CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 3 27^th Novem­ber 2020

1. CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: CAIRNGORMS VIS­IT­OR MAN­AGE­MENT REVIEW

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

Pur­pose

1. This is the end of sea­son review look­ing at the vis­it­or man­age­ment work that has been under­taken in the Park this sum­mer and also look­ing at the work to be done this winter.

Over­view

1. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity has been work­ing with part­ners across the Nation­al Park since spring. There was 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 in Annex 1.

2. The Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group 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 and the CEO now sits on the nation­al Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Steer­ing Group and co-chairs the Investment/​Infrastructure sub-group with the CEO of LLTTNPA. CNPA are also rep­res­en­ted on the com­mu­nic­a­tions, enforce­ment and oper­a­tion­al sub-groups.

4. A Sea­son Review meet­ing was held on 28^th Octo­ber and this paper sets out the work review work as well as the work that is being under­taken this winter.

5. It is worth acknow­ledging as we review and look to the future all the vis­it­or man­age­ment efforts by a range of part­ners in these unpre­ced­en­ted times and that the coordin­ated efforts have gone a long way to lim­it the impacts across the Nation­al Park.

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.

	What worked	Work for 2021 (East­er)
Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Plans	Gave a good focus for the work and made sure that every­one was bought in to the actions under­taken. Good inform­a­tion col­lated from land man­agers across the summer.	Will revamp VMP’s dur­ing this winter for Deeside, Glen­more and cre­ate a new one for Angus Glens. Still with­in over­all CNP frame­work VMP.
Cairngorms Togeth­er development	This gave an excel­lent focus to the com­mu­nic­a­tions work and also ensured good buy-in from res­id­ents, busi­nesses, coun­cilors etc.	CBP and CNPA to con­tin­ue to work to refine mes­sages with part­ners and ensure we have agreed approach in place for start of next season.
Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group	The over­all VMG worked very well, was well atten­ded and made com­mu­nic­a­tion and coordin­a­tion as easy as could be.	Con­tin­ue with VMG dur­ing the winter but on a monthly basis and set up sub-groups on the spe­cif­ic work in areas covered by sub-plans.

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.

	What worked	Key Issues to address for 2021
Access Mes­sages	As the Access Author­ity the CNPA has been very clear on mes­sages around fires, bbq’s, lit­ter and camping.	Need to ensure that we get con­sist­ency with nation­al and region­al mes­saging and that those mes­sages are pos­it­ive, con­sist­ent, clear and concise
Resources such as posters and infographics	posters and infograph­ics were well received.	Small access comms sub group for 2020 to be set up. CNPA, CBP, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire, SLE to devel­op agreed mes­sages in advance of the sea­son build­ing on Tread Lightly and nation­al messaging.
Web­site Information	CNPA has had Cov­id spe­cif­ic pages + inform­a­tion on what car parks and toi­lets were open. CBP had a spe­cif­ic web­site set­ting out what busi­nesses were open and rel­ev­ant inform­a­tion. Very good website.	Poten­tial to look at real time inform­a­tion for what car parks are open and how busy they are. Look to devel­op web­site copy that can be shared across partner’s websites.
Sig­nage	CNP sig­nage at lots of loc­a­tion in the Park. Wel­comed by land managers.	Agree suite of sig­nage for next sea­son dur­ing the winter season.
Social Media (see Annex 2 for info)	The CNPA, CBP, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire and many oth­ers have been put­ting out sig­ni­fic­ant mes­sages around vis­it­or man­age­ment through­out the summer.	Con­tin­ue to look at how the loc­al mes­saging fits with­in the work at a nation­al level. Ensure con­sist­ency across the Park of mes­sages and audiences.

