CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 1 | 12^th June 2020

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:

1. Cairngorms Nature: The Cairngorms Nature BIG 10 Days at Home, a vir­tu­al ver­sion of the BIG week­end nor­mally held each year in May, was a huge suc­cess with over 80 on-line events. Rangers, land man­agers, NGOs and com­munit­ies all con­trib­uted mater­i­al to bring the out­stand­ing nature of the Cairngorms into people’s liv­ing rooms dur­ing lockdown.

CNPA and part­ners were suc­cess­ful with a num­ber of applic­a­tions to round two of the Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund. Work focused on deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan includes river res­tor­a­tion and ripari­an plant­ing, aspen plant­ing and pro­tec­tion, hab­it­at man­age­ment for farm­land waders and tar­geted action for Cairngorms Nature pri­or­ity spe­cies includ­ing fresh water pearl mus­sel and pine hoverfly.

Through Nation­al Park Part­ner­ships, CLIF, the energy bar com­pany, has pledged £10,000 to fund a con­ser­va­tion pro­ject in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The pro­ject will focus on the endangered nar­row headed ant and will take place later in the year on the Nation­al Trust for Scotland’s Mar Lodge Estate in Deeside. CNPA is one of five pro­jects being sup­por­ted this year – the oth­er pro­jects are in the Brecon Beacons, Dart­moor, Loch Lomond & the Trossachs and North York­shire Moors Nation­al Parks.

1. Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: The devel­op­ment phase of the pro­ject form­ally ended in March 2020, although CNPA and part­ners con­tin­ue to sup­port some of the project’s work as part of ongo­ing con­ser­va­tion oper­a­tions, and the applic­a­tion for Deliv­ery Phase has been sub­mit­ted. The Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund UK com­mit­tee meet to dis­cuss and determ­ine the applic­a­tion on 10^th June. If suc­cess­ful, the Deliv­ery Phase of the pro­ject (2020 – 2023) will imple­ment the plans developed dur­ing the Devel­op­ment Phase. Plans include all five areas of work (hab­it­at cre­ation, improved mon­it­or­ing, invest­ig­at­ing genet­ic health, rais­ing aware­ness and under­stand­ing and com­munity participation).

2. Wood­land expan­sion tar­gets: We con­tin­ue to be in dis­cus­sion with a wide vari­ety of landown­ers across the Park, encour­aging them to devel­op wood­land cre­ation plans and advising oth­ers on max­im­iz­ing the bene­fits of schemes that are in devel­op­ment. Our tem­por­ary intern Camer­on Cos­grove car­ried out an excel­lent desk-based GIS study for us identi­fy­ing hitherto unmapped areas of wood­land and isol­ated trees. This will help us to pro­tect and hope­fully expand vul­ner­able nat­ive wood­land rem­nants. The impact of Cov­id 19 lock­down on deer man­age­ment and con­sequently wood­land regen­er­a­tion is a major con­cern we have high­lighted with col­leagues in Scot­tish Government.

3. Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion: Lock­down has pre­ven­ted field­work and delayed get­ting con­tract­ors on site, but the peat­land officers have been ensur­ing work will be ready to go as soon as pos­sible when con­di­tions allow. Staff have also been devel­op­ing plans for CNPA being dir­ectly fun­ded by Peat­land Action as an altern­at­ive to man­aging pro­jects through admin­is­tra­tion by SNH. We are very grate­ful for the work car­ried out by Peter Green, our intern who has been map­ping pri­or­ity areas for peat­land res­tor­a­tion across the Park.

4. Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship: The Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund have agreed to a three month exten­sion to the TGLP which means we have until end of Decem­ber to com­plete all the pro­jects and final­ise arrange­ments for the leg­acy man­age­ment of the pro­gramme. There is still much to do and the staff team, part­ners and volun­teers are still extremely busy. We are con­tinu­ing to pro­gress as much as pos­sible dur­ing lock­down which has delayed a num­ber of pro­jects. The most sig­ni­fic­ant areas of work remain­ing to be com­pleted are: com­pre­hens­ive inter­pret­a­tion across the area, digit­al archiv­ing, wood­land-cre­ation demon­stra­tion, dark skies light­ing improve­ments and a wide range com­munity led nat­ur­al her­it­age pro­jects. We were sorry to see Jack­ie Taylor leave for anoth­er job and we wish her and Amy Woolv­in (now on mater­nity leave) all the best.

Vis­it­or Experience:

1. Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um: CLOAF are being informed of tem­por­ary changes to the access legis­la­tion and con­sul­ted on the ease of Lock­down work.

2. Long Dis­tance Routes: a) Spey­side Way: Exten­sion from Aviemore to New­ton­more now ​‘open’ with fur­ther work on sig­nage to be com­pleted autumn 2020. Work on installing new or upgrad­ing old, branded map boards at key ​‘drop off points along the whole route with­in CNP is also under­way. Addi­tion­al funds secured from SNH to upgrade sec­tions of the exist­ing route with­in the Nation­al Park will be used in autumn and winter 2020. New­ton­more Busi­ness Asso­ci­ation has secured funds and plan­ning con­sent for install­a­tion of a seat sculp­ture for the start/​end point of the new route with pos­sible open­ing autumn 2020. b) Deeside Way Exten­sion: Plan­ning con­sent in place for the sec­tion from Brae­mar to Inver­cauld Bridge with fund­ing included as a poten­tial pro­ject in CNP Recov­ery Plan. Sus­trans Scot­land lead­ing on a pro­ject to improve the exist­ing NCN195/​Deeside Way from Aber­deen to Ballater.

3. Moun­tains and People Pro­ject: This five year Lot­tery fun­ded pro­ject was due to com­plete in June 2020 but due to Cov­id-19 has been exten­ded. Agree­ment with OATS on path main­ten­ance and volun­teer­ing are part of a part­ner­ship agree­ment approved by CNPA Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Board Group in March 2020.

4. Sea­son­al Rangers: CNPA is cur­rently recruit­ing sev­en sea­son­al rangers to sup­port com­munit­ies, land man­agers and exist­ing ranger ser­vices in provid­ing safe and enjoy­able exper­i­ences for vis­it­ors post Cov­id-19. These tem­por­ary staff will work at the key coun­tryside vis­it­or des­tin­a­tions in Deeside and Badenoch & Strath­spey from June until end of October.

5. Volun­teer­ing & Health Walks: Both volun­teer rangers and health walks are on ​‘lock­down’ with CNPA staff reg­u­larly com­mu­nic­at­ing with all involved so that interest is main­tained and people are ready to ​‘restart’ when safe.

6. Edu­ca­tion and Inclu­sion: This work is cur­rently on ​‘hold’ with no John Muir Awards or Juni­or Ranger pro­grams being delivered. It is worth not­ing that there is a grow­ing nation­al interest in the pos­it­ive role that loc­ally delivered out­door edu­ca­tion has to play in safely enga­ging with young people post Covid-19.

7. Inform­a­tion and Inter­pret­a­tion: Designs for the inter­pret­a­tion and inform­a­tion to be installed in CNPA office in Bal­later are reach­ing final stage. As an unstaffed cen­ter this has poten­tial to be opened in sum­mer of 2020.

Rur­al Development:

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020: Exam­in­a­tion of Plan is under way. The Report­ers had hoped to com­plete work by May 2020 but travel restric­tions have delayed the expec­ted timetable to June. CNPA has respon­ded to a few quer­ies and inform­a­tion requests dur­ing the examination.

2. Plan­ning Case­work: There was live broad­cast of Plan­ning Com­mit­tee for the first time in May. Plan­ning case­work has con­tin­ued dur­ing Cov­id-19 with applic­a­tions at House of Bru­ar (gal­lery exten­sion), Cairngorm Moun­tain funicu­lar, and Kin­gussie (con­ver­sion of police sta­tion for short term hol­i­day lets) approved and a forestry related track pri­or noti­fic­a­tion at Glen Clova also approved.

