CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 Annex 1 | 11^th Septem­ber 2020

COR­POR­ATE PLAN REPORTING

Con­ser­va­tion and Land Management

Pri­or­ity 1 – Sup­port land­scape-scale con­ser­va­tion, spe­cific­ally the expan­sion of nat­ive and mont­ane wood­land, peat­land res­tor­a­tion, nat­ur­al flood man­age­ment and Caper­cail­lie management

Key Work Areas	Update
Deliv­er peat­land res­tor­a­tion and wood­land expan­sion targets	We were only able to deliv­er 450 hec­tares of the planned res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment work in 2019 much less than the 1052ha we had fund­ing for. The crit­ic­al issue is a lack of exper­i­enced con­tract­ors who have the right machinery and are big enough for the pro­jects. Six pro­jects were unable to appoint con­tract­ors in 2019 and with some of our oth­er pro­jects con­tract­ors had taken on too many jobs and could not deliv­er what was prom­ised. COVID19 is delay­ing the deliv­ery of pro­jects in 2020 and our focus is on com­plet­ing 11 pro­jects that had grant fund­ing offers from NatureScot in 2019 but were not star­ted or com­pleted due to the lack of con­tract­ors and winter weath­er. 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. Our peat­land intern fin­ished in April and mapped about 40% of the CNP, so fur­ther work is needed. We also require GIS expert­ise to help with using the imagery and data we will start col­lect­ing with our drone (Both Emma and Steph­en are now licensed drone oper­at­ors). Fund­ing for Peat­land ACTION is chan­ging fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. CNPA will be dir­ectly fun­ded to deliv­er res­tor­a­tion work from 2021 (COVID19 delayed this by a year). This will enable quick­er pro­cessing of pro­ject fund­ing and the abil­ity to offer multi-year grants for work. Pro­ced­ures will need to be developed to enable CNPA to offer Peat­land ACTION grants and addi­tion­al staff resources are required to man­age the pro­cess and enable increased deliv­ery. Pro­ject deliv­ery in 2021 is likely to be only in the region of 500ha due the impact of COVID19. Work ongo­ing with SG to look at pro­ject fin­ance and gov­ernance for 2021 onwards.
Devel­op and deliv­er Cairngorms Nature Strategy with wider partnership	From 2017 until the last update giv­en in Decem­ber 2019, 2948 ha of wood­land has been cre­ated through the Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS). Since then at least 342 ha of wood­land has been approved by Scot­tish Forestry for plant­ing, includ­ing a 275 ha nat­ive wood­land scheme at Bal­avil. How­ever, fur­ther wood­land expan­sion con­tin­ues to pro­gress in key areas through man­aging deer pop­u­la­tions, with an encour­aging 1451 ha of nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion in the High­land con­servancy approved since the last update. We are also in dis­cus­sion with nine oth­er private estates that are each look­ing to cre­ate at least 100 ha of new wood­land, in some cases much more than this. Two of these are part of the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship. Uptake of the Wood­land Chal­lenge Fund in its first year (2019÷20) was low, with two suc­cess­ful applic­a­tions from Glen Ban­chor and Cor­riechul­lie. Since April, how­ever, there has been notice­ably great­er interest, with two applic­a­tions received to date and, fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with landown­ers and agents, sev­er­al more likely dur­ing the cur­rent fin­an­cial year. The cur­rent Cairngorms Nature Action Plan (2019 – 2024) was launched at a Holyrood recep­tion and in Boat of Garten in Feb­ru­ary 2019. The Strategy Group con­tin­ues to meet quarterly to mon­it­or and over­see deliv­ery of the three main aims of land­scape-scale con­ser­va­tion, action for pri­or­ity spe­cies and involving people. The cur­rent plan main­tains com­mit­ments to the con­ser­va­tion of rare and endangered spe­cies, wood­land expan­sion, peat­land res­tor­a­tion and fresh­wa­ter res­tor­a­tion and high­lights the import­ance of advoc­at­ing the socio-eco­nom­ic bene­fits of nature and the con­tri­bu­tions made to biod­iversity by all types of land man­age­ment in the Park. The part­ner­ship has been suc­cess­ful in draw­ing down over £100,000 of fund­ing in 2019 – 2020 for hab­it­at and spe­cies res­tor­a­tion from the Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund and Clif Bar spon­sor­ship. Pro­jects under­way this year include GIS map­ping of spe­cies rich grass­land, plant­ing and pro­tec­tion of aspen stands, fresh water pearl mus­sel trans­lo­ca­tion and res­tor­a­tion of upper Spey trib­u­tar­ies. The Rare Inver­teb­rates in the Cairngorms and the Cairngorms Wild Plants Pro­ject have both entered into new phases of deliv­ery fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful fund­ing bids for new 3 yr pro­jects to build on pre­vi­ous work train­ing volun­teers and work­ing with land man­agers. The Strath­spey Wet­lands and Waders Ini­ti­at­ive officer, employed by CNPA, has fund­ing from Work­ing for Waders for a fur­ther year to work with farm­ers in Badenoch and Strath­spey to cre­ate wader hab­it­at, ensure a leg­acy for the Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Peesie Pro­ject and coordin­ate the five year wader sur­vey post­poned from 2020 due to COV­ID restric­tions. The Cairngorms Nature BIG week­end was can­celled and replaced with an on-line ver­sion, Cairngorms Nature BIG 10 Days. The vir­tu­al pro­gramme of over 80 events ran from 15th– 24th May 2020 attract­ing 4,226 vis­it­ors to the CNBW web­site. Cairngorms Nature Young Ambas­sad­or was a prom­in­ent advoc­ate for con­ser­va­tion in the Cairngorms on Spring­watch and Countryfile.
Deliv­er Caper­cail­lie Framework	Dur­ing COV­ID restric­tions, many staff from part­ner agen­cies and part­ner­ships were fur­loughed and field work was unable to take place. How­ever, any hab­it­at work that was sched­uled for March 2020 will be res­ched­uled for deliv­ery in Autumn/​Winter 2020; the sur­vey work was able to be com­pleted once restric­tions had lif­ted slightly to allow lone work­ing out­doors. More resource has been expen­ded cap­it­al­ising on the re-engage­ment with nature that lock­down offered, as fig­ures for the vir­tu­al BIG week­end showed. The focus for con­ser­va­tion work going for­wards will be the oppor­tun­it­ies for invest­ment into land based busi­nesses and the role of con­ser­va­tion in the green recov­ery. The Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject was awar­ded a fur­ther grant from Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund to deliv­er the find­ings of the devel­op­ment phase, com­pleted in March 2020. The total pro­ject funds of £2.9million, includ­ing fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tions from CNPA, NatureScot, Forestry and Land Scot­land (FLS), Roy­al Soci­ety for the Pro­tec­tion of Birds (RSPB), Seafield Estates, Devel­op­ing Moun­tain Bik­ing in Scot­land and in-kind con­tri­bu­tions from volun­teers and sup­port­ing part­ners, will be inves­ted into loc­al com­munit­ies, wood­land man­age­ment, employ­ing game­keep­ers, eco­lo­gists and pro­ject staff deliv­er­ing caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion across the Nation­al Park from July 2020 until July 2023. Caper­cail­lie hab­it­ats are hybrid spaces where people and nature coex­ist. Involving people to secure wider own­er­ship of solu­tions and treat­ing con­ser­va­tion as a socio-eco­nom­ic issue as well as an eco­lo­gic­al one is now crit­ic­al to pre­vent extinc­tion in Scot­land. The pro­ject com­ple­ments the ongo­ing, eco­lo­gic­ally focussed work being done by agen­cies and organ­isa­tions with a people focussed approach, empower­ing com­munit­ies of place and interest to devel­op and take own­er­ship for their own ideas as to how they can play their part in caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion. The pro­ject will encom­pass five main strands of activ­ity across the Nation­al Park: ● improve and cre­ate 10,000ha of caper­cail­lie hab­it­at; ● raise aware­ness and under­stand­ing of the plight of caper­cail­lie and the ways people can get involved; ● help five fur­ther com­munit­ies of place and interest cre­ate and deliv­er their own caper­cail­lie action plans; ● research the genet­ic diversity of caper­cail­lie in the Nation­al Park to help inform action; ● strengthen and co-ordin­ate cur­rent mon­it­or­ing and research