	What worked	Key Issues to address for 2021
#Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er approach and inter­views on radio and TV.	There has been sig­ni­fic­ant work to tar­get 1st time vis­it­ors and spe­cific­ally the 18 – 30 year old, audi­ence includ­ing pur­chas­ing adverts on social media aimed at a young­er visitor	Need to use the vis­it­or sur­vey inform­a­tion to also inform decisions. Devel­op plans for loc­al mes­saging that reaches out to residents.
Com­munity Engagement	Zoom meet­ings were also held by CNPA & CBP with com­munity coun­cils, loc­al author­ity coun­cilors and res­id­ents in June and again in late August.	Fur­ther com­munity engage­ment dur­ing the winter to keep people up to speed and also ensure that any pro­posed changes are well trailed.

Rangers, Sea­son­al Rangers & Police

1. Boots on the ground has been a crit­ic­al part of the work done this sum­mer by a range of dif­fer­ent organ­isa­tions across the Park.

	What worked	Key Issues to address for 2021
CNPA Sea­son­al Rangers (see Annex 3 for info)	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. Lots of great feed­back from res­id­ents and land managers.	The CNPA is look­ing at its man­age­ment struc­ture around CNPA ranger ser­vices for Spring 2021. CNPA keep­ing on 2 rangers dur­ing the winter to help liais­on and devel­op­ment of approach for 2021. (see Annex 4)
	There were some comms issues between estate based ser­vices and sea­son­al rangers. Most of these were rec­ti­fied but some will need address­ing this winter.	man­agers devel­op stand­ard oper­at­ing pro­ced­ures. Look at a joint rota between estate-based ser­vices and CNPA rangers so that we all know who is doing what and where there are gaps to plug espe­cially in areas without an estate based ser­vice. Link closely to communities.
Estate based services	There has been 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.	Still a need to increase the ​‘Team Cairngorms’ approach between exist­ing estate-based ranger ser­vices and CNPA sea­son­als. Link in with the vis­it­or man­age­ment meet­ings being set up.
Police Ser­vice	Police Scot­land have been stretched dur­ing Cov­id but have been respons­ive to call-outs across the Park on vis­it­or man­age­ment issues. Good com­mu­nic­a­tion with Police on the west side of the Park, less so with East side.	Meet­ing with Police on both sides of the Park to dis­cuss sea­son 2021 and key con­tact points and lead officers such as wild­life crime. In part­ner­ship with Police Scot­land ensure police officers are fully aware of vis­it­or man­age­ment require­ments and expectations.

Fire Ser­vice

Good work on prac­tic­al fire action e.g. put­ting out fires at Loch Mor­lich. Need to set up a more stra­tegic approach to con­tacts and approach across the Park.

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.

	What worked	Key Issues to address for 2021
Toi­lets	Most toi­lets opened very quickly across the Park.	Key issues is cost and ensur­ing that the capa­city is in place if we have increased vis­it­or numbers.
Camper­vans	Def­in­itely a key issue. FLS tri­alled some sites for overnight stays.	CBP fun­ded through the CNPA Green Recov­ery Fund to help address this issue. Need to increase capa­city and waste dis­pos­al points.
Camp­ing	This is a key issue and was focused on in mes­sages and by rangers across the Park.	Poten­tial to look at more inform­al camp­sites at key places. Con­tin­ue mes­saging and boots on the ground.
Lit­ter	Skip was placed in Glen­more car park early to help. Mes­saging has been gen­er­ally con­sist­ent. More to do on this.	Work with the nation­al Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group to agree con­sist­ent approach to lit­ter mes­saging and ensure lead agen­cies play their part.
Path Infra­struc­ture	Increased usage and cov­id restric­tions on main­ten­ance led to some issues early in the summer.	Likely to be con­tin­ued high usage of paths across the Park. Need to ensure that col­lect­ively there is the right invest­ment in path maintenance.

1. 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’.

