CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held in the Spey & Dee meet­ing rooms, CNPA HQ, Grant­own on Spey

on Fri­day 20 Septem­ber 2019 at 11.00am

PRESENT

• Xan­der McDade (Con­vener)
• Peter Argyle
• Geva Black­ett
• Car­o­lyn Caddick
• Pippa Had­ley
• Janet Hunter
• John Kirk
• John Lath­am

• Douglas McAdam

• Elean­or Mackintosh

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

In Attend­ance:

• Grant Moir, Chief Executive
• Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Development
• Pete May­hew, Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion & Vis­it­or Experience
• Pete Crane, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices, Items 1 – 7
• Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment, Items 6 — 9
• Alan Smith, Out­door Learn­ing Officer, Items 6 & 7
• Robert Cain, Youth Action Group, Items 6 & 7
• Liam McAl­lan, Youth Action Group, Items 6 & 7
• Chris­toph­er Faulk, Youth Action Group, Items 6 & 7
• Reece Mus­grave, Youth Action Group, Items 6 & 7
• Kerri Mil­ligan, Youth Action Group, Items 6 & 7
• Jes­sica Lawson, Youth Action Group, Items 6 & 7
• Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board.

Apo­lo­gies:

• Deirdre Fal­con­er
• Derek Ross

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Wel­come and Introduction

1. Xan­der McDade, the Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing in Grant­own on Spey.

2. Apo­lo­gies were noted for Deirdre Fal­con­er and Derek Ross.

Declar­a­tions of Interest

1. Declar­a­tions of interest were invited.

2. Gaen­er Rodger declared an Indir­ect Interest in:

   • Paper 2 — Reas­on: Pro­posed Youth Action Group Member

Minutes of Last Meet­ings – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 14 June 2019 were agreed with no amendments.

2. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 28 June 2019 were agreed with no amendments.

3. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 16 August 2019 were agreed sub­ject to the fol­low­ing amendment:

   • At Para 2. – Con­grat­u­la­tions to Peter Argyle and not Peter Fer­guson, to be amended.

Mat­ters Arising

1. The Con­vener provided an update on the Action points from the minutes of the meet­ing on 14 June 2019:

   • Action Point at Para 10 (i.) – In Hand – Paper on Cli­mate Change Emer­gency response will go to the Board in Decem­ber 2019
   • Action Point at Para 18 (i) – In Hand – Inform­a­tion on socio-eco­nom­ic back­ground of John Muir Award par­ti­cipants being col­lated and will be distributed.

2. The Con­vener provided an update on the Action points from the minutes of the meet­ing on 28 June 2019:

   • Action Point at Para 22 (i) – Closed – Final Policy papers to sup­port imple­ment­a­tion of Board Fees issued.

3. The Con­vener provided an update on the Action points from the minutes of the meet­ing on 16 August 2019:

   • Action Point at Para 19 (i) – In Hand – Sched­ule Four doc­u­ments are cur­rently under­go­ing their final checks.
   • Action Point at Para 19 (ii) – In Hand – Sub­mis­sion doc­u­ments for LDP exam­in­a­tion are cur­rently being finalised.
   • Action Point at Para 19 (iii) – In Hand – Sub­mit­ted to the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment today.

4. Grant Moir, the CEO presen­ted a review of the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders for con­sid­er­a­tion by the Board. He explained that the paper fol­lows agree­ment of revised Stand­ing Orders for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity at the Board meet­ing of 14 June 2019, and action agreed at that meet­ing to under­take a review of Plan­ning Stand­ing Orders to ensure they are in keep­ing with the Board’s revised Stand­ing Orders. He added that they Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders had been reviewed by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee at their meet­ing last week and their amend­ments had been incor­por­ated into this ver­sion as Annex 1.

5. The Board agreed to: a) res­cind the Board’s agreed action of March 2019 to increase the quor­um for Plan­ning Com­mit­tee to 13 to be set out in the Committee’s Stand­ing Orders; b) approve the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders set out in this paper with imme­di­ate effect.

6. Action Points Arising: None.

CEO Report & Con­vener Update (Paper 1)

