CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held by telephone/​video con­fer­ence on Fri­day 27^th March 2020 at 11.00am

PRESENT

(By video con­fer­en­cing unless stated otherwise)

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

• Douglas McAdam

• Elean­or Mackintosh

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

In Attend­ance:

• Grant Moir, Chief Executive
• Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services
• Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Development
• Dr Peter May­hew, Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion & Vis­it­or Experience
• Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies:

None.

Wel­come and Introduction

1. Xan­der McDade the Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the meeting.
2. There were no apologies.

Declar­a­tions of Interest

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

Minutes of Last Meet­ings held – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 6 Decem­ber 2019 were agreed sub­ject to the fol­low­ing amendments:

• At Para 10(ii) Ref­er­ence to be made expli­citly to caper­cail­lie project.

Deirdre Fal­con­er joined the meeting.

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 6^th March 2020 were agreed with no amendments.

Mat­ters Arising

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

a) 20^th Septem­ber 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 19 (iii) – Closed – Update on this was giv­en to the Board in Feb­ru­ary 2020 b) 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. c) 6^th Decem­ber 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 10 (i) – Closed – Make it Yours train­ing ses­sion for Board Mem­bers had taken place in Feb­ru­ary 2020. d) 6^th Decem­ber 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 10 (ii) – In hand – Com­mu­nic­a­tion of the over­all Caper­cail­lie pro­ject to be bet­ter coordin­ated to ensure that oth­er ele­ments of the pro­ject are also known and are being dis­cussed. e) 6^th Decem­ber 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 22 (i) – In hand — Future Chair of Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group to sit on Tour­ism Action Group and vice versa to ensure link­ages. f) 6^th Decem­ber 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 22 (ii) – Closed — Board Mem­bers inter­ested in becom­ing the Chair of the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group to make it known to the Board Con­vener fol­low­ing the meet­ing. g) 6^th Decem­ber 2019 Minutes – Action Point at Para 32 (i) – Closed — Staff Turnover KPI, descrip­tion to be corrected.

1. A Board mem­ber asked when the Board dis­cus­sion around Moor­land Man­age­ment and the Wer­rity Report would be likely to take place. CEO advised that it was sched­uled to take place today how­ever it had been over­taken by cur­rent events. He advised that the dis­cus­sion would be rearranged for anoth­er time when the COV­ID-19 crisis was over.

2. Action Points Arising: None

CEO Report & Con­vener Update (Paper 1)

1. This paper was not dis­cussed. Board mem­bers were invited to email any ques­tions on the con­tents of the paper dir­ectly to the CEO fol­low­ing the meeting.

²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ Budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan (Paper 2)

1. Grant Moir, CEO high­lighted the unusu­al cir­cum­stances of con­sid­er­ing budget pro­pos­als for the year ahead at a time when every­one involved under­stood that oper­a­tion­al impacts and wider implic­a­tions of the COV­ID-19 crises would require adjust­ments to be made in to our plans. The CEO explained that the budget presen­ted allows the CNPA to have a frame­work in place for the start of the fin­an­cial year. This will allow the Author­ity to pro­gress agreed actions where that was pos­sible and remained appro­pri­ate, while recog­nising the fin­an­cial alloc­a­tions would be sub­ject to ongo­ing review in light of the cur­rent crisis and adjus­ted accordingly.

2. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced Paper 2 which sets out the Authority’s fin­an­cial pos­i­tion for ²⁰⁄₂₁ fin­an­cial year. He explained the paper presents the pro­posed fin­an­cial alloc­a­tions for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ for core income and expendit­ure, togeth­er with inten­ded oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ment. He added the paper seeks Board endorse­ment of the budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ as an appro­pri­ate deploy­ment of resources to work towards deliv­ery of the Authority’s adop­ted Cor­por­ate Plan.

