191206CNPABdPaper1 CEOReportConvenerUpdateRevised

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 1 6^th Decem­ber 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 Nature: The Cairngorms Nature Action Plan will be used as a key cri­ter­ia for the next round of Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund mon­ies alloc­ated in the Park, fur­ther cement­ing its role as the key stra­tegic doc­u­ment for identi­fy­ing and deliv­er­ing con­ser­va­tion pri­or­it­ies in the Park. After the first 6‑monthly review of activ­ity, deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan is on track with few areas of work con­sidered to be at any risk. The rel­at­ively short term nature of peat­land res­tor­a­tion fund­ing is a risk to achiev­ing res­tor­a­tion tar­gets and this is cur­rently being con­sidered by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and SNH. The Cairngorms Nature Strategy Group con­tin­ues to take a stra­tegic over­view and mobil­ise deliv­ery on the ground.

b) Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: The pro­ject to find ways in which people can play their part in caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion is in the last three months of the Devel­op­ment Phase. The Deliv­ery Phase applic­a­tion will be sub­mit­ted in March 2020. The extremely pos­it­ive res­ults from the com­munity listen­ing work car­ried out by Dr Alistair Bath in Carr-bridge has giv­en the com­munity group a great boost and strong man­date to go ahead with draw­ing up a com­munity-led action plan. The mod­el for how to sup­port fur­ther com­munit­ies of place and interest through a sim­il­ar pro­cess will form the basis of the 2^nd round applic­a­tion; along with pro­pos­als for rais­ing aware­ness and under­stand­ing, hab­it­at expan­sion and enhance­ment, pred­at­or man­age­ment and genet­ic ana­lys­is. Pro­posed com­munit­ies to work with in the deliv­ery phase include the (wild­life, activ­ity pro­vider and accom­mod­a­tion) busi­ness com­munity, moun­tain bik­ing com­munity, vis­it­ors to Glen­more, a com­munity in Strath­spey and a whole-estate approach in Deeside.

c) Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship: We are now in the final year of pro­ject deliv­ery. There is still a huge amount of work to do and the staff and volun­teer teams con­tin­ue to do an amaz­ing job. 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. Jack­ie Taylor and the team recently organ­ised an import­ant Nation­al event in Perth host­ing oth­er Nation­al Lot­tery fun­ded pro­jects to explore how best to ensure the pro­jects leave long last­ing worth­while legacies. We are very sorry Lynn Cas­sells is leav­ing us at the end of the year, she has done a fant­ast­ic job, but are recruit­ing for a new Land Man­age­ment Officer to take us to Octo­ber 2020.

A quick sum­mary of pro­gress on some of the main TGLP projects:

i. Sta­bil­isa­tion work on Blairfindy Castle is almost com­plete, with final aspects such as the path from the dis­til­lery and land­scap­ing to be com­pleted. The qual­ity of the work­man­ship is aston­ish­ing. Com­ple­tion expec­ted in early Dec. ii. The Dis­cov­ery Centre is now a well-estab­lished focal point for vis­it­ors. Now closed until Spring. iii. The Spey­side Way Spur has now been com­pleted, an open­ing event was held on 22^nd Septem­ber. iv. Scalan Mills is pro­gress­ing well and on time with out­stand­ing atten­tion to detail from the loc­al con­tract­or lead­ing the res­tor­a­tion work. Com­ple­tion expec­ted end of Nov. v. A very sig­ni­fic­ant amount of work has recently taken place con­sult­ing the com­munity on Inter­pret­a­tion of pro­jects across the part­ner­ship. With this com­pleted we will soon see more of the many pro­jects accom­pan­ied by strik­ing inter­pret­ive dis­plays. vi. Some Ripari­an wood­land pro­jects are still being developed along­side the exist­ing pro­jects where tree have been planted in buf­fers along­side rivers. vii. A range of train­ing pro­jects are con­tinu­ing to be made avail­able through the part­ner­ship. viii. The water-envir­on­ment works along the River Avon at Ford­mouth have been com­pleted. This was a com­plex pro­ject which is con­sidered to be one of the most ambi­tious river restoration/​sediment man­age­ment pro­jects of its kind in the UK. ix. New wader officer, Vicky Ander­son, is in post. Hir­ing out the new rush cut­ter and cre­at­ing more ​‘wader scrapes’ are con­tinu­ing as part of the Peez­ie pro­ject. x. An applic­a­tion to the Scot­tish Forestry Grant Scheme has been sub­mit­ted for cre­at­ing a new area of nat­ive wood­land above the River Con­glass near the Lecht road. This and the recent felling of non-nat­ive con­ifers at the bot­tom of the Lecht will form part of a demon­stra­tion pro­ject. 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 taken place for the com­munity, the most recent being learn­ing how to accur­ately map a lost farm­stead. xiv. The recent Wild in the Park event in Septem­ber was a great success.