Pri­or­ity 2 — Ensure deer man­age­ment is focused on deliv­er­ing pub­lic interest pri­or­it­ies spe­cific­ally the expan­sion of nat­ive wood­lands and peat­land restoration

Key Work Areas	Update
Sup­port pop­u­la­tion mod­el­ling and herb­i­vore impact assessments	Com­pre­hens­ive Hab­it­ats Impacts Assess­ments (HIA) imple­men­ted for Dwarf Shrub Heath hab­it­ats across CNP. Ini­ti­ated improved cov­er of HIA for Blanket Bog hab­it­ats across all Deer Man­age­ment groups (DMGs) with­in CNP, lead­ing to com­pre­hens­ive cov­er­age by Spring 2020. Data will also advise pri­or­it­ies for Peat­land Action pro­jects. Com­pre­hens­ive HIA for Blanket Bog hab­it­ats imple­men­ted across DMGs Sup­port­ing pop­u­la­tion mod­el devel­op­ment, based on reg­u­lar counts, across West Grampi­an DMG and South Deeside North Angus DMG. Cairngorms Spey­side DMG pop­u­la­tion man­age­ment based on hab­it­at per­form­ance. Upper Deeside and Don­side DMG ini­ti­at­ing annu­al counts to advise ongo­ing pop­u­la­tion mod­el­ling. South Grampi­an DMG focused on pop­u­la­tion man­age­ment to address issues on Caen­lochan SAC in part­ner­ship with NatureScot. Work­ing with DMGs to ensure cull plans for 2020⁄21 are delivered des­pite chal­lenges asso­ci­ated with severe down­turn in ven­ison mar­ket due to COVID19/ Facil­it­at­ing ongo­ing review and dis­cus­sion of cull­ing regimes to meet dif­fer­ent land use policies between Wild­land, Atholl, Dal­nac­ar­doch. Facil­it­a­tion efforts con­tin­ue but sig­ni­fic­ant ten­sions res­ult­ing from cull­ing regimes prov­ing prob­lem­at­ic. Devel­op­ing pro­pos­al for deer population/​habitat pro­ject with­in West Gramps DMG (incl. Atholl/​Dal­nac­ar­doch) which would improve focus and ease ten­sions due to con­flict­ing land use policies. Report on deer num­bers and asso­ci­ated hab­it­at impacts across CNP work­ing with Strath Caulaidh Ltd expec­ted in Autumn 2020
Work closely with Deer Man­age­ment Groups (DMGs) to deliv­er pub­lic interest priorities	NatureScot report on per­form­ance of DMGs in deliv­er­ing pub­lic interest as defined in deer man­age­ment plans sub­mit­ted to and await­ing response from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG). Gen­er­al feel­ing is that private sec­tor has respon­ded well. Deer Work­ing Group report sub­mit­ted to SG. Await­ing response from SG with pos­sible policy changes. Work­ing with NatureScot, South Deeside North Angus DMG and South Grampi­an DMG regard­ing cull plan­ning to address Caen­lochan SAC impacts.

