CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 1 — 11^th Septem­ber 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 Action Plan is now one third of the way through deliv­ery. Of the 83 actions, 72 are repor­ted as ​‘green’, 6 ​‘amber’, no ​‘red’, 4 ​‘not star­ted’ and 1 ​‘not repor­ted’. Amber actions under con­sid­er­a­tion by the Cairngorms Nature Strategy Group include peat­land res­tor­a­tion, rap­tor mon­it­or­ing and nature friendly farm­ing. The Cairngorms Wild Plants pro­ject was recently suc­cess­ful in secur­ing Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund fund­ing to con­tin­ue the pro­ject into a second phase, focus­ing on work with land man­agers https://​www​.bbc​.co​.uk/​n​e​w​s​/​u​k​-​s​c​o​t​l​a​n​d​-​h​i​g​h​l​a​n​d​s​-​i​s​l​a​n​d​s​-​5​3​8​05626. Pro­jects delivered through the Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund which were slightly delayed by restric­tions on field­work dur­ing lock­down have resumed and are back on track for deliv­ery with­in agreed timescales.

2. Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: Recruit­ment is under­way for a pro­ject officer, caper­cail­lie advis­ory assist­ant, com­mu­nic­a­tions officer, admin­is­tra­tion officer and com­munity ranger. New gov­ernance and man­age­ment pro­cesses are being put in place with a refreshed Pro­ject Board to sup­port advocacy and rela­tion­ship build­ing amongst land man­agers and provide addi­tion­al stra­tegic expert­ise related to our work with com­munit­ies. The com­munity con­sulta­tion on the Car­rbridge Caper­cail­lie Con­ser­va­tion Strategy has closed. Full res­ults are pub­licly avail­able here and have been shared with the com­munity via the Car­rbridge Caper­cail­lie News­let­ter, delivered to all house­holds. The Car­rbridge Caper­cail­lie Group are now in the pro­cess of review­ing the res­ults and ways to integ­rate them into the strategy. Work is devel­op­ing with fur­ther com­munit­ies of interest and place in part­ner­ship with Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, land man­agers in Glen­more, Devel­op­ing Moun­tain Bik­ing in Scot­land, and Bal­mor­al Estate. Plans for hab­it­at improve­ment and genet­ic mon­it­or­ing con­tin­ue as sched­uled. The full pro­ject Update and Sum­mary doc­u­ment is now live on the pro­ject web­site — link here.

3. Wood­land expan­sion tar­gets: We are well on the way to see­ing the 2017 – 22 wood­land expan­sion tar­get of 5,000ha being reached. To date, the area of wood­land cre­ation through plant­ing and regen­er­a­tion achieved through the Scot­tish Forestry Grant Scheme and through deer man­age­ment is approx­im­ately 4,800ha. We are con­tinu­ing to dis­cuss oppor­tun­it­ies for wood­land cre­ation with a num­ber of landown­ers. Uptake of the Wood­land Chal­lenge Fund in its first year (2019÷20) was low, how­ever interest this year has sig­ni­fic­antly increased.

4. Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion: Res­tor­a­tion work has been hampered by Cov­id 19 and the lim­ited avail­ab­il­ity of suit­ably skilled con­tract­ors. Cov­id-19 is delay­ing the deliv­ery of pro­jects in 2020 and our focus is on com­plet­ing 11 pro­jects that had grant fund­ing offers in 2019. Sev­er­al of these pro­jects are about to start and this should deliv­er 428ha of res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment if con­tact­ors can be found and they can be com­pleted before this winter. Fund­ing for Peat­land ACTION is chan­ging fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. CNPA will be dir­ectly fun­ded to deliv­er res­tor­a­tion work from 2021. This will enable quick­er pro­cessing of pro­ject fund­ing and the abil­ity to offer multi-year grants for work.

5. Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship: has been giv­en a 3 month exten­sion by NHLF with the aim of com­plet­ing all pro­jects by the end of 2020. There is still a lot of work to do, which has been hampered by lock­down restric­tions, but we are on tar­get for com­plet­ing all of the most sig­ni­fic­ant tasks on time and with­in budget. Major pro­ject work being com­pleted includes wood­land cre­ation near the Lecht mine, sed­i­ment man­age­ment on the River Avon, final­ising the digit­al archive in the Dis­cov­ery Centre and install­a­tion of all the inter­pret­a­tion and sig­nage across the land­scape part­ner­ship. We have recently con­trac­ted out assist­ance with draft­ing a mar­ket­ing plan/​toolkit and agree­ing man­age­ment and main­ten­ance plans with all the part­ners. Both of these con­tracts are crit­ic­al for the leg­acy of the pro­gramme in ensur­ing all the invest­ment that has been put in place is prop­erly main­tained and gen­er­ates fur­ther bene­fits into the future.

Vis­it­or Experience:

1. Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um: Advice has been sought from Cairngorms Out­door Access For­um dur­ing Cov­id-19 lock­down and re-open­ing on the pro­mo­tion of respons­ible out­door access. The key areas that we have focused our activ­ity on are camp­ing and camp fires while also provid­ing inform­a­tion on camper­vans. Scot­tish Out­door Access Code provides clear advice on camp­fires; ​‘nev­er light an open fire dur­ing pro­longed dry peri­ods or in areas such as forests, woods, farm­land, or on peaty ground or near to build­ings or in cul­tur­al her­it­age sites where dam­age can be eas­ily caused. Heed all advice at times of high risk.’ As this cov­ers most of the Nation­al Park we have been rein­for­cing this with clear ​‘no fires, no bar­be­cues’ mes­sages on media, vari­able road signs, posters and ​‘face to face’ dis­cus­sion with rangers. Respons­ible camp­ing is allowed on most coun­tryside so here our focus has been on lit­ter remov­al, safe toi­let­ing and no fires. Toi­lets open to the pub­lic have widely been pro­moted and we have sup­por­ted NTS Mar Lodge in the hire of addi­tion ​‘porta­loos’. Camper­vans are not covered by the access legis­la­tion but we have been pro­mot­ing gov­ern­ment advice; not block­ing an entrance to a field or build­ing, not mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for oth­er people to use a road or track, hav­ing regard for the safety of oth­ers, try­ing not to dam­age the verge, using a car park if one is nearby. Vehicle Access (car park­ing) is also not covered by the code but we have at busy times seen large num­bers of cars want­ing to park at key ​‘hot spots’. Here, with part­ners, we have intro­duced a range of site spe­cif­ic inter­ven­tions to bet­ter man­age cars includ­ing:- a) Addi­tion­al staff on site sup­por­ted by CNPA sea­son­al rangers b) Vari­able road signs provid­ing up to date inform­a­tion – three on A93 Deeside and one in Glen­more c) Tem­por­ary install­a­tion of no park­ing bol­lards – Glen­more, Loch Insh & Auch­lean d) Tem­por­ary speed reduc­tion in Glen­more e) Addi­tion­al tem­por­ary car park­ing – Mar Lodge/​Linn of Dee f) Tem­por­ary clos­ure of the road to Loch Muick when the car park is full

