CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 27^th March 2020

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Title: CEO REPORT AND CON­VENER UPDATE Pre­pared by: GRANT MOIR, CHIEF EXECUTIVE

1. Pur­pose:

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.

2. Con­ser­va­tion:

Cairngorms Nature: Deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan’s three pri­or­it­ies of ​‘land­scape-scale con­ser­va­tion’, ​‘action for pri­or­ity spe­cies’ and ​‘involving people’ con­tin­ues to be on-track with no sig­ni­fic­ant risks or bar­ri­ers iden­ti­fied at this early stage. Fund­ing via the Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund is deliv­er­ing nature-friendly farm­ing, fresh­wa­ter res­tor­a­tion and spe­cies con­ser­va­tion pro­jects across the Park. Anoth­er applic­a­tion for the second round of fund­ing was sub­mit­ted in Feb­ru­ary 2020. The Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end in May 2020 is under review due to Cov­id-19. A final decision on wheth­er to post­pone will be taken shortly.

3. Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: The devel­op­ment phase of the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund and LEAD­ER fun­ded pro­ject ends in March 2020. This phase cov­ers the five main strands of pro­ject activ­ity: improv­ing over 10,000 hec­tares of hab­it­at; strength­en­ing exist­ing mon­it­or­ing work; research­ing the genet­ic diversity; rais­ing aware­ness and under­stand­ing and pilot­ing com­munity-led con­ser­va­tion in Car­rbridge. Learn­ing and out­comes from devel­op­ment phase work, and pro­pos­als to work with five oth­er com­munit­ies of place and interest, will form the applic­a­tion for deliv­ery phase.

4. Wood­land expan­sion tar­gets: We have com­mis­sioned a piece of work with the James Hut­ton Insti­tute to quanti­fy the area of suit­able land poten­tially avail­able for wood­land expan­sion in Scot­land and in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. This allowed them to provide us with an indic­a­tion of what the equi­val­ent wood­land cre­ation tar­get should or could be in the CNP. The res­ults revealed that our cur­rent CNP tar­get of 5,000 ha (over 5 years) is very much in line with the cur­rent nation­al tar­get of 12,000 ha per year. The res­ults have also been mapped to provide an indic­a­tion of how much of the Nation­al Park would be wooded by 2045 if this tar­get is met. The answer is that at the cur­rent rate, by 2045 wood­land cov­er in the nation­al park would be less than 20%. This demon­strates that whilst our wood­land tar­gets are ambi­tious, they are also achiev­able and the impact on open hab­it­ats will be min­im­al. These find­ings were repor­ted on at the Cli­mate Con­fer­ence on 9^th March.

5. Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion: Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has announced fund­ing for peat­land res­tor­a­tion in Scot­land to the tune of £250million over the next ten years. This is very good news for us con­tinu­ing to pro­mote and pro­ject man­age peat­land res­tor­a­tion in the Nation­al Park. We are explor­ing options for future dir­ect fund­ing of the Peat­land res­tor­a­tion to ease future pro­ject management.

6. Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship: Latest report to NHLF included below to give a fla­vour of the breadth of pro­ject work being under­taken along­side the con­tinu­ing over­all pro­ject man­age­ment by staff and TGLP board.