1. CEO intro­duced Paper 1 which high­lights the main stra­tegic work streams that are being dir­ec­ted by Man­age­ment Team. CEO explained that these are areas where sig­ni­fic­ant staff resources are being dir­ec­ted to deliv­er Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan pri­or­it­ies. He high­lighted the fol­low­ing areas: a) Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject – Dr Alistair Bath chosen by the com­munity was tri­al­ling a social sci­ence approach to wildlife/​human con­flict res­ol­u­tion. He had devised a ques­tion­naire for vis­it­ors and anoth­er for res­id­ents which had now been dis­trib­uted. The next step would be to hold work­shops to identi­fy the community’s con­cerns, com­mon ground and oppor­tun­it­ies. b) Open­ing of Spey­side Way Spur – would be tak­ing place on 22^nd Septem­ber 2019, praise for Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship and all the work that they do. c) Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence – Open even­ings on 25^th and 26^th Septem­ber 2019 were planned to seek views on the off road route between Aviemore and Car­rbridge. Work was ongo­ing between Grant­own and Dul­nain Bridge. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices added that the Kin­gussie com­munity were look­ing to improve the act­ive travel in their town and that Lag­gan were as well. d) Moun­tains and the People Pro­ject — The upgraded Beinn of Ghlo path would be opened by John Swin­ney MSP on 27^th Septem­ber 2019, this was the final sec­tion of the pro­ject in the Cairngorms. e) Volun­teer­ing – Have just fin­ished train­ing the latest group of volun­teers and they are now out and about on the ground, should be just shy of 40 volun­teer rangers in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park by sum­mer 2020 put­ting in hun­dreds of hours of volun­teer­ing. f) Plan­ning Case­work – inter­est­ing high pro­file case­work at present con­cern­ing Cairngorm Moun­tain and hill tracks. g) Badenoch Great Place – The Badenoch Her­it­age Fest­iv­al will fin­ish on 22^nd Septem­ber, all the events had been well atten­ded and there would be story telling this even­ing with Merryn Glover the Nation­al Park’s Writer in Res­id­ence assist­ing. h) Eco­nom­ic Action Plan – Con­sulta­tion ends today. The Con­vener repor­ted that his vis­its, along with oth­er Board mem­bers, to busi­nesses had proved very suc­cess­ful and worth­while. i) Cairngorms Nature Cam­paign – over 3270 people atten­ded this year which is over 1000 more than last year. It has fast become one of the biggest nature fest­ivals in Scotland.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) How much weight would be giv­en to the caper­cail­lie pro­ject vis­it­or sur­vey? The CEO advised that it was the com­munity group who asked for a sur­vey aimed at vis­it­ors be car­ried out, to see if their per­cep­tions were in line with those of res­id­ents. The main focus was on res­id­ents. b) Had there been any pro­gress on the Tread Lightly cam­paign? Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices advised that there had been a meet­ing with SNH and oth­er organ­isa­tions to dis­cuss how to best engage with people on the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code but that an agreed nation­al approach had not yet been reached. c) Con­cern that the pro­gress on the Deeside Way had hal­ted. The CEO explained that the issue was that the work to the path from Brae­mar to Bridge of Dee did not fit with­in Sus­trans fund­ing cri­ter­ia. He advised that the SRDP fund­ing was not avail­able at present and fund­ing for access through SNH was not avail­able either. He added that the plan­ning per­mis­sion was in place, and as soon as appro­pri­ate fund­ing is iden­ti­fied, an applic­a­tion would be sub­mit­ted. d) Con­cern raised regard­ing the new cri­ter­ia that Sus­trans are using and the impact this has on rur­al pro­jects. CEO advised that he had writ­ten to the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment regard­ing this issue and was fol­low­ing that up. e) Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices advised that on the 11^th Novem­ber 2019 it is the 100^th anniversary of the birth of the poet Ham­ish Hende­r­son and that the Cat­er­an Eco­mu­seum were hold­ing an event. f) A Board Mem­ber sug­ges­ted that it would be good for the Board to meet with the con­sult­ant to dis­cuss the issues iden­ti­fied from the sur­vey find­ings. The CEO advised that an appro­pri­ate date would be sought. g) Would it be pos­sible to cir­cu­late cop­ies of the vis­it­or and res­id­ents sur­veys in rela­tion to Car­rbridge? CEO agreed to cir­cu­late them to all who were inter­ested. h) When would the report illus­trat­ing the pro­gress of the Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship be avail­able? CEO advised that fur­ther work was being car­ried out and the inten­tion was to pre­pare and bring a report to the March 2020 or June 2020 Board meet­ing. i) Could the Snowroads be exten­ded to Dal­whin­nie? CEO explained that it was not in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, its pur­pose was to increase vis­its to the less vis­ited areas of the Nation­al Park and was not inten­ded to be a cir­cu­lar route. The Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject was focus­ing on a dif­fer­ent product which would help the Dal­whin­nie com­munity and oth­ers in the Badenoch area. Dir­ect­or of Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Plan­ning added that this was the rationale for the pro­ject. j) Dur­ing ini­tial talks with busi­nesses as part of the Eco­nom­ic Action Plan con­sulta­tion had the issue of hous­ing for staff been iden­ti­fied? The Con­vener advised that it had, along with the avail­ab­il­ity of com­mer­cial land. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Rur­al Devel­op­ment advised that he was draw­ing up a paper for the Decem­ber 2019 Board meet­ing on the Eco­nom­ic Action Plan which would sum­mar­ise all of the feed­back received. k) As a res­ult of the Board vis­it hos­ted by the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship earli­er in Septem­ber how was the need for estates to have fire plans in place pro­gress­ing? The CEO advised that the Author­ity were encour­aging fire plans to be developed but ulti­mately the onus was on estates to put plans in place how­ever the Author­ity were happy to provide support.

