CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

Held by telephone/​video conference

On Fri­day 11^th Septem­ber 2020 at 11.00am

PRESENT

(By video con­fer­en­cing unless stated otherwise)

• Xan­der McDade (Con­vener)
• Elean­or Mackintosh
• Geva Black­ett
• Wil­lie McKenna
• Peter Argyle
• Ian McLar­en
• Car­o­lyn Caddick
• Dr Fiona McLean
• Deirdre Fal­con­er (Items 1 – 5 & 7 – 11)
• Wil­li­am Munro
• Pippa Had­ley
• Anne Rae Macdonald
• Janet Hunter (Items 7 – 11)
• Dr Gaen­er Rodger
• John Kirk
• Derek Ross
• John Lath­am (Items 5 – 11)
• Judith Webb
• Douglas McAdam

In Attend­ance:

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

Apo­lo­gies:

• Peter Argyle

Wel­come and Introduction

1. Xan­der McDade, the Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the meeting.
2. Apo­lo­gies were noted.

Minutes of Last Meet­ings held – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 12 June 2020 were agreed with no amendments.
2. The draft minutes of the last meet­ing held on 28^th August 2020 were agreed with no amendments.

Mat­ters Arising

1. The Con­vener provided an update on the Action points from the pre­vi­ous minutes:

   a) June Minutes — Action Point at Para 16 (i) – Closed – Wil­lie Mun­ro to sit on the Green Recov­ery Fund Group. b) June Minutes — Action Point at Para 20 (i) – Closed – prin­cipals for Green Recov­ery Fund were developed and the fund is now live. c) August Minutes – Action Point at Para 8(i) – Closed – revised time­tabling for postal bal­lot of Deputy Con­vener­ship had been circulated.

2. Action Points Arising: None

John Lath­am joined the meeting.

Declar­a­tions of Interest

1. The Con­vener invited Declar­a­tions of Interest.
2. Pippa Had­ley, Fiona MacLean and Deirdre Fal­con­er declared an Indir­ect Interest in Paper 2, as mem­bers of the Badenoch Great Place project.
3. Douglas McAdam declared an Indir­ect interest in Paper 4 as he is the Chair­man of the South Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group.

Deirdre Fal­con­er left the meeting.

CEO Report & Con­vener Update (Paper 1)

1. Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive, intro­duced Paper 1 which high­lights the main stra­tegic work streams that are being dir­ec­ted by Man­age­ment Team. CEO explained that these are areas where sig­ni­fic­ant staff resources are being dir­ec­ted to deliv­er Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan pri­or­it­ies. He high­lighted the fol­low­ing areas:

   a) Grow biz was launched last week, ment­or­ing busi­ness advice and busi­ness net­work. b) Nature of Scot­land Awards – short­l­ist­ing 4 pro­jects in Cairngorms will cir­cu­late details after meet­ing. c) Alt Lor­gie pro­ject won the River Res­tor­a­tion award for the work that had been going on there for the past 7 years. Money for that ori­gin­ally came from shovel ready fund­ing that the Author­ity and the SG put in. Great video has been released and will cir­cu­late it around the Board. d) Ongo­ing and worth not­ing, the Gov­ern­ment Kick Start Pro­gram has just been launched for employ­ing 16 – 24yr olds for 6‑month post, pulling togeth­er with Nation­al Parks UK look­ing at a poten­tial pro­gram of posts that could be done using this scheme. Details to fol­low in due course. e) Green recov­ery fund is open – the clos­ing date is 20^th Sept and the pan­el will meet and make decisions on the applic­a­tions received based on the estab­lished cri­ter­ia. f) Gael­ic Intern had done work on Shinty as part of Badenoch Great Place pro­ject which will be launched in the Autumn. An excel­lent piece of resource which is a digit­al story­book of Shinty. g) COV­ID and how it impacts the Author­ity as an organ­isa­tion, staff will con­tin­ue to work from home.

2. The Board noted the Paper.

3. Action Points Arising:

   i. Short­l­ist for Nature of Scot­land Awards to be cir­cu­lated. ii. River Res­tor­a­tion award win­ner video to be circulated.

