munity are also look­ing to upgrade the path from the vil­lage to the Shinty Club fur­ther improv­ing the route. With fund­ing from SNH a poorly drained sec­tion of the route between Aviemore and Boat of Garten was upgraded this sum­mer. In addi­tion to path con­struc­tion in 2019 work on sig­nage, inter­pret­a­tion and cre­at­ing a start/​finish point at New­ton­more is being under­taken. The route devel­op­ment is being led by CNPA with sup­port from High­land and Moray Coun­cils. In ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ we will need to revis­it and improve the exist­ing route in the Nation­al Park. 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 & to date we have been unable to source such addi­tion­al support.

c) Moun­tains and People Pro­ject: The five year Moun­tains and People pro­ject with­in both Nation­al Parks in Scot­land is now in its final year. A total 53km of the most used moun­tain paths in Cairngorms have been improved through this pro­ject. The most notice­able paths rebuilt in this final stage are Mount Keen, Aber­deen­shire, and Beinn a Ghlo, Perth & Kinross, seen from A9 at Blair Atholl. The upgraded Beinn a Ghlo path is being ​‘opened’ by John Swin­ney MSP on 27^th Septem­ber cel­eb­rat­ing the work of Moun­tains & People pro­ject. 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 Travel: The first phase of detailed, cos­ted, designs for bet­ter act­ive travel in Aviemore will be pro­duced for the area in and around the new hos­pit­al. Fur­ther pro­gres­sion of the Aviemore work requires Sus­trans to be con­fid­ent that matched fund­ing for the devel­op­ment phase can be sourced and so the main pro­ject design is on hold until this match can be found. The multi-use path in Glen­more sup­por­ted by the Vis­it Scot­land man­aged Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund still requires High­land Coun­cil Roads Author­ity per­mis­sion with build sched­uled for Spring 2020.

Kin­gussie and Dul­nain com­munit­ies with Sus­trans sup­port developed out­line pro­pos­als for improv­ing multi-use access in and around the com­munit­ies. The Kin­gussie work includes link­ing to Spey­side Way and NCN7, with 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. Both have applied for detailed design fund­ing to Sustrans.

e) Volun­teer­ing: We now have 26 trained volun­teer rangers sup­port­ing the work of ten ranger ser­vices and oth­er part­ners, con­trib­ut­ing to date some 516 days of very valu­able volun­teer­ing (nearly 2.5 years’ worth of work). Train­ing for the new­est intake is now com­plete with a fur­ther intake sched­uled to join the pro­gramme in early spring 2020. One volun­teer ranger will be attend­ing the UK Soci­ety of Nation­al Park Staff con­fer­ence in Latvia that over­laps with the EURO­PARC Con­fer­ence in Septem­ber: a very pos­it­ive cel­eb­ra­tion and shar­ing of the role that volun­teer rangers are play­ing in Cairngorms. To date some 135 oppor­tun­it­ies to volun­teer for nature and envir­on­ment from 18 part­ners have been pro­moted on Volun­teer Cairngorms web portal, on social media and to over 350 e‑newsletter subscribers.

f) Edu­ca­tion and Inclu­sion: Fol­low­ing Board decision in Decem­ber work devel­op­ing the Euro­parc Youth Mani­festo into sus­tain­able engage­ment with young people is com­plete. Lead­er+ fund­ing sup­por­ted a part­ner­ship with Fin­ish young people. How we sup­port and effect­ively use the Cairngorms Youth Action team is detailed in Paper 2 Cairngorms Youth Action. Some 60 young people have com­pleted the Juni­or Ranger pro­gramme this year, 10 atten­ded a week­end camp at Bal­mor­al and two went to the Euro­parc camp in Esto­nia. The John Muir Award con­tin­ues to be pop­u­lar with some 2,100 mainly young people dis­cov­er­ing, explor­ing, & con­serving this area and then shar­ing their exper­i­ences. Back­bone, with sup­port from Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity and Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age, has launched ​‘Our Nat­ur­al Her­it­age’ pro­ject sup­port­ing and encour­aging black and eth­nic minor­ity groups, par­tic­u­larly refugees, to enjoy our spe­cial places. Late May ​‘Into the Moun­tain’ provided guided hill walks to a remote dance & choir per­form­ance link­ing women who walk in the Cairngorms with the moun­tains them­selves and the work of Nan Shep­herd. Media feed­back was very pos­it­ive. ​‘Writer in Res­id­ence’ pro­jects encour­aging people to cre­at­ively cel­eb­rate the out­stand­ing cul­ture of Cairngorms are still enga­ging with people. The cre­at­ive out­puts will be shared widely this autumn. Both pro­jects are sup­por­ted by Cre­at­ive Scot­land, with Wood­land Trust sup­port­ing the ​‘Writer’ programme