3. Com­munity-led Hous­ing Deliv­ery: Many pro­jects have slowed dur­ing Cov­id-19 restric­tions. Brae­mar com­munity hous­ing pro­ject devel­op­ment con­tinu­ing but cur­rently delayed over obtain­ing secure access to the land. Tomin­toul pro­ject study into low car­bon sys­tems is nearly com­plete. Cur­rently invit­ing design and build tenders.

4. Eco­nom­ic Action Plan: Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group met in April and will meet in June. Focus of part­ners has been on reac­tion to Cov­id-19 and refo­cus­ing to sup­port eco­nom­ic recov­ery dur­ing and post Cov­id-19, input­ting to Green Recov­ery Plan.

5. Smart Vil­lages: Pro­ject to devel­op Smart Vil­lages to pro­mote col­lab­or­a­tion using digit­al tech­no­logy is under­way in Badenoch, Grant­own and Bal­later / Brae­mar. The pro­ject is delivered by the char­ity Growbiz.

6. Cairngorm Moun­tain: Plan­ning applic­a­tion for strength­en­ing works approved. Applic­a­tions for recre­ation­al facil­it­ies and car-park char­ging are in the pipeline.

7. Con­sult­ants for HIE are pre­par­ing the Mas­ter­plan which will be sub­ject to fur­ther pub­lic con­sulta­tion and dis­cus­sion with CNPA.

8. Tour­ism Action Plan: Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group has been meet­ing weekly. The cur­rent Plan is at the mid-point of its five year peri­od coin­cid­ing with the res­ults of the ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ vis­it­or sur­vey. A brief review of the plan will be under­taken includ­ing the sur­vey res­ults. This inform­a­tion, and the res­ults of sev­er­al nation­al and region­al sur­veys look­ing at the impact of Cov­id-19 on vis­it­ors, will shape a revised plan that will out­line our vis­it­or & tour­ism work for the next two years.

9. Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund: SNH has com­pleted work on the Muir of Din­net NNR car park, improv­ing and upgrad­ing the site and mak­ing it access­ible to camper­vans and installing waste dis­pos­al facil­it­ies. The new road­side tar­mac path in Glen­more link­ing the Old Log­ging Way from the Beach Car Park to Hay­field Bridge has been delayed by Cov­id-19. Con­struc­tion is sched­uled for autumn 2020.

10. A9 Dualling pro­ject: Trans­port Scot­land have now com­mit­ted to design and fund install­a­tion of new off-road route for non-motor­ized users from Aviemore to Car­rbridge in asso­ci­ation with A9 dualling work. CNPA are meet­ing with Trans­port Scot­land and Atkins Mouchel in June to dis­cuss the next steps.

11. Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject: New Pro­ject Officer (Car­oline Ster­ritt) star­ted in post Apr 20. Pro­ject being pro­gressed where pos­sible through the Cov­id-19 crisis. An exten­sion until end Oct 21was secured from NLHF enabling much of activ­ity Pro­gramme to be delayed until and rescheduled.

Stake­hold­er Engagement:

1. Sig­ni­fic­ant stake­hold­er engage­ment has taken place across the organ­isa­tion in the face of Cov­id-19 at a nation­al and loc­al level. This has included the involve­ment at a nation­al level with the Envir­on­ment and Eco­nomy Lead­ers Group, Scot­tish Tour­ism Emer­gency response Group, the ENFOR Access Group & the Rur­al Eco­nomy Group.

