CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 3 11^th Septem­ber 2020

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY VIS­IT­OR MAN­AGE­MENT UPDATE

Title: CAIRNGORMS VIS­IT­OR MAN­AGE­MENT UPDATE

Pre­pared by: GRANT MOIR, CEO & PETE CRANE, HEAD OF VIS­IT­OR SERVICES

Pur­pose:

1. This is an inter­im report to the Board on the vis­it­or man­age­ment work that has been under­taken in the Park this sum­mer. A full report will be presen­ted after the end of sea­son review at the end of October.

Over­view

1. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity has been work­ing with part­ners across the Nation­al Park since spring pre­par­ing for ​‘re-open­ing’. There has been a weekly vis­it­or man­age­ment meet­ing chaired by the CEO of the CNPA with land man­agers, pub­lic bod­ies, Loc­al Author­it­ies, tour­ism groups, rep­res­ent­at­ive bod­ies and Police Scot­land. A full list of the mem­ber­ship is included an Annex I.

2. The Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group has also met weekly to address issues around the reopen­ing of tour­ism. This group has been chaired by CNPA Board Mem­ber Janet Hunter and includes tour­ism groups, loc­al author­it­ies, and Vis­it Scot­land. The mem­ber­ship is again at Annex 1.

3. There has also been sig­ni­fic­ant work at a nation­al level with the ENFOR Access Group, Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Green­er Com­mu­nic­a­tions Group, UKNP Comms Group and input to the nation­al Scot­tish Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group, as well as, dir­ect con­tact on a reg­u­lar basis with SG policy teams.

Plan­ning

1. The CNPA with input from a range of part­ners pro­duced a vis­it­or man­age­ment plan for the Cairngorms as a whole and spe­cif­ic plans for Glen­more and Deeside. This allowed us to try and ensure that the right solu­tions were in place to deal with the anti­cip­ated demand for access to the Park when lock­down was eased.

2. The key dates that the dif­fer­ent groups worked towards were the 18^th June allow­ing short dis­tance travel for out­door leis­ure and exer­cise, 3^rd July when travel restric­tions were lif­ted, and then 15^th July with hol­i­day accom­mod­a­tion re-opening.

3. The CNPA ensured that the Park Author­ity web­site was kept up to date with all the latest inform­a­tion for res­id­ents and visitors.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions Approach

1. The #Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er approach was developed by CBP, CNPA and oth­ers to ensure a con­sist­ent approach to com­mu­nic­a­tions – Know the Guidelines, Plan Ahead, Be Flex­ible, Be Kind. This has been used con­sist­ently by all the part­ners in the Park to deliv­er clear, con­sist­ent and pos­it­ive mes­sages for vis­it­ors and residents.

2. The CBP with sup­port from the CNPA held a num­ber of meet­ings with busi­nesses and oth­ers to ensure buy-in to the devel­op­ment of the approach.

3. Zoom meet­ings were also held by CNPA & CBP with com­munity coun­cils, loc­al author­ity coun­cil­lors and res­id­ents in June and again in late August to share inform­a­tion, listen to loc­al con­cerns, and devel­op a con­sist­ent approach to safely wel­com­ing vis­it­ors. Zoom meet­ings were also held with SLE mem­bers in the Park and North-East on two occa­sions as well.

Prac­tic­al Action

1. CNPA Sea­son­al Rangers – Dur­ing lock­down CNPA hired nine sea­son­al rangers to help man­age vis­it­ors at even­ings and week­ends across the Park and to sup­ple­ment the exist­ing ranger ser­vices in the Park. This is a 36% increase in ranger cov­er­age in the Nation­al Park. Appoint­ment was mid-June, fol­lowed by two weeks train­ing with the team ​‘on the ground’ by 26 June allow­ing great pre­par­a­tion for Phase 3 open­ing on 15 July. The sup­port provided by sea­son­al rangers has proved very wel­come across the Park, they have been seen to be doing a great job and feed­back has been very pos­it­ive. Annex 2 provides a sum­mary of their engage­ment with vis­it­ors to date.

2. Part­ner Ranger Ser­vices – dur­ing lock­down some ser­vices fur­loughed staff and we agreed with those receiv­ing CNPA grant to put this ​‘on hold’ while con­firm­ing that grant would be avail­able when they returned. All but one part­ner ser­vice was back work­ing in July & enga­ging with CNPA Sea­son­al Rangers to provide effect­ive cov­er­age where most needed. There has been really good col­lab­or­at­ive work­ing across the Park between exist­ing ranger ser­vices and the CNPA sea­son­als. Forestry & Land Scot­land also appoin­ted addi­tion­al week­end staff to engage with vis­it­ors at Glen­more over week­ends in August. Annex 3 provides a sum­mary of work encountered on estates across the nation­al park many staffed by rangers and vis­it­or staff.

3. Infra­struc­ture – The part­ners all moved quickly to get toi­lets and car parks open for the start of phase 3 in July and inform­a­tion was made avail­able on the CNPA web­site about what toi­lets and car parks were open. Fund­ing was also provided for tem­por­ary toi­lets at Linn of Dee. CBP also put in place an excel­lent web­site that updates daily about what busi­nesses are open across the Park.