2. Long Dis­tance Routes: a) Spey­side Way: The Spey­side Way exten­sion from Aviemore to New­ton­more is now open and being well used by walk­ers and cyc­lists. Work on sig­nage, map­ping and pro­mo­tion is ongo­ing with addi­tion­al path signs and map inter­pret­a­tion pan­els being upgraded and installed. New­ton­more Busi­ness Asso­ci­ation is con­struct­ing a cre­at­ive, sculp­ture seat start/​finish that is sched­uled to be com­plete for a form­al, nation­al open­ing of the exten­sion autumn this year. Addi­tion­al fund­ing has been secured from SNH to upgrade key sec­tions of the exist­ing route with­in the Nation­al Park this year. Fur­ther work is required on safe sig­nage for the on road sec­tion from Kin­gussie to Ruthven Bar­racks that is also NCN7 Cycle Route and involves Sus­trans, Hitrans and High­land Coun­cil. b) Deeside Way Exten­sion: Plan­ning con­sent has been obtained for a path from Brae­mar and Inver­cauld Bridge but no fund­ing has been secured and Cov­id-19 has to date put this ​‘on hold’. Sus­trans has iden­ti­fied NCN 195/​Deeside Way as a key route and pre Cov­id-19 was work­ing with the two loc­al author­it­ies and CNPA to bet­ter devel­op and pro­mote the exist­ing route from Aber­deen to Bal­later. The route and exten­sion with­in CNP is being assessed for poten­tial to be included with­in Her­it­age Hori­zons Lot­tery Bid.

3. Moun­tains and People Pro­ject: the five pro­ject has secured a Lot­tery Fund exten­sion to go bey­ond the Sum­mer 2020 pro­ject end and is on sched­ule to com­plete the upgrade and improve­ment of 53km of key moun­tain paths in Badenoch, High­land Perth­shire, Angus Glens and Deeside includ­ing the well know Mun­ro paths of Beinn a’ Ghlo vis­ible from A9, and Mount Keen. Fur­ther dis­cus­sion is required with Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land on how we con­tin­ue our part­ner­ship going for­ward and sup­port the main­ten­ance of the upgraded paths.

4. Sea­son­al Rangers: The poten­tial for more vis­it­ors to the Nation­al Park post lock­down and the need to have more staff on the ground encour­aging respons­ible access was iden­ti­fied in April. Job descrip­tions, risk assess­ment, oper­a­tion­al pro­ced­ures and a tem­por­ary restruc­tur­ing with­in CNPA to man­age the team was under­taken involving Vis­it­or & Cor­por­ate Ser­vices. Some 178 people applied for a 4.5 month con­tract. The sea­son­al rangers were inter­viewed 9^th June, with eight appoin­ted, start­ing two week train­ing on 15^th June and on site work 27^th June. Their key func­tion is to sup­port land man­agers and com­munit­ies in encour­aging vis­it­ors to respons­ibly enjoy a vis­it to the coun­tryside of the Nation­al Park. They are not inten­ded to replace the exist­ing part­ner­ship ranger pro­vi­sion or oth­er exist­ing part­ner staff under­tak­ing this work. The work of sea­son­al rangers is dis­cussed in more detail in Paper 3.

5. Volun­teer­ing & Health Walks: our work sup­port­ing both health walks, volun­teer­ing and volun­teer rangers has been ongo­ing dur­ing lock­down but no prac­tic­al activ­ity has been under­taken with our focus being main­tain­ing sup­port to keep the groups engaged. Work is now start­ing to ​‘react­ive’ all three area.

6. Edu­ca­tion and Inclu­sion: our work sup­port­ing edu­ca­tion and inclu­sion is also on hold. Spe­cific­ally John Muir Award, Juni­or Rangers and work sup­port­ing Back­bone enga­ging with ​‘new Scots’ (newly arrived res­id­ents often of eth­nic and cul­tur­al minor­it­ies) is on hold. Much of this work is likely to be ​‘on hold’ until spring 2021 with loc­al author­ity edu­ca­tion ser­vices being a key part­ner in determ­in­ing when it is safe for pupils to re-engage in out­door education.

7. Inform­a­tion and Inter­pret­a­tion: key work is focus­ing on the Spey­side Way includ­ing the sculp­ture start/​end point in New­ton­more, and inter­pret­a­tion sup­port­ing the deliv­ery of Bade­boch Great Place Scheme.