g) Inform­a­tion and Inter­pret­a­tion: Ten loc­al inform­a­tion centre (LIC’s) part­ner­ships are now in place across the Nation­al Park. Staff have par­ti­cip­ated in the ​‘Make it Yours’ train­ing and all the centres are branded, have vis­it­or leaf­lets and are pro­moted on our web­site and maps of the Nation­al Park. We will review this year’s part­ner­ship with the teams in the autumn. We are also in dis­cus­sion with oth­er poten­tial centres work­ing with the loc­al com­munity coun­cil to reach agree­ment. Spey­side Centre (former Heath­er Centre nr Dul­nain Bridge) is due to open this autumn with clear inform­a­tion and inter­pret­a­tion about the Nation­al Park. Work is ongo­ing devel­op­ing Spey­side Way and Bal­later inter­pret­a­tion and sup­port­ing the work of Badenoch Great Place & Tomin­toul & Glenlivet.

h) Snow Roads Scen­ic Route: The CBP secured Vis­it Scot­land Growth Fund sup­port that con­tin­ues to use 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.

Rur­al Development:

a) Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020: The Board approved the sub­mis­sion of unre­solved rep­res­ent­a­tions and oth­er rel­ev­ant doc­u­ment­a­tion on the pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan to the Dir­ect­or­ate for Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment­al Appeals (DPEA) for exam­in­a­tion by a Report­er. The doc­u­ments are being col­lated and checked by staff and will be sub­mit­ted by end of Septem­ber 2019. We expect the exam­in­a­tion to start before the end of 2019.

b) Plan­ning case­work: The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee have approved a part-ret­ro­spect­ive plan­ning applic­a­tion for a hill track and an applic­a­tion to replace a foot­bridge, as well as refused an applic­a­tion for a recre­ation­al hut in a caper­cail­lie wood since the last Board meet­ing. There are many inter­est­ing devel­op­ment pro­pos­als under con­sid­er­a­tion includ­ing pro­posed new dis­til­lery near Grant­own, new hous­ing at Car­rbridge and modi­fic­a­tions to the ter­rain at ski centre at Cairngorm Mountain.

c) Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er: The annu­al report for ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ from this sur­vey of busi­nesses (290 responses) under­taken by Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship high­lighted a num­ber of factors (full reports are avail­able here https://​vis​it​cairngorms​.com/​b​a​r​o​meter):

i. Bar­ri­ers to growth: The cost of staff levels are con­sist­ently rising over time while most oth­er bar­ri­ers are stable or declin­ing ii. Busi­ness con­fid­ence: Medi­um and long term con­fid­ence fell to their low­est levels since ²⁰¹²⁄₁₃, although short and medi­um term con­fid­ence was still rated above the long term aver­age. Non-tour­ism busi­nesses seemed to be more con­fid­ent about the future. iii. Influ­ence of Cairngorms Nation­al Park as a des­ig­na­tion: Influ­ence is high and improv­ing over time for attract­ing first time vis­it­ors and return­ing vis­it­ors, for prof­it­ab­il­ity and on impacts on run­ning a busi­ness, iv. Extern­al sup­port from organ­isa­tions: Busi­nesses said that CNPA rank­ing in provid­ing gen­er­al sup­port is both high and improv­ing over time and we are maintaining/​increasing on our aver­age in ²⁰¹⁷⁄₁₈ which was an indic­at­or in the Cor­por­ate Plan

d) Eco­nom­ic Action Plan: The Eco­nom­ic Action Plan has been con­sul­ted on since June and will end on 20 Septem­ber. The Board Con­vener and loc­al mem­bers have under­taken 7 days of vis­its with officers to busi­nesses across the Nation­al Park over the sum­mer, meet­ing dir­ectly with over 40 busi­nesses in a very wide range of eco­nom­ic sec­tors. The CBP have held two con­sulta­tion events; and officers and board mem­bers have atten­ded two loc­al busi­ness asso­ci­ation meet­ings and met with organ­isa­tions such as Fed­er­a­tion of Small Busi­nesses and Scot­tish Land and Estates, and envir­on­ment­al NGOs. The feed­back from meet­ings and ana­lys­is of writ­ten responses received will be repor­ted to mem­bers in Decem­ber with recom­mend­a­tions on how to final­ise the Action Plan.