d) 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. Wader pro­ductiv­ity mon­it­or­ing has con­tin­ued this year with a report due soon. Areas for wood­land expan­sion and peat­land res­tor­a­tion are still being developed.

e) 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. The Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group met in October.

Vis­it­or Experience:

a) Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um: The Octo­ber meet­ing covered access issues that are primar­ily raised by users and show­ing no sig­ni­fic­ant change; ​‘Tread Lightly’ pro­mot­ing respons­ible access and a spring 2020 Sem­in­ar bring­ing togeth­er part­ners and interest groups to look at respons­ible access round ground nest­ing birds with a focus on Caper­cail­lie. SNH is bring­ing togeth­er pub­lic part­ners includ­ing Forestry & Land Scot­land and both Nation­al Park Author­it­ies to devel­op ways that we can bet­ter encour­age respons­ible out­door access for a range of bene­fits from health to CO2 saving.

b) Long Dis­tance Routes:

i. Spey­side Way: The ini­tial study on a 20 mile exten­sion of the Long Dis­tance Route from Aviemore to New­ton­more star­ted in May 2004 and the route as des­ig­nated by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment will be com­pleted by the end of this year, and offi­cially opened in spring 2020. This has required two Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment ​‘enquir­ies’, six plan­ning applic­a­tions and five fund­ing part­ner­ships to raise the £1.2 mil­lion required to con­struct the route. This year we have sup­por­ted Kin­gussie Devel­op­ment Com­pany in upgrad­ing the exist­ing path between the shinty pitch & vil­lage and are in dis­cus­sion with them about options for an off road solu­tion from Ruthven Bar­racks north. We are devel­op­ing new maps and inter­pret­a­tion boards to be installed at key sites along the route and work­ing with New­ton­more Busi­ness Asso­ci­ation to devel­op a start/​finish sculp­ture in the vil­lage. ii. Deeside Way Exten­sion: 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 near­ing com­ple­tion in sum­mer 2020. Some 82% of paths iden­ti­fied in Cairngorms were com­plete by Octo­ber includ­ing the well-used and well seen Beinn a Ghlo path in High­land Perth­shire opened by John Swin­ney in Septem­ber. The focus over the next nine months is com­plet­ing the pro­ject and main­tain­ing the leg­acy of paths and volunteers.

d) Act­ive Travel: Secur­ing fund­ing to take the concept design for Act­ive Aviemore to a detailed cos­ted build design is prov­ing chal­len­ging and we are in dis­cus­sion with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment about how best to pro­gress this next stage. Glen­more sup­por­ted by the Vis­it Scot­land man­aged Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund still requires High­land Coun­cil Roads Author­ity per­mis­sion with build sched­uled for Spring/​Summer 2020. Kin­gussie and Dul­nain com­munit­ies have secured Sus­trans sup­port to devel­op cos­ted designs for their act­ive travel work. The Dul­nain desire to cre­ate a mul­ti­use path link to Grant­own is fur­ther sup­por­ted by fund­ing from the Grant­own dis­til­lery. Lag­gan has secured fund­ing from Sus­trans for a stage one work look­ing at options to improve act­ive travel in and around the community.

e) Volun­teer­ing: We now have 26 trained volun­teer rangers sup­port­ing the work of ten ranger ser­vices and oth­er part­ners. Train­ing for the next intake, already ​‘recruited’, is sched­uled for early spring 2020.