2. There has also been sig­ni­fic­ant loc­al engage­ment across the Green Recov­ery Plan and the Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Plan­ning with organ­isa­tions, part­ners and com­munit­ies across the Park.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions:

1. Cairngorms Nature Cam­paign: The first ​‘vir­tu­al’ Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al took place from 15 – 24 May as the 10 BIG Days of Cairngorms Nature at Home. Each day had a theme with online activ­it­ies, blogs, films music and art includ­ing fam­ily-friendly activ­it­ies designed for those who may be quite new to nature, through to spe­cial­ist and exclus­ive items with experts to dis­cov­er the land­scapes and wild­life in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Work­ing with more than 20 part­ners the pro­gramme offered over 80 ​‘events’ to choose from and res­ul­ted in 4,226 ​‘vis­it­ors’ tak­ing part. The social media reach was 462,141 across all plat­forms and we had great sup­port online with the #BIG10Days. Full stat­ist­ics are being final­ized but can be seen here: https://​infogram​.com/​1​p​6​l​r​0​y​q​v​q​0​d​w​q​c​5​k​5​m​1​5​p​r​p​l​q​a​3​0​5​3​k​z​x​y​?live

2. Make It Yours Cam­paign: Due to the COV­ID lock­down the Vis­it­or Sur­vey stopped at the begin­ning of March. A final report of the find­ings are being pre­pared and will be pos­ted on the CNPA web­site. We are also work­ing on devel­op­ing on online ver­sion of the MIY vis­it­or facing staff train­ing ses­sion and sup­port­ing the Grow­biz Smart Vil­lage pro­ject by shar­ing the MIY sup­port mater­i­als on the Smart Vil­lage web hubs.

3. Act­ive Cairngorms: The cur­rent focus on this work is now agree­ing, and deliv­er­ing, with a range of nation­al and region­al part­ners pos­it­ive, con­cise and con­sist­ent mes­sages that pro­mote safe respons­ible access to the Nation­al Park as we come out of Cov­id-19 lock­down. Dur­ing April a cam­paign focused on safe and respons­ible access to the out­doors includ­ing keep­ing dogs on leads dur­ing lamb­ing and bird nest­ing sea­son, no fires dur­ing high fire risk peri­ods and Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment mes­sages to Stay Safe, Stay at Home and to exer­cise once a day, close to home and only with mem­bers or your own household.

4. Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions: Work is under­way to con­tin­ue to sup­port Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment mes­sages dur­ing the COV­ID pan­dem­ic and to pre­pare for the gradu­al eas­ing of lock­down with a coordin­ated com­mu­nic­a­tions cam­paign focus­ing on Being Safe Out­side and Be Kind to each oth­er and nature.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development:

1. Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning (BCP): We are con­sult­ing with staff around plans for the ease of Lock­down. CNPA phases for eas­ing the lock­down are aligned with the SG roadmap, and until we move to SG phase 3, staff access to the office is strictly restric­ted to busi­ness crit­ic­al pur­poses, and is man­aged by the BCP team. Staff have had the oppor­tun­ity to attend drop-in ses­sions to inform think­ing in this regard, and plan­ning for when in-door office work­places can open. Cur­rently, we are map­ping out max­im­um staff num­bers and desk spaces accord­ing to offi­cial social dis­tan­cing and PPE guidance.

2. Office Exten­sion Pro­ject: We are still devel­op­ing plans to upgrade the meet­ing and social space in the old build­ing, and improve cycle stor­age, but these are on hold pending full return of staff to the office.

3. Staff­ing update: Since March, staff­ing updates are as fol­lows: a) Camer­on Cos­grove, Wood­land Intern, and Peter Green, Peat­land Intern both left, their fixed term intern­ship con­tracts hav­ing come to an end. b) Bruce McCon­ach­ie resigned from his post as Land Man­age­ment Adviser. c) Jack­ie Taylor resigned from her post as TGLP Pro­ject Man­ager. d) Daniel Farm­er has been appoin­ted to the fixed term Gradu­ate Plan­ner post, and joins the Author­ity in June.

4. Youth Employ­ment: a) Intern­ships: We have exten­ded Bruce MacDonald’s con­tract as the Gael­ic Intern to early 2021. b) Appren­tice­ships: Our IT Appren­tice, Reece Mus­grave is leav­ing in August to study IT at uni­ver­sity. It is our inten­tion to recruit anoth­er IT intern on a 2‑year fixed term con­tract, to replace Reece.