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

a) Praise for the cov­er­ing paper and the clar­ity of the inform­a­tion with­in it. b) Sug­ges­tion made that on approv­ing the budget a caveat be added refer­ring to the cur­rent COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices high­lighted that this was in the recom­mend­a­tions of the paper and that the budget would be revis­ited dur­ing the course of the fin­an­cial year. c) Ques­tion raised on wheth­er there can be flex­ib­il­ity in the budget so that funds that can­not be used because of the COV­ID-19 restric­tions might be redeployed into ​“sup­port” activ­it­ies? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that man­age­ment would work with the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee to recog­nise the changes arising in budget estim­ates and pri­or­it­ies around their pos­sible rein­vest­ment. With regard to gov­ernance pro­cesses asso­ci­ated with the Cor­por­ate Plan, any res­ult­ing budget amend­ments would be brought to the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee for review before com­ing to the Board for agree­ment. d) Com­ment made that the cur­rent budget states that there are no added pen­sion costs increases in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ CSPS pen­sion con­tri­bu­tion rates. How­ever doesn’t the increases in pay of between 3 – 6% across the organ­isa­tion mean that there will nat­ur­ally be increased CSPS costs for the Author­ity? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that there would be slight increase in costs but these would be infla­tion­ary pen­sion increase rather than as a res­ult of policy changes and increases in under­ly­ing con­tri­bu­tion rates, which was the inten­ded ref­er­ence of the ​“no added pen­sion cost increases” ref­er­ence in the paper. e) Cla­ri­fic­a­tion reques­ted around estim­ated vacancy sav­ings allowed for in the budget at this stage has been reduced to £0.078 mil­lion (pri­or year £0.099 mil­lion). Aware that at least 2 posts were not filled last year and delayed recruit­ment on oth­ers to make the sav­ings. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that there were a couple of vacant posts in the organ­isa­tion and that there would be a 3 – 4 month delay in recruit­ing to fill those giv­en the cur­rent pan­dem­ic. The reduc­tion in vacancy sav­ing estim­ates is linked to the aware­ness of a num­ber of sig­ni­fic­ant, extern­ally fun­ded pro­grammes com­ing to a con­clu­sion and the poten­tial for some vacant posts being needed to accom­mod­ate return­ing staff – hence lim­it­ing poten­tial for sav­ings. f) Request made to have a break­down of the types of post included in the Cor­por­ate Ser­vices team for clar­ity. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that Cor­por­ate Ser­vices refers to IT, Admin, HR and Fin­ance teams as well as the shared ser­vices con­tracts with LLT­NP, the inter­ac­tion with Nation­al Park Part­ner­ships and UKNP’s. He added that LEAD­ER deliv­ers dir­ectly against Rur­al Devel­op­ment pri­or­it­ies and while he line man­aged those staff, they were accoun­ted for with­in Rur­al Devel­op­ment budget lines. He advised that this was a good illus­tra­tion of many areas of activ­ity that, while line man­aged from one area of the organ­isa­tion, made mul­tiple impacts across a wide range of cor­por­ate plan pri­or­it­ies. g) Could a Pro­ject Coordin­at­or, as ref­er­enced in the paper as a resource require­ment, be found from with­in the organ­isa­tion, rather than recruit­ing extern­ally? That way the skill set going for­ward could be retained. CEO agreed and advised that man­age­ment were cur­rently look­ing intern­ally to real­loc­ate staff, which is always the first point in any agreed recruit­ment pro­cess. h) Sug­ges­tion made to go through the Cor­por­ate Plan and Budget to identi­fy which items were likely to be delivered and which might be delayed. CEO advised that Man­age­ment Team and the Oper­a­tion­al Man­age­ment Group were cur­rently work­ing on this and that that inform­a­tion should be avail­able in the next couple of weeks. i) Con­cern raised that the ratio of staff costs in rela­tion to the GiA alloc­a­tion was high and while recog­nising that the Cor­por­ate Plan could not be delivered without staff it would be good to see some planned reduc­tion in staff costs. CEO explained that the fund­ing being levered in, in order to carry out some pro­jects, also had to be taken into account. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices added that he and Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment are work­ing with the Staff­ing & Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee and were look­ing at the full num­ber of staff on fixed term con­tracts and work­ing out a plan to man­age these fixed term con­tracts over the com­ing 18 months to enable great­er flex­ib­il­ity as we near the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan peri­od. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices noted that the Authority’s staff­ing levels remained well below many oth­er Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Bod­ies and this indic­at­or remained a key met­ric in the man­age­ment team’s plan­ning. j) The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair advised that it was import­ant to approve the budget as presen­ted with the pro­viso to review things as and when they change, which would be the most sens­ible and prag­mat­ic approach in the cur­rent environment.

1. The Board:

a) Reviewed the pro­posed budget and resource alloc­a­tions for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁; b) Con­sidered wheth­er the pro­posed deploy­ment of resources poses any per­ceived risks to the achieve­ment of the Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives by 2022 and agree any risks posed for sub­sequent action by the Chief Exec­ut­ive and Man­age­ment Team; c) Endorsed the budget and oper­a­tion­al plan pro­pos­als for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁; and d) Agreed that the Man­age­ment Team shall keep the budget and resource alloc­a­tions under review in light of Cov­id-19 impacts on both the organ­isa­tion and the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, and report to Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee and Board to seek approvals for any sig­ni­fic­ant changes required to budget alloc­a­tions and deliv­ery profile.