Pri­or­ity 3 — Sup­port sus­tain­able moor­land man­age­ment to deliv­er great­er hab­it­at diversity and good man­age­ment practice

Key Work Areas	Update
Deliv­er with estates the work pro­gramme of the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship (ECMP)	Work Pro­gramme agreed cov­er­ing poten­tial for 9 indi­vidu­al ECMP pro­ject top­ics. # Final phase of Wader breed­ing pro­ductiv­ity pro­ject (in part­ner­ship with the Brit­ish Trust for Orni­tho­logy (BTO) com­pleted dur­ing 2019. Tran­sect mon­it­or­ing con­tin­ued for a third year in 2020. # Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion pro­jects planned for com­ple­tion dur­ing autumn 2020 on Bal­mor­al, Inver­cauld, Mar. Pro­jects planned for 2021 on Mar Lodge with addi­tion­al poten­tial pro­jects iden­ti­fied on Glen­liv­et & Mar. New pro­jects being developed for Glenavon & Del­nadamph. # GIS map­ping from aer­i­al images of low dens­ity wood­land and lone trees, rep­res­ent­ing areas of poten­tial wood­land expan­sion. Scrub expan­sion plans drawn-up for Delndamph and Mar Lodge. Ripari­an plant­ing in spring 2020 on Bal­mor­al, Inver­cauld & Mar. #Col­lab­or­at­ive rap­tor mon­it­or­ing involving estate staff, Rap­tor Study Groups and con­sult­ants con­tin­ued for the second year in 2020 (but scaled down due to COVID19 restric­tions). # Muir­burn maps com­pleted for all six estates indic­at­ing areas of ​‘no burn’. Dis­cus­sions around inter­pret­a­tion and imple­ment­a­tion of maps is on-going. # Game & Wild­life Con­ser­va­tion Trust (GWCT) train­ing in Moun­tain Hare mon­it­or­ing com­pleted by all #ECMP estates. Imple­ment­a­tion of mon­it­or­ing con­tin­ues with res­ults con­trib­uted to GWCT nation­al data­set. # Enga­ging People: dis­plays for Bal­later-based inter­pret­a­tion facil­ity being produced.
Estab­lish a Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group	Cairngorms Uplands Advis­ory group (CUAG) met for the first time in March 2019 and again in the begin­ning of Octo­ber. Both meet­ings were well atten­ded and already have stim­u­lated some use­ful sug­ges­tions for CNPA play­ing a lead role in devel­op­ing policies of Nation­al interest. The draft Best Prac­tice Guid­ance for all ter­rain vehicles (ATV) use dis­cussed in Octo­ber has attrac­ted a lot of interest from Nation­al Bod­ies inter­ested in pro­mot­ing best prac­tice man­age­ment. One CUAG meet­ing has been held dur­ing lock­down but the most recent meet­ing was cancelled.
Elim­in­ate rap­tor per­se­cu­tion and devel­op wild­life tour­ism pro­ject around raptors	Rap­tor crime con­tin­ues to be a ser­i­ous prob­lem in the Park, includ­ing the recent pois­on­ing of a sea eagle in Strath­don, which was one of the few sea eagles fledged in the Park since the early 1800s. CNPA con­tin­ues to work with Police Scot­land and oth­er part­ners to try and elim­in­ate this crim­in­al activ­ity. The rap­tor track­er devel­op­ment has been slowed due to soft­ware issues but we hope to deploy it on golden eagle chicks in 2021. The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment response to the Wer­ritty review is expec­ted by the end of 2021

Vis­it­or Experience

Pri­or­ity 1 — Con­tin­ue to ensure vis­it­or infra­struc­ture meets the expect­a­tions of vis­it­ors to the Nation­al Park and help deliv­er a sus­tain­able tour­ism economy

