CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 1 27^th Novem­ber 2020

1. 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: Over the last two rounds of Scot­tish Government’s Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund, Cairngorms Nature part­ners have attrac­ted approx­im­ately £200,000 of con­ser­va­tion fund­ing tar­geted at deliv­er­ing the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan. Works which were pre­vi­ously delayed due to COV­ID-19 restric­tions are now under­way and back on track for deliv­ery by March 2021. These include river res­tor­a­tion and ripari­an plant­ing, wet grass­land man­age­ment for waders, pine hov­er­fly cap­tive breed­ing and rein­tro­duc­tion, hab­it­at cre­ation for rare inver­teb­rates, aspen plant­ing and pro­tec­tion from graz­ing, and fresh water pearl mus­sel translocation.

Work con­tin­ues on the Cairngorms Nature Index, devel­op­ing a tri­al mod­el for fresh­wa­ter sys­tems in the Park to assess hab­it­at extent and con­di­tion, spe­cies dis­tri­bu­tion and abund­ance, and indic­at­ors of eco­sys­tem func­tion­al­ity. Plan­ning starts for Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end 2021, with strong part­ner sup­port for an event which incor­por­ates both vir­tu­al and socially dis­tanced out­door experiences.

1. Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: Recruit­ment is com­plete. A Pro­ject Man­ager, Com­munity Ranger, Game­keep­er, Caper­cail­lie Advis­ory Officer and Caper­cail­lie Advis­ory Assist­ant now form the Pro­ject Team. They will soon be joined by a Com­mu­nic­a­tions Officer, Admin­is­tra­tion Officer and Pro­ject Officer. An Oper­a­tion­al Man­age­ment Team is also now in place, made up of rep­res­ent­at­ives from all of the com­munit­ies and organ­isa­tions that the pro­ject is work­ing with. More inform­a­tion about the Pro­ject Team and Oper­a­tion­al Man­age­ment Team is avail­able here.

Baseline sur­veys have been con­duc­ted to meas­ure the impact of the project’s hab­it­at improve­ment work and pred­at­or con­trol in tar­geted areas is under­way. A con­tract­or is cur­rently being recruited to ana­lyse the genet­ic diversity of the caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion in the Nation­al Park using DNA extrac­ted from caper­cail­lie feathers.

The Car­rbridge Caper­cail­lie Group are pre­par­ing to pub­lish their pri­or­it­ies for the next six months; based on the Car­rbridge Caper­cail­lie Con­ser­va­tion Strategy, the com­munity con­sulta­tion res­ults, brood sur­vey res­ults and changes neces­sary in light of Cov­id-19. Com­munity-led action work with vis­it­ors and moun­tain bikers is also con­tinu­ing to devel­op, and a work­shop to identi­fy ways in which the pro­ject can help the busi­ness com­munity to help caper­cail­lie will be hos­ted by the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship in early December.

1. Wood­land expan­sion tar­gets: We are 75% of the way through the 2017 – 22 report­ing peri­od but have now reached 95% of wood­land expan­sion tar­get of 5,000ha. The past year has seen the approv­al in the Nation­al Park of 1400 ha of new wood­land by nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion alone. This is the same amount of wood­land cre­ation as was achieved in the whole of Eng­land in 2019 by both plant­ing and regen­er­a­tion. We are con­tinu­ing to dis­cuss oppor­tun­it­ies for wood­land cre­ation with a num­ber of landown­ers across the Park. Around a dozen or so estates are cur­rently pro­pos­ing pre­dom­in­antly nat­ive wood­land schemes of at least 100ha. Some of these will be near­er 1000 ha in size and some will con­trib­ute sig­ni­fic­antly to strength­en­ing a forest hab­it­at net­work across the Nation­al Park by link­ing up wood­lands along and between river catchments.

2. Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion: Con­tract­ors are mak­ing good pro­gress on peat­land res­tor­a­tion work on sites across the Nation­al Park. There are two pro­jects on Bal­mor­al Estate above Loch Muick, two pro­jects on the south west of Glen­fe­sh­ie Estate, two pro­jects on Lynaber­ack Estate on the slopes of Meall Chuaich and one pro­ject on RSPB Aber­nethy below Byn­ack More. Work on all these sites star­ted in Septem­ber with Cov­id-19 pro­to­cols and the pro­jects should all com­plete by Christ­mas. We have one fur­ther site on Tulchan Estate that we hope to com­plete this year.

3. Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship: The Land­scape Part­ner­ship is in its final weeks and almost everything is com­plete, but it is still a race against time to com­plete a num­ber of pro­jects. Cov­id restric­tions have severely affected many areas of work, and caused some sig­ni­fic­ant delays, but the staff team led by our Head of Land Man­age­ment are work­ing extremely hard. My thanks to Will, all the team and part­ners on the TGLP Board. Final things to fin­ish include: The inter­pret­a­tion boards which have been beau­ti­fully designed and pre­pared will be going in over the next few weeks. Brown tour­ist signs high­light­ing many of the key fea­tures of the pro­gramme have been approved and will be going in soon. New Dark Sky Park friendly light­ing is being fit­ted in dozens of farms. Final tidy­ing up and land­scap­ing is being car­ried out at Blairfindy castle and wil­low bank pro­tec­tion being installed at Scalan. Extra work on the Spey­side way spur to repair recent flood dam­age is being com­pleted. Agree­ments for pur­chas­ing a new stor­age facil­ity for the com­munity to use into the future are being nego­ti­ated. Finally, 10 year Man­age­ment and Main­ten­ance agree­ments with all the many part­ners are being final­ised so that bey­ond the life of the LP pro­gramme we can ensure everything is kept in good heart, so that we and the part­ners in the com­munity can build on all the superb work that has been done over the last sev­er­al years.

Vis­it­or Experience:

1. Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um: Post ​‘Lock­down’ we have seen a 100% increase in access issues being registered with CNPA as the Access Author­ity includ­ing paths being blocked by recently locked gates, tem­por­ary fen­cing and inap­pro­pri­ate sig­nage. We have also seen a new use of social media to raise ​‘ad-hoc’ access con­cerns. On a more pos­it­ive note path coun­ters indic­ate a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in people get­ting out­doors with the August count for the Old Log­ging Way being the highest ever by 30%, some 13,300 uses with 87% on bikes. The CLOAF will vir­tu­ally meet again in early 2021 to review this year and advise on 2021.

2. Spey­side Way: In part­ner­ship with New­ton­more Com­munity an offi­cial Long Dis­tance Route branded stone is being installed at a start/​finish point in the centre of New­ton­more next to a stun­ning new shinty stick seat and asso­ci­ated inter­pret­a­tion. The route has been remapped and inter­pret­a­tion pan­els developed to install in vil­lages along the route, and new sig­nage is now in place from Kin­gussie to Tromie Bridge; all in pre­par­a­tion for a poten­tial form­al open­ing in Spring 2021. While the route is fully useable there are sev­er­al sec­tions with­in the Nation­al Park that require upgrade and improvement.

3. Moun­tains and People Pro­ject: This five year Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land led Lot­tery fun­ded pro­ject sup­por­ted by both Nation­al Park Author­it­ies, Nature Scot­land and Forestry & Land Scot­land is near­ing com­ple­tion hav­ing upgraded 53km of key moun­tain paths in Cairngorms includ­ing the pop­u­lar Munro’s of Beinn a Ghlo (Perth­shire) & Mount Keen and Loch­nagar (Aber­deen­shire). Fur­ther work is required with OATS to col­lect­ively agree how we best sup­port the ongo­ing main­ten­ance of these paths and the volun­teers engaged with the project.

4. Sea­son­al Rangers: The sum­mer con­tract for the nine sea­son­al rangers came to an end in Octo­ber with the team hav­ing engaged face to face with over 5000 vis­it­ors and sup­port­ing the work of land man­agers and com­munit­ies in encour­aging vis­it­ors to Cairngorms to have a safe, enjoy­able and respons­ible time. We have recently appoin­ted two short term winter rangers to con­tin­ue the work with vis­it­ors as required and keep the engage­ment with part­ners and com­munit­ies in pre­par­a­tion for 2021. They are work­ing closely with the recently appoin­ted Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject ranger.

5. Volun­teer­ing & Health Walks: In August both the 38 volun­teer rangers and 14 Health Walk Groups (sup­por­ted by Paths for All) were giv­en the oppor­tun­ity to safely restart if they wanted. Many of the volun­teer rangers have enjoyed get­ting out­doors sup­port­ing both the work of CNPA sea­son­al rangers and part­ner ranger ser­vices, and over half the health walk groups are back walking.

6. Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres: It has been a rather ​‘on hold’ year for LIC’s with some mainly in shut down and many of those open focussed on main­stream activ­ity. We will host a vir­tu­al gath­er­ing this winter to bring the part­ners togeth­er to plan ahead for 2021. On a pos­it­ive note; Glen­shee Pot­tery suc­cess­fully applied for Green Recov­ery Fund to redevel­op inform­a­tion, inter­pret­a­tion in the centre, Glen­liv­et Moun­tain Bike Centre has joined the team, and Brae­mar tour­ism group has secured fund­ing to devel­op an unstaffed inform­a­tion centre in the village.

7. Edu­ca­tion and Inclu­sion: Take up of John Muir Award has recom­menced fol­low­ing ​‘Lock­down’ with 789 awards so far this year con­trast­ing with a usu­al 3,000 per year. How­ever, an impress­ive back­log of 3,584 people are cur­rently registered to under­take the award in and around the Cairngorms. The CNPA, LL&TNPA and Nature Scot­land part­ner­ship is sup­port­ing Back­bone in devel­op­ing two new pro­jects; a sym­posi­um enga­ging with BAME com­munit­ies in the out­doors in response to the Black Lives Mat­ter cam­paign, and a new, one year, and ver­sion of the Com­munity Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme. The Cairngorms Youth Action Team vir­tu­ally par­ti­cip­ated in Euro­parc con­fer­ence and are input­ting to the Her­it­age Hori­zons lot­tery bid.

8. Inform­a­tion and Inter­pret­a­tion: Main activ­ity has focussed on devel­op­ing Spey­side way and sup­port­ing the work of Badenoch Great Place Scheme and Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship. After a hiatus this year we will be work­ing on the the vis­it­or leaf­lets likely to be needed in 2021.

Rur­al Development:

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020: The Plan was approved by CNPA Board on 13 Novem­ber and will be sent to Scot­tish Min­sters for final adoption.

2. Devel­op­ment on the ground: While some devel­op­ment slowed in 2020, work star­ted on the new dis­til­lery near Grant­own-on-Spey and the brand for the new whisky was launched — ​‘The Cairn’. Ground works began this sum­mer and erec­tion of the steel frame star­ted in Novem­ber. Work has con­tin­ued through­out the year on the new Badenoch & Strath­spey Com­munity Hos­pit­al and Health­care Centre in Aviemore which it due to be com­pleted in 2021.

3. Cairngorm Moun­tain: All plan­ning con­di­tions were dis­charged on time and con­struc­tion work on the funicu­lar repair has now com­menced. Advice has been giv­en to HIE on the draft Mas­ter­plan and fur­ther meet­ings are planned soon to take this forward.

4. Com­munity-led Hous­ing Deliv­ery: Com­munity Hous­ing group met in Septem­ber and pro­gress with sev­er­al pro­jects was noted. The two main pro­jects are tak­ing dif­fer­ent approaches to deliv­er­ing their hous­ing although both are work­ing to sim­il­ar times­cales. Brae­mar have appoin­ted a design team and secured loan fund­ing from CAF Ven­ture­some (a first in Scot­land) for this stage of work. They will then tender for the build once the design is agreed. In Tomin­toul a con­tract­or has been appoin­ted for a fixed price design and build scheme. Both hope to sub­mit plan­ning applic­a­tions in early 2021. In Dul­nain Bridge, feas­ib­il­ity work is under­way on afford­able self-build plots in the vil­lage. Scot­tish Min­is­ters have announced that Rur­al Hous­ing Fund is to be exten­ded — which is very welcome.

5. Eco­nom­ic Action Plan: The busi­ness sup­port pro­gramme led by Grow­biz is now estab­lished and is cur­rently recruit­ing ment­ors for its one to one new ment­or­ing pro­gramme and has held its first work­shop to estab­lish a Cairngorms women’s busi­ness net­work. Grow­biz are also work­ing to devel­op an artis­an hub for the Nation­al Park, reen­er­giz­ing and enhan­cing the Cre­at­ive Cairngorms net­work. The Smart Vil­lage concept, also led by Grow­biz, is now being developed with groups in Grant­own, Brae­mar and Ballater.

6. Tour­ism Action Plan: Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship met on 9 Novem­ber to review pro­gress with imple­ment­a­tion of the Tour­ism Action Plan and con­sider the stra­tegic changes required to our approach due to Cov­id 19. A paper will be taken to the March meet­ing of Board. The Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­pos­als and the recent vis­it­or sur­vey res­ults were also discussed.

7. Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund: Work star­ted in Novem­ber in Glen­more con­struct­ing a 2.4m wide tar­mac path link­ing Old Log­ging Way to Beach, Camp­site, Vis­it­or Centre, Reindeer Centre and the multi-use path to Glen­more Lodge — cre­at­ing the first dir­ect path from the vil­lage to the beach and link­ing OLW (13,300 uses in August 2021) safely to the key attrac­tions. Road slow raised bumps will also be installed on the minor county road at key cross­ing points to slow vehicles down. No applic­a­tions were sub­mit­ted for Round 3 of the Fund but work is being pro­gressed for future applications.

8. A9 Dualling pro­ject: Trans­port Scot­land will under­take a month long pub­lic con­sulta­tion from 17^th Novem­ber to 17^th Decem­ber on the two Non-Motor­ised User (NMU) route options for the Aviemore to Car­rbridge sec­tion; dir­ect fol­low­ing B9152, A95 and B9153 and indir­ect fol­low­ing Spey­side way to Boat of Garten, then NCN7 to A95 & B9153 to Car­rbridge. Trans­port Scot­land arranged a pre­plan­ning meet­ing with High­land Coun­cil in August atten­ded by CNPA; plan­ning, nat­ur­al her­it­age and vis­it­or ser­vices representatives.

9. Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject: The BGPP has had to adapt its pro­gramme due to the impact of COV­ID, revis­ing its approved Activ­ity Plan and gain­ing a 9 month pro­ject exten­sion from the NLHF. It has focused on those ele­ments that will form the con­tent that will pop­u­late the pub­lic facing deliv­er­ables. The vis­it­or itin­er­ar­ies are being developed and a key storytelling con­tract has now been let. 3D visu­al­isa­tions of Ruthven, Dun da Lamh and Torr Advie have been pro­duced and the first set of aer­i­al imagery of the area and key sites has now been com­pleted. All this mater­i­al will feed into both the web­site and the App which is due to launch next Spring. Very suc­cess­ful Badenoch Her­it­age Fest­iv­al was held recently and the shinty trail and web­site were launched. A work­shop to plan out the leg­acy for the pro­ject has recently been held.

10. Digit­al con­nectiv­ity: The Cairngorms Digit­al Steer­ing Group is meet­ing later in Novem­ber and will dis­cuss roll out of R100 pro­ject and Broad­band Vouch­er scheme. A pro­ject to use the ​“inter­net of things” to estab­lish a new ​“Lorow­an” Net­work and then con­nect vis­it­or and traffic mon­it­or­ing devices in the Cairngorm/​Glen­more and Aviemore area is being planned.

11. Green Recov­ery Fund: The Fund proved to be hugely pop­u­lar and was heav­ily over­sub­scribed. 13 pro­jects across the Cairngorms were chosen to share the £130,000 of fund­ing avail­able. Suc­cess­ful applic­ants include a new com­munity wood­land in Brae­mar, build­ing a sus­tain­able wel­come for camper vans, a rare invertebrate’s pro­ject and the start-up of up a new com­munity facil­ity in Kin­gussie. All pro­jects have been provided with 40% of their grant up front with the rest to be claimed on dur­ing and on com­ple­tion of the projects.

12. Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er Quarter 3 (July — Septem­ber): This study is under­taken by CBP mem­bers and is fun­ded by CNPA. This sur­vey has been run­ning for more than 13 years. Note that the sur­vey ques­tion­naire was com­pleted by more than 100 busi­nesses before the enhanced lock down meas­ures and before the recent fur­lough exten­sion. a) Busi­nesses repor­ted sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tions in both cus­tom­ers and turnover com­pared to aver­age and recent Q3’s. This indic­ates that whilst vis­it­or num­bers were gen­er­ally strong, busi­nesses did not bene­fit fin­an­cially and had a rel­at­ively poor trad­ing quarter, per­haps reflect­ing the restric­tions and the reduced capa­city under which they were oper­at­ing. b) Busi­ness con­fid­ence in the short (3 months) and medi­um (12 months) term con­tin­ues to be very low com­pared to long term aver­ages. Con­fid­ence in the long term (24 months) has reduced since Q2 2020 though is not as low as short and medi­um term con­fid­ence. c) 53% of busi­nesses remain likely or very likely to reduce staff num­bers (bey­ond nor­mal sea­son­al levels) over the com­ing months. d) 25% of busi­nesses expect to employ less staff in sum­mer 2021 than they would ​‘nor­mally’ employ. e) 48% of busi­nesses expect to have con­tin­ued reduced prof­it­ab­il­ity in sum­mer 2021 f) 15% of busi­nesses have a low con­fid­ence of sur­viv­ing (com­pared to 11% in the pre­vi­ous quarter) g) In terms of busi­ness sup­port, the organ­isa­tion which recor­ded the largest pos­it­ive change in per­cep­tion from Q2 2020 was CNPA — scores increased from 5.06 in Q2 2020 to 5.82 in Q3 2020. CNPA remains the highest place pub­lic sec­tor organisation