Deirdre Fal­con­er and Janet Hunter joined the meeting.

Stra­tegic Risk Man­age­ment and Mon­it­or­ing Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance (Paper 2)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced Paper 2 presents an update on the Authority’s per­form­ance to date in work­ing towards deliv­ery of stra­tegic object­ives estab­lished in the 2018 to 2022 Cor­por­ate Plan. He explained that the paper focuses on deliv­ery against the Key Per­form­ance Indic­at­ors adop­ted as meas­ures of per­form­ance in deliv­ery of our Cor­por­ate Plan, while high­light­ing by excep­tion any sig­ni­fic­ant con­straints, risks or short­com­ings on planned deliv­ery. He added that the paper also presents the latest ver­sion of the Stra­tegic Risk Register, fol­low­ing ongo­ing review and mit­ig­a­tion action by the Man­age­ment Team and review by the Audit and Risk Committee.

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

   a) In terms of rur­al devel­op­ment excep­tions spe­cific­ally level of busi­ness sat­is­fac­tion KPI which has moved into an amber risk cat­egory what was the reas­on­ing for this? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that this was as a res­ult of the latest sur­vey res­ults which showed a down­ward trend in terms of busi­ness sat­is­fac­tion on all cat­egor­ies of that sur­vey which was not sur­pris­ing giv­en the neg­at­ive impacts on busi­nesses of COV­ID-19. Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment explained that the Busi­ness Baro­met­er is a sur­vey that the CBP car­ries out on a quarterly basis, sent out to a wide range of busi­nesses with an aver­age response rate of 13%. He sug­ges­ted that this issue be raised at the next meet­ing of the Cairngorms Eco­nom­ic For­um. b) With regards to Wee Walks Week, were we encour­aging the pub­lic to walk vir­tu­ally around the Cairngorms, seen a lot more enjoy­ment of loc­al net­work dur­ing lock­down. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices advised that they have been act­ively pro­mot­ing 17 com­munity path net­work leaf­lets, shar­ing on social media. c) With regards to excep­tion report­ing on the tour­ism pro­ject around on rap­tors what was behind this shad­ing? Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence advised that the fol­low­ing week there would be a press release going out on the first sea eagle breed­ing pair. He explained that had been delayed because of covid19. d) Com­ment made that the review of the Glen­more and Cairngorm Strategy needs to be pri­or­it­ised and that there is real bene­fit to hav­ing a joined up approach. e) With ref­er­ence to Annex 3 Risk Register, wel­come the remedi­al actions detailed para­graph 8. Regard­ing the account­able body issue, high cost­ing thoughts of list­ing high level pro­jects indi­vidu­ally as opposed hav­ing them all under resourcing on page 4. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that they sought to treat it as a single stra­tegic risk, act­ing as lead body for a num­ber of pro­jects, each pro­ject has its own Risk register, if any of those pro­jects has a sig­ni­fic­ant risk it would be escal­ated and come into this Risk Register in its own right. Keep at cor­por­ate level, recog­nising more detail else­where. f) With ref­er­ence to the back of the Risk Register, the last one about gov­ernance, while appre­ci­at­ing the large scale land man­age­ment issues, what on a Board level could be done to help that? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices high­lighted the import­ance of the Board skills mat­rix for recog­nising aspects of cor­por­ate gov­ernance and identi­fy­ing train­ing needs. g) With ref­er­ence to Pri­or­ity 2 in Annex 1 a mem­ber repor­ted that the South Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group were focus­sing on deer pop­u­la­tion man­age­ment spe­cific­ally focus­sing on land­scape plan­ning and large wood­land plant­ing. h) Com­ment made there had been a down turn in the mar­ket for ven­ison that the Nation­al Park Author­ity were look­ing to assist Deer Man­age­ment Groups with this. i) Wild­life crime what were the num­ber of incid­ents and rate of crimes. CEO repor­ted that Police Scot­land pub­lish this inform­a­tion annu­ally how­ever there had not been any arrests in the Park. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has been tak­ing for­ward an increase in sen­tences asso­ci­ated with wild­life crime. j) With ref­er­ence to Annex 4 on social media, could it be explained why Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion did not have a Twit­ter account? CEO advised that Cairngorms Nature do have a Twit­ter account and that it is not com­puls­ory for staff to have one although they can if they want to. k) Sug­ges­tion made to merge risks A14 and A15 into one and keep it on the risk register. Query at keep­ing the wild­life crime risk green as it was still high risk and also until the com­munity aspect of afford­able hous­ing could be pro­gressed, sug­ges­tion made to keep an over­view of it. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee did not look at the detail of the register know­ing it was being laid before the full Board and that he was happy with the sug­ges­tion of mon­it­or­ing the over­all repu­ta­tion­al risk of NPA and to roll the risk into one. He explained the reas­on­ing behind not rat­ing a down­ward trend had been a res­ult of instances of neg­at­ive media atten­tion while the bal­ance of pos­it­ive work on vis­it­or man­age­ment and con­ser­va­tion con­tent and as a Man­age­ment Team over past few months on a whole decided that was the case. l) Strong sup­port on Glen­more situ­ation, had per­son­al exper­i­ence of cyc­ling all over the area and agreed to have con­ver­sa­tions with the Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices after the meet­ing to dis­cuss what could eas­ily be done to fix some of the issues. m) Sug­ges­tion made to bring risks A14, A19 and A21 alto­geth­er into one as they have the com­mon theme of repu­ta­tion­al risk. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed and advised he would made the changes and bring it to the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee meet­ing then back to the Board in March 2021. n) With ref­er­ence to Annex 4 on social media how could young­er people be attrac­ted? CEO advised that a lot of work had taken place tar­get­ing young­er audi­ences link­ing to Vis­itScot­land and Ins­tagram and the effects of that would be seen in the next few years. o) The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair repor­ted that the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee at their meet­ing that morn­ing had focussed on the Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning register and what should be kept on it. She added that the Board’s com­ments on the main Stra­tegic Risk Register had been well made.