4. Traffic Man­age­ment – The amount of cars com­ing into the Park has caused issues at six main loc­a­tions; Glen­more, Muir of Din­net, Linn of Dee, Glen Muick, Glen Tanar and Glen Clova with oth­er smal­ler ​‘hot spots’. The CNPA has worked with estates and loc­al author­it­ies to put in solu­tions includ­ing vari­able mes­sage signs at 4 loc­a­tions, speed lim­its, road traffic order at Glen Muick, over­flow car park at Linn of Dee, park­ing bol­lards at a num­ber of loc­a­tions includ­ing Glen­more, Loch Insh and Achlean. GlenTanar Estate also put in place an over­flow car park. This has allowed sig­ni­fic­antly bet­ter man­age­ment of vis­it­or flows and traffic across the Park.

5. Enforce­ment – We have worked closely with the police and fire ser­vices to ensure that a prompt response can be made to issues where appro­pri­ate whilst tak­ing account of the remote nature of some of the sites in the Park.

Mes­saging

1. The CNPA, CBP, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire and many oth­ers have been put­ting out sig­ni­fic­ant mes­sages around vis­it­or man­age­ment through­out the sum­mer. This includes films, vlogs & blogs across all social media plat­forms linked to the #Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er approach and inter­views on radio and TV. There has been sig­ni­fic­ant work to tar­get 1^st time vis­it­ors and spe­cific­ally the 18 ‑30 yr old, audi­ence includ­ing pur­chas­ing adverts on social media aimed at a young­er vis­it­or. Annex 4 provides a sum­mary of key CNPA com­mu­nic­a­tion show­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in audi­ence reach.

2. As the Access Author­ity the CNPA has also been very clear on mes­sages around fires, bbqs, lit­ter and camping.

Vis­it­or Information

1. The CNPA park wide vis­it­or sur­vey, con­duc­ted every five years, was com­pleted in March 2019. Post lock­down CBP under­took a sur­vey with 2,500 con­tacts and we sup­por­ted Nature Scot­land in a sur­vey of 1000 people on atti­tudes to the Scot­tish coun­tryside and access. This has been com­pli­men­ted by a short ​‘snap sur­vey’ of vis­it­ors by sea­son­al rangers. Col­lect­ively this data provides good insights into what vis­it­ors to the Nation­al Park may want going for­ward. A sum­mary of the vis­it­or sur­vey data is at Annex 5.

Issues Addressed

1. There has been a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of people com­ing into the Park over the sum­mer. There have also been issues around camp­ing, camper­vans, human waste, fires, lit­ter and verge park­ing. These have been espe­cially pre­val­ent at key hot­spots. How­ever, it should also be noted that the vast major­ity of vis­it­ors have behaved well, and that many of the issues around fires etc were done through ignor­ance rather than malice.

2. Over­all the approach this sum­mer has been suc­cess­ful and the feed­back from res­id­ents and vis­it­ors has on the whole been very good.

3. There are two real excep­tions to that. One was the fail­ure to get the Camp­ing in the Forest site open at Glen­more. This caused extreme pres­sure on the area and it is dis­ap­point­ing that this could not be rec­ti­fied. The oth­er is the lack of facil­it­ies to deal with the influx of camper­vans espe­cially waste. This is some­thing that we need to fix for next year.

Next Steps

1. A full end of sea­son review will be held at the end of Octo­ber. The Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group has agreed to also work on pro­du­cing fur­ther iter­a­tions of the vis­it­or man­age­ment plans dur­ing the autumn/​winter and to identi­fy areas for invest­ment. There is the oppor­tun­ity to work up Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund bids for spe­cif­ic ​‘hot­spots’ in the Park.

2. The work and feed­back from this sum­mer has giv­en us an excel­lent under­stand­ing of what worked, what didn’t work and the sorts of invest­ment that we all col­lect­ively will need to make.

3. It is also clear that the vis­it­or exper­i­ence could be greatly improved by CNPA main­tain­ing a ranger ser­vice, and great­er invest­ment in vis­it­or infra­struc­ture includ­ing; traffic man­age­ment, car park­ing, pro­vi­sion of pub­lic toi­lets and waste dis­pos­al for camper­vans com­bined with clear, con­sist­ent and pos­it­ive mes­saging about the Nation­al Park both pre and post arrival. Fur­ther work is also required on com­mu­nic­at­ing with our ​‘new audiences’

4. CNPA will con­tin­ue to coordin­ate reg­u­lar land man­ager and tour­ism meet­ings and com­pile a full review of this summer’s work in Octo­ber. Going for­ward, we will, with part­ners, devel­op an ongo­ing vis­it­or man­age­ment plan for the Nation­al Park with more detailed plans for the ​‘hot spots’ of Deeside and Cairngorm & Glenmore.

5. Fol­low­ing the Octo­ber review on sum­mer 2020 we will come to the Board in Decem­ber with recom­mend­a­tions on how to take for­ward our col­lect­ive man­age­ment of vis­it­ors in 2021 and beyond.

6. Finally, it is worth stat­ing that the co-ordin­a­tion and genu­ine part­ner­ship work­ing across organ­isa­tions at a Park level has been fant­ast­ic. Where things have gone wrong we have adap­ted and addressed the issues and the approach taken stands us in good stead for the future and has been used as a tem­plate for oth­er areas.

Annexes

• Annex 1 Key CNP ​‘Re-open­ing’ Part­ner­ship Groups
• Annex 2 Sum­mary of CNPA Sea­son­al Ranger Engage­ment with Vis­it­ors August 2020
• Annex 3 Sum­mary of Land Man­age­ment Group Engage­ment with Vis­it­ors 15 July – 24 Aug 2020
• Annex 4 Sum­mary of Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Engage­ment with Coronavir­us Guid­ance & Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Messages
• Annex 5 Sum­mary of rel­ev­ant Vis­it­or Data in 2020