e) Cairngorm Moun­tain: Staff con­tin­ue to assist HIE with the chal­lenges of repair­ing the funicu­lar and plan­ning a sus­tain­able future for the ski area. HIE are shortly to announce plans for the devel­op­ment of a mas­ter­plan for the area, includ­ing sig­ni­fic­ant pub­lic engage­ment — staff have advised on the scope of this work and on appoint­ment of con­tract­ors. Plan­ning applic­a­tions are under act­ive con­sid­er­a­tion for modi­fic­a­tion of ter­rain. Staff reg­u­larly attend the Funicu­lar Response Group and have met recently with the Aviemore and Glen­more Com­munity Trust to dis­cuss their aspirations.

f) 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 Tour­ism Action Plan. The vis­it­or sur­vey ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ is now under way with inter­im res­ults expec­ted at the end of the year. It was agreed that Janet Hunter would now Chair the CTP and she has been out and about over the sum­mer meet­ing stake­hold­ers as part of tak­ing on that role. Next CTP meet­ing is planned for November.

g) Afford­able Hous­ing Deliv­ery: A num­ber of com­munit­ies con­tin­ue to act­ively pur­sue com­munity hous­ing pro­jects in Dul­nain Bridge, Boat of Garten, Tomin­toul, Brae­mar and Bal­later. BSW Tim­ber and Seafield Estate have an act­ive plan­ning applic­a­tion for afford­able hous­ing near Boat of Garten. All the pro­jects are hop­ing to use the Scot­tish Government’s Rur­al Hous­ing Fund to pro­gress their plans. Next meet­ing of Com­munity-led Hous­ing Group is in late November

h) A9 Dualling pro­ject: The CNPA main­tains its objec­tion to the Dalraddy to Slo­chd sec­tion on the basis that the pro­vi­sion for non-motor­ised users between Aviemore and Car­rbridge is insuf­fi­cient. Trans­port Scot­land are cur­rently lead­ing a study to look at route options for new path pro­vi­sion which could allow us remove that objec­tion if TS com­mit to its pro­vi­sion. Pub­lic engage­ment events are to be held in 25 Sept in Aviemore and 26 Sept in Car­rbridge about these proposals.

i) Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject: The first, com­munity-led Badenoch Her­it­age Fest­iv­al took place over two weeks in Septem­ber, cel­eb­rat­ing Badenoch’s her­it­age with a very wide range of events. The Fest­iv­al has been used to launch the brand­ing pro­pos­als for the des­tin­a­tion around concept of ​“Badenoch: The Story­lands”. Work is under way on wide range of pro­jects includ­ing Gael­ic place-names; pro­vi­sion of an altern­at­ive tour­ism route to attract people off the A9; devel­op­ment of a web portal to link to com­munity web­sites; devel­op­ment of a net­work of com­munity her­it­age ambassadors.

j) Nat­ur­al and Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Fund: Four applic­a­tions have been sub­mit­ted with­in the Park for this ERDF fund that is man­aged by Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age: by RSPB for vis­it­or facil­it­ies at Aber­nethy; by High­life High­land for youth facil­it­ies at High­land Folk Park, by RZSS for vis­it­or facil­it­ies at High­land Wild­life Park and by a loc­al com­munity group for an dark skies obser­vat­ory near Tomin­toul. It is under­stood that the scheme has been very com­pet­it­ive with 37 applic­a­tions across the High­lands and Moray and only nine pro­jects are likely to be offered fund­ing. Decisions will be announced by Min­is­ters on 23 Septem­ber 2019.