• a) Peesie Pro­ject: 5 Wader scrapes have been installed in the field below the Bird Hide and addi­tion­al ones agreed in neigh­bour­ing fields. Extens­ive areas of rush cut­ting has been under­taken. Volun­teers have been gathered to help with the final year of wader sur­veys. Leg­acy plan­ning work is under­way and a key stake­hold­er meet­ing has been held that estab­lished an agreed leg­acy approach for the Peesie Pro­ject. A soil health event is being dis­cussed to be held in the sum­mer for farm­ers in the T&G area. Machinery Loans have continued.
• b) Water Mar­gin Man­age­ment: A fen­cing con­tract­or is being pro­cured to fence off a water mar­gin on the River Avon on Ballindal­loch Estate. The wader scrape has been installed. Wood­land Trust are provid­ing trees for the fenced off water mar­gin. Works are due to com­mence in April. Oth­er areas have been iden­ti­fied where improve­ments could be made to water mar­gins. These sites could be taken for­ward once match fund­ing budget is finalised.
• c) Fish Bar­ri­er Ease­ment: Inter­pret­a­tion pan­els are pro­gress­ing with pan­el design final­ised and con­tent for the fish bar­ri­er ease­ment being developed. A loc­a­tion for the inter­pret­a­tion way­mark­er in the Braes of Glen­liv­et has been agreed, which is adja­cent to the fish pass site.
• d) Scalan Mills: Pro­ject has reached prac­tic­al com­ple­tion and is now in the defects stage. Some land­scap­ing work is required to repair water dam­age and pos­sibly re-seed some of the foot­path sections.
• e) Blairfindy Castle: Prac­tic­al com­ple­tion has been achieved. The site is to be land­scaped in the spring and a wild­flower mead­ow cre­ated as part of the works.
• f) Train­ing and Skills: The train­ing pro­ject is con­tinu­ing with its digit­al skills train­ing classes of which 5 people reg­u­larly attend. The fol­low­ing courses have been delivered: 1 day and 2 day out­door first aid courses, Needle felt­ing for begin­ners and needle felt­ing next steps, Fiddle classes are on-going and con­tin­ue to be pop­u­lar. Deer Stalk­ing Cer­ti­fic­ate level 1 con­tin­ue to be under­taken by loc­al game­keep­ers. The TO is cur­rently organ­ising a Dark Skies Work­shop for loc­al businesses.
• g) Oral His­tory: The Digit­al Archive is now behind sched­ule and is being prioritised.
• h) Fish­ing for the Future: Addi­tion­al site infra­struc­ture is being installed and snag­ging under­taken on pre­vi­ous installed items. The LMO has been work­ing with the fish­ing organ­isa­tions to final­ise the beat maps for the fish­ing leaflet.
• i) Com­munity Cul­tur­al Her­it­age: The CCH group have held a plan­ning meet­ing for their 2020 activ­it­ies and have atten­ded an overnight vis­it to the Nation­al Archives of Scot­land. The archives vis­it was to col­late more inform­a­tion to inform the inter­pret­a­tion con­tent and spe­cific­ally to help them with con­tent for the CCH Her­it­age Trail Book­let the group are producing.
• j) Com­munity Nat­ur­al Her­it­age: A total of 8 grant applic­a­tions have been approved in 2019 totalling £12k. The last round of grants was com­pleted in Janu­ary 2020 and a total of 6 applic­a­tions have been received totalling £14k. The 2020 applic­a­tions are cur­rently being reviewed.
• k) Edu­ca­tion: Edu­ca­tion con­tract has been awar­ded to Mind­stretch­ers. The incep­tion meet­ing has been held and the con­tract­or is now con­tact­ing stake­hold­ers as part of the inform­a­tion gath­er­ing phase of the contract.
• l) Inter­pret­a­tion & Digit­al: The area inter­pret­a­tion con­tract is now in Phase 2 with pan­el design com­plete and con­tent devel­op­ment underway
• m) Dis­cov­ery Centre: Will reopen for the 2020 sea­son on 27^th March.
• n) Access Improve­ments: Spey­side Way Spur has reached prac­tic­al com­ple­tion and the con­tract­or is cur­rently under­tak­ing snagging/​defects.
• o) Wood­land Improve­ment: The grant applic­a­tion has been sub­mit­ted to Forest & Land Scot­land and we are due to hear back immin­ently if the grant will be awar­ded for the 20ha nat­ive wood­land plant­ing scheme.
• p) Dark Skies: New light units and bulbs have been delivered and the elec­tri­cian was arranged for the first round of light­ing changes on ten­ant farms.
• q) Land­scape, Her­it­age & Song: Three volun­teers are work­ing with the CHO to hold a Bothy Nicht at the Braes Hall in May. This will involve the fiddle classes, loc­al schools, and will invite loc­als to play a tune, sing a song or recite poetry. The tra­di­tion­al song work­shops are on-going and the next ses­sions being planned.

