CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held in the Spey & Dee Meet­ing rooms, CNPA HQ, Grant­own on Spey on Fri­day 6^th Decem­ber 2019 at 11.05am

PRESENT

• Xan­der McDade (Con­vener)
• Geva Black­ett (Deputy Convener)
• Peter Argyle
• Car­o­lyn Caddick
• Deirdre Fal­con­er
• Pippa Had­ley
• Janet Hunter
• John Kirk
• Douglas McAdam

• Elean­or Mackintosh

• Wil­lie McKenna

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

In Attend­ance:

• Grant Moir, Chief Executive
• Dr Mike Riv­ing­ton, James Hut­ton Insti­tute, Items 1 to 7
• Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services
• Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Development
• Dr Peter May­hew, Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion & Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence, Items 1 to 7 and Items 10 to 13
• Gav­in Miles, Head of Plan­ning & Com­munit­ies Items 8 to 13
• Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies:

• John Lath­am

Wel­come and Introduction

1. Xan­der McDade the Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing in Grant­own on Spey.
2. Apo­lo­gies were noted from John Latham.

Declar­a­tions of Interest

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

Minutes of Last Meet­ing held on 20 Septem­ber 2019 – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 20 Septem­ber 2019 were agreed with no amendments.

Mat­ters Arising

1. The Con­vener provided an update on the Action points from the pre­vi­ous minutes June to Septem­ber 2019

   a) 14^th June 2019 Minutes — Action Point at Para 10 (i.)– Closed – Paper on response to cli­mate change emer­gency on today’s Agenda. b) 16^th August 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 19 (i) — Closed — Plan­ning Policy Team final­ised the format­ting of the Sched­ule 4 doc­u­ments. c) 16^th August 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 19 (ii) — Closed — Plan­ning Policy Team final­ised the com­pil­a­tion of the neces­sary core and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments needed for the exam­in­a­tion. d) 16^th August 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 19 (iii) — Closed — Plan­ning Policy Team to sub­mit Pro­posed LDP and all oth­er mater­i­al to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for con­sid­er­a­tion. e) 20^th Septem­ber 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 17 (i) — In Hand — Alister Bath to dis­cuss his find­ings with the Board being arranged for Feb­ru­ary 2020. f) 20^th Septem­ber 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 17 (ii.) – Closed – Cop­ies of Res­id­ent and Vis­it­or Survey’s sur­round­ing Car­rbridge have been cir­cu­lated to the Board. g) 20^th Septem­ber 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 24 (i) –Closed – John Kirk to pass on con­tact for Young Farm­ers Group onto the CNPA Out­door Learn­ing Officer. h) 20^th Septem­ber 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 30 (i) – Closed – Details of Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee train­ing on 14^th Novem­ber 2019 were cir­cu­lated to the Board.

2. Action Points Arising: None

CEO Report & 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. CEO explained that these are areas where sig­ni­fic­ant staff resources are being dir­ec­ted to deliv­er Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan pri­or­it­ies. He high­lighted the fol­low­ing area:

   a) Since the time of writ­ing the paper the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment­al Appeals Divi­sion (DPEA) had con­firmed that the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan Review would com­mence any­time from 31^st Decem­ber 2019. It was noted that this was on sched­ule and what had been anticipated.