Key Work Areas	Update
Fin­ish Spey­side Way exten­sion, the Moun­tains and the People Pro­gramme and start Deeside Way extension	Spey­side Way Exten­sion – The Spey­side Way exten­sion has been con­struc­ted and is being well used. Fur­ther work on sig­nage, inter­pret­a­tion and New­ton­more ​‘sculp­ture’ start/​finish loc­a­tion is ongo­ing and we are aim­ing for a form­al open­ing in Spring 2021. Fund­ing has been secured from Nature Scot­land for improve­ments in 2020 to the ​‘old’ exist­ing route with­in the Nation­al Park. It will be offi­cially opened this autumn/​winter. Deeside Way – Brae­mar to Inver­cauld Bridge plan­ning con­sent approved with fund­ing being invest­ig­ated. Moun­tains & People — The 5 year pro­ject was due to com­plete in June 2020 but due to Cov­id-19 it has secured an exten­sion so that all 53 km of moun­tain path in the Cairngorms will be improved. Fur­ther work with Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land (OATS) is required to agree how we best sup­port the main­ten­ance of these paths and the volun­teers that the pro­ject trained in path maintenance.
Deliv­er Tour­ism Action Plan and devel­op and deliv­er with part­ners a Vis­it­or Giv­ing scheme	Tour­ism Action Plan – Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship (CTP) twice yearly. Pro­gramme was on tar­get with the excep­tion of delays in VS Total Qual­ity Des­tin­a­tion Pro­gramme. How­ever, with COVID19 the focus has been on cre­at­ing a Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group to plan for eas­ing of Lock­down & reopen­ing the review of CTP is there­fore ​‘on hold’ and deliv­ery of last two years work to be agreed Vis­it­or Giv­ing – CNPA Board agreed this work June 2018 & Cairngorms Trust launched in May 2019. Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund (RTIF) — CNPA suc­cess­fully secured fund­ing for two pro­jects on Nation­al Nature Reserves at Glen­more (mul­ti­use tar­mac path) and Muir of Din­net (car park­ing, toi­let upgrade and sewage dis­pos­al) with work on Muir of Din­net com­pleted and Glen­more now sched­uled for Autumn 2020. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment are cur­rently revis­ing plans for 2020⁄21 bids.
Pro­gress with deliv­ery of Cairngorm/​Glenmore Strategy	The CNPA has secured fund­ing through RTIF for the Glen­more multi-use path. High­land Coun­cil has approved con­struc­tion and Forestry and Land Scot­land are lead­ing on the install­a­tion of this path but delays with COVID19 mean that it is now sched­uled for Autumn 2019. The CNPA has also recently replied to the con­sulta­tion on the Cairngorm Moun­tain mas­ter­plan. The great­er num­ber of vis­it­ors using of Glen­more and Cairngorm post COVID19 lock­down indic­ates the need for part­ners to review the cur­rent Cairngorm and Glen­more Strategy and agree a clear part­ner­ship action plan for 2021 – 22.

Pri­or­ity 2 — Increase phys­ic­al activ­ity in both res­id­ents and vis­it­ors and sup­port deliv­ery of Scotland’s Nat­ur­al Health Service

Key Work Areas	Update
Devel­op and deliv­er Act­ive Cairngorms with Act­ive Aviemore and Health Walks as flag­ship projects	Act­ive Aviemore – High­land Coun­cil, Hitrans, Sus­trans, NHS High­land are devel­op­ing an act­ive travel link to the new Aviemore Hos­pit­al and Trans­port Scot­land are design­ing a Non-Motor­ised User (NMU) link from Aviemore to Car­rbridge. The main multi use infra­struc­ture in Aviemore will form part of the Her­it­age Hori­zons bid. Dul­nain Bridge & Kin­gussie com­munit­ies have secured Sus­trans fund­ing to improve act­ive travel — the former for detailed designs for an NMU link to Grant­own-on-Spey. Lag­gan com­munity has secured funds for stage one design. 16 Health Walk groups with­in the Nation­al Park are slowly start­ing to re-open Health Walks as we come out of Lockdown
Expand and deliv­er volun­teer­ing pro­gramme and spe­cific­ally Volun­teer Rangers	38 Volun­teer Rangers have now been trained and are sup­port­ing the work of part­ners cross CNP as part of our ongo­ing pro­ject sup­por­ted by Cairngorms LEAD­ER. How­ever, this work is cur­rently on hold due to COVID19.

Pri­or­ity 3 — Cre­ate a ​‘Park for All’ by encour­aging people from all back­grounds to come and recre­ate, learn in or vis­it the Nation­al Park

Key Work Areas	Update
Con­tin­ue to sup­port and pro­mote the John Muir Award and Juni­or Ranger programme	Some 2684 people com­pleted a John Muir Award in and around Cairngorms by Oct 2019. This is on tar­get but some 880 few­er than the same excep­tion­al peri­od last year. 80 young people trained as Juni­or Rangers in 2019 which is 14 more young people than 2018. Eight Juni­or Rangers atten­ded a winter exchange in Bav­aria, 15 atten­ded a sum­mer camp on Bal­mor­al Estate, and 15 went to a UK Nation­al Parks gath­er­ing in Peak Dis­trict. COVID19 has placed the Juni­or Ranger pro­gramme on hold.
Work with Inclus­ive Cairngorms and part­ners to reduce bar­ri­ers and encour­age participation.	CNPA has now appoin­ted 15 mem­bers to the revamped Equal­ity Advis­ory For­um, with the induc­tion meet­ing due to be held in Septem­ber The for­um will meet again in Octo­ber to help con­sider the Equal­ity Out­comes for 2021 — 2024 Back­bone are being sup­por­ted to work with some 100 Syr­i­an refugees based in and around Inverness encour­aging them to vis­it and enjoy the Nation­al Park while learn­ing how to repeat and share these exper­i­ences with oth­ers but this work is now on hold with COVID19.