7. Vis­it­or Experience:

Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um: SNH has brought togeth­er key part­ners includ­ing Loch Lomond & Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity, Forestry and Land Scot­land, Scot­tish Forestry and ourselves to look at shared out­door access issues includ­ing pro­mot­ing respons­ible out­door access more con­sist­ently. While this work devel­ops we will con­tin­ue to pro­mote ​‘Tread Lightly in the Cairngorms’. The 2019 social media cam­paign reached 308,685 accounts with 31,463 engage­ments. In March with Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age, Moun­tain­eer­ing Scot­land, Ram­blers Scot­land and Scot­tish Land and estates we co-hos­ted a work­shop with over fifty part­ners. Entitled ​‘Work­ing Togeth­er to Pro­tect Ground Nest­ing Birds’ the day pro­duced out­puts designed to encour­age all of us to more effect­ively pro­mote respons­ible access to look after these birds.

8. Long Dis­tance Routes:

• a) Spey­side Way: The ini­tial study on a 20 mile exten­sion of the Long Dis­tance Route from Aviemore to New­ton­more star­ted in May 2004 and after nearly 16 years of work in plan­ning and con­struc­tion the route as des­ig­nated by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment is now open. New­ton­more Busi­ness Asso­ci­ation has secured fund­ing to cre­ate a sculp­ture seat start/​end point to Spey­side Way and we are in dis­cus­sion about a form­al open­ing at this loc­a­tion in the autumn. We are also sign­ing and map­ping the route and work­ing with loc­al com­munit­ies to install inform­a­tion pan­els show­ing the path and nearby com­munit­ies. Kin­gussie com­munity has raised safety con­cerns about the on road sec­tion between the vil­lage and Ruthven Bar­racks, shared with NCN7 Cycle route, and we are meet­ing with High­land Coun­cil, Sus­trans and Hitrans to look at ways to improve the sig­nage on this sec­tion. Fur­ther work in 2020, in part­ner­ship with The High­land Coun­cil and Moray Coun­cil sup­por­ted by SNH will focus on improv­ing the exist­ing route north of Boat of Garten.
• b) Deeside Way Exten­sion: The route from Aber­deen to Bal­later is also pro­moted as NCN195 by Sus­trans and in Feb­ru­ary they brought togeth­er part­ners; Aber­deen City and Shire Coun­cils, Nes­trans and CNPA to look at ways of improv­ing the route and extend­ing to Brae­mar. This work is ongo­ing and we will use this work to try and re-invig­or­ate poten­tial fun­ders for the sec­tion from Brae­mar to Inver­cauld Bridge that has plan­ning consent.

9. 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 89% 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. This pro­ject along with its pre­de­cessor, the Cairngorms Moun­tain Her­it­age Pro­ject, have upgraded 144km of key moun­tain paths. The focus over the next three months is com­plet­ing the pro­ject and main­tain­ing the leg­acy of paths and volun­teers. We are also refin­ing our part­ner­ship with Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land to ensure that paths improved in Cairngorms over the last 15 years are maintained.

10. Act­ive Travel: Sus­trans has now agreed in prin­ciple to sup­port the devel­op­ment of the round­about entrance to the new hos­pit­al in Aviemore being led by High­land Coun­cil and improve­ments to walk­ing and access to the site being led by Hitrans. We are still try­ing to secure fund­ing to take the concept design for more Act­ive Aviemore to a detailed cos­ted build design. Glen­more sup­por­ted by the Vis­it Scot­land man­aged Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund now has High­land Coun­cil Roads Author­ity per­mis­sion to build a tar­mac path from the beach car park to Hay­field bridge with build sched­uled for Spring/​Summer 2020. Once con­struc­ted High­land Coun­cil will ​‘adopt’ the path. 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.

11. Volun­teer­ing: The 26 trained volun­teer rangers are being joined by 12 oth­ers cur­rently under­go­ing train­ing this spring. To date these volun­teers have offered a total of three years of volun­teer­ing sup­port to ten ranger ser­vices and oth­er part­ners. Lead­er + fund­ing for this ini­tial devel­op­ment phase of volun­teer rangers ends in Septem­ber after which the ongo­ing sup­port will be fun­ded by us. We do not intend to train fur­ther volun­teer rangers this year while we eval­u­ate the future sup­port required to main­tain the cur­rent team.

12. Health walks: The six­teen health walk groups across the Nation­al Park sup­por­ted 4410 walks in 2019 and the Nethy Bridge group were awar­ded Paths for All Demen­tia Friendly Accreditation.