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

   a) Make It Yours train­ing, was is pos­sible for this to be organ­ised for Board Mem­bers to under­go? CEO agreed to pro­gram a ses­sion in the New Year. b) Could assur­ance be provided that the Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship (TGLP) pro­ject would be com­pleted on time and if not what the asso­ci­ated mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures would be? The CEO advised that he was con­fid­ent in the pro­cesses in place and that the TGLP Pro­gramme Board have the right team in place to do it. He acknow­ledged that there could be a few hic­cups along the way but was assured that the right pro­cesses were in place to deal with any even­tu­al­ity. c) With ref­er­ence to the 2018 STEAM data could it be explained why there had been an increase in vis­it­ors in the shoulder months of April and Septem­ber? The CEO explained that April and Septem­ber were the months that the Author­ity & oth­ers had car­ried out pro­mo­tion­al activ­ity in a bid to expand the sea­son but that this was also part of a wider trend in Scot­land. d) Con­cern raised around the com­mu­nic­a­tion strategy and man­aging the pub­lic per­cep­tions of the Car­rbridge com­munity ele­ment of the Caper­cail­lie pro­ject. The CEO recog­nised that there were some very strong views being expressed in the Car­rbridge ele­ment of the Caper­cail­lie pro­ject. He acknow­ledged that there was sig­ni­fic­ant volun­teer time being put in by res­id­ents of Car­rbridge to the Work­ing Group. The sur­vey had pro­duced a stat­ist­ic­ally robust set of data and that over­all people in Car­rbridge wanted to do their bit to help ensure a healthy Caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion. There is abso­lutely no truth in any rumours that the CNPA is look­ing at byelaws for Caper around Car­rbridge. e) Com­ment made that the res­id­ent sur­vey was too long and that not all of the vil­lage res­id­ents respon­ded. CEO repor­ted that the response rate from the vil­lage gave a 95% con­fid­ence rate which in stat­ist­ic­al terms is very robust. f) Com­ment made that the oth­er ele­ments (such as hab­it­at man­age­ment) of the Caper­cail­lie pro­ject were not as vis­ible to the press, social media and gen­er­al pub­lic and sug­ges­tion made to ensure bet­ter com­mu­nic­a­tion of the over­all pro­ject going for­ward. This was agreed. g) With ref­er­ence to the East Cairngorms Moor­land pro­ject officer the fund­ing was due to end in spring 2020 were there any plans to extend the post? CEO con­firmed that the Estates had agreed to con­tin­ue their fund­ing and as a res­ult of this the Author­ity would match the oth­er 50% there­fore the post would con­tin­ue for anoth­er two years. h) With ref­er­ence to meet­ings the CEO and Con­vener had with Roseanne Cun­ning­ham MSP and also with Mairi Gougeon MSP, could a fla­vour of the dis­cus­sions be giv­en? CEO advised that dis­cus­sion had mainly been around net zero and what indi­vidu­al organ­isa­tions were doing to meet the require­ment. i) Assur­ance sought that In Kind fund­ing for LEAD­ER pro­jects was being recor­ded. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed that an ongo­ing record was being kept where in kind fund­ing was dis­closed in applic­a­tions. Where this was not dis­closed it would be more dif­fi­cult to quanti­fy. This aspect of pro­gramme invest­ment would be con­sidered fur­ther as the team head into the mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation phase. j) Query around snow gen­er­a­tion being dies­el powered and was there an ambi­tion for net zero? CEO advised that High­land and Islands Enter­prise (HIE) would be switch­ing from dies­el to bio­fuel from Janu­ary 2020 but that their long term ambi­tion was to switch to elec­tri­city. k) Con­cern raised that bring­ing Grow­biz to the Cairngorms would risk tread­ing on the toes of oth­er organ­isa­tions already work­ing in the area. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment advised all would be explained under paper 3 on today’s agenda. l) Con­cern raised with regards to the Deeside Way exten­sion near Brae­mar and its plan­ning con­sent would expire, had there been any dis­cus­sions on this issue? The Con­vener advised that he had raised the issue to the Min­is­ter in Octo­ber. The CEO added that he had also raised it in oth­er meet­ings around fund­ing for rur­al paths that were not com­munity links paths.

3. The Board noted the Paper.

4. Action Point Arising:

   i. Make it Yours train­ing ses­sion for Board Mem­bers in 2020 to be arranged. ii. Com­mu­nic­a­tion of the over­all pro­ject to be bet­ter coordin­ated to ensure that oth­er ele­ments of the pro­ject are also known and are being discussed.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Net Zero with Nature (Paper 2)

1. Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive intro­duced Paper 2 which looks at how the Cairngorms Nation­al Park and the CNPA responds to the chal­lenges of the glob­al cli­mate emer­gency. Ques­tions were invited:

   a) How do we ensure irre­par­able dam­age is not caused to rur­al com­munit­ies? CEO advised the need to start plan­ning and hav­ing an evid­ence base, scop­ing the vari­ous options and work­ing closely with the com­munit­ies in the Park. b) A Board Mem­ber com­men­ted that for Scot­tish Beef Effi­ciency Scheme it was a require­ment to col­lect car­bon fig­ures and that this had been hap­pen­ing for the past two to three years. She advised she would like to see what was being done with the data col­lec­ted. The CEO advised that he was unsure about this data but would find out. c) Praise for the paper as a good start­ing point for the dis­cus­sions, with recog­ni­tion that the dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and the Cli­mate Change con­fer­ence in March 2020 would both provide excel­lent oppor­tun­it­ies on how to take net zero for­ward. Sug­ges­tion made to approach work­ing with fra­gile com­munit­ies with cre­ativ­ity and cau­tion and a sug­ges­tion made to set up work­ing groups at a Nation­al Park level as well as a Nation­al level. CEO advised that this was the first of a series of papers com­ing to the Board, the next ones being brought in June and Decem­ber 2020. He added that he pre­ferred the dis­cus­sions to take place as a full Board as opposed to set­ting up a spe­cif­ic work­ing group but happy to dis­cuss. d) Query around set­ting the glob­al cli­mate emer­gency as an over­arch­ing pri­or­ity and what status this would be giv­en against the stat­utory aims and a plea made to care­fully artic­u­late it. CEO advised that the stat­utory aims give a very clear approach to tack­ling the cli­mate emer­gency in the Nation­al Park. e) Con­cern raised on the effect this could have on rur­al com­munit­ies and work­ing with young people to ensure they are skilled in the right way that will be needed in the future. Com­ment made that volun­teer pos­i­tions are not attract­ive to young people and would not help to retain young people in the area. f) Interest in what approach would be taken on a nation­al con­text, would the Nation­al Pak bound­ary be ring-fenced or would the Nation­al Park be expec­ted to become the car­bon sink for cit­ies? CEO advised that there were inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions loom­ing around policy dir­ec­tion to determ­ine what was urb­an Scotland’s rela­tion­ship with rur­al Scot­land? He added that the peat­land car­bon code was also being put in place. g) Recog­ni­tion that there needed to be a bal­ance, could assur­ance be provided that the trans­ition com­mis­sion have an under­stand­ing on equal­ity and the rur­al ele­ment? CEO agreed to find out more about the Just Trans­ition Com­mis­sion & report back to Board. h) Would the addi­tion­al work this causes detract from the deliv­ery of the work in the cur­rent Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan? CEO advised that many of the things (e.g. wood­land expan­sion, peat­land res­tor­a­tion) are in the cur­rent NPPP and that it should not detract from exist­ing pri­or­it­ies. i) With regards to the dir­ect emis­sions as an organ­isa­tion, the Author­ity must con­tin­ue to deliv­er its emis­sions reduc­tions tar­gets in order to give a stronger pos­i­tion to jus­ti­fy the wider influ­en­cing work it planned to under­take on cli­mate change. CEO agreed and advised the move to hybrid cars, use of bio­mass heat­ing and the energy effi­cient build­ing are all steps to mak­ing the organ­isa­tion car­bon effi­cient. j) Com­ment made that nat­ur­al cap­it­al account­ing would be of bene­fit in a rur­al area such as this.

2. He wel­comed Dr Mike Riv­ing­ton, author of the report (Annex 1) to this Paper who then gave a presentation.

3. The CEO added the fol­low­ing points:

   a) The Scot­tish Government’s Rur­al and Envir­on­ment Sci­ence and Ana­lyt­ic­al Ser­vices Divi­sion (RESAS) com­mis­sioned the report on behalf of the CNPA. Going for­ward the CNPA needs to con­sider where to focus the Authority’s fund­ing on research and tap into oth­er pieces of work being led by the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. b) On the 22^nd Janu­ary 2020, a report detail­ing the impacts on private water sup­plies in Aber­deen­shire will be pub­lished. c) He and Dr Mike Riv­ing­ton would be attend­ing an Aber­deeen­shire Coun­cil Cli­mate Change event the fol­low­ing week.