The full Busi­ness Baro­met­er res­ults are avail­able: https://​www​.vis​it​cairngorms​.com/​b​a​r​o​meter

Stake­hold­er Engagement:

1. The CEO is now sit­ting on the nation­al Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Strategy Group and also co-chairs the Infra­struc­ture and Invest­ment sub-group. The CEO has also atten­ded the EELG, CoHI and the NDPB For­um meet­ings dur­ing the autumn.

2. The CEO has had meet­ings with many dif­fer­ent part­ners in rela­tion to vis­it­or man­age­ment and the her­it­age hori­zons bids. The CEO has atten­ded the Equal­it­ies Advis­ory For­um and Youth Action Team in the past month. Liais­on meet­ings have been held with CES, NLHF, Spey Fish­er­ies Board, HIE, KSB, LLTTNPA and NatureScot. The CEO has also atten­ded the High­land Coun­cil Ward Area Com­mit­tee and atten­ded the Glen­more Review organ­ised by FLS. Finally the CEO spoke at and SLE train­ing event to around 100 land man­agers on access and vis­it­or management,

Com­mu­nic­a­tions:

1. Cairngorms Nature Cam­paign: Plan­ning is about to start for the Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end 2021 and the Steer­ing Group will meet later in Novem­ber to decide what this will look like. The RSPB Nature of Scot­land Awards will be announced in an online cere­mony. Our nom­in­ated pro­ject is the Dee Catch­ment Part­ner­ship river res­tor­a­tion work, which has been short­l­is­ted in the Coasts and Waters cat­egory. There are also four oth­er short­l­is­ted pro­jects with­in the Park: The Peesie Pro­ject (TGLP), Spey­side Fields for Wild­life, Peat­land ACTION and Scot­tish Wild­cat Action. The final Cli­mate Change film is being com­pleted and should be avail­able by the end of November.

2. Make It Yours Cam­paign: We launched, and are con­tinu­ing to run, #Cairngorm­sAu­tum­n­Views a social media cam­paign designed to sup­port busi­nesses by encour­aging vis­it­ors to the Park (whilst fol­low­ing cov­id restric­tions). Oth­er social media mes­saging has focused on encour­aging res­id­ents and vis­it­ors to sup­port busi­nesses in the Park by shop­ping locally.

3. Act­ive Cairngorms: We con­tin­ue to help man­age vis­it­ors to the Park, focus­ing on pro­mot­ing clear, con­sist­ent and pos­it­ive out­door access advice to encour­age respons­ible beha­viour in the Park, includ­ing tack­ling lit­ter, fires, wild camp­ing and park­ing issues. 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. This year’s Wee Walks Week took place vir­tu­ally, from 21 – 27 Septem­ber. With a focus on the bene­fits of walk­ing for health and well­being, we took the oppor­tun­ity to high­light many of the paths around the Park’s communities.

4. Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions: Scot­tish Government’s COVID19 health and safety mes­sages con­tin­ue to be pro­moted through our social media activ­ity and web­site. Octo­ber com­mu­nic­a­tions focused on youth and cul­tur­al her­it­age, with a num­ber of blogs, case stud­ies and social media high­lights pub­lished. Our new online resource – The Shinty Trail — pre­pared by Bruce Mac­Don­ald, our Gael­ic Lan­guage intern – was launched in Octo­ber, in both Eng­lish and Gael­ic. An online event about Shinty, and pro­mot­ing the new online trail, was chaired by Fiona MacLean at the vir­tu­al Badenoch Her­it­age Fest­iv­al. Novem­ber com­mu­nic­a­tions will focus on the Green Recovery.