13. Edu­ca­tion and Inclu­sion: Cairngorms Youth Action Team launched by Mari Gougeon, Min­is­ter for Rur­al Affairs and the Nat­ur­al Envir­on­ment, in Octo­ber has now recruited 15 young people, 15 ‑25 yrs old, to devel­op and sup­port young people’s insolv­ent with the Cairngorms. We will be look­ing for engage­ment with the CNPA Board in 2020. The John Muir Award con­tin­ues to be pop­u­lar with some 2,662 mainly young people dis­cov­er­ing, explor­ing, & con­serving this area and then shar­ing their exper­i­ences in 2019. The John Muir Trust is cur­rently under­tak­ing a nation­al apprais­al of the award. The Juni­or Ranger pro­gramme attrac­ted 75 young people from across the Cairngorms in 2019. Back­bone, with sup­port from Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity and Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age is now deliv­er­ing ​‘Our Nat­ur­al Her­it­age Pro­ject’ to engage with 400 people of all ages and abil­it­ies from Scotland’s Refugee and Asylum Seeker and Black & Eth­nic Minor­ity com­munit­ies; vis­it­ing her­it­age sites, under­tak­ing con­ser­va­tion volun­teer­ing and the John Muir Award.

14. Inform­a­tion and Inter­pret­a­tion: Shar­ing the Stor­ies ​‘A year in the Cairngorms’ came to an end in Novem­ber with the launch of an antho­logy. Some 246 people atten­ded work­shops and train­ing ses­sions with 170 pupils and 17 staff tak­ing part in school work­shops. CNPA and Loch Lomond and Trossachs NPA have launched Lit­er­ary Land­scapes book­let and web pres­ence ​‘unlock’ the lan­guage of the land that cel­eb­rates the rich nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age of both Nation­al Parks. Cat­er­an Eco­mu­seum, sup­por­ted by CNPA and oth­er part­ners, cel­eb­rated the 100^th anniversary of the birth of poet and folk artist Ham­ish Hende­r­son with a tem­por­ary por­trait in Glen­shee. It was made of jute, covered two acres of the hill­side and pos­it­ively launched the Eco­mu­seum. Work is con­tinu­ing in part­ner­ship with Bal­later Halls Com­mit­tee on devel­op­ing an unstaffed inter­pret­a­tion centre that shares the stor­ies of the east­ern Cairngorms with visitors.

15. Snow Roads Scen­ic Route: CNPA fun­ded Vis­itScot­land to run a Snow Roads cam­paign in spring 2019 to coin­cide with CBP’s launch of the Snow Roads web­site and app. The cam­paign ran online using a mix of social media pro­mo­tion and Avid nat­ive advert­ising. Across the cam­paign, there were over 5 mil­lion digit­al impres­sions. Face­book advert­ising was par­tic­u­larly suc­cess­ful, with over 97,000 inter­ac­tions and over 17,000 land­ings on the Snow Roads website.

16. Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres: CNPA are sup­port­ing and pro­mot­ing 10 Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres across the Nation­al Park and in dis­cus­sion with sev­er­al oth­er com­munit­ies about the oppor­tun­ity to devel­op more. What3Words App will be act­ively tri­alled as an addi­tion­al way of pro­mot­ing these centres in 2020. We are also using this app and our web­site to act­ively pro­mote the 17 Pub­lic Toi­lets in the Nation­al Park.

17. Rur­al Development:

Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020: The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan was sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Min­is­ters on Septem­ber 20^th 2019. The exam­in­a­tion of unre­solved rep­res­ent­a­tions by Report­ers from the Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment­al Appeals Divi­sion (DPEA) is now under way. Site inspec­tions of the alloc­ated sites and those pro­moted in rep­res­ent­a­tions will take place over the com­ing months. To date some requests for fur­ther inform­a­tion have been received though all have been on minor mat­ters. We have very recently been advised that oral ses­sions will not be required and that the work should be com­plete by the end of May. At the end of the pro­cess, the Report­er will pub­lish an Exam­in­a­tion Report, which will set out a list of recom­men­ded modi­fic­a­tions to the Plan. Pro­gress can be mon­itored on the DEPA’s web­site: http://​www​.dpea​.scot​land​.gov​.uk/​C​a​s​e​D​e​t​a​i​l​s​.​a​s​p​x​?​I​D​=​1​20658