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

   a) A mem­ber advised that Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil has more people on private water sup­plies than any oth­er loc­al author­ity in Scot­land. b) Acknow­ledge­ment that the report meant that the future cli­mate would be milder for the Nation­al Park yet the land man­age­ment des­ig­na­tions and fea­tures had been set years pri­or: would there be change in these des­ig­na­tions? CEO agreed that this would be an issue which would require agree­ment from SNH and SG on what cli­mate proof­ing des­ig­na­tions would look like or if some fea­tures would need to change. He added that these dis­cus­sions have begun. c) Would Cairngorm Moun­tain take the find­ings of this report into con­sid­er­a­tion espe­cially at the crit­ic­al stage of the cre­ation of a mas­ter­plan? CEO agreed and advised that this after­noon rep­res­ent­at­ives from HIE, SNH, CBP, Cairngorm Moun­tain were meet­ing with Dr Riv­ing­ton to dis­cuss the report and what it means in terms of the need for diver­si­fic­a­tion and the asso­ci­ated costs. d) Sug­ges­tion made that using the stark image of not hav­ing snow on flora on high moun­tains, may make an impact to assist in speed­ing up the urgency, to help people call to action as indi­vidu­als, cit­izens. CEO acknow­ledged that there had been a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of press cov­er­age but he had hoped to determ­ine what this trans­lated into in prac­tise e.g. around peat­land res­tor­a­tion and wood­land expan­sion to enable clear mes­sages being com­mu­nic­ated. e) Sug­ges­tion made to amend the recom­mend­a­tions to sep­ar­ate what the Author­ity would do as an organ­isa­tion and how the Author­ity would work with the Nation­al Park’s rur­al com­munit­ies to bring them along. This was agreed and the word­ing for a fur­ther addi­tion­al recom­mend­a­tion would be dis­cussed dur­ing the lunch break. f) Had some thought been put into determ­in­ing the link­ages between the find­ings of this report and Cairngorms Nature, for example what spe­cies may be lost as a dir­ect impact? Pete May­hew, Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion & Vis­it­or Ser­vices advised that the CNP State of Nature report was expec­ted in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ and using the find­ings in that report and the cli­mate report it should be pos­sible to draw out the cur­rent pic­ture and the prac­tic­al­it­ies and what could be done to about it. He con­firmed that high alti­tude spe­cies were at risk.

5. The meet­ing paused for lunch. Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence left the meeting.

6. The Board agreed an addi­tion­al recom­mend­a­tion high­lighted in yel­low below and also endorsed the oth­er four recommendations:

   a) Iden­ti­fied the glob­al cli­mate emer­gency as an over­arch­ing pri­or­ity for the CNPA. b) The CNPA will sup­port and work with its rur­al com­munit­ies to make the trans­ition to net zero. c) Agreed that it should be one of the cent­ral themes of the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (2022 – 2027) for the CNP. d) Agreed to the CNPA estab­lish­ing a real­ist­ic date to achieve zero dir­ect emis­sions as an organ­isa­tion. To agree this tar­get date with the Board by Decem­ber 2020. e) Dis­cussed the deliv­ery of Net Zero with Nature and the role of young people at the first meet­ing of the Cairngorms Youth Action Team.

7. Action Point Arising: None.

Cairngorms Eco­nom­ic Action Plan (Paper 3)

1. Gav­in Miles, Head of Plan­ning and Com­munit­ies joined the meeting.

2. Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment intro­duced Paper 3 which presents the res­ults of the con­sulta­tion under­taken between June and Septem­ber 2019 and seeks the Board’s approv­al of the final­ised Eco­nom­ic Action Plan 2019 – 2022.