Stake­hold­er Engagement:

a) CEO atten­ded a range of groups/​events includ­ing Envir­on­ment and Eco­nomy Lead­ers Group, CoHI Chief Officers Group, High­land and Moray Com­munity Plan­ning Part­ner­ships, Cairngorms Funicu­lar Response Group, Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion Work­shop b) CEO also had meet­ings with the fol­low­ing organ­isa­tions – Entre­pren­eur­i­al Scot­land, John Muir Trust; HIE; High­land Coun­cil; Crown Estate Scot­land; Forest Hol­i­days, Forest and Land Scot­land; Fed­er­a­tion of Small Busi­nesses; CBP, SEFARI Gate­way, SNH, Forestry Scot­land; Aviemore and Glen­more Com­munity Trust; Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment; Alder Estate; Glenavon Estate; Bal­mor­al Estate; Scot­tish Enterprise;

Com­mu­nic­a­tions:

a) Cairngorms Nature Cam­paign: Cairngorms Nature is pro­moted via the Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end, Volun­teer­ing Cairngorms and the Caper­cail­lie pro­ject. To date Cairngorms Nature has over 19.9K social media fol­low­ers. The LEAD­ER fun­ded Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end took place 10 – 13 May with over 100 events across the Park and 3,273 people (61% Park res­id­ents) tak­ing part includ­ing 400 school chil­dren involved in the art com­pet­i­tion and the rur­al skills day. Six private estates, two farms, 10 ranger ser­vices, 17 private busi­nesses and 18 organ­isa­tions and pro­jects were involved and the feed­back sur­vey res­ults con­firm 81% of par­ti­cipants said the CNBW was excel­lent or very good, 97% would attend again and 94% would recom­mend it to oth­ers. In addi­tion, 82% said they would get out into nature more often and 76% said they learnt some­thing new. The CNBW steer­ing group has met to dis­cuss next year’s pro­gramme of events which will take place 15 – 17 May 2020.

b) Make It Yours Cam­paign: The CNPA’s 5 yearly all park vis­it­or sur­vey star­ted in May this year. This involves face to face ques­tion inter­views with 2,500 vis­it­ors across the Nation­al Park and builds on the pre­vi­ous sur­veys com­pleted in 2004, 2010 and 2015. This data is extremely use­ful in under­stand­ing vis­it­or motiv­a­tion and expect­a­tion and focuses our work in deliv­er­ing the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. The first six month data will be avail­able late 2019 with the final report ready for June 2020. A sum­mary of the 2015 data is avail­able on the Cairngorms Nation­al Park web­site. The 2018 STEAM data is now avail­able and show that vis­it­or num­bers have increased by 4.7% from 2017 to 1.92M.

c) Act­ive Cairngorms: The third Wee Walks Week was pro­moted across the Nation­al Park 9^th– 15^th Septem­ber encour­aging us all to take a short walk for health and enjoy­ment. It also pro­moted the great loc­al path net­work shared on 17 com­munity path leaf­lets, and cel­eb­rated loc­al health walks. In ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ first quarter 208 Health Walks have been pro­grammed through­out the Nation­al Park encour­aging some 140 people a week to take a short walk for health and well­being as well as fun with company.

d) Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions: The Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan Annu­al Review was pub­lished in an e‑storybook format and has been viewed 354 times between 14 June – 5^th July. Our digit­al pro­mo­tion included 6 posts and one video on Face­book, Twit­ter and You­Tube which res­ul­ted in:

i. Reach of posts on Face­book: 2,782, engage­ment: 418, engage­ment rate: 15% ii. Impres­sions of posts on Twit­ter: 7,048, engage­ment: 679, engage­ment rate: 10% iii. Total view videos: 900 (*engage­ment includes; likes, com­ments, shares, clicks on post and video views.)

The Eco­nom­ic Action Plan con­sulta­tion was launched on 26 June and will run until 20 Septem­ber. The CNPA’s Annu­al Report ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ will be sub­mit­ted to Min­is­ters and pub­lished on our web­site in autumn 2019.

To pro­gress our Gael­ic Lan­guage Action Plan we are look­ing to recruit anoth­er Gael­ic Lan­guage research stu­dent through the Adopt an Intern pro­cess to work on a pro­ject to help pro­mote Gael­ic Exper­i­ences in the Park through our digit­al com­mu­nic­a­tions. The online ​‘Gael­ic as an Asset’ Toolkit was pub­lished in July and a joint Gael­ic Edu­ca­tion pro­ject with Loch Lomond & the Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity was pro­moted with loc­al schools in August. The edu­ca­tion pro­ject has pre­pared a resource book­let which provides a guide to com­mon place names in Scot­land with sug­ges­ted activ­it­ies for schools, groups, and indi­vidu­als which can be used to sup­port a class project.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development:

a) Office Exten­sion Pro­ject: Now that the exten­sion has been occu­pied for a full year, and staff have adap­ted pos­it­ively to work­ing in the open plan space, we are mov­ing our focus to ​“phase 2”, which involves improv­ing facil­it­ies in the old part of the office. We have provided a brief to the archi­tects set­ting out our require­ments for improv­ing meet­ing space and suit­able staff break-out space in the lower floor of #14 and hope that work will com­mence this fin­an­cial year. We are also review­ing the pos­sib­il­ity of improv­ing cycle stor­age facil­it­ies to pro­mote act­ive travel to work.