f) Edu­ca­tion and Inclu­sion: Cairngorms Youth Action was launched by Mari Gougeon, Min­is­ter for Rur­al Affairs and the Nat­ur­al Envir­on­ment, in Octo­ber with the team of young people shar­ing their stor­ies of last year’s work and their vis­ion for the future on how bet­ter to mean­ing­fully engage and work with young people. We are now recruit­ing for 12 – 15 young people (14−26 yrs. old) to take for­ward this work in 2020. The John Muir Award con­tin­ues to be pop­u­lar with some 2,477 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. The ​‘Writer in Res­id­ence’ cel­eb­rates its com­ple­tion on 21 Novem­ber with an event in Grant­own shar­ing the stor­ies that people in and around the Nation­al Park have writ­ten to cel­eb­rate the out­stand­ing cul­ture of this area. A book has been pub­lished of this work that will be widely avail­able. This work has been sup­por­ted by Cre­at­ive Scot­land, with Wood­land Trust. We will now look at options for sup­port­ing ​‘a writer in res­id­ence’ in future years.

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. Through this winter we will look at how to improve our sup­port and meet with com­munit­ies that are inter­ested in expand­ing this net­work into their area.

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 were sub­mit­ted at end of Septem­ber 2019. We are await­ing details of the timetable from DPEA and expect the exam­in­a­tion to start early in 2020.

b) Plan­ning case­work: The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee approved a new dis­til­lery and a second phase of afford­able hous­ing at Beachen Court, both at Grant­own-on-Spey, a num­ber or ret­ro­spect­ive track applic­a­tions and afford­able hous­ing in Dul­nain Bridge. An appeal has been made against the CNPA’s enforce­ment notice to remove a sec­tion of unau­thor­ised track in Glen Clova. Upcom­ing case­work includes land re-grad­ing works at Cairngorm Moun­tain and anoth­er ret­ro­spect­ive applic­a­tion for a track at Bal­avil estate.

c) Plan­ning and the Nat­ur­al Her­it­age: As part of our Plan­ning Ser­vice Pri­or­it­ies a work­shop was organ­ised with SNH for staff from our two organ­isa­tions plus the five loc­al author­it­ies and SEPA. Dis­cus­sion focussed on the new Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan, the new plan­ning legis­la­tion and pro­cesses to make sure that plan­ning pro­cess was work­ing well to con­serve and enhance nature.

d) 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. CNPA is assist­ing the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Devel­op­ment Trust with refine­ment of costs with view to sub­mis­sion of stage 2 applic­a­tion to Scot­tish Land Fund to redevel­op the old school site. In Brae­mar, the community’s pro­pos­als have recently received pre-applic­a­tion advice. 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 January.

e) Eco­nom­ic Action Plan: The Eco­nom­ic Action Plan is being presen­ted to Board for approv­al in Decem­ber along with a sum­mary of the responses received dur­ing the consultation.

f) Cairngorm Moun­tain: Staff con­tin­ue to assist HIE & oth­er part­ners with plan­ning a sus­tain­able future for the ski area. HIE have com­menced work on a mas­ter­plan for the area, includ­ing sig­ni­fic­ant pub­lic engage­ment. A plan­ning applic­a­tions is under act­ive con­sid­er­a­tion for modi­fic­a­tion of ter­rain close to the base sta­tion and a fur­ther applic­a­tion to move snow-mak­ing equip­ment to a site above the mid-sta­tion is expec­ted soon.

g) Tour­ism Action Plan: The Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship met in Novem­ber, with Board mem­ber Janet Hunter in the Chair, and dis­cussed: Nation­al Tour­ism Strategy, adven­ture tour­ism, camper­van use and the mid-term res­ults for Cairngorms Vis­it­or Sur­vey ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀. Over­all, good pro­gress is being made with deliv­ery of the Tour­ism Action Plan with a mid-term review sched­uled for sum­mer 2020. Mid-term ​‘sum­mer’ res­ults for the Vis­it­or Sur­vey have now been cir­cu­lated to part­ners. So far the res­ults show: an increase to vis­it­ors of the import­ance of the area being a Nation­al Park; an increase in the rat­ings by vis­it­ors of their over­all exper­i­ence; the avail­ab­il­ity of pub­lic toi­lets was iden­ti­fied as a pri­or­ity for improvement.

h) Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund: Muir of Din­net pro­ject (car-park exten­sion, new sewage dis­pos­al and motor-home pro­vi­sion) led by SNH is near­ing com­ple­tion. Glen­ore pro­ject (a path) is await­ing approv­al – see above. The RTIF scheme has been exten­ded and Expres­sions of Interest are to be sub­mit­ted by middle of January.

i) A9 Dualling pro­ject: The CNPA is main­tain­ing an objec­tion to the Dalraddy to Slo­chd sec­tion on the basis that the pro­vi­sion for non-motor­ised users between Aviemore and Car­rbridge is insuf­fi­cient. In the mean­time staff are assist­ing Trans­port Scot­land with a study to identi­fy a suit­able off-road walk­ing and cyc­ling route between Aviemore and Carrbridge.

j) Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject: The Badenoch Fest­iv­al was 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; attract­ing people off the A9; devel­op­ment of a web portal to link to com­munity web­sites; devel­op­ment of a net­work of com­munity her­it­age ambas­sad­ors. Badenoch has fea­tured in a new Vis­itScot­land mar­ket­ing cam­paign. A work stream is about to com­mence with busi­nesses and the Pro­ject has agreed to attend Expo next year along with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Partnership.

k) European Region­al Devel­op­ment Fund: The RSPB applic­a­tion for enhanced vis­it­or facil­it­ies, car park­ing and inter­pret­a­tion at Aber­nethy was suc­cess­ful. Pro­gress and plans were repor­ted to the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship and imple­ment­a­tion is planned for 2020.

Stake­hold­er Engagement:

a) CEO atten­ded a range of groups/​events includ­ing Envir­on­ment and Eco­nomy Lead­ers Group, CoHI, Cairngorms Funicu­lar Response Group, Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion Con­fer­ence, UKNP Con­fer­ence, Euro­parc Con­fer­ence, Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship AGM, SNH/LLTTNPA/CNPA joint meeting.

b) CEO also had meet­ings with the fol­low­ing people & organ­isa­tions – Mr Li Chun­li­an, Vice Admin­is­trat­or, Nation­al Forest and Grass­land Admin­is­tra­tion, China; Dr José A. Her­rera, Min­is­ter for the Envir­on­ment, Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and Cli­mate Change, Malta; HIE; NLHF; High­land Coun­cil; Crown Estate Scot­land; Forest and Land Scot­land; CBP, Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Eco­nomy & Agri­cul­ture, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire, Tomin­toul Com­munity Associations.

c) CEO spoke at the fol­low­ing events – NHI/NC500 Con­fer­ence, Plan­ning and Nat­ur­al Her­it­age Sem­in­ar, CBP Annu­al Con­fer­ence, Entre­pren­eur­i­al Scot­land Cli­mate Event

Com­mu­nic­a­tions:

a) Cairngorms Nature Cam­paign: The Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end will take place 15 – 17 May 2020. Build­ing on this year’s suc­cess, the pro­gramme will include a launch event, school arts com­pet­i­tion, a com­munity hub in Grant­own-on-Spey work­ing with loc­al schools, care homes and loc­al busi­nesses, vari­ous spe­cial­ist inclu­sion events as well as the Park-wide pro­gramme of events run by rangers, estates and part­ners. A rur­al skills day will take place on Monday 8^th June 2020 and two young people (16−30 year olds) have won a schol­ar­ship on a LANTRA Accred­ited Nature Iden­ti­fic­a­tion course to be run by Spey­side Wild­life in 2020. Xan­der John­son, Cairngorms Nature Young Ambas­sad­or, con­tin­ues to pro­mote Cairngorms Nature through his video work win­ning two more awards and he presen­ted on BBC Autum­n­Watch hos­ted in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park through­out 2019 and into 2020. Sus­tain­able farm­ing is pro­moted through the Cairngorms Nature Farm Awards won by Ballin­luig Farm near Grantown-on-Spey.

b) Make It Yours Cam­paign: The CNPA’s 5 yearly all park vis­it­or sur­vey star­ted in May this year and the first six month data inter­im report was presen­ted in Novem­ber with the full year final report ready in July 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 and that an estim­ated £270 mil­lion was gen­er­ated with­in the loc­al eco­nomy through vis­it­or and tour­ism busi­ness expendit­ure, an increase of 12% on the pre­vi­ous year. Also worth not­ing is that 62% of the addi­tion­al vis­it­ors in 2018 came to the Cairngorms in the quieter months of Septem­ber and April.