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

   a) Sup­port for the Smart Vil­lage pro­pos­al, of which some mem­bers had come across the concept in Europe but not in Scot­land. b) Trans­port con­nectiv­ity had been iden­ti­fied as a real issue in Deeside. c) Com­ment made that cur­rently the enter­prise agen­cies do not provide sup­port to micro-busi­nesses. And if smart vil­lage pro­pos­al goes for­wards, could reas­sur­ance be provided that the infra­struc­ture was in place to con­tin­ue that ongo­ing sup­port? Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment advised that he did think that Grant­own-on-Spey, Ballater/​Brae­mar and Badenoch vil­lages did pos­sess the required digit­al capabilities/​cov­er­age to accom­mod­ate the Grow­biz mod­el and they did seem to have the right people on the ground to take the pro­ject for­ward. d) Could it be explained how the con­cern from land man­age­ment busi­nesses, hav­ing felt neg­lected, as part of the con­sulta­tion pro­cess would be take for­ward? CEO advised that only one estate made that com­ment. Reas­sur­ance provided that the CNPA has sig­ni­fic­ant con­tact with land man­age­ment sec­tor through indi­vidu­al con­tacts, CUAG, Cairngorms Nature and oth­er mech­an­isms. e) Had work been car­ried out on region­al­ising sub­sidies? Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment explained that they would look to increase par­ti­cip­a­tion in nat­ur­al cap­it­al over time encour­aging them to take a role in it. CEO added that SNH had pub­lished a report on the nat­ur­al cap­it­al of Nation­al Nature Reserve’s (NNR) today and that staff were look­ing at that. f) Query around hous­ing stock and what to do with old hous­ing, how that could be addressed and how to make use of stock in the Nation­al Park. CEO explained that it would be linked to Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy (SPP) 4 guid­ance rather than through this piece of work. g) Sug­ges­tion made that a Terms of Ref­er­ence for the steer­ing group is drawn up. h) What resources would the steer­ing group have? Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment advised that the group itself would not have any resources but that resources would be provided though his team and man­aged through nor­mal cor­por­ate plan­ning pro­cess. i) Com­ment made around the need to ensure reas­on­able achieve­ments over the next few years. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment advised that the team had tried to ensure the actions can be pro­gressed in a rel­at­ively short time with annu­al updates being provided to the Board. j) Could it be explained how the Tour­ism Action Plan (TAP) and the Eco­nom­ic Action Plan (EAP) inter­act without link­ing? Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment advised that some of responses were more appro­pri­ate to the TAP so would be brought to the atten­tion of that steer­ing group. k) The Con­vener sug­ges­ted that the Chair of TAP sits on EAP and vice versa to ensure link­ages. This was agreed. l) Plea made to ensure work­ing with the right people with­in com­munit­ies, seek­ing help to identi­fy these with loc­ally elec­ted mem­bers. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment con­firmed that this had already happened. m) The point raised around Aviemore being the cul­tur­al cap­it­al of sport and not hav­ing seen it being picked up any­where? Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment said this point had been listened to and sug­ges­ted this come back as part of future Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan dis­cus­sions. n) A mem­ber advised that he had atten­ded the Scotland’s Towns Con­fer­ence recently and had been inspired by a case study in Cork County and recom­men­ded staff seek inform­a­tion on it. o) Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment added that tomor­row was Small Busi­ness Sat­urday (pro­moted by the Fed­er­a­tion of Small Busi­nesses) and encour­aged mem­bers and col­leagues to shop loc­ally. p) Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment repor­ted that pos­it­ive con­ver­sa­tions had taken place with act­ive Busi­ness Asso­ci­ations in Kin­gussie, Bal­later and Grant­own. q) Sug­ges­tion made to provide feed­back dir­ectly to con­sul­tees who sub­mit­ted responses. r) The Con­vener advised the Board that if any mem­bers were inter­ested in being involved in the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group to con­tact him dir­ectly fol­low­ing the meeting.

4. The Board:

   a) con­sidered the feed­back received dur­ing the con­sulta­tion b) approved the Cairngorms Eco­nom­ic Action Plan 2019 – 2022

5. Action Points Arising:

   i. Future Chair of Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group to sit on Tour­ism Action Group and vice versa to ensure link­ages. ii. Board Mem­bers inter­ested in becom­ing the Chair of the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group to make it known to the Board Con­vener fol­low­ing the meeting.

Adop­tion of the Place Prin­ciple (Paper 4)

1. The Con­vener passed on to the Deputy Con­vener to con­vene the meet­ing for the next two papers.

2. Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment intro­duced Paper 4 which seeks the Board’s endorse­ment of adopt­ing the Place Principle.

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

   a) Com­ment made that the place prin­ciple was not some­thing new to the Nation­al Park; it was what the Author­ity did any­way and it worked suc­cess­fully. b) Com­ment made that Com­munity Plan­ning Part­ner­ships use the Place Stand­ard wheel very suc­cess­fully. c) Com­ment made that the Place Stand­ard wheel was a good tool to pro­mote con­ver­sa­tions. d) Over­all it was con­sidered that a place-based approach was very appro­pri­ate with­in the Nation­al Park and we had many good examples to share. Staff should encour­age fur­ther such work to take this approach forwards.