Rur­al Development:

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020: The Pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan was sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Min­is­ters in Septem­ber 2019 and the exam­in­a­tion of unre­solved rep­res­ent­a­tions began in Decem­ber 2019. All mat­ters were dealt through writ­ten rep­res­ent­a­tions and no oral ses­sions were held. The Park Author­ity received the Exam­in­a­tion Report and the Report­ers’ list of recom­men­ded changes on August 24 2020. The Nation­al Park Author­ity will now con­sider the recom­men­ded changes to the Pro­posed Plan in late October/​early Novem­ber and sub­mit to Scot­tish Min­is­ters to request per­mis­sion to adopt. The Exam­in­a­tion Report and all oth­er mater­i­al can be seen at https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​p​l​a​n​n​i​n​g​-​d​e​v​e​l​o​p​m​e​n​t​/​l​o​c​a​l​-​d​e​v​e​l​o​p​m​e​n​t​-​p​l​a​n​-​2​0​2​0​/​e​x​a​m​i​n​a​tion/

2. Plan­ning Case­work: Since June we’ve dealt with a range of inter­est­ing cases includ­ing approv­ing reten­tion of wig­wam accom­mod­a­tion at Glen­more, a ret­ro­spect­ive applic­a­tion for track works in Glen Clova and new facil­it­ies at Cairngorm Moun­tain. In August we dealt with a fur­ther con­tro­ver­sial applic­a­tion at Nethy­bridge, refus­ing per­mis­sion for 20 houses with­in sens­it­ive wood­land hab­it­at. But on the same day we gran­ted per­mis­sion for 22 apart­ments in Kin­gussie and 40 new homes in Kin­craig. Mean­while we reviewed the last ever Action Plan for the cur­rent LDP and approved new Guid­ance for con­sulta­tion for the new Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020. All plan­ning papers are at https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​t​o​g​e​t​h​e​r​/​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​s​/​m​e​e​ting/

3. Com­munity-led Hous­ing Deliv­ery: Excel­lent pro­gress is being made in Brae­mar by the loc­al group and Rur­al Hous­ing Scot­land – the group have now taken out a sig­ni­fic­ant loan and are wait­ing for sub­mis­sion of returns for designs. In Tomin­toul the plans for re-use of the old school site for afford­able hous­ing are being led by Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Devel­op­ment Trust and are mak­ing good pro­gress. It now looks like HIE will now provide some sig­ni­fic­ant sup­port to help make this pro­ject hap­pen. Next meet­ing for the Park-wide Com­munity-led Hous­ing Group has been arranged for late September.

4. Eco­nom­ic Action Plan: A new pro­ject has star­ted in col­lab­or­a­tion with the char­ity Grow­biz to devel­op a new approach to busi­ness facil­it­a­tion that is suited to our rur­al area. Over the next few months one-to-one ses­sions will be arranged with busi­nesses, a new ment­or­ing pro­gramme launched and steps taken to estab­lish a Cairngorms women’s busi­ness net­work. In the mean­time the net­work of Smart Vil­lages is devel­op­ing with ini­ti­ation meet­ings tak­ing place in Grant­own, Brae­mar, Bal­later and Badenoch. Dis­cus­sions are under­way with Skills devel­op­ment Scot­land about fur­ther col­lab­or­at­ive work. Next meet­ing of the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group is in mid-September.

5. Cairngorm Moun­tain: CNPA respon­ded to the mas­ter­plan con­sulta­tion in August 2020 and the response can be found here.

6. Tour­ism Action Plan: Meet­ings of the Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Liais­on Group have taken place at least every two weeks since March, pulling togeth­er key busi­ness and des­tin­a­tion organ­isa­tions, loc­al author­it­ies and rel­ev­ant agen­cies. Meet­ings took place in late with the key com­munity lead­ers in June and in August along with Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship to dis­cuss visor man­age­ment issues and to hear feed­back. Com­mon theme raised included the need for invest­ment in infra­struc­ture, the suc­cess of sea­son­al rangers, lit­ter col­lec­tion and pro­vi­sion for motor homes. The next meet­ing of Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship will be in early November.

7. Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund: Forest and Land Scot­land have advised that work is finally due to start on the Glen­more path in late Octo­ber and be com­plete by end of the year. We have agree to sub­mit applic­a­tions in Round 3 of the Fund for improved car-park­ing and traffic man­age­ment at Glen Muick and at Beinn a Ghlo (both sites in part­ner­ship with Out­door Access Trust Scot­land) and at Din­net Estate. Ideas have been sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment offi­cials about the press­ing need for fur­ther invest­ment and for simple fin­ance and deliv­ery arrangements.

8. A9 Dualling pro­ject: The pro­ject to devel­op and off-road route from Aviemore to Car­rbridge con­tin­ues to devel­op pace. CNPA and The High­land Coun­cil (THC) have giv­en advice about con­sent mech­an­isms and route choice. The con­sult­ants work­ing for Trans­port Scot­land are doing fur­ther ana­lyt­ic­al work before con­sulta­tion with com­munity groups and poten­tial users.

9. Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject: The pro­ject part­ners have been delighted to announce the launch of the new Badenoch Her­it­age web­site, espe­cially designed to high­light Badenoch’s fas­cin­at­ing cul­tur­al her­it­age to vis­it­ors, loc­al busi­nesses and res­id­ents www​.badenoch​story​lands​.com. New digit­al illus­tra­tions of Ruthven Bar­racks and oth­er sites are being cre­ated as part of series of aug­men­ted real­ity, 3D mod­els of key loc­al her­it­age sites to fea­ture on the web­site and on the Badenoch Great Place App which is due to be released soon. An online ver­sion of the Badenoch Fest­iv­al is planned with five events in the third week of September.

10. Digit­al con­nectiv­ity: All the Digit­al Scot­land Super­fast Broad­band Pro­gramme deploy­ment is now com­plete and the sim­il­ar pro­ject in HIE area is due to be com­plete in Novem­ber 2020. For the R100 pro­ject (which will deliv­er sig­ni­fic­ant broad­band con­nectiv­ity improve­ments to the most rur­al prop­er­ties) the leg­al chal­lenge that was hold­ing up the £384 M invest­ment in north Scot­land has now been resolved. Near Aviemore the pro­ject to devel­op a net­work to sup­port the ​“Inter­net of Things” in Cairngorm/​Aviemore and Glen­more is gath­er­ing pace. There was a pos­it­ive stake­hold­er meet­ing in late July and we are now final­ising plans and cost estim­ates for a mod­est net­work of path and traffic mon­it­or­ing sensors in the area to help with future vis­it­or management.

Stake­hold­er Engagement:

1. There has been extens­ive stake­hold­er engage­ment on vis­it­or man­age­ment issues with com­munit­ies, estates, busi­nesses and pub­lic bod­ies. This is all set out in the vis­it­or man­age­ment update.

2. Oth­er stake­hold­er engage­ment has taken place with NPUK, HIE, EELG, eNGO’s, Crown Estate Scot­land, Well-being Eco­nomy Alli­ance, Trans­port Scot­land, SLE, Cli­mate Ready Aberdeenshire.

3. The Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme Advis­ory Board has also met includ­ing reps from SLC, NHS, Young­Scot, Sus­trans, Back­bone, EnvLINK, VABS, CBP, Bal­mor­al, WEA, Edin­burgh Uni­ver­sity and our Youth Action Team.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions:

1. Cairngorms Nature Cam­paign: August com­mu­nic­a­tions focused on pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able farm­ing and loc­al pro­duce to encour­age people to buy loc­al and sup­port loc­al busi­nesses. Dur­ing Cli­mate Week 14^th-20^th Septem­ber 2020 we will pro­mote pro­gress made against our Green Recov­ery Plan and a blog by Doug McAdam will con­sider how changes to land man­age­ment can help tackle the Cli­mate Emergency.

2. Make It Yours Cam­paign: A Green Recov­ery Fund launched in August sup­ports pro­jects that are focused on green solu­tions that help the well-being and eco­nom­ic growth of com­munit­ies, cre­ate jobs and bene­fits the com­munity in the longer term. The Grow­Biz ini­ti­at­ive has been pro­moted fol­low­ing £20,000 sup­port from CNPA.