1. Action Points Arising: None.

Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity: Review of Stand­ing Orders (Paper 3)

1. The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener advised that the set up for the plan­ning com­mit­tee for VC would have to work bet­ter for that meet­ing to be effect­ive. It was noted this was the first live tri­al of a meet­ing of over 20 people by a mix of video con­fer­ence and phone call, only one week or so after imple­ment­a­tion of full Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plans. Full review of func­tion­al­ity and meet­ing pro­to­cols would continue.

2. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced Paper 3 which presents a review of the Board’s and Plan­ning Committee’s Stand­ing Orders for con­sid­er­a­tion by the Board in the con­text of Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning con­sid­er­a­tions neces­sit­ated by risk man­age­ment of the Coronavir­us out­break. The paper fol­lows noti­fic­a­tion of review of Stand­ing Orders agreed by the Board at its meet­ing of 6 March 2020.

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

a) If the Con­vener and the Deputy Con­vener were both off at the same time due to ill­ness who would lead the Board? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that the most seni­or mem­ber of staff would look for a sub­sti­tute from the Board start­ing first by the Chairs and Vice-Chairs from the Gov­ernance Group group­ing from which Board mem­bers would be asked to make nom­in­a­tions. He added that he and the Con­vener would draft a page clearly stat­ing the pro­cess of how this would work and cir­cu­late it to the Board as soon as pos­sible. b) Acknow­ledge­ment that the cor­res­pond­ence has high­lighted that the arrange­ments first imple­men­ted are to sup­port decision mak­ing in peri­od to Board meet­ing on 27 March with fur­ther review at that point. How­ever, clar­ity may be required on spe­cified timeline of oper­a­tion of BCP arrange­ments and / or arrange­ments to call BCP arrange­ments to a halt and revert to nor­mal pro­ced­ures. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that the cur­rent arrange­ments would stay in place until the Board resolved that they were no longer required. There was a dis­cus­sion on wheth­er a reg­u­lar review should be put in place and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices warned that he thought that would be an unne­ces­sary bit of pro­cess. He advised that in order to get the ball rolling a mem­ber could pro­pose it and anoth­er mem­ber seconds it, then it would go to decision by vote. As with oth­er aspects of the Authority’s oper­a­tions, the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that the Board would of course have to give full regard to any nation­al guid­ance and reg­u­la­tions in force.

1. The Board:

a) Agreed to the tem­por­ary vari­ation to Stand­ing Orders of the Board and its Plan­ning Com­mit­tee should that be required by the Authority’s responses to man­age impacts of the Coronavir­us out­break; b) Agreed the pro­posed imple­ment­a­tion arrange­ments for Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan pur­poses set out in this paper and Annex 2, to incor­por­ate any amend­ments approved by the Board; c) Agreed that the Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Arrange­ments adop­ted through this pro­cess should be added as a stand­ing response plan with­in the Authority’s Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan for man­age­ment of the Authority’s gov­ernance arrange­ments in the event of any sim­il­ar risk of dis­rup­tion as a con­sequence of pan­dem­ic events or sig­ni­fic­ant dis­rup­tion to travel; d) Agreed the amend­ment to Stand­ing Orders set out in para­graph 6 of this paper to imple­ment the approved Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity arrangements.

1. Action Point Arising:

i. The Con­vener and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices to draft pro­gres­sion plan should the Con­vener and Deputy Con­vener be off at the same time clearly stat­ing the pro­cess. This is to be cir­cu­lated to the Board once drafted.

AOCB

1. The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener provided the fol­low­ing update:

a) Rothes 3 and Clash­n­agour wind­farm objec­tions were dis­cussed at the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ing and the Com­mit­tee decided to main­tain the objec­tion and not to provide oral evid­ence at any appeal. This was being ques­tioned by Ian Kelly (Plan­ning Agent). The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener wishes to reas­sure mem­bers that the Author­ity would be able to provide oral evid­ence at any future appeal.

1. The CEO invited the Board to send any points of cla­ri­fic­a­tion on the CEO report dir­ect to him for answering.

2. Action Points Arising: None.

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 12 June 2020.
2. The meet­ing con­cluded at 12.25