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

i. Plan­ning Team: — we have recruited Nina Caudrey to the per­man­ent Plan­ning Officer (Devel­op­ment Plan­ning) post to replace Dan Har­ris who was pro­moted into the man­age­ment role. Andrew Teece has also joined us in the fixed term Plan­ning Officer (Devel­op­ment Plan­ning) post to cov­er Katie Crerar’s mater­nity leave. Rob­bie Cal­vert has been recruited in to the fixed term Gradu­ate Plan­ner post, repla­cing Luke Vogan. The Plan­ning team are now fully resourced. ii. Vicky Ander­son has joined the Author­ity in the Strath­spey Farm­land Wader Officer post. This is a new fixed term post, fun­ded through the Strath­spey Wet­lands and Wader Ini­ti­at­ive iii. Rachael Bisset’s fixed term con­tract as the Fin­ance Sup­port Officer Gradu­ate Intern­ship ended on 30^th June. Amy Mack­en­zie has returned from mater­nity leave and resumed her role as Fin­ance Assist­ant. iv. Abi Ball resigned from the Stra­tegic Routes Pro­ject Officer post. This post is not being replaced currently.

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

i. Intern­ships: — Rhi­an­non Holden’s intern­ship to col­late accur­ate inform­a­tion on where there are cur­rently hill tracks across the Nation­al Park has come to an end but pro­duced extremely use­ful mater­i­al. We are now cur­rently recruit­ing two fur­ther intern­ships – one to col­late research for a pro­ject bring­ing Gael­ic Her­it­age to life for non-Gael­ic speak­ers; the oth­er to digit­ise unmapped wood­land and trees in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Both intern­ships are likely to start before Christ­mas ii. Over the sum­mer we sup­por­ted a young per­son on a volun­teer pro­gramme with­in the IT depart­ment, through Pro­ject Scot­land. iii. Reece Mus­grave, our IT Appren­tice has been one of only four young people short­l­is­ted for the High­land Busi­ness Awards Young Appren­tice on the Year Award. The win­ner will be announced on 27^th Septem­ber. iv. Uni­ver­sity of the High­lands and Islands (UHI) Part­ner­ship: — We have sup­por­ted the deliv­ery of career talks aimed at the Envir­on­ment­al Sci­ence stu­dents; we sup­por­ted two work place­ments involving UHI stu­dents; sev­er­al CNPA staff are sup­port­ing the UHI ment­or­ship programme.

d) Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy 3: We have now developed the next stage of our Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy – ODS3, which has been con­sul­ted with the Board’s S&RC and staff through the SCF. We are in the pro­cess of cre­at­ing work­ing groups to deliv­er this strategy. The Best Com­pan­ies Sur­vey will be launched in September/​October this year, and the sur­vey res­ults will feed in to the evolving ODS3.

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 and implemented.

f) UKNP: With the nation­al char­ity now estab­lished, Nation­al Park Part­ner­ships, in con­junc­tion with the char­ity Trust­ees, have begun to seek char­ity fund­ing from nation­al organ­isa­tions and nation­al cam­paigns which would not oth­er­wise be access­ible by indi­vidu­al or smal­ler / region­al groups of nation­al parks. The ini­tial bids for fund­ing have been sub­mit­ted over July and August. With respect to wider spon­sor­ship activ­ity under­taken by Nation­al Park Part­ner­ships (NPP) the pos­i­tion for each NPA to be at worst cash-neut­ral in terms of com­par­is­on of each Authority’s annu­al con­tri­bu­tion when com­pared with the cash return from cor­por­ate spon­sors and fun­ders for the ¹⁹⁄₂₀ fin­an­cial year. The value of cloth­ing from Columbia is addi­tion­al to this.