3. Act­ive Cairngorms: To help man­age vis­it­ors to the Park dur­ing the sum­mer our com­mu­nic­a­tions has focused on pro­mot­ing clear, con­sist­ent and pos­it­ive out­door access advice to encour­age respons­ible beha­viour in the Park. Giv­en the dra­mat­ic increase in new vis­it­ors to the Park, this has focused on tack­ling lit­ter, fires, wild camp­ing and park­ing issues at ​‘hot spots’ around the Park. To reach new audi­ences who don’t fol­low the CNPA or oth­er pub­lic body social media chan­nels or vis­it our web­sites, we have worked with social media influ­en­cers and retail out­lets to help get our mes­sages across. Eight new sea­son­al rangers have provided invalu­able sup­port on the ground.

4. Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions: Scot­tish Government’s COVID19 health and safety mes­sages have been pro­moted through our social media activ­ity and web­site. CNPA’s Annu­al Report ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ was sub­mit­ted to Min­is­ters and pub­lished in July 2020 and a pro­gress report on the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan was pub­lished in August. Bruce Mac­Don­ald, our Gael­ic Lan­guage stu­dent intern, has pre­pared an online Story of Shinty trail to be launched in autumn and we have gained £10,000 from the Bòrd na Gàidh­lig to fur­ther pro­mote Gael­ic exper­i­ences in the Park.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development:

1. Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning (BCP): The BCP team con­tin­ues to meet reg­u­larly to plan around the next stages of the SG roadmap. Staff access to the build­ing is cur­rently lim­ited to busi­ness crit­ic­al reas­ons, which are approved and logged by Heads of Ser­vice. Access is cur­rently restric­ted to a max­im­um of 12 staff/​board with no access to the pub­lic. In pre­par­a­tion for when SG moves to phase 4 of their road map, and access to non-essen­tial offices is per­mit­ted, offices have been scru­tin­ized with regards to 2m dis­tan­cing and desks have been alloc­ated as ​“hot desks” and there­fore avail­able for use by staff who need to access the build­ing. Access will at this point be restric­ted to 26 staff, which will be man­aged by Heads of Ser­vice on a rota basis. We do not expect full use of the build­ing or board room to be avail­able until SG moves to phase 5, which we expect is likely to be next year. In the mean­time staff are sup­por­ted to work from home with regards the pro­vi­sion of IT and office kit, and broad­er well­being sup­port. All line man­agers have recently attend­ing train­ing on ​“Man­aging Virtually”.

2. Office Exten­sion Pro­ject: We have had to put on hold the plans to upgrade the meet­ing and social space in the old build­ing, as depend­ing on guid­ance from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment regard­ing the open­ing of non-essen­tial offices, we may tem­por­ar­ily require this space for office space, to facil­it­ate more staff being in the office whilst still adher­ing to social distancing.

3. We are in the pro­cess of pro­cur­ing a redec­or­at­ing con­tract, and intend repaint­ing the old build­ing by the end of Decem­ber, whilst staff num­bers in the Grant­own build­ing are still limited.

4. We are in the pro­cess of plan­ning improved cycle stor­age facil­it­ies to pro­mote act­ive travel to work.

5. Staff­ing update: Since March, staff­ing updates are as fol­lows: a) Bruce McCon­ach­ie resigned from the part time Land Man­age­ment Advisor post. b) Jack­ie Taylor resigned from her full time TGLP Pro­gramme Man­ager post. As there are only a few months of this pro­ject remain­ing, she was not replaced but the work was alloc­ated to oth­ers across the organ­iz­a­tion c) Eight Sea­son­al Rangers joined the Author­ity in June on full time con­tracts to the end of Octo­ber. They are; Pete Short, Duncan Mac­Don­ald, Craig Fraser, Blair John­ston, Nic­ola Wil­li­am­son, Vic­tor­ia Ing­lis, Lianne Star­buck-Steph­en and Polly Free­man. d) Nas­im Mehr­abi joined the Author­ity as a Gradu­ate Plan­ner on a 3‑year fixed term contract.