a) 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. Pro­mo­tion of respons­ible access con­tin­ues to be a major focus of the cam­paign and work is under­way to get a more col­lab­or­at­ive approach in place across Scot­land led by SNH and sup­por­ted by both Nation­al Park Author­it­ies and the Forestry & Land Scotland.

b) Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions: The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Annu­al Review ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ has been pub­lished on our web­site along with the Annu­al Accounts which were laid in Par­lia­ment dur­ing week com­men­cing 11 Novem­ber. A con­sulta­tion on the Eco­nom­ic Action Plan is com­plete and the plan has been final­ised for Board approv­al. The Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan Annu­al Review was pub­lished in an e‑storybook format and has been viewed 354 times between 14^th June – 5^th July. To pro­gress our Gael­ic Lan­guage Action Plan we have recruited anoth­er Gael­ic Lan­guage research stu­dent start­ing in Janu­ary 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.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development:

a) Office Exten­sion Pro­ject: Our HQ exten­sion won the Archi­tec­ture Journ­al Archi­tec­ture Award 2019 for best work­place up to 10,000m² with judges com­ment­ing that the devel­op­ment ​“achieves remark­able things on a lim­ited budget”. For more inform­a­tion see: https://​www​.archi​tect​s​journ​al​.co​.uk/​s​t​o​r​y​.​a​s​p​x​?​s​t​o​r​y​C​o​d​e​=​1​0​0​45328. A new kit­chen has been fit­ted in the old build­ing and we are devel­op­ing plans to upgrade the meet­ing and social space in the old build­ing. We are also review­ing the pos­sib­il­ity of improv­ing cycle stor­age facil­it­ies to pro­mote act­ive travel to work.

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

i. Car­oline Stan­ton joined us as Land­scape Adviser, repla­cing Gra­ham Saun­ders. ii. Vicky Walk­er joined the Author­ity in the Office Ser­vices Man­ager post, which is a vari­ation of the recently vacated Cor­por­ate Sup­port Officer role. iii. Leav­ers included: — Kirsty Mack­en­zie (Lead­er Pro­ject Devel­op­ment and Sup­port Officer) who came to us as an Appren­tice sev­er­al years ago and who has secured a new pos­i­tion with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment; Emma Rawl­ing who’s fixed term con­tract as the Cairngorm Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject Com­munity Ranger has come to an end.

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

i. Intern­ships: — We have appoin­ted two interns – Bruce Mac­Don­ald who will col­late research for a pro­ject bring­ing Gael­ic Her­it­age to life for non-Gael­ic speak­ers; and Camer­on Cos­grove who will digit­ise unmapped wood­land and trees in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. We are also cur­rently recruit­ing an intern to identi­fy and digit­ise erod­ing and drained peat­land. ii. Work Exper­i­ence: — We are sup­port­ing a young per­son from Grant­own Gram­mar on a 10-day place­ment over the next 5 weeks, help­ing her to under­stand the role of the Author­ity and the vari­ous jobs and career paths to those jobs.

d) Shared Ser­vices: 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.

e) Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy 3: We have now launched the next stage of our Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy – ODS3, which has been con­sul­ted with the Board’s S&RC and staff through the SCF. Work­ing groups have been set up to deliv­er this strategy. The Best Com­pan­ies Sur­vey was com­pleted in Octo­ber, and the res­ults are due early in Janu­ary. The sur­vey res­ults will feed in to the evolving ODS3.

f) We have secured fund­ing to replace two of our dies­el pool car fleet with elec­tric vehicles and four more with pet­rol hybrid vehicles and these changes are being imple­men­ted over the final months of the year.

g) 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.

h) Cairngorms Trust and LEAD­ER: The Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme alloc­a­tion of £2.97 mil­lion is now fully com­mit­ted, with an addi­tion­al £0.07 mil­lion secured from com­pet­it­ive bids into remain­ing nation­al funds to fin­ance addi­tion­al activ­ity in the Cairngorms. Estim­ated total pro­ject value includ­ing eli­gible match fund­ing is cur­rently estim­ated at £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 Trust is lead­ing on a sus­tain­able rur­al trans­port cooper­a­tion pro­ject, along­side Kilkenny LEAD­ER (Ire­land). Two suc­cess­ful stake­hold­er group meet­ings have now taken place. This pro­ject aims to imple­ment improve­ments in com­munity and act­ive travel provision.

