CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Paper 3 Annex I 27^th March 2020

Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning Advice Note — Coronavirus

Board and Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Decision Making

With the first cases of Coronavir­us now con­firmed in Scot­land there is a heightened risk of ser­vice dis­rup­tions cre­ated through both poten­tial absences through ill­ness; dis­rup­tion to travel and poten­tial advice to min­im­ise large scale face to face meet­ings. The Author­ity is con­duct­ing a Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan (BCP) led review of poten­tial ser­vice disruption.

The threat posed to Board and Plan­ning Com­mit­tee decision mak­ing has been iden­ti­fied as a key risk mer­it­ing more detailed con­tin­gency planning.

Board stand­ing orders estab­lish the fol­low­ing requirements:

1. The quor­um of the NPA board will be half of its total num­ber plus one — in oth­er words, 10 Mem­bers. This will apply regard­less of vacan­cies in mem­ber­ship. No busi­ness will be trans­acted at a board meet­ing unless a quor­um is present. If the Con­vener of the meet­ing finds dur­ing a board meet­ing that the num­ber of mem­bers present has reduced below the quor­um, the meet­ing shall end at that point. All attend­ance and absences shall be recor­ded in the minutes of the meet­ing. The quor­um for com­mit­tees will be as agreed for each com­mit­tee individually.

2. Par­ti­cip­a­tion will nor­mally be in per­son, and must be in per­son for meet­ings arranged to con­duct elec­tions of Con­vener and Deputy Con­vener and elec­tions of Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener and Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Deputy Con­vener. Par­ti­cip­a­tion at meet­ings oth­er than those sched­uled for elec­tions may excep­tion­ally (with agree­ment of the Con­vener of the meet­ing) be by tele­phone or video-con­fer­ence provided the Member’s con­tri­bu­tion is fully access­ible to all mem­bers and pub­lic attend­ing the meet­ing. In these cases, such mem­bers will be deemed to be present and con­sti­tute part of the board attend­ance for the pur­pose of the meet­ing and quorum.

Con­tin­gency Planning

Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment advice on travel and pub­lic meet­ings, togeth­er with the poten­tial for ill­ness amongst Board mem­bers may pre­vent Board meet­ings being held as required by these stand­ing orders. There­fore, the fol­low­ing con­tin­gency plans are proposed:

1. In the event of either Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment deem­ing that spe­cial meas­ures are to be put in place to deal with Coronavir­us con­tain­ment, this BCP response for gov­ernance of the Board’s oper­a­tions shall be put in place.

2. Board meet­ings will be designed as private meet­ings, not open for pub­lic attend­ance, although papers will be pub­lished as nor­mal. This will allow con­tin­gency plans for meet­ings to be put in place that do not need to con­sider means of open­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions of meet­ings for pub­lic access.

3. The Author­ity will con­sider arrange­ments for estab­lish­ing tele­phone or video con­fer­ence meet­ings should these facil­it­ies be required to con­duct busi­ness — deem­ing imple­ment­a­tion of these BCP meas­ures in this instance to sat­is­fy the ​“excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances” cited in para­graph 10 of stand­ing orders.

4. Seni­or staff will pre­pare a list of poten­tial decision items anti­cip­ated to come to the Board, Plan­ning Com­mit­tee or oth­er stand­ing Com­mit­tees over the next 3 months. If the Con­vener con­siders that cir­cum­stances around the Authority’s BCP response to Coronavir­us make it appro­pri­ate to seek to vary the quor­um require­ments estab­lished in stand­ing orders, to allow for decisions to con­tin­ue to be taken on any decision items in the event of assessed risk of sig­ni­fic­ant levels of absence through ill­ness and / or travel restric­tions, approv­al to revise quor­um may be secured by email cor­res­pond­ence. Email requests to Board mem­bers to vary quor­um shall be author­ised by the Con­vener or Deputy Con­vener, and coordin­ated by the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices or anoth­er des­ig­nated seni­or man­ager in their absence.

5. In line with para­graph 21 of the stand­ing orders, the Con­vener should estab­lish nom­in­ated Board mem­bers to take decisions on Board meet­ing arrange­ments in the event of both the Con­vener and Deputy Con­vener being indis­posed dur­ing the peri­od of the BCP response to a Coronavir­us outbreak.

6. Pro­vi­sions set out in points 2 and 3 shall also be made for Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meetings.

7. As with point 4 cov­er­ing Board meet­ings, the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener should determ­ine wheth­er quor­um amend­ments need to be made for any decision items and seek approv­al to vary quor­um for Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ings by email. The email cor­res­pond­ence shall be author­ised by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­ven­or or Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Vice Con­vener, and coordin­ated by the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices or anoth­er des­ig­nated seni­or man­ager in their absence.

8. In line with para­graph 21 of the stand­ing orders, the Con­vener should estab­lish nom­in­ated Board mem­bers to take decisions on Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ing arrange­ments in the event of both the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener and Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Vice Con­vener being indis­posed dur­ing the peri­od of the BCP response to a Coronavir­us outbreak.

Dav­id Cameron 5 March 2020