6. Youth Employ­ment: a) Intern­ships: Camer­on Cos­grove (Wood­land); Peter Green (Peat­land) both com­pleted 4‑month intern­ships, map­ping wood­land and peat­land respect­ively. Bruce Mac­don­ald com­menced a Gael­ic Intern­ship in Janu­ary, which has been exten­ded to Feb­ru­ary 2020. We are in the pro­cess of recruit­ing an HR Intern, on a 12-month fixed term con­tract, to sup­port staff well­being and HR case­work. b) Appren­tice­ships: Reece Mus­grave com­pleted his IT Appren­tice­ship in August. This was a 2‑year post dur­ing which he achieved his SVQ level 6 qual­i­fic­a­tion in ICT. Reece also com­pleted addi­tion­al mod­ules at UHI. He is now going to Aber­deen Uni­ver­sity to study IT. Reece has been replaced by Luke Dig­gins, who until recently atten­ded Kin­gussie High School. Luke joins the Author­ity on a sim­il­ar pro­gramme in Septem­ber. c) We are work­ing in part­ner­ship with UHI and Kin­gussie High School to sup­port Dami­an Paluga com­plete 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 Dami­an achieve his SVQ qual­i­fic­a­tion in busi­ness administration.

7. 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 ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ pay remit, which has recently been approved and implemented.

8. 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 and Healthy Work­ing Lives Sur­vey res­ults have fed in to the ODS3. Since Lock­down com­menced, many of the actions were delivered organ­ic­ally, par­tic­u­larly those around agile work­ing. Some actions are no longer rel­ev­ant and the Man­age­ment Team is in the pro­cess of val­id­at­ing the exist­ing action plan. Sev­er­al staff sur­veys have been con­duc­ted dur­ing lock­down, and the responses will fur­ther inform the evolving ODS.

Grant Moir Septem­ber 2020

Board Con­vener Report – For Information

Although sum­mer has been a quieter time admin­is­trat­ively, the gradu­al reopen­ing of the Park and its busi­nesses to tour­ists has seen a huge surge in vis­it­ors. The sig­ni­fic­ant vis­it­or man­age­ment plan­ning under­taken by the Nation­al Park dur­ing the lock­down has paid off and the new sea­son­al ranger ser­vice has been able to advise both new and return­ing vis­it­ors on how to safely enjoy the area. This doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been issues, but it has def­in­itely reduced the num­ber and scale.

The CNPA is con­tinu­ing to work very closely with part­ners to man­age the increase in vis­it­ors and I’d like to express my thanks to all of the staff involved in this. I believe that the CNPA has shown great lead­er­ship on this issue and I hope that we can con­tin­ue and expand on a lot of this good work next year.

Fol­low­ing approv­al at the June Board meet­ing the Cairngorms Green Recov­ery Fund has been wel­comed pos­it­ively and is a very prac­tic­al example of the CNPAs work sup­port­ing eco­nom­ic recov­ery. I would encour­age Board Mem­bers to men­tion it to any­one they think may be inter­ested in applying.

Fol­low­ing our last Board meet­ing the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject was suc­cess­fully awar­ded fund­ing from the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund to sup­port the deliv­ery phase of the pro­ject. Work under­taken dur­ing the pilot stage will be used to inform how best to pro­ceed through the deliv­ery phase. I hope that the deliv­ery phase will be an oppor­tun­ity for our part­ners and com­munit­ies to join us in work­ing togeth­er on a safe future for Caper­cail­lie in the Cairngorms.

Finally I would like to express my thanks to Geva Black­ett for her work over the past 18 months as Deputy Con­vener, in par­tic­u­lar for her work dur­ing the COV­ID-19 lock­down and on eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment matters.

Xan­der McDade Board Con­vener