18. CNPA staff are cur­rently updat­ing and pro­du­cing new Sup­ple­ment­ary Guid­ance (SG) and non-stat­utory guid­ance (NSG) to sup­port the new Plan. The timetable for con­sulta­tion is cur­rently as follows:

• a) April onwards: Nat­ur­al Her­it­age NSG, Land­scape Her­it­age NSG, Cul­tur­al Her­it­age NSG and Renew­able Energy NSG;
• b) May onwards: Sup­port­ing Eco­nom­ic Growth NSG, Sport and Recre­ation NSG and Resources NSG;
• c) June onwards: Hous­ing SG, Developer Con­tri­bu­tions SG and Design and Place-mak­ing NSG.

19. Plan­ning case­work: At the Janu­ary and Feb­ru­ary Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ing, the Com­mit­tee have approved a fur­ther 26 afford­able hous­ing units with 14 in Aviemore and 12 near Boat of Garten. They have also approved 27 open mar­ket flats in Aviemore and addi­tion­al houses at Dulicht Court in Grant­own-on-Spey. Applic­a­tions for houses in wood­land on the edge of Nethy­bridge and for pri­or approv­al of a hut in wood­land near Car­rbridge were refused. In March, the Com­mit­tee will have determ­ined applic­a­tions recom­men­ded for approv­al for the con­tin­ued oper­a­tion of the Nation­al Park’s only act­ive land­fill site near Aviemore and for an exten­sion to the House of Bru­ar busi­ness near Blair Atholl. The CNPA has also called in applic­a­tions for hous­ing at Crom­dale, Nethy Bridge and Kin­gussie, a num­ber of tracks as plan­ning applic­a­tions and pri­or approv­al applic­a­tions, and will call in an applic­a­tion to strengthen the funicu­lar rail­way on Cairngorm. The Report­er from the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Dir­ect­or­ate for Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment­al Appeals has upheld the CNPA’s enforce­ment notice requir­ing an unau­thor­ised track to be removed fol­low­ing an appeal against the enforce­ment notice.

20. Com­munity-led Hous­ing Deliv­ery: Com­munity Led Hous­ing Group met in early Feb­ru­ary. Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Devel­op­ment Trust have received £190,000 from the Scot­tish Land Fund to pur­chase to Old School site in Tomin­toul. They have also received fund­ing from CARES to under­take a feas­ib­il­ity study into energy effi­ciency meas­ures for the site. They are about to tender for the design and build stage. The Brae­mar hous­ing group have sub­mit­ted an applic­a­tion to the Rur­al Hous­ing Fund for nearly £1.5million to build for 14 units. Dul­nain Bridge are pro­gress­ing a feas­ib­il­ity study into self-build plots (fun­ded by High­land Hous­ing alli­ance), and Boat of Garten have received a RHF feas­ib­il­ity grant to look into 2 afford­able units in the vil­lage. Bal­later are cur­rently rais­ing fund­ing to invest­ig­ate a site with­in the vil­lage for two units. Peter Argyle and Mur­ray Fer­guson atten­ded the annu­al Rur­al Hous­ing Scot­land Con­fer­ence in Birnam.

21. Eco­nom­ic Action Plan: Action Plan has been updated and loaded to web­site. Deidre Fal­con­er has been agreed as Chair of the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group and first meet­ing is planned for mid-April. Rur­al Devel­op­ment Officer is been recruited to assist with coordin­a­tion and deliv­ery of pro­jects with­in the Plan.

22. Cairngorm Moun­tain: Con­sol­a­tion on the pre­par­a­tion a mas­ter­plan is under­way and fin­ished on 8 March. Staff atten­ded sev­er­al com­munity con­sulta­tion events and met with con­sult­ants. Recom­mend­a­tions are due to be presen­ted to HIE by June. In the mean­time the Funicu­lar Rail­way is still out of action and work is pro­gress­ing to devel­op the busi­ness case for repair and sub­mit neces­sary applic­a­tion for con­sent includ­ing a plan­ning applic­a­tion which will be called in by CNPA for determination.

23. Tour­ism Action Plan: A com­pre­hens­ive paper on the Tour­ism Action Plan is on the agenda for Board meet­ing in March 2020.

24. Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund: The pro­ject to improve car-park­ing, toi­lets and pro­vi­sion for motor homes at Muir of Din­net NNR, man­aged by SNH, is com­plete. The pro­ject in Glen­more, man­aged by Forest and Land Scot­land, to provide new pavement/​path from Beach car­park to Hay­field has yet to com­mence and is due to be com­plete by July. In Round 3 one Expres­sion of Interest has been sub­mit­ted for two small motor home park­ing facil­it­ies in Strath­don. A design grant has been provided to work up the Scheme for full sub­mis­sion in June.

25. A9 Dualling pro­ject: CNPA Board agreed to with­draw objec­tion in early March fol­low­ing an agree­ment being reached with Trans­port Scot­land who will provide off­line route for cyc­lists and pedestrians.

26. Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject: The Pro­ject Officer, Oliv­er O’Grady, resigned in Janu­ary and recruit­ment has been under way to replace him. It has only been pos­sible to recruit a part time replace­ment, who is pro­grammed to start work in April. The impact of this on pro­ject deliv­ery has been mit­ig­ated to date by CNPA staff and Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey (plus the com­munity rep­res­ent­at­ives) keep­ing the key activ­it­ies on track and the secur­ing of a three month exten­sion of the pro­ject such that it will now run to March 2021. A BGPP Board work­shop took place in late Jan to flush out the detail of the mar­ket­ing, inter­pret­a­tion and destination/​route strategies. A con­tract for drone pho­to­graphy has been let and oth­ers for digit­al visu­al­isa­tion, storytelling and audio record­ing and busi­ness engage­ment are about to be tendered for. Plan­ning is now under­way for the 2020 Badenoch Fest­iv­al which will be led by Badenoch Her­it­age but sup­por­ted by the Pro­ject. The BGPP has secured a stand at Vis­it Scot­land Expo and will be pro­mot­ing the area as a new cul­tur­al her­it­age des­tin­a­tion with­in the Park.

27. Stake­hold­er Engagement:

The CEO met with the fol­low­ing organ­isa­tions and indi­vidu­als since the last board meet­ing; NHS High­land, CaMPA, Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion, Cairngorms Con­nect, RSPB, Trans­port Scot­land, Edward Moun­tain MSP, Kate For­bes MSP, Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Peat­lands team, Com­munity Councils.

28. The CEO has atten­ded the fol­low­ing events and meet­ings: Joint CNPA, LLTTNPA & SNH Man­age­ment Team meet­ing, Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, Net Zero Land Use Report, Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion Stra­tegic Plan event, NHLF Her­it­age Hori­zons, Cairngorm Moun­tain Mas­ter­plan, Envir­on­ment and Eco­nomy Lead­ers Group, Cli­mate Group, Ready Aber­deen­shire, COP26 Work­shop, SG Biod­iversity Pro­gramme Advis­ory Group

29. The CEO also spoke at the Cross Party Rur­al Group on Land Use & Plan­ning, Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence & Volun­teer Ranger Train­ing Day

30. Com­mu­nic­a­tions:

Cairngorms Nature Cam­paign: The Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end will take place 15 – 18 May and the pro­gramme will be launched at the end of March. Over 80 events are planned aimed at people who are new to nature, nature enthu­si­asts and spe­cial­ists as well as volun­teer­ing and inclu­sion events. There will also be the usu­al School Arts com­pet­i­tion and the Rur­al Skills day will take place on 8^th June 2020.

31. Make It Yours Cam­paign: Await­ing the new vis­it­or sur­vey data we have not been act­ively pro­mot­ing the train­ing but are still receiv­ing and respond­ing to requests. Attendees are reach­ing 400 since the start of the pro­gramme equat­ing to nearly 2% of the pop­u­la­tion of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The train­ing has been updated to include Badenoch Great Place and Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Dark Skies.

32. Act­ive Cairngorms: Wee Walks Week in Septem­ber 2019 was suc­cess­ful in pro­mot­ing walks on social media; posts reached an audi­ence of 180,572 through­out Septem­ber – an increase of 61% from 2018 and 38% from 2017.

33. Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions: A Cli­mate Change con­fer­ence took place on 9^th March with Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary Roseanna Cun­ning­ham MSP, Chris Stark CEO of the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, Dr Mike Riv­ing­ton and Pro­fess­or Alis­on Hester from the James Hut­ton Insti­tute speak­ing. We are expect­ing 180 del­eg­ates and the after­noon will focus on Land Use, Biod­iversity Loss, Sus­tain­able Com­munit­ies & Busi­ness and Trans­port & Act­ive Travel in the Park.