g) Cairngorms Trust and LEAD­ER: The Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme alloc­a­tion of £2.97 mil­lion is now fully com­mit­ted, with an estim­ated total pro­ject value of £3.807 mil­lion exclud­ing organ­isa­tions’ ​“in-kind” match fund­ing in terms of staff and oth­er exist­ing resources con­trib­uted to pro­ject deliv­ery. These in-kind costs are ineligible for the cur­rent pro­gramme and there­fore do not fea­ture in pro­ject val­ues. The Cairngorms Trust, as the Loc­al Action Group for the LEAD­ER Pro­gramme, has bid for an addi­tion­al funds to sup­port two fur­ther cooper­a­tion pro­jects and a com­munity pro­ject. We hope to hear the out­come of this bid by mid-Octo­ber. The Trust is lead­ing on a sus­tain­able rur­al trans­port cooper­a­tion pro­ject, along­side Kilkenny LEAD­ER (Ire­land). The first stake­hold­er group on this pro­ject met in August with a fol­low up to come in early Octo­ber. This pro­ject aims to imple­ment improve­ments in com­munity and act­ive travel pro­vi­sion. The Trust has also made its first awards from char­it­able fund­ing to sup­port com­munity pro­jects fol­low­ing adop­tion of two cam­paigns and open­ing a small grants scheme of up to £1,000 sup­port­ing com­munity led projects.

h) Board Gov­ernance Group – The Board Gov­ernance Group met on the 9^th August and the main issues dis­cussed were Board Skills Mat­rix, Board Apprais­als & poten­tial Board CPD ses­sions. There was also an update on budget dis­cus­sions with Scot­tish Government.

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

Board Con­vener Update – For Information

Grant Moir, Wil­lie McK­enna and I atten­ded the launch of The Cairngorm Story at Cairngorm Moun­tain last month. This new exhib­i­tion is a very pos­it­ive addi­tion to the offer­ing on Cairngorm. I had a pro­duct­ive dis­cus­sion with James Stu­art, Con­vener of Loch Lomond & the Trossachs Nation­al Park, about pos­sible areas for future col­lab­or­a­tion between the two Nation­al Parks. We also updated each oth­er on the ongo­ing work in our respect­ive Parks and agreed to share inform­a­tion on a num­ber of projects.

Eco­nom­ic Action Plan

Over the sum­mer recess I have been out speak­ing to busi­nesses across the Park with Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment, and a num­ber of the dir­ectly elec­ted Board Mem­bers. This was a very use­ful and insight­ful sev­en days, and a num­ber of new issues were raised with us for future con­sid­er­a­tion. The feed­back we received was fairly upbeat, but iden­ti­fied key chal­lenges facing each of the loc­al com­munit­ies that were act­ing as bar­ri­ers to growth. Mur­ray Fer­guson will report fur­ther on the responses in his Decem­ber report on the Eco­nom­ic Action Plan. How­ever, every­one we spoke to was very pos­it­ive about see­ing the Park take a pro­act­ive approach to speak­ing to busi­nesses and we have taken this feed­back on board to con­sider how we might con­tin­ue this in the future.

Gov­ernance Group

The first meet­ing of the Gov­ernance Group was con­vened in August and we agreed that all future agen­das would be cir­cu­lated to all Board Mem­bers so that if any Mem­ber has spe­cif­ic thoughts on any of the items under dis­cus­sion they can raise them with the Con­vener in advance. As this is an inform­al group and there is not a form­al minute we also agreed that a brief sum­mary of the top­ics dis­cussed would be included in the CEO/​Convener report and Grant has included an update in his report. Any actions for gov­ernance improve­ments will go through the appro­pri­ate Board Com­mit­tee or to the Board itself and as stated in the Terms of Ref­er­ence this group will provide advice on any sug­ges­ted changes.