Rur­al Development

Pri­or­ity 1 — Sup­port deliv­ery of hous­ing for loc­al needs through an effi­cient and effect­ive plan­ning service

Key Work Areas	Update
Devel­op and imple­ment Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020	The Exam­iners Report on the Cairngorms Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan has now been received, mark­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant mile­stone on this sig­ni­fic­ant piece of work for the Authority.
Sup­port com­munity-led hous­ing in the Nation­al Park	5 com­munit­ies are act­ively look­ing to devel­op com­munity led hous­ing pro­jects. Dul­nain Bridge – Have secured fund­ing through High­land Coun­cil to assess the feas­ib­il­ity of pro­ject and devel­op asso­ci­ated busi­ness plan as well as fund­ing from the Scot­tish Rur­al Hous­ing Fund and the sup­port of Seafield Estate . Con­sultancy work to be under­taken by High­lands Small Com­munit­ies Hous­ing Trust (HSCHT) Brae­mar –Pro­ject to build 15 afford­able houses for rent has pro­gressed sig­ni­fic­antly. Main applic­a­tion to the Rur­al Hous­ing Fund was sub­mit­ted in Feb­ru­ary 2020. Brae­mar Com­munity Lim­ited has also secured loan fund­ing from CAF Ven­ture­some which now enables the pro­ject to go out to tender for the design stage. Land acquis­i­tion is also pro­gress­ing with Heads of Terms for option agreed. Bal­later – Work­ing group estab­lished and were plan­ning to update hous­ing needs demands sur­vey while invest­ig­at­ing poten­tial sites and options avail­able. Work has been delayed by COVID19. Boat of Garten – Have iden­ti­fied a site for 2 x 2 bed bun­ga­lows and HSCHT under­taken feas­ib­il­ity study. Work has been delayed by COVID19. Tomin­toul – Fund­ing has been secured by Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Devel­op­ment Trust (TGDT) from Scot­tish Land Fund to buy the Old School site. Main applic­a­tion to the Rur­al Hous­ing Fund for con­struc­tion of 12 prop­er­ties has been sub­mit­ted. A study into low car­bon options for the devel­op­ment is in its final phase. The ten­der­ing pro­cess for a Design and Build con­tract is near­ing com­ple­tion. Once com­plete TGDT will be able to determ­ine viab­il­ity or oth­er­wise of the project.

Pri­or­ity 2 — Sup­port com­munit­ies, spe­cific­ally focus­sing on the most fra­gile, to deliv­er their agen­das for change

Key Work Areas	Update
Con­clude Tomintoul/​Glenlivet Land­scape Part­ner­ship, devel­op new focus area in Badenoch and help deliv­er Great Place Scheme	The Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship has been giv­en a 3 month exten­sion by Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (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. Badenoch Great Place Scheme. 2 major stud­ies have now been com­pleted (Cul­tur­al Her­it­age and Mar­ket­ing Strategy and Her­it­age High­way Route) which will now guide the devel­op­ment of oth­er strands of the pro­ject includ­ing the devel­op­ment of the ​“Badenoch the Story­lands” brand. The Gael­ic lan­guage of the area has been researched and is being used in new inter­pret­a­tion for the area. A web­site is being developed which will launch in Decem­ber. The inaug­ur­al Badenoch Her­it­age Fest­iv­al took place in Sep, offer­ing over 40 events over 2 weeks. This was hugely suc­cess­ful, cel­eb­rat­ing the cul­ture of the area and also rais­ing the pro­file of the project.
Sup­port com­munity organ­isa­tions to deliv­er pro­jects that help deliv­er NPPP	Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch & Strath­spey (VABS) — Have been at the fore­front of the com­munity response to COV­ID in Badenoch and Strath­spey, sup­por­ted by the CNPA’s Com­munity Sup­port Man­ager. They set up Com­munity Response groups in every Badenoch and Strath­spey com­munity, secured and are admin­is­ter­ing a £100k sup­port fund for area and are provid­ing sig­ni­fic­ant sup­port to a myri­ad of com­munity-led groups and organ­isa­tions. VABS con­tin­ue to be a key part­ner in the Badenoch Great Places Pro­ject, sit­ting on the Board, Team and run­ning the recruit­ment pro­cess for the new Pro­ject Officer. Marr Area Part­ner­ship (MAP) – Has provided a vital COV­ID com­munity sup­port net­work on Deeside work­ing closely with Aber­deen­shire coun­cil to meet loc­al needs. They are man­aging an Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil sup­port fund for the Marr area com­munit­ies. The Part­ner­ship has seen a com­plete change of devel­op­ment officer staff over the last 9 months and all new staff are now settled into their roles. Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Devel­op­ment Trust – Has taken the lead as the COV­ID com­munity response focal point in the area, set­ting up a com­munity response line, oper­at­ing a com­munity lar­der and sup­port­ing those in need. COV­ID forced the Trust to close both its income gen­er­at­ing busi­nesses (hostel and Dis­cov­ery Centre) as well as can­cel all its events for 2020. How­ever they have been very suc­cess­ful at access­ing COV­ID sup­port grants to give them some fin­an­cial sta­bil­ity for the remainder of the year. They con­tin­ue to pro­gress the Old school site afford­able hous­ing pro­ject and aspir­a­tions for a camp­site in the area.
Suc­cess­fully con­clude LEAD­ER pro­gramme and con­sider future fund­ing for Com­munity Led Loc­al Development	The Cairngorms Trust now has approved 39 pro­jects in the pro­gramme to date, with a total value of over £3.8 mil­lion. Twelve of these pro­jects cov­er Park-wide oper­a­tions; two cov­er all of the Aber­deen­shire area of the Cairngorms NP; with remain­ing applic­a­tions com­ing from 13 dif­fer­ent com­munit­ies with­in the Cairngorms. Almost £1.5 mil­lion of the pro­ject value sup­ports Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment and Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion pro­jects. The Trust has now fully com­mit­ted all pro­ject fund­ing alloc­a­tions, with £67,000 addi­tion­al fund­ing alloc­a­tion secured through com­pet­it­ive bids into resid­ual alloc­a­tions recovered cent­rally by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment from oth­er LAG areas across Scot­land. The Trust and staff team is sup­port­ing remain­ing live pro­jects adapt their deliv­ery plans and timetables to accom­mod­ate the impacts of COVID19. To date, the Trust is not aware of any pro­jects which have closed their pro­jects as being undeliv­er­able. The Trust is now deliv­er­ing the Rur­al Trans­port In Cairngorms and Kilkenny (TICK) pro­ject, which in Cairngorms involves the pro­cure­ment of elec­tric bikes provide under social pre­scrip­tion to sup­port an update in act­ive travel and the pro­vi­sion of an elec­tric minibus for com­munity transport.