i) The Trust has also made its first awards from char­it­able funds to sup­port com­munity pro­jects fol­low­ing adop­tion of two cam­paigns and open­ing a small grants scheme of up to £1,000 sup­port­ing com­munity led pro­jects. Devel­op­ment of the vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme remains a focus for the Trust Man­ager, although the cur­rent uptake by loc­al busi­ness into the scheme is rel­at­ively slow. How­ever, some £2,200 has been raised in the year to date against a busi­ness plan tar­get of £5,000 for the first year, and there­fore some early inroads are being achieved.

Grant Moir Decem­ber 2019

Board Con­vener Update – For Information

I have con­tin­ued to work with Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment, on the con­sulta­tion around the Eco­nom­ic Action Plan and as part of that we met with Jack­ie Brier­ton of Grow­biz. We dis­cussed the pro­posed plan and ways that Grow­biz and the Nation­al Park might be able to work togeth­er in the future. There is the pos­sib­il­ity to col­lab­or­ate on a smart village’s pro­ject in the CNP with three com­munit­ies out­lined as poten­tial pilot areas.

Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive and I atten­ded a meet­ing with all Chairs and CEOs from the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Envir­on­ment Dir­ect­or­ate to dis­cuss cli­mate change and pos­sible areas of future col­lab­or­at­ive work. This was a pos­it­ive meet­ing and fur­ther oppor­tun­it­ies from this dis­cus­sion for the CNPA are likely to come for­ward in the future.

Gaen­er Rodger and I atten­ded the very suc­cess­ful launch of Cairngorm Youth Action with Mairi Gougeon MSP, Min­is­ter for Rur­al Affairs & Nat­ur­al Envir­on­ment. The young people who have steered the pro­ject since its incep­tion did a great job of explain­ing the issues faced by young people liv­ing in the Cairngorms and some of the areas of work that the group intends to focus on going for­ward. The groups’ work will build on the EURO­PARC Youth Mani­festo which the CNPA is com­mit­ted to supporting.

I have just returned from Nation­al Parks UK Chairs For­um where it was agreed to take the final steps to dis­solv­ing the NPUK Com­pany. A major­ity of dir­ect­ors agreed to pro­ceed with the dis­sol­u­tion. Now all 15 Nation­al Parks, who are the only mem­bers, will be writ­ten to ask for their con­sent to dis­solve it. A 75% major­ity of NPs in favour is required to enable the dis­sol­u­tion to hap­pen. The Chairs endorsed the pro­gramme of work of the new Brand­ing & Mar­ket­ing Unit, sub­ject to a few minor changes. This strategy has been for­mu­lated in con­sulta­tion with CEOs and Heads of Com­mu­nic­a­tions of all 15 Nation­al Parks and will focus heav­ily on cli­mate change and biod­iversity loss. Dame Fiona Reyn­olds, Chair Green Alli­ance, spoke about future chal­lenges and oppor­tun­it­ies for Nation­al Parks, par­tic­u­larly in rela­tion to cli­mate change. Next year’s Chairs For­um will be hos­ted by Loch Lomond & the Trossachs NP in Balloch.

Xan­der McDade Board Con­vener

Extern­al Engage­ments (16^th Septem­ber – 27^th Novem­ber 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
16⁄9	Meet­ing with Jack­ie Brier­ton, Grow­biz and Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or Plan­ning & Rur­al Development	Coupar Angus
1⁄10	Meet­ing with Roseanna Cun­ning­ham MSP, Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary and oth­er Envir­on­ment Dir­ect­or­ate Chairs & CEOs	Scot­tish Par­lia­ment, Edinburgh
7⁄10	Meet­ing with Mairi Gougeon MSP, Minister	Grant­own-on-Spey
7⁄10	Launch of Cairngorm Youth Action with Gaen­er Rodger	Grant­own-on-Spey
28⁄10	Con­ven­tion of the High­lands & Islands with Geva Blackett	Inverness
26⁄11	Meet­ing with Lorne Crerar & Car­roll Bux­ton, HIE Chair and HIE Inter­im CEO and Grant Moir, CEO	Aviemore
26−27÷11	UK Nation­al Parks Chairs Forum	Lon­don