3. The Board:

   a) Reviewed the update on cor­por­ate per­form­ance and stra­tegic risk man­age­ment set out in this paper. b) High­lighted any achieve­ments or excep­tions which, from a stra­tegic lead­er­ship per­spect­ive, Board mem­bers believe are of par­tic­u­lar sig­ni­fic­ance to the deliv­ery of the Authority’s stra­tegic object­ives. c) Review and com­ment on the risk register for com­plete­ness in cov­er­age of cur­rent stra­tegic risks and adequacy of mit­ig­a­tion actions.

4. Action Points Arising:

   i. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment to raise the issue of busi­ness sat­is­fac­tion at the next Cairngorms Eco­nom­ic For­um. ii. Risks A14, A19 and A21 alto­geth­er into one as they have the com­mon theme of repu­ta­tion­al risk and bring the Stra­tegic Risk Register back to the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee at their March 2021 meeting.

Cairngorms Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Update (Paper 3)

1. Grant Moir, CEO and Pete Crane, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices presen­ted 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.

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

   a) Con­grat­u­la­tions to the team giv­en the chal­len­ging times a pos­it­ive pic­ture is emer­ging. Com­ment made that des­pite the pan­dem­ic not being pos­it­ive over­all it had been a real oppor­tun­ity for the Author­ity to make a pos­it­ive impact and be seen out and about. The improve­ments at Glen­more spe­cific­ally the reduced speed lim­it will hope­fully con­tin­ue and oth­er improve­ments made on the back of this. Wild campers was a big issue along with waste remov­al and car park­ing how­ever effort was made to address this and extern­al people were appre­ci­at­ive. b) Com­ment made that the paper was wel­comed, there had been a con­sid­er­able increase in lit­ter includ­ing throw away tents show­ing people were not giv­ing any thought to the impact on the cli­mate emer­gency which leads to ques­tion­ing what was being taught in schools about tak­ing lit­ter home. Sug­ges­tion made to bring schools on board with the vis­ion that the Nation­al Park is a spe­cial place that must be treated with respect. The Con­vener agreed with this sen­ti­ment and sug­ges­ted that Loc­al Author­ity nom­in­ated Board mem­bers have these con­ver­sa­tions with their respect­ive Edu­ca­tion Author­it­ies. c) Con­grat­u­la­tions for the good work achieved and it was good to see that in a crisis the Author­ity were solu­tion focused. Com­ment made that it had been a huge dis­ap­point­ment that a small pro­por­tion of people did not know how to behave in a Nation­al Park and that it was vital that going for­ward secur­ing powers for our Rangers par­tic­u­larly on irre­spons­ible fire light­ing. Sug­ges­tion made to make the traffic man­age­ment meas­ures more per­man­ent whilst ensur­ing that it is aes­thet­ic­ally pleas­ing and in keep­ing with the Nation­al Park. Camper­vans and motorhomes sale increased, can make it more wel­com­ing for them, by book­ing a night, there had been a demand for drop­ping off black and grey waste. Offer of mak­ing links with a Nation­al camper­van organ­iz­a­tion if links had not already been made. CEO advised that he had had con­ver­sa­tions with Campa and that the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship were look­ing at work­ing up a pro­ject on that front too. d) Com­ment made that one issue that was not just in the Nation­al Park but also High­land wide was the num­ber of camp­ing sites that did not open or those which were oper­at­ing were oper­at­ing at 60% below capa­city in order to adhere to the social dis­tan­cing meas­ures. Vis­itScot­land had added to the per­fect storm and while the cir­cum­stances were unusu­al it meant a lot of work, work­ing out the infra­struc­ture for wel­com­ing so many vis­it­ors. e) Com­ment made that at Loch Muick there had been some man­age­ment issues where some people were camp­ing overnight in the car park which meant hill­walk­ers arriv­ing