Pri­or­ity 3 — Work closely with the busi­ness com­munity and part­ners to sup­port a sus­tain­able Park economy

Key Work Areas	Update
Review and help deliv­er Eco­nom­ic Strategy for the Park with partners	The CNPA approved Eco­nom­ic Action Plan for the Nation­al Park in Decem­ber 2019 and approved a Green Recov­ery Plan for the Nation­al Park in response to the impacts of COVID19 on the eco­nomy in June 2020.
Ensure impacts of A9 dualling are under­stood and addressed where appro­pri­ate by the Park Authority	The CNPA with­drew an objec­tion to the A9 Dalraddy to Slo­chd sec­tion in March 2020, fol­low­ing a com­mit­ment from Trans­port Scot­land to fund the devel­op­ment of an altern­at­ive non-motor­ised user route to link Aviemore and Car­rbridge. Plan­ning for that pro­ject is being led by Trans­port Scot­land with the sup­port of CNPA and High­land Council.

Cor­por­ate Services

Pri­or­ity 1 — Imple­ment the Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy and embed the organ­isa­tion­al and cul­tur­al improve­ments to make the CNPA the best small pub­lic body in Scotland

Key Work Areas	Update
Imple­ment, review and refresh Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy as part of con­tinu­al improve­ment work.	Fol­low­ing com­pre­hens­ive con­sulta­tion and engage­ment with staff, the Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy (ODS3) has now been draf­ted and approved, and the 5 themes of the ODS3 are: — Lead­er­ship; Work­ing Envir­on­ment; Cul­ture and Beha­viour; Effi­cient and Agile Work­force; Informed and Engaged Staff. Work­ing groups have met to identi­fy action plans for the deliv­ery of the strategy over the next 18 – 24 months. The Best Com­pan­ies as well as the NHS Healthy Work­ing Lives sur­vey res­ults have all fed in to the evolving ODS3 Work toward the object­ive of the ​“Best Small Pub­lic Body in Scot­land” was marked by the Author­ity being awar­ded an ​“Above and Bey­ond” award by Fam­ily Friendly Work­ing Scot­land for going far bey­ond the levels that may be expec­ted of an organ­isa­tion our size in our range of policies to sup­port work-life bal­ance and flex­ible working.
Sup­port effect­ive staff con­sulta­tion processes	Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um (SCF) con­tin­ues to work effect­ively, with sup­port of 2 board mem­bers and good engage­ment with the trade uni­on. Policies con­sul­ted with staff and adop­ted in the last 6 months include the new Domest­ic Abuse Policy, Volun­teer­ing Policy; review and revi­sions to the Lone Work­ing Pro­ced­ures; as well as engage­ment with staff around: — the Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan and guid­ance around staff access­ing the office, Lock­down Sur­vey res­ults and future working

Pri­or­ity 2 — Ensure that the office exten­sion, exist­ing accom­mod­a­tion and ICT facil­it­ies are ​‘fit for pur­pose’ and help to deliv­er the ODS

Key Work Areas	Update
Com­plete exten­sion project	Exten­sion com­pleted on budget in August 2018, and staff have now settled well in the build­ing. Rent­al for the exten­sion has now com­menced on basis of expec­ted values
Imple­ment GIS Strategy	The imple­ment­a­tion of GIS Strategy and ser­vice pro­vi­sion con­tin­ues to make slower than planned pro­gress dur­ing the cur­rent year, with a num­ber of inter­rup­tions caused by capa­city restraints with­in the Author­ity while oth­er key pro­jects are pro­gressed, now exacer­bated by our busi­ness con­tinu­ity responses to COV­ID. We will take GIS con­sid­er­a­tions for­ward as part of a wider devel­op­ment of an IT and Data Man­age­ment Strategy through the second half of the 2020⁄21 oper­a­tion­al year.
Imple­ment cyber secur­ity frame­work and wider IT development	Cyber Secur­ity Plus Accred­it­a­tion has now been achieved fol­low­ing com­ple­tion of work on 3 medi­um and 3 low recom­mend­a­tions, many of which cor­rel­ate with actions high­lighted from a recent intern­al audit report. Pro­cure­ment for imple­ment­a­tion of Cus­tom­er Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM) and enhanced Doc­u­ment and Records Man­age­ment Sys­tem (DRMS) was com­pleted in the pri­or report­ing peri­od. Staff changes and work pri­or­it­isa­tion, togeth­er with COVID19 busi­ness con­tinu­ity imple­ment­a­tion has led to fur­ther delay in our ori­gin­al roll-out plans for the CRM. The Cor­por­ate team have picked up CRM imple­ment­a­tion work dur­ing the course of recent months with a view to imple­ment­a­tion over the second half of the 2020⁄21 oper­a­tion­al year.