3. The Board noted the Paper.

4. Actions: i. CEO to look at Board dates and see if it would be pos­sible to invite Alistair Bath to dis­cuss his find­ings with the Board. ii. Cop­ies of the Res­id­ent and Vis­it­or sur­veys sur­round­ing Car­rbridge to be cir­cu­lated the Board.

Cairngorms Youth Action (Paper 2)

1. Alan Smith, Out­door Learn­ing Officer intro­duced this paper which seeks the CNPA’s sup­port for the pro­posed struc­ture and remit for Cairngorms Youth Action. The young people Robert Cain, Liam McAl­lan, Chris­toph­er Faulk, Reece Mus­grave, Kerri Mil­ligan and Jes­sica Lawson gave a present­a­tion and showed a video. He high­lighted that the launch of the group would take place on 7^th Octo­ber and Mairi Gougeon, Min­is­ter for the Envir­on­ment would attend the event.

2. The Con­vener thanked the young people and acknow­ledged the incred­ible amount of time they had put into this pro­ject, which was a huge achieve­ment. He exten­ded his thanks to Alan Smith for coordin­at­ing it all. He added that since their vis­it to Greece in April, people were start­ing to think about how to engage young people and involve them in structures.

3. The Board con­sidered the detail of the paper and dis­cussed the fol­low­ing points: a) A Board Mem­ber thanked the young people for their present­a­tions and com­men­ted that they had found it inter­est­ing and were very much in sup­port of what they were doing, she added that she was very impressed with what they had achieved in a short time and was excited for what the future holds. b) A Board mem­ber asked about the struc­ture of the group and had any thought been giv­en into how they would main­tain the gender bal­ance and diversity ensur­ing an even spread across the Nation­al Park and wider Scot­land? Out­door Learn­ing Officer explained that that the group had had a dis­cus­sion around age. The young people agreed that they were happy with the age range and the spread of where the young people come from but agreed to be flex­ible and would use enthu­si­asm to attract any gaps and were look­ing to work in part­ner­ship with oth­er groups. c) Sug­ges­tion made that young people should have great­er involve­ment to par­ti­cip­ate in Board Groups. The Con­vener explained that this was the pur­pose of hav­ing two Board Mem­bers linked to the Cairngorms Youth Action Team, to ensure a close link with the group so that their views can be brought and fed into Board dis­cus­sions on a stra­tegic level. Out­door Learn­ing Officer added that youth gov­ernance was a key sec­tion where they did not only want to involve them in but also look at how Boards and Com­mit­tees are run. The Con­vener explained that when look­ing to devel­op the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan young people’s views would be a crit­ic­al part of the devel­op­ment of that plan. He told the young people that their views would need to be embed­ded all the way through it. d) A Board Mem­ber asked the young people if they felt that the pro­ject was mov­ing on as fast as they would have liked and if not what could be done to help this? Out­door Learn­ing Officer explained that once the offi­cial launch on 7^th Octo­ber 2019 had taken place, things would move at a faster pace. He added that they had been build­ing the pro­ject slowly to ensure longev­ity. e) A Board Mem­ber advised that he could pass on details of the young farm­ers group. This was welcomed.

4. The Con­vener thanked the young people on behalf of the Board, he stated that they were inspir­a­tion­al and that they should not under­es­tim­ate the level of work they had put into it and should be very proud of them­selves. The Board gave them a round of applause.

5. The Board: a) Endorse and com­mend the work of the Youth Steer­ing Group in devel­op­ing Cairngorms Youth Action to date. b) Agreed the pro­posed struc­ture and remit for Cairngorms Youth Action as developed by the Youth Steer­ing Group. c) Agreed Board mem­bers Gaen­er Rodger and Derek Ross to be involved in the project.

6. CEO advised that the budget for the Youth Action group would come to the Board in the nor­mal way.

7. Action Point arising: i. John Kirk to pass on the con­tact for the Young Farm­ers group onto the Out­door Learn­ing Officer.

Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Annu­al Report (Paper 3)

1. The CEO intro­duced Paper 3 which presents the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Annu­al Report to the Board. The Author­ity had developed a good rela­tion­ship with the intern­al aud­it­ors BDO, there had been an issue around busi­ness con­tinu­ity and work was ongo­ing on that issue over the next few months. Both aud­it­ors were happy with it and it would be laid before parliament.