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. We also mon­it­or staff attend­ance at site visits/​external meet­ings, which have to be on the basis that they approved at Head of Ser­vice level as being busi­ness crit­ic­al, and have imple­men­ted robust risk assess­ments and lone work­ing sys­tems to ensure staff safety and well­being. The BCP has been updated accord­ing to SG’s new tiered sys­tem, which shows how restric­tions may change depend­ing on the tier the organ­isa­tion is loc­ated. Staff have been advised that it is likely that they will con­tin­ue to Work From Home (WFH) until Spring 2021. We have con­trac­ted sev­er­al bespoke on-line courses to sup­port staff dur­ing this time, includ­ing how to man­age people in a vir­tu­al envir­on­ment; chair­ing vir­tu­al meet­ings and mind­ful­ness train­ing to sup­port resi­li­ence while WFH.

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. In the mean­time, we have appoin­ted a con­tract­or to redec­or­ate the old build­ing, and this work will take place over the winter, when staff num­bers in the build­ing are limited

3. Staff­ing update: Since Septem­ber, staff­ing updates are as fol­lows: a) Tania Alli­od joined as Rur­al Devel­op­ment Officer as at 21 Septem­ber. This is a new role, fixed term for 18 months. b) 3 of the Sea­son­al Rangers have been appoin­ted to addi­tion­al roles fol­low­ing the intern­al recruit­ment pro­cess, as fol­lows: — Duncan Mac­don­ald appoin­ted to CCP Com­munity Ranger to July 2023; Pete Short and Polly Free­man appoin­ted to the CNPA Winter Ranger posts to 31 March 2021. c) Fran­coise van Buuren retired at the end of Octo­ber, hav­ing been with the organ­iz­a­tion for 15 years. d) Car­rie Mar­low, Admin Sup­port Officer left hav­ing secured a new job in advance of her fixed year con­tract com­ing to an end. e) Six of the Sea­son­al Rangers left at the end of Octo­ber, their fixed term con­tracts hav­ing come to an end. They are; Craig Fraser, Blair John­ston, Nic­ola Wil­li­am­son, Vic­tor­ia Ing­lis, Lianne Star­buck-Steph­en, Tom Cole.

4. Youth Employ­ment: a) Intern­ships: Kath­er­ine Will­ing joined as HR intern on a 12 months con­tract. This is a new post to sup­port the increase in HR work­load over the com­ing peri­od (recruit­ment, restruc­ture and Vol­un­tary Exit Scheme) b) Appren­tice­ships: Luke Dig­gins joined as IT Appren­tice, repla­cing Reece Mus­grave, who at the end of his Intern­ship went to Uni­ver­sity to pur­sue a degree in IT. 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.

5. Shared Ser­vices: Con­tin­ued work to provide HR sup­port the Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion has included the devel­op­ment of new policies, the devel­op­ment, staff con­sulta­tion and pay remits.

6. Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment: We are cur­rently con­sult­ing with staff on the pro­posed man­age­ment restruc­ture. In addi­tion, we have launched a Vol­un­tary Exit scheme for staff – all staff with 2 years’ ser­vice are eli­gible to apply, and applic­ants will be scored on the basis of Pay­back peri­od; fit to organ­iz­a­tion­al struc­ture plan and cost/​benefit analysis.

7. LEAD­ER: The Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme has now exceeded £4 mil­lion in com­munity led loc­al devel­op­ment (CLLD) invest­ments over the last 4 years, with £4,004,092 total pro­gramme expendit­ure sup­por­ted by £2,466,302 LEAD­ER grants to com­munity groups and organ­isa­tions. The great major­ity of pro­jects have now closed and com­pleted their planned activ­it­ies, while 13 pro­jects remain act­ive and are being sup­por­ted by the team toward full clos­ure by the end of Feb­ru­ary 2021 to allow final claim by the 31 March 2021 dead­line. In addi­tion to man­aging the effi­cient com­ple­tion of live pro­jects, the LEAD­ER team is also turn­ing its atten­tion to pre­par­ing for pro­gramme clos­ure and extern­al audit. The team are also sup­port­ing the deliv­ery of the com­mis­sioned ​“Trans­port in Cairngorms and Kilkenny” (TICK) pro­ject with 3 lots of elec­tric bikes now pro­cured, with all pro­cure­ment lots won by loc­al cycle busi­nesses, and an elec­tric minibus to oper­ate in part­ner­ship with the Badenoch and Strath­spey Com­munity Trans­port Com­pany to be pro­cured over the next month. The pro­ject has drawn atten­tion of the gov­ern­ment in Éire, with the pro­ject team meet­ing the Irish Nation­al Parks Ser­vice rep­res­ent­at­ive last week at the request of an Irish Min­is­ter to advise on their rep­lic­at­ing the pro­ject ini­ti­at­ive in some way.