Pri­or­ity 3 — Deliv­er ongo­ing ser­vice improve­ment, includ­ing appro­pri­ate shared ser­vice devel­op­ment and oper­a­tion, to the Author­ity, oth­er pub­lic bod­ies and the com­munity and char­it­able organ­isa­tions we support

Key Work Areas	Update
Deliv­er cor­por­ate sup­port to Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion, and char­it­able and com­munity organisations.	HR sup­port (policy devel­op­ment, case­load and payroll) for Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion (SLC) com­menced in Janu­ary 2018, and is ongo­ing. Ad hoc HR sup­port provided as required to loc­al char­it­able trusts. The Author­ity con­tin­ues to act as the account­able body for Cairngorms LEAD­ER and sup­port the admin­is­tra­tion of the LEAD­ER Pro­gramme. The Author­ity provides sup­port to the Cairngorms Loc­al Action Group Trust (“Cairngorms Trust”) as the char­ity devel­ops and rolls out its approach to devel­op­ing vol­un­tary dona­tions mech­an­isms, through sup­port­ing the costs of the Trust Man­ager post and provid­ing a small admin­is­tra­tion budget. The Authority’s sup­port means that cur­rently 100% of all dona­tions raised by the Trust go towards pro­ject invest­ments in the Nation­al Park.
Provide accom­mod­a­tion and facil­it­ies sup­port to NPPP deliv­ery partners	Grant­own Archive Pro­ject using Grant­own office tem­por­ar­ily for archiv­ing work. The Grant­own office has also been used for occa­sion­al hot-desk­ing by part­ner staff. The Bal­later office hub con­tin­ues to accom­mod­ate a range of part­ners, with Vis­itScot­land now seek­ing to accom­mod­ate a mem­ber of staff with­in the hub on a part time basis.

Pri­or­ity 4 — Pro­mote and sup­port the highest stand­ards of gov­ernance and man­age­ment, includ­ing equal­it­ies actions, with­in the Author­ity, oth­er pub­lic bod­ies and the com­munity and char­it­able organ­isa­tions we support

Key Work Areas	Update
Design and imple­ment effect­ive and effi­cient man­age­ment and con­trol systems.	Our intern­al and extern­al audit review pro­cesses con­tin­ue to con­firm the effect­ive­ness and effi­ciency of our man­age­ment and con­trol sys­tems. Fur­ther inform­a­tion on the work of audit over the course of the year can be found in the Audit and Risk Committee’s annu­al report. Over­all, there is pos­it­ive feed­back on design and imple­ment­a­tion of our man­age­ment and con­trol sys­tems. http://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​r​e​s​o​u​r​c​e​/​d​o​c​s​/​b​o​a​r​d​p​a​p​e​r​s​/​2​3​1​1​2​0​1​8​/​1​8​1​1​2​3​A​u​C​t​t​e​e​P​a​p​e​r​5​A​A​1​7​1​8​A​u​d​i​t​C​t​t​e​e​A​n​n​u​a​l​R​e​p​o​r​t.pdf
Imple­ment Green­ing Strategy and deliv­er Youth Devel­op­ment Strategy	Green­ing Policy adop­ted dur­ing Cli­mate change week in Octo­ber 2018. Youth Devel­op­ment Strategy adop­ted winter 2017, and imple­men­ted on an on-going basis: — IT appren­tice joined in August 2018, and pro­gressed excep­tion­ally well. The IT Appren­tice left at the end of August to pur­sue a degree course in IT at Aber­deen Uni­ver­sity, and a new 2‑year IT Appren­tice has been recruited, join­ing the Author­ity on 14^{th} Septem­ber. We have a Found­a­tion Appren­tice join­ing us in Septem­ber for a one day/​week for the next year (dur­ing term-time), sup­port­ing our Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion Ser­vices. In addi­tion, we have sup­por­ted 3 Intern­ships 2020 (Wood­land map­ping; Digit­al Map­ping and Gael­ic Intern­ships) on a min­im­um of 4‑month con­tracts; two work shad­ow­ing oppor­tun­it­ies sup­por­ted in part­ner­ship with UHI, and one young per­son from the loc­al sec­ond­ary school sup­por­ted on a work exper­i­ence placement.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions

Pri­or­ity 1 — Deliv­er the Com­mu­nic­a­tion and Engage­ment Strategy and increase aware­ness, engage­ment and involve­ment with the Park