Board Mem­ber Updates

Wil­lie Munro

I was at the board of Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire on 28^th Octo­ber. There was a present­a­tion and dis­cus­sion on the new nation­al tour­ism strategy. It largely mir­rors the dis­cus­sions that we have in CNPA, par­tic­u­larly about the need for more to be attrac­ted into employ­ment in the sec­tor and the sub­sequent chal­lenges of recruit­ment and reten­tion, afford­able accom­mod­a­tion, train­ing and quality.

I was also at a meet­ing of VisitAberdeenshire/​Scottish Gov­ern­ment about Adven­ture Tour­ism and VA pro­ject Extreme North.

Douglas McAdam

On 27^th Sept I atten­ded the Bein A’Glo path event rep­res­ent­ing the Con­vener. Along with John Swin­ney and pro­ject part­ners I made a short address on behalf of the CNPA to the guests which was well received and raised some key points on man­aging vis­it­or impacts and vis­it­or giv­ing. John Swin­ney was very sup­port­ive of the pro­ject and a good turnout des­pite the weath­er. Some media cov­er­age achieved.

19^th Novem­ber. I atten­ded the Wild­Scot­land AGM and con­fer­ence which was held in the LLT­NP HQ in Bal­loch. I atten­ded as both WS Board mem­ber and also CNPA Board mem­ber. A good turn out and good dis­cus­sions focus­ing on grow­ing the wild­life and adven­ture tour­ism mar­ket and also, import­antly, focus­ing on the prob­lems of lit­ter­ing in the NP and wider countryside/​marine envir­on­ment with a look at some inter­est­ing schemes to address the issue e.g. Bask­ing Shark Scot­land beach clean pro­jects ini­tially sup­por­ted by Crowd­fund­ing and now part of their com­mer­cial product.

Geva Black­ett

Car­o­lyn and I rep­res­en­ted the Board at the Euro­parc Con­fer­ence in Latvia. The busy week included fas­cin­at­ing present­a­tions from two young entre­pren­eurs and the role of nature in health (includ­ing men­tal health) by Dr Wil­li­am Bird. Field trips were diverse from the res­tor­a­tion of wet­lands, fish­ing and cul­tur­al her­it­age, cyc­ling tours, gast­ro­nomy and a chance to dis­cov­er the nat­ur­al heal­ing powers of Ķemeri Nation­al Park by learn­ing about the nat­ur­al cur­at­ive resources of Ķemeri Nation­al Park look­ing at mud and min­er­al water…) to name but a few. The very long day ended with a deli­cious meal and open air music­al even­ing in the Ķemeri Nation­al Park. I also atten­ded the Park’s Pres­id­ents and May­ors meet­ing. Car­o­lyn atten­ded a work­shop about reju­ven­at­ing urb­an areas she couldn’t believe she had to go to Latvia to hear from Paul Barclay, telling us about the work he does with TCV Scot­land, a Scot­tish com­munity volun­teer­ing char­ity, that focus on health­i­er, hap­pi­er com­munit­ies through engage­ment with nature. All in all a fas­cin­at­ing trip which was also atten­ded by oth­er officers in dif­fer­ent ​‘guises’ and a fant­ast­ic rep­res­ent­a­tion from some of our young people who are not just amaz­ing ambas­sad­ors but also great fun!

Amongst oth­er meet­ings I have atten­ded CoHi in Inverness as an observ­er; Mur­ray Fer­guson and I met with Angus McNicol and Mark Tate from the CBP in Tomin­toul to dis­cuss their response to the Eco­nom­ic Action Plan; At Derek Ross’s request I atten­ded a meet­ing in Tomin­toul along with Elean­or, Pete Crane and Grant to listen to their con­cerns about rub­bish and the future of the pub­lic loos; I atten­ded a meet­ing at Glen Tanar hos­ted by Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire which was also atten­ded by the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil and most recently Pippa Had­ley, Deirdre Fal­con­er and I atten­ded the CBP Con­fer­ence in Aviemore.