Xan­der McDade Board Con­vener

Extern­al Engage­ments (5^th June – 9^th Septem­ber 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
5⁄6	Meet­ing with Sir Peter Luff, Her­it­age Lot­tery Fund, and Grant Moir	Boat of Garten
8⁄6	Moun­tain­eer­ing Scot­land Con­ser­va­tion Strategy	Birnam
18⁄6	Meet­ing with Car­ol Evans, Wood­lands Trust and Steve Mickle­wright, CEO Trees for Life	Pit­lo­chry
7/7	Vis­it to Strath­spey Steam Railway	Aviemore
8⁄7	Eco­nom­ic Action Plan – meet­ing with busi­nesses in Kin­gussie with Mur­ray Ferguson	Kin­gussie
9⁄7	Eco­nom­ic Action Plan – meet­ing with busi­nesses in Aviemore with Mur­ray Fer­guson and Wil­lie McKenna	Aviemore
22⁄7	Eco­nom­ic Action Plan – meet­ing with busi­nesses in Grant­own with Mur­ray Ferguson	Grant­own-on-Spey
23⁄7	Eco­nom­ic Action Plan – meet­ing with busi­nesses in Tomin­toul with Mur­ray Fer­guson and Elean­or M	Tomin­toul
1⁄8	Eco­nom­ic Action Plan – meet­ing with busi­nesses in Brae­mar with Mur­ray Fer­guson and Geva Blackett	Brae­mar
2⁄8	Eco­nom­ic Action Plan – meet­ing with busi­nesses in Bal­later with Mur­ray Ferguson	Bal­later
8/8	Eco­nom­ic Action Plan – meet­ing with busi­nesses in Blair Atholl with Gav­in Miles and Deirdre Falconer	Blair Atholl
8/8	Meet­ing with Cllr Shiers and Gav­in Miles to dis­cuss former Spit­tal of Glen­shee Hotel	Spit­tal of Glenshee
15⁄8	The Cairngorm Story Launch	Cairngorm Moun­tain
9/9	Meet­ing with James Stu­art, Con­vener LLTNP	By tele­phone

Geva Black­ett: In July I was asked to host a day for 22 high rank­ing offi­cials from Hain­an Province who were inter­ested to learn more about the Park. Hav­ing a pretty free rein, I decided to demon­strate how one small com­munity – Brae­mar — was help­ing deliv­er all four of the Park’s stat­utory aims. First stop was Glen­shee chairlift and café where a trip up the chairlift to admire the view was included. Our vis­it­ors, via the offi­cial inter­pret­er, had an explan­a­tion about the chal­lenges facing one busi­ness in the park try­ing to deliv­er the 4^th aim (the eco­nom­ic one) with cli­mate change and the mul­ti­tude of inter­ested parties involved in plan­ning applic­a­tions rid­ing high on the list. One of the seni­or del­eg­ates was the Chief Engin­eer for the province and he was abso­lutely fas­cin­ated in how the human waste was dis­posed of so far up the hill, so a trip to the sep­tic tank proved a ​‘high’ point of that part of the day… at least for some.

From there we vis­ited the Games Park where our vis­it­ors were piped into the centre and allowed to look round so they got a sense of the cul­tur­al import­ance of the Gath­er­ing – and what it entails, as well as see­ing the Roy­al Box. Lunch at the Fife was fol­lowed by a fas­cin­at­ing trip round part of Inver­cauld, hos­ted by Angus McNicol and his team, where the view­points we stopped at provided con­ver­sa­tions around agri­cul­ture, forestry, moor­land and mont­ane and their chal­lenges as well as some stun­ning landscapes;

I had been asked to organ­ise a trip to a Fish Farm and as there are none around here I felt a trip to the Old Brig at Inver­cauld to meet with Edwin Third from the Dee Dis­trict Sal­mon Fish­ery Board was prob­ably a bet­ter bet – dis­cus­sions were had around the dif­fer­ent envir­on­ment­al des­ig­na­tions on the river (a Natura 2000 Spe­cial rea of Con­ser­va­tion for sal­mon, otters and fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sels) and on the sur­round­ing land (Bal­loch­buie – a Natura 2000 Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area for caper­cail­lie and the Scot­tish cross­bill) as well as the chal­lenges facing our wild sal­mon in particular.

We wound up the day with a vis­it to Brae­mar Castle and a quick tour around! Someone found some swords and our guests soon star­ted to relax and enjoy them­selves after a pretty action and inform­a­tion packed day… All in all the day was a huge suc­cess and the feed­back was excel­lent, well worth the effort every­one involved put in to the day.

Car­o­lyn Cad­dick – Janet Hunter, Derek Ross and myself atten­ded a day on Atholl Estate to learn more first-hand about deer stalk­ing from the stalk­ers on the estate. It was an excel­lent day and we learnt many things around heath­er beetle, deer man­age­ment and estate management.

Anne Rae Mac­don­ald — wrote an art­icle on farm­ing in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park for Walk High­lands at the end of August.