Key Work Areas	Update
Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Social Media	A Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions strategy is being imple­men­ted to sup­port the Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment Strategy which has set tar­gets to increase aware­ness through digit­al com­mu­nic­a­tions by achiev­ing 400,000 web­site ses­sions and 50,000 social media fol­low­ers by 2022. At the end of 2019 we achieved over 300,000 web­site ses­sions, a 25% increase over the pre­vi­ous year and a 20% increase in new web­site users. Dur­ing 2019 our social media chan­nels had 40,428 fol­low­ers, a 22% increase on the pre­vi­ous year with a com­bined reach of over 6.5 mil­lion, a 60% increase over 2018. An over­view of our digit­al per­form­ance dur­ing 2019 was presen­ted to the Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Brand Board Group in Janu­ary 2020.
Cam­paigns: Cairngorms Nature, Act­ive Cairngorms & ​‘Make it Yours’	Cairngorms Nature: Due COVID19 the Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end 2020 has been rolled over to 14 – 16 May 2021. Instead a 10 day pro­gramme of over 80 vir­tu­al events took placed from 15 – 24 May 2020 which attrac­ted over 4,000 web­site vis­it­ors. TV nature presenter Nigel Mar­ven, and his pet owl Dig­ger, opened the 10 days with a video from his home in lock­down. Each day was themed, with top­ics ran­ging from ​‘Massive Con­ser­va­tion’ and the cli­mate emer­gency through to endangered spe­cies, nature inspired art and nature friendly farm­ing. Events included videos, music, quizzes, blogs and even a live song writ­ing work­shop from Jenny Stur­geon, inspired by Nan Shepherd’s Liv­ing Moun­tain. The event reached people who may be unable to phys­ic­ally join in with the BIG Week­end, giv­ing them the oppor­tun­ity to immerse them­selves in our fant­ast­ic wild­life here in the Cairngorms. It was such a suc­cess that we will def­in­itely be includ­ing online events as part of the BIG Week­end in 2021. All the events are still online to be enjoyed at www​.cairngorm​snature​big​week​end​.com. Cairngorms Nature con­tin­ues to share nature exper­i­ences through a reg­u­lar blog and column in the loc­al paper and through social media activ­ity. To date Cairngorms Nature has 20,900 social media fol­low­ers. Act­ive Cairngorms: Due to the Coronavir­us pan­dem­ic ranger led events and our health walks have been can­celled dur­ing the COV­ID lock­down and the Wee Walks Week planned for Septem­ber has been post­poned until Septem­ber 2021. Dur­ing lock­down CNPA pro­moted Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment health mes­sages and act­ively encour­age people to take their daily exer­cise. Since restric­tions were lif­ted in July the focus has been on pro­mot­ing respons­ible access through our media rela­tions, social media and the pro­duc­tion of edu­ca­tion­al videos. We have also pro­moted our 17 com­munity path leaf­lets to encour­age res­id­ents to use the resources on their door­step and encour­age vis­it­ors to sup­port loc­al busi­nesses in the com­munit­ies. Inform­a­tion and advice on COVID19 includ­ing up to date inform­a­tion on car parks, toi­lets and camp­ing ser­vices have been provided via the CNPA web­site. To pro­mote access, Tread Lightly and Act­ive Cairngorms mes­sages we use 12 core web pages which in 2019 received 104,186 page views com­pared to 84,493 page views in 2018, a 19% increase. In addi­tion, there were 15,664 page views of the com­munity paths and trails page in 2019 — a 9% increase on 2018. To date Act­ive Cairngorms has 5,000 social media fol­low­ers. ​‘Make it Yours’ (MIY): At the start of the COVID19 lock­down the CNPA set up a Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group chaired by Janet Hunter. The group’s pur­pose is to provide con­sist­ent and com­pre­hens­ive ana­lys­is of the implic­a­tions of COVID19 for tour­ism, to coordin­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions with the tour­ism industry, ensure close work­ing between key agen­cies and the private sec­tor, to gath­er, share, facil­it­ate, inter­pret and dis­sem­in­ate inform­a­tion and agree rel­ev­ant actions and deliv­ery plans. Mem­ber­ship con­sists of; CNPA, Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire, MoraySpey­side, Vis­itScot­land, Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil, High­land Coun­cil, High­lands and Islands Enter­prise. Updates have been sent to busi­nesses and Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres in and around the Park to provide advice on the latest Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Guidelines through the MIY net­work of 180 Brand Charter Hold­ers. Res­ults of the five-yearly Vis­it­or Sur­vey (pre-COV­ID19) were announced in July and show the Cairngorms Nation­al Park is a top des­tin­a­tion with vis­it­or sat­is­fac­tion at an all-time high and 96% of vis­it­ors agree­ing that they ​‘love this place’. Work is ongo­ing to col­late post COVID19 research res­ults to inform how we can best pre­pare for tour­ism dur­ing 2021. CNPA is also sup­port­ing a Grow­Biz ini­ti­at­ive to devel­op 3 Smart Vil­lage pro­jects in the Nation­al Park — in Badenoch, Grant­own-on-Spey and Deeside. This will involve the devel­op­ment of a web portal for each of the ​‘vil­lages’ and is a good oppor­tun­ity to pro­mote the usage of the free ​‘Make it Yours’ resources – espe­cially the images and videos.
Deliv­er stake­hold­er engage­ment & events	In March (pre-lock­down) CNPA hos­ted the ​‘Net Zero with Nature’ con­fer­ence to address the cli­mate crisis and what needs to hap­pen in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park to tackle the issues. Del­eg­ates heard from Roseanna Cun­ning­ham Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary for Envir­on­ment, Cli­mate Change and Land Reform, the Chief Exec­ut­ive of the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, Pro­fess­or Alis­on Hester and Dr Mike Riv­ing­ton from the James Hut­ton Insti­tute who spoke about the recent Snow Report for the Cairngorm Moun­tains. The CNPA’s Green Recov­ery Plan agreed in June will focus on how this work can be taken for­ward. Through­out the COVID19 reg­u­lar updates on how the CNPA and