2. Judith Webb Chair of the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee said all was sub­mit­ted on time.

3. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Had mit­ig­a­tion been planned for the risks of Brexit? CEO advised that they had for the risks sur­round­ing LEAD­ER and that the CNPA were part of an SG net­work on Brexit pre­par­a­tions. b) Com­ment made that the risks could be an oppor­tun­ity for change. The Chair of the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee, Judith Webb, explained that the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee at their last meet­ing had reques­ted a whole Board dis­cus­sion on risk appet­ite focus­sing on not only the neg­at­ives but also the oppor­tun­it­ies. The CEO advised that there would an Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee train­ing ses­sion on Thursday 14^th Novem­ber 2019 in Brae­mar (after­noon pri­or to the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ing). All Board mem­bers would be invited to attend and an invite would be forth­com­ing shortly. c) Com­ment made that the Cairngorms LEAD­ER pro­ject has proved as suc­cess­ful as it could be, had the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee picked up on this and were they feed­ing this for­wards?. He noted that this could be looked at going for­ward. d) Dir­ect­or of Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Plan­ning advised that the Chairs of Scot­tish LEAD­ER Groups had recog­nised the demand for a fund­ing stream to fol­low on from LEAD­ER, post Brexit. He added that there was a Scot­tish Rur­al Action event tak­ing place in the Grant Arms at 7pm on Monday 23^rd Septem­ber 2019 focussed on build­ing a case for post Brexit com­munity fund­ing and encour­aged Mem­bers to attend.

4. The Board con­sidered and noted the report.

5. The Con­vener thanked the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee on behalf of the Board.

6. Action Point arising: i. Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee train­ing details on Thursday 14^th Novem­ber 2019 to be cir­cu­lated to the Board.

AOCB – Board Mem­bers Rep­res­ent­a­tion­al Responsibilities

1. The Con­vener intro­duced this Paper which presents a sum­mary of the cur­rent pos­i­tion regard­ing Board mem­bers’ respons­ib­il­it­ies for rep­res­ent­ing the Author­ity. The paper seeks to estab­lish the agreed basis for cal­cu­lat­ing top up time alloc­a­tions and Board fee pay­ments from 1 Octo­ber 2019.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and the fol­low­ing query was raised: a) Three days’ worth had been sched­uled against the Cairngorms Nature Strategy group how­ever there were four meet­ings sched­uled to take place the fol­low­ing year. It was explained that this was because 0.75 of a day was alloc­ated to each meeting.

3. Car­o­lyn Cad­dick, Chair of the Staff­ing and Recruit­ment gave an update, she made the fol­low­ing points: a) The next Staff­ing & Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee would take place on Fri­day 13^th Decem­ber 2019 instead of 6^th Decem­ber 2019, this was to allow staff to under­go Insights train­ing. b) The Com­mit­tee had been work­ing on devel­op­ing a new Board skills mat­rix and the sur­vey is being developed using sur­vey mon­key. A link to the sur­vey would be cir­cu­lated in Octo­ber with very clear instruc­tions on how to com­plete it. c) The Com­mit­tee had agreed in prin­cip­al not to identi­fy indi­vidu­als but that may need to be dis­cussed fur­ther in the future. d) The Com­mit­tee at their meet­ing that morn­ing had dis­cussed the need for an equal­it­ies cham­pi­on to assist with revital­ising equal­it­ies in the Nation­al Park and tak­ing a volun­teer from with­in the Com­mit­tee group­ing. It was pro­posed that Fiona McLean take on that role giv­en her exper­i­ence and would sup­port Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment in tak­ing that work for­ward. This was agreed by the Board.

4. The Board agreed the Board Mem­bers’ rep­res­ent­a­tion­al respons­ib­il­it­ies on groups as detailed in the paper with the fol­low­ing addi­tion: a) Fiona McLean to take on role of Equal­it­ies Champion.

5. The CEO provided an update on the fol­low­ing items: a) The UK Nation­al Park’s con­fer­ence had taken place this week, the New Hori­zon Award was won by the Cairngorms Youth ambas­sad­or Xan­der John­ston who had clocked up over 500 hours of vol­un­tary work in the Cairngorms. He added that the Loch Lomond and Trossachs Youth Action Com­mit­tee had won an award for youth activ­ity. b) There would be a pub­lic even­ing present­a­tion on the Cli­mate Emer­gency being held in Grant­own on the 7^th Octo­ber 2019.

6. Action Point Arising: None.

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 6 Decem­ber 2019, Spey & Dee meet­ing rooms, CNPA HQ, Grant­own on Spey.

2. The Pub­lic part of this meet­ing con­cluded at 12.36.