5. 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 ²⁰⁄₂₁ pay remit, which has recently been approved and implemented.

Grant Moir June 2020

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Board Con­vener Report – For Information

The past few months have inev­it­ably been dom­in­ated by COV­ID-19 and the Nation­al Park response to this. This past few months has shown the strengths of our Board and staff team and I would like to express my thanks to all our staff for their hard work to ensure busi­ness con­tin­ued as close to nor­mal as is possible.

Our Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning has been com­pre­hens­ive, and has worked well. For­tu­nately we have not been as badly affected absence wise as we feared and no aspects of lead­er­ship con­tinu­ity have required to be enacted.

In addi­tion to their nor­mal work­load, staff have taken on addi­tion­al COV­ID-19 related work­load, in par­tic­u­lar the devel­op­ment of our Green Recov­ery Plan and Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Plans sup­por­ted by sea­son­al rangers. These are huge pieces of work and they have turned them around in record time. This sort of agil­ity is going to be very import­ant in the post COV­ID world and the CNPA is well placed to respond.

We have had a pos­it­ive response from stake­hold­ers to our Green Recov­ery Plan and the recent situ­ation has shown how strong many of our part­ner­ships are and has giv­en us all a reas­on to strengthen them fur­ther, because unless we work togeth­er we will not be able to recov­er. I have had pos­it­ive dis­cus­sions with the Chairs of HIE, Vis­it Scot­land and Scot­tish Enter­prise all of whom will be key part­ners in recov­ery, along with our five loc­al author­it­ies, the CBP and our busi­ness and tour­ism associations.

It is also worth reflect­ing on some non-COV­ID achieve­ments. The CNPA held a Cairngorms Cli­mate Con­fer­ence – Net Zero with Nature in Aviemore, atten­ded by the Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary for Envir­on­ment, Cli­mate Change and Land Reform, CEO of the UK Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, and many oth­er key play­ers nation­ally which reflects the level of respect the Cairngorm Nation­al Park is held in. How­ever, for me the most import­ant mes­sage from the day, came from our com­munity rep­res­ent­at­ives, busi­nesses and land man­agers who were united in their determ­in­a­tion to play their part in the wider effort.

For a small pub­lic body the CNPA has shown it can have a big impact and the cur­rent crisis has shown our resi­li­ence too.

Xan­der McDade Board Con­vener

Extern­al Engage­ments (28^th Novem­ber 2019 – 04^th June 2020)

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
3⁄2	Caper­cail­lie Con­nect Meet­ing with G. Moir, W. McK­enna & J. Kirk	Car­rbridge
21⁄2	Meet­ing with Andrew Bowie MP	Bal­later
26⁄2	Meet­ing with Keith Con­nal and Brid­get Camp­bell, Scot­tish Government	Perth
9⁄3	Cairngorms Cli­mate Conference	Aviemore

Date	Engage­ment	Ven­ue
17⁄3	COV­ID-19 Con­fer­ence Call for Envir­on­ment Pub­lic Bod­ies with Scot­tish Government	By phone
6⁄4	Eco­nom­ic Recov­ery Plan Meeting	By VC
19⁄5	Con­fer­ence call with Alistair Dodds, Chair HIE	By phone
19⁄5	Con­fer­ence call with Lord Thurso, Chair Vis­it Scotland	By VC
28⁄5	Con­fer­ence call with Lord Smith, Chair Scot­tish Enterprise	By phone

Board Updates

Judith Webb

Chaired remote CUAG meet­ing – includ­ing dis­cus­sion on issues for the Recov­ery Plan and those areas of key con­cern to CUAG mem­bers, these have been fed back and used in draft­ing of the plan.

Atten­ded Cairngorms Nature Steer­ing Group – focused on the Recov­ery Plan. A very pos­it­ive meet­ing with good ques­tions and dis­cus­sion around the plan.