34. Organ­isa­tion­al Development:

Office Exten­sion Pro­ject: 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.

35. Staff­ing update: Since Novem­ber, staff­ing updates are as follows:

• a) Lynn Cas­sells resigned from her post as TGLP Land Man­age­ment Officer. This was a part time (15 hours/​week), fixed term post. Jos Mil­ner, who cur­rently works for the CNPA as the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship Officer, was suc­cess­fully recruited to this post.
• b) Kath­er­ine Don­nach­ie resigned from her post as Plan­ning Officer. Recruit­ment to this post was not suc­cess­ful, neither was our attempt to fill the post with a temp. As a res­ult we are focus­sing on gradu­ate level posts and are cur­rently recruit­ing a Gradu­ate Planner.
• c) Tom Cole was appoin­ted to the Sea­son­al Ranger post and joined us in Feb­ru­ary. This is a fixed term con­tract to the end of September.

36. Youth Employment:

• a) Intern­ships: We have appoin­ted three interns – Camer­on Cos­grove who joined us in Novem­ber to digit­ise unmapped wood­land and trees in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park; Bruce Mac­Don­ald who joined us in Janu­ary to col­late research for a pro­ject bring­ing Gael­ic Her­it­age to life for non-Gael­ic speak­ers; and Peter Green who joined us in Janu­ary to identi­fy and digit­ise erod­ing and drained peat­land. These short term intern­ships have proven to be a suc­cess­ful mod­el for the com­ple­tion of spe­cif­ic, time-bound pro­jects and also sup­port the devel­op­ment of super­vi­sion and man­age­ment skills of exist­ing staff.
• b) Work Exper­i­ence: We are sup­port­ing a young per­son from Grant­own Gram­mar who joined us on an ini­tial 10-day place­ment in Decem­ber, help­ing her to under­stand the role of the Author­ity, the vari­ous jobs and career paths to those jobs, and gen­er­al work­ing in a cor­por­ate envir­on­ment. This has proven to be a pos­it­ive exper­i­ence for the young per­son and we are extend­ing the oppor­tun­ity until the end of the cur­rent aca­dem­ic year.
• c) We are work­ing in part­ner­ship with UHI and Kin­gussie High School to sup­port a Found­a­tion Appren­tice – this involves a work place­ment for a young­ster still at school, work­ing for the organ­isa­tion one day/​week dur­ing term time. The place­ment will help them achieve their SVQ qual­i­fic­a­tion in busi­ness administration.

37. 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.

38. Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy 3: ODS3 has now com­menced. All work­ing groups have met, and a draft action plan has been developed. The Best Com­pan­ies Sur­vey was com­pleted in Octo­ber, and CNPA has been iden­ti­fied as a 1‑star organ­isa­tion for staff engage­ment. This is a pos­it­ive res­ult and only the second time since we star­ted doing the sur­vey in 2020 that we have bene recog­nised as a 1‑sstar organ­isa­tion. We have also been lis­ted at *** out of the top 100 com­pan­ies in the ​“not-for-profit” sec­tor. The very detailed res­ults of this sur­vey are still being ana­lysed and con­sul­ted with staff and will feed in to the over­arch­ing ODS.

39. Fam­ily Friendly Awards: CNPA has been selec­ted as a final­ist in the ​‘Men­tal Health & Well­being’ cat­egory of the Top Employ­er Awards 2020. The awards cere­mony are being held on 26^th March.

Grant Moir March 2020

Peter Argyle

I was pleased to be able to attend, along with Mur­ray, the Rur­al Hous­ing Scot­land (RHS) Con­fer­ence in Birnam on 28^th Feb­ru­ary. The theme was ​“Rur­al Vis­ion” and the event was well-atten­ded. RHS have sup­por­ted 24 com­munit­ies in 10 loc­al author­ity areas with hous­ing pro­jects as well as mak­ing an input to policy devel­op­ment. Pro­jects with­in the CNP include Brae­mar and Bal­later, while Blair­gowrie is close.