Grant Moir Novem­ber 2020

Board Con­vener Report – For Information

Firstly I would like to con­grat­u­late Car­o­lyn Cad­dick on her elec­tion as Board Deputy Con­vener. I would also offer my thanks and com­mis­er­a­tions to Elean­or Mack­in­tosh and Fiona McLean for their offer of ser­vice to the Board. The postal vote ran very smoothly and I would con­grat­u­late the staff involved in the organ­isa­tion. We will use this same pro­cess for the elec­tion of the new Plan­ning Con­vener this month.

Now that the imme­di­ate COV­ID response work­load has reduced we have been able to pick up on a num­ber of delayed items of work includ­ing most import­antly the plan­ning for the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. This work, par­tic­u­larly with part­ners will intensi­fy in 2021 and is still expec­ted to fin­ish on time in 2022.

As we look to our new pri­or­it­ies for the next NPPP, we need to ensure that the organ­isa­tion is ready both on the Board and officer side to execute those new pri­or­it­ies. Over the com­ing months the staff will be con­sul­ted on a man­age­ment restruc­ture and a Vol­un­tary Exit Scheme is also being offered to staff. Through the Board Devel­op­ment Con­ver­sa­tions over the next couple of months we will look too ensure we have the right struc­tures on the Board side to scru­tin­ise future deliv­ery of our new pri­or­it­ies and con­tin­ue to strengthen governance.

As the final Board report of the year, I feel it is import­ant to recog­nise the enorm­ous amount of work put in across the year by officers and Board mem­bers. We have col­lect­ively achieved a huge amount in very short peri­od of time and our abil­ity to respond so quickly to chan­ging cir­cum­stances has demon­strated the agil­ity of the organ­isa­tion. How­ever, we must also recog­nise that we could not have achieved everything we have without the close cooper­a­tion of our part­ners and com­munit­ies. Years of close work­ing and build­ing of rela­tion­ships allowed every­one to act as one team in response to an unpre­ced­en­ted situ­ation since the found­ing of the Park. My grate­ful thanks to you all and I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing what we can col­lect­ively achieve next year as we cre­ate our next NPPP.

Xan­der McDade Board Convener

Oth­er Board Mem­ber Updates

Car­o­lyn Caddick

I atten­ded the vir­tu­al, Scot­tish Lands and Estates Con­fer­ence on Tue 10^th Nov. The focus was very heav­ily on Cli­mate Change and the key­note speak­er was Pro­fess­or Dieter Helm from Oxford Uni­ver­sity, who gave one of the most con­cise but also wide-ran­ging present­a­tions on Peat, Trees, Bio-crops and the import­ance of soil! He spe­cific­ally focused on motiv­at­ing people to make real changes now and how the use of regen­er­at­ive agri­cul­ture is so import­ant in sup­port­ing these changes. There were present­a­tions from 4 Scot­tish Busi­nesses focus­ing on how they are diver­si­fy­ing in order to sur­vive, par­tic­u­larly giv­en the pres­sures from COV­ID restric­tions and there was a debate between MSPs, which covered COV­ID, Brexit and Cli­mate Change challenges.

Dr Fiona Mclean

On 8^th and 9^th Septem­ber, I atten­ded the vir­tu­al Euro­parc con­fer­ence. Inev­it­ably, dis­cus­sion was dom­in­ated by Nation­al Park responses to the influx of vis­it­ors post lock­down over the sum­mer months. I am proud to say that the present­a­tion by Mur­ray Fer­guson on behalf of CNPA which related our approach to vis­it­or man­age­ment, was the most warmly received and the most inspir­a­tion­al of the present­a­tions. It emphas­ised the sig­ni­fic­ance of work­ing in part­ner­ship in devel­op­ing a stra­tegic and effect­ive response. My oth­er main take away from the con­fer­ence was the import­ance of research for mon­it­or­ing and devel­op­ing under­stand­ing; that it should be built in to any pro­gramme at an early stage; and that care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to ask­ing the right research questions!