4. The Board agreed to adopt the Place Prin­ciple which states that:

   a) We recog­nise that:

   i. Place is where people, location and resources combine to create a sense of identity and purpose, and is at the heart of addressing the needs and realising the full potential of communities. Places are shaped by the way resources, services and assets are directed and used by the people who live in and invest in them.
   ii. A more joined-up, collaborative, and participative approach to services, land and buildings, across all sectors within a place, enables better outcomes for everyone and increased opportunities for people and communities to shape their own lives.
   

   b) The Prin­ciple requests that: All those respons­ible for provid­ing ser­vices and look­ing after assets in a place need to work and plan togeth­er, and with loc­al com­munit­ies, to improve the lives of people, sup­port inclus­ive and sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth and cre­ate more suc­cess­ful places. c) We com­mit to tak­ing: A col­lab­or­at­ive, place-based approach with a shared pur­pose to sup­port a clear way for­ward for all ser­vices, assets and invest­ments which will max­im­ize the impact of their com­bined resources.

5. Action Point Arising: None.

Stra­tegic Risk Man­age­ment and Mon­it­or­ing Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance (Paper 5)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced Paper 5 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. He explained that he paper focuses on deliv­ery against the Key Per­form­ance Indic­at­ors adop­ted as meas­ures of per­form­ance in deliv­ery of our Cor­por­ate Plan, while high­light­ing by excep­tion any high­lights of deliv­ery and achieve­ments togeth­er with any sig­ni­fic­ant con­straints, risks or short­com­ings on planned deliv­ery. He added that the paper also presents the latest ver­sion of the Stra­tegic Risk Register, fol­low­ing ongo­ing review and mit­ig­a­tion action by the Man­age­ment Team and review by the Audit and Risk Committee.

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

   a) Query around the num­ber of wild­life crime repor­ted and how many brought for­ward? CEO repor­ted that there were three instances that the police have invest­ig­ated and there is not the abil­ity to pro­sec­ute unless they identi­fy a cul­prit. He added that there had been oth­er instances sur­round­ing the Park bound­ary and that the Wer­rity report was awaited fol­low­ing the elec­tions but the aim was to reduce the num­ber of wild­life crime instances to zero. b) With ref­er­ence to Annex 2, could it be explained why accord­ing to the STEAM data tour­ism had declined in the East of the Nation­al Park? CEO advised that there was noth­ing obvi­ous oth­er than high­er growth in Badenoch & Strath­spey. He added that it could be that it did grow but that this was mar­gin­al growth in com­par­is­on to the growth in Badenoch and Strath­spey. c) With regards to wild­life crime, did this hap­pen to oth­er wild­life or just to rap­tors and was there increased poli­cing in Nation­al Parks to com­bat this? CEO advised that in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park there were incid­ences of oth­er wild­life crime e.g. hare cours­ing. He con­firmed there was no extra poli­cing in the Nation­al Park. d) Query around the KPI on staff turnover being 8%, the col­our rat­ing was illus­trated as being green how­ever the descrip­tion had not been changed? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed this is a present­a­tion­al error and advised the descrip­tion would be changed to match the col­our rat­ing. The turnover rate is of a level high­er than the accept­able max­im­um adop­ted with­in the organ­isa­tion­al mon­it­or­ing frame­work. e) With regards to peat­land res­tor­a­tion con­cern raised at the lack of con­tract­ors. CEO advised that this was a capa­city and tim­ing issue across Scot­land where res­tor­a­tion was con­strained by the bird breed­ing sea­son, deer stalk­ing sea­son, grouse sea­son or by winter. He added that fund­ing is awar­ded on an annu­al basis and work can only be car­ried out 5 months of the year there­fore the Author­ity have asked for fund­ing over mul­tiple years to enhance work plan­ning rather than on a year on year basis. f) Praise for the num­ber of people involved in com­munity activ­ity for the first time through LEAD­ER being three times the tar­get sig­ni­fied by the blue col­our cod­ing in Annex 2 – recog­nising that this cor­por­ate plan meas­ure had now been met or exceeded. g) With ref­er­ence to the Risk Register (Annex 3) could it be explained how long risks remain on the register after there was a down trend of green? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that nor­mally dis­cus­sion would take place between the Man­age­ment Team and the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee (ARC). Risks that have been greyed out in the Stra­tegic Risk Register are await­ing approv­al from the ARC to poten­tially remove those risks. Gen­er­ally if the risk is rated as green for three cycles it is taken out but there are excep­tions. h) Praise for the addi­tion of large scale extern­ally fun­ded pro­jects receiv­ing con­tin­ued sup­port from the Author­ity over the peri­od after clos­ure into leg­acy deliv­ery being detailed as a risk. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices said he was pleased this had been picked up and com­men­ted that TGLP needed to agree man­age­ment plans and leg­acy impacts a pro­cess which he would con­tin­ue to mon­it­or. i) With ref­er­ence to risk A14, what would it take to make it go amber in light of the caper­cail­lie dis­cus­sion? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed this was a good point to con­sider. He advised that ele­ments while there had been strong views expressed in some quar­ters on the caper­cail­lie pro­ject it was not thought con­sidered to be enough to escal­ate any high­er at this time in terms of the like­li­hood of neg­at­ive ele­ments of this con­ver­sa­tion more widely impact­ing on the Authority’s repu­ta­tion. There were con­sidered to be a large volume of pos­it­ive aspects to cov­er­age of both the caper­cail­lie pro­ject itself and also wider work and achieve­ments by the Author­ity at this time to jus­ti­fy not increas­ing the cur­rent risk assess­ment. CEO advised that the risk on the caper­cail­lie pro­ject would be best placed in the risk cat­egor­ies focus­ing on ser­vice spe­cif­ic risks. j) The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee (ARC) Chair provided reas­sur­ance to the Board that the ARC con­tin­ued to give full con­sid­er­a­tion to the Stra­tegic Risk Register between its con­sid­er­a­tions by the Board and would con­sider fur­ther the point made about the risk man­age­ment on caper­cail­lie communications.

3. Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Ser­vices returned to the meeting.

4. The Board:

   a) Reviewed the update on cor­por­ate per­form­ance and stra­tegic risk man­age­ment set out in this paper. b) High­lighted any achieve­ments or excep­tions which, from a stra­tegic lead­er­ship per­spect­ive, Board mem­bers believe are of par­tic­u­lar sig­ni­fic­ance to the deliv­ery of the Authority’s stra­tegic object­ives. c) Reviewed and com­ment on the risk register for com­plete­ness in cov­er­age of cur­rent stra­tegic risks and adequacy of mit­ig­a­tion actions.

5. Action Point Arising:

   i. Staff Turnover KPI, descrip­tion to be corrected.

Review of Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders (Paper 6)

1. The Deputy Con­vener passed the chair­ing onto Elean­or Mack­in­tosh (Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener) to con­vene who intro­duced Paper 6 which presents a minor modi­fic­a­tion to the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders last agreed by the Board on 20 Septem­ber 2019 to cla­ri­fy a poten­tial point of con­fu­sion. The paper fol­lows agree­ment of the modi­fic­a­tion by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee at its meet­ing on 11 Octo­ber 2019.

2. The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener asked mem­bers to give a show of hands of who would be sub­mit­ting their apo­lo­gies for next week’s Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ing as she had con­cerns around being quor­ate. A plea was made to let the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener and the Clerk to the Board know if there were any fur­ther apologies.

3. The Board approved the change to Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders agreed by Plan­ning Com­mit­tee on 11 Octo­ber 2019 and set out with this paper.

4. Action Point Arising: None.

AOCB

1. The CEO repor­ted that the Nature of Scot­land awards had taken place two night ago and the Cairngorms Nation­al Park had three pro­jects nom­in­ated. He announced that of the three nom­in­ated two had won their cat­egor­ies: Lyn­breck Croft and Stew­art Taylor’s Aspen Work.

2. Action Point Arising: None.

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 27 March 2020, Dee & Spey Meet­ing rooms, CNPA HQ.

2. The Pub­lic part of this meet­ing con­cluded at 14.50