The key-note address was from Les­ley Rid­doch. Ms Rid­doch was fol­lowed by Andrew Copus, a seni­or research­er on demo­graphy, JHI and a European uni­ver­sity, who gave an inter­est­ing present­a­tion on chan­ging demo­graphy in Scot­land and sparsely pop­u­lated areas in par­tic­u­lar. Such pop­u­la­tions, espe­cially work­ing age, will decline and migra­tion is not entirely the solu­tion. The net effect of migra­tion in cit­ies is roughly zero whilst the impact in rur­al areas of migra­tion from out­with the UK or RUK is pretty small. The pop­u­la­tion in rur­al areas is grow­ing slowly but not in sparsely pop­u­lated areas or the islands.

There was a present­a­tion on the island of Ulbha (off the W coast of Mull) which was sub­ject to a com­munity pur­chase, with £4.4m from the SLF although this also included land on Mull itself. Ulbha is mostly moor­land, con­nec­ted by ferry to Mull, pop­u­la­tion (f/​t) is six with between ⁵⁄₆₀₀₀ vis­it­ors pa. The pop­u­la­tion was 600 in the early c19th. The strategy is to use pub­lic funds to ren­ov­ate 6 res­id­en­tial prop­er­ties; sev­en sites have been iden­ti­fied for new-build but on an island with lim­ited access from anoth­er island with access issues and with no metalled roads, this is not without its chal­lenges. The aim is to grow the pop­u­la­tion to 50 with­in 20 years but it was not clear what employ­ment oppor­tun­it­ies would be cre­ated or what would be done around edu­ca­tion and oth­er ser­vices. There is a pro­ject (estim­ated at £1.4m) to devel­op the laird’s house as a her­it­age centre with self-cater­ing accom­mod­a­tion. Also plan to devel­op agri­cul­ture on the island – cur­rently 35 high­land cattle and some sheep. The present­a­tion raised some ques­tions for me but which – as noted below – I was unable to air…

A num­ber of present­a­tions fol­lowed on fin­an­cing com­munity pro­jects, on energy effi­ciency and com­munity-led hous­ing pro­jects, the lat­ter focus­sing on work on Arran. Scot­tish Land & Estates CEO Sarah Jane Laing spoke about the sup­ply of afford­able hous­ing and the import­ance of the private sec­tor in this, par­tic­u­larly ref­er­en­cing Andrew Brad­ford of Kin­cardine Estate. She also men­tioned the com­munity pro­ject at Rothiemurches (which was wel­come) but com­men­ted in that con­text ​“the plan­ners were afraid of innov­a­tion” (which was not) in their deal­ing with the applic­a­tion. Dav­id Stew­art from the Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion spoke about the need for fur­ther land reform, access to land and the need for policy and legis­lat­ive change.

The final ses­sion — a pan­el Q&A – was aban­doned as by this point it was snow­ing and the spec­tacle of around 2cm of wet snow sit­ting on the ground caused some to leave in haste, whilst more hardy souls remained to the end of the ses­sion (without Q&A). Those who had trav­elled by train did not have any option. As it happened the snow-belt exten­ded not more than 5 miles from Birnam.

An inter­est­ing con­fer­ence in gen­er­al and some good con­ver­sa­tions around the main ses­sions. Mur­ray and I were able to have a help­ful dia­logue with some folk from the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment about some of the issues we face in the CNP and poin­ted out that the Park is an ideal place to pilot new ini­ti­at­ives. There was per­haps a slight sense that ​“Rur­al Scot­land” is mostly the west­ern part of the coun­try north of Glas­gow and the islands off the west coast but there were occa­sion­al ref­er­ences to oth­er parts.

Judith Webb

I atten­ded the Cairngorms Nature Steer­ing group and have been keep­ing updated with both Andy Ford and Lucy Ford on pro­gress with Her­it­age Hori­zons and the Big Week­end respectively.

I chaired a CUAG meet­ing which was extremely well atten­ded and had some very use­ful present­a­tions from Cairngorms Con­nect, Dee Fish­er­ies Trust and East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship (ECMP) along with some dis­cus­sion on Hill Tracks, Wer­ritty and the Deer report these reports will con­tin­ue to be part of our Cairngorms Upland Action Group (CUAG) dis­cus­sions going forward.