early morn­ing were arriv­ing to a car park that was 50% full. Com­ment made that this should be addressed for next year. f) Com­ment made that some of the issues exper­i­enced dur­ing the sum­mer would be an ongo­ing prob­lem. Encour­aging people to have a stayc­a­tion would remain. The issues seen on Skye and in Glen­more were here before the pan­dem­ic struck and were amp­li­fied by the increase in vis­it­ors. g) Sug­ges­tion made that the fund­ing com­ing from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment should be used in a coordin­ated way with Loc­al Author­it­ies to ensure a con­sist­ent mes­sage is delivered by way of sig­nage. CEO agreed and advised that he would be attend­ing a meet­ing the fol­low­ing Monday with MSP Fer­gus Ewing to dis­cuss the nation­al coordin­a­tion sur­round­ing vis­it­or man­age­ment. h) Agree­ment that a nation­al approach would be essen­tial going for­ward to con­tin­ue the good work star­ted. Query about the areas where there were no estate rangers, such as Gle­nesk who had been left to deal with the increase in vis­it­ors them­selves and did not get much sup­port from their Loc­al Author­ity for lit­ter remov­al, increase in vis­it­ors. Sug­ges­tion made to make use of the estate staff, for­est­ers and keep­ers. CEO advised that he had a meet­ing com­ing up with Angus Coun­cil to dis­cuss Glen Esk and Glen Doll going for­wards. i) Resound­ing con­grat­u­la­tions to the team on their fast work on this over the sum­mer. j) Com­ment made that the increase in vis­it­ors seen this year was only really the begin­ning. Sug­ges­tion made that the Girl Guides and Scouts do a lot of fire safety badges and have a fant­ast­ic set of resources avail­able on their web­site. k) Com­ment made that there was a need to edu­cate vis­it­ors around defin­i­tions and expect­a­tions for example where not to light fires and where to set up camp. And the defin­i­tions of dirty camp­ing and wild camp­ing. l) Com­ment made that Loc­al Author­it­ies hav­ing removed bins from laybys was a big issue, as vis­it­ors were throw­ing rub­bish out of their car win­dows and into fields which was a big prob­lem for farm­ers and land own­ers. CEO noted this and said he would pick it up with Loc­al Author­it­ies at the end of the sea­son. m) Com­ment made that they hadn’t seen the cam­paign with TISO and Nation­al Parks UK on respons­ible camp­ing. n) Plea made to be ready for the school Octo­ber hol­i­days as they would be on dif­fer­ing weeks depend­ing on Loc­al Author­ity area. CEO agreed and advised that this was why the Sea­son­al Rangers were con­trac­ted until the end of Octo­ber 2020. o) Com­ment made that is had been good that work was being car­ried out doing the brash­ing on the path between Boat of Garten and Aviemore which makes it easi­er for cyc­lists using that sec­tion of the Spey­side Way. p) Sug­ges­tion made to tar­get big super­mar­ket chains in urb­an areas who sell cheap tents to give out an inform­a­tion leaf­let at the time of pur­chase. The Con­vener agreed with this point and recog­nized that many tents were pur­chased in the loc­al­ity of where the vis­it­ors reside rather than buy­ing them when they arrive in the Nation­al Park. q) Sug­ges­tion made that Nation­al Parks UK are encour­aged to take this work with big super­mar­ket chains on board to get the mes­sage out. CEO agreed to take those con­ver­sa­tions for­ward to Nation­al Parks UK, He added that there was no link between people buy­ing cheap tents and dirty campers. Dirty campers come from all dif­fer­ent back­grounds and socio eco­nom­ic groups and the vast major­ity of campers have been doing the right things across the Nation­al Park. r) The Con­vener thanked the staff team for their effort over the past 6 months for man­aging the situ­ation which involved a huge amount of plan­ning loc­ally, nation­ally and on the ground. He stated that the huge effort had res­ul­ted in pos­it­ive res­ults, rangers and part­ner­ship work­ing togeth­er lead­ing to pos­it­ive out­comes, should be proud of the team for that.

3. The Board noted the update.

4. Action Points Arising:

   i. Loc­al Author­ity nom­in­ated Board mem­bers con­ver­sa­tions with their respect­ive Edu­ca­tion Author­it­ies regard­ing encour­aging schools to teach the mes­sage of tak­ing lit­ter home in order to help com­bat cli­mate change. ii. CEO to pick up the remov­al lit­ter bins from laybys with Loc­al Author­it­ies. iii. CEO to encour­age Nation­al Parks UK to encour­age big super­mar­ket chains to dis­trib­ute a respons­ible camp­ing leaf­let with every tent purchase.

East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship (Paper 4)

1. Dr Pete May­hew, Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence intro­duced Paper 4 which reviews the pro­gress of the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship (ECMP) to date, as well as con­sid­er­ing its future devel­op­ment. He reminded the Board that whilst the pro­ject was set up in 2015 they did not have staff in place until 2018 so this was an update on work under­taken since then.

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

   a) Pleased to see the paper being brought to the Board. b) In the paper there is some dis­cus­sion that pred­at­ors are the biggest cause of nest fail­ure, was there scope for that to be brought for­ward? c) With ref­er­ence to para­graph 8, was there data to back it up? Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence explained that it was counter intu­it­ive, wood­land adja­cent to the wood­land areas impacted on the level of pred­at­or man­age­ment. d) Praise for the paper that it was very inform­at­ive and that the pro­gress being made and com­ment made that the pro­ject is exem­plar nation­ally. Board Mem­ber repor­ted that she had atten­ded the Euro­parc con­fer­ence which was held vir­tu­ally which had talked about gath­er­ing mass accur­ate data such as this and what more could be done and how to encour­age a nation­al debate about this. Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence explained that with the resources the Author­ity had which equates to half a per­son they are focus­ing on how waders are doing in which areas, the types of wood­land that we have and where we are with Muir­burn. Agree­ment that people are look­ing at the pro­ject from out­side the Nation­al Park with interest. There is more that the Author­ity would like to do as part of this pro­ject and the con­ser­va­tion team are col­lat­ing data to inform the Cairngorm Nature Index which will provide excel­lent data in the next few years. The more object­ive the inform­a­tion can be the bet­ter. e) With ref­er­ence to a recent art­icle in the Press & Journ­al report­ing what there is and what there isn’t, how does the num­ber of hare’s and waders on ECMP land com­pare to those on Cairngorms Con­nect land? Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence explained that the dens­ity of hares was high­er on ECMP land because of the dif­fer­ent mix of land type He explained that with the Sus­tain­able Moor­land Man­age­ment, grouse shoot­ing had been pushed too far in one dir­ec­tion mean­ing that the bal­ance of nature was not quite right. f) Query raised around grouse moors pro­du­cing more spe­cies what were the Author­ity doing to com­pare dif­fer­ent land man­age­ment pil­lars and dif­fer­ent spe­cies to com­pare on a spe­cies by spe­cies basis. Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence explained that that was hap­pen­ing form­ally and inform­ally already. He added that the Cairngorms Con­nect research groups are using some ECMP sites as com­par­at­ive site, moth spe­cies and small pas­ser­ines, and plant interest, look­ing at 600 spe­cies in total. Broad­er look how it’s biod­iversity is doing to obtain a dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of land man­age­ment sys­tems. g) Agree­ment that it was an inform­at­ive paper and that it was good to see wood­land expan­sion. h) Com­ment made that it was import­ant to share the good pro­gress the ECMP had made. Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence agreed and advised that a press release on the sea eagles pairs was planned to be pub­lished the fol­low­ing week. i) Com­ment made regard­ing the need to pro­mote bal­anced biod­iversity across moor­lands and the bene­fit of identi­fy­ing the eco­nom­ic bene­fits and unique selling points to encour­age oth­ers on board. Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence explained that they did not yet have the eco­nom­ic data how­ever money from wood­land car­bon would become an import­ant part in the future. CEO reminded the Board that the Author­ity were three quar­ters of the way through to reach­ing the wood­land expan­sion tar­get set in the cur­rent Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.

3. The Board:

   a) noted the pro­gress of the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship and; b) con­sidered its future development.

4. Action Point Arising: None.

AOCB

1. The Board dis­cussed the update and had the fol­low­ing com­ments and points of clarity:

   a) A Board mem­ber repor­ted that NatureScot had made a pos­it­ive devel­op­ment with new shared approaches to enable pro­gress to be made around con­ser­va­tion and spe­cies man­age­ment. CEO agreed to cir­cu­late this to the Board. b) Board self-assess­ment is a require­ment of Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, when would it be sched­uled? Con­vener advised that it was due to be under­taken in August but had slipped but it was hoped that it would take place in Octo­ber once a new deputy Con­vener had been appoin­ted. He advised that he would keep the Board updated on that front in the next couple of months. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices added that a gov­ernance review would be under­taken by the aud­it­ors and that it would be good to have a fresh set of eyes on the pro­cess. With ref­er­ence to the CEO Report, where only 8% of the pop­u­la­tion respon­ded to last caper­cail­lie sur­vey, request made to be invited as a board mem­ber to Caper­cail­lie Steer­ing Group meet­ing. CEO to dis­cuss this with the indi­vidu­al board mem­ber. c) Recog­ni­tion that only 200Ha of wood­land expan­sion was needed to reach the tar­get set in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. CEO advised that the future rate would take account of chan­ging nation­al tar­gets and would be part of the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. d) A Board Mem­ber repor­ted that there was a small sec­tion of the Spey­side Way at Drumguish that was impass­able. CEO asked that the Board mem­ber advise him of the grid ref­er­ence and he will seek to address it. Could an update be giv­en on the Dark Skies Pro­ject? CEO advised he had had a meet­ing with Crown Estate Scot­land and that they should know if the pro­ject would be a run­ner by the end Octo­ber 2020. A Board Mem­ber asked what would become of the £40k com­mit­ted to the pro­ject if it wasn’t required. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that the Green Recov­ery Pan­el would meet to agree fund­ing on applic­a­tions already received. Dis­cus­sion would take place at Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee if Obser­vat­ory pro­ject does not go ahead.

1. Action Points Arising:

   i. CEO to cir­cu­late to the Board NatureScot new shared approaches around con­ser­va­tion and spe­cies man­age­ment. ii. Deirdre Fal­con­er to provide CEO with grid ref­er­ence of Spey­side Way sec­tion at Drumguish.

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 27 Novem­ber 2020.
2. The meet­ing con­cluded at 13.20.