	What worked	Key Issues to address for 2021
Traffic Man­age­ment	The CNPA has worked with estates and loc­al author­it­ies to put in solu­tions includ­ing vari­able mes­sage speed lim­its at Glen­more, road traffic order at Glen Muick & sim­il­ar approach at Linn of Dee, park­ing bol­lards at a num­ber of loc­a­tions includ­ing Glen­more, Loch Insh and Achlean.	As part of VMP dis­cus­sion organ­ise spe­cif­ic meet­ings on traffic man­age­ment with Loc­al Author­it­ies, Police and rel­ev­ant estates to estab­lish approach for 2021 based on what worked.
Over­flow car parks	Over­flow car parks were provided at GlenTanar and Linn of Dee	Poten­tial to have more of these for next sea­son in key places. Identi­fy through VMPs.
Vari­able Signs	4 vari­able signs have been in place. 2 in Deeside, 1 in Glen­shee and 1 in Glenmore	Need to look at loc­a­tions for next year and size of signs. Poten­tial to look at per­man­ent option for Glenmore.

Next Steps

1. The Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group has agreed to work on pro­du­cing fur­ther iter­a­tions of the vis­it­or man­age­ment plans. Meet­ings have been set up with key part­ners in Glenmore/​Strathspey, Deeside and Angus Glens for November/​December to look at the key issues and the invest­ment needed for 2021.

2. The Com­mu­nic­a­tions Sub-Group meet­ing is also being set up as per the sea­son review.

3. The Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group as a whole is going to go to monthly meet­ings dur­ing the winter peri­od and then start to ramp up again in March 2021 as we approach Easter.

4. 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. The work that the CNPA is feed­ing into a nation­al level will also help deliv­er an improved approach but some of the infra­struc­ture improve­ments may take a bit of time to deliv­er and not everything can be done by the start of the 2021 season.

5. The CNPA are devel­op­ing the plans for a CNPA Ranger Ser­vice that will com­ple­ment exist­ing ranger ser­vices in the Park and will include this in the man­age­ment restruc­ture the CNPA is cur­rently under­tak­ing and will look at the final shape of this post the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment budget and the CNPA Grant-in-aid for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂.

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.

7. With­in the Park Author­ity as well as the front­line sup­port indic­ated in this paper there has been fant­ast­ic cor­por­ate sup­port from HR to recruit and sup­port the ranger team, com­mu­nic­a­tions work 7 days a week, all the risk assess­ment work and the sup­port from the vis­it­or ser­vices team across all these work areas. None of it would have been achieved without that support.

Grant Moir grantmoir@​cairngorms.​co.​uk Pete Crane petecrane@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Novem­ber 2020

Annex 1 Key CNP Vis­it­or Man­age­ment & Tour­ism Groups

Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group

Chair Grant Moir CNPA

• Cairngorms Busi­ness Partnership
• Vis­it Aberdeenshire
• Aber­deen­shire Council
• High­land Council
• Police Scot­land
• Scot­tish Land & Estates
• RSPB Aber­nethy
• Mar Lodge Estate NTS

• Cairngorm Moun­tain

• Atholl Estate

• Rothiemurchus Estate
• Bal­mor­al Estate
• Glen Tanar Estate
• Forestry and Land Scotland
• NatureScot
• High­lands & Islands Enterprise
• Angus Alive

Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group

Chair Janet Hunter CNPA

• Cairngorms Busi­ness Partnership
• Vis­it Aberdeenshire
• Moray Spey­side

• High­land Council

• Aber­deen­shire Council

• Vis­it Scotland
• High­land & Islands Enterprise
• Angus Alive

Annex 2 Sum­mary of Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Engage­ment with Coronavir­us Guid­ance & Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Messages

Data Obser­va­tions

• With the first phase of eas­ing of restric­tions (29^th May) we saw a major increase in our digit­al com­mu­nic­a­tions reach and from the second phase (19^th June) we saw the largest increase in our reach and engage­ment. From the 15^th July when tour­ism resumed in Scot­land our digit­al chan­nels have main­tained high levels and engage­ment through­out the sum­mer – vis­its to the web­site increased by 47% com­pared to the same peri­od in 2019.
• From March to Septem­ber, we pub­lished 904 posts to CNPA Face­book, Twit­ter and Ins­tagram accounts, reach­ing 3.1 mil­lion accounts, attract­ing 5,053 new fol­low­ers – doub­ling some of our more loc­al audiences.
• Our posts using #Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er reached 1.3 mil­lion users on social media.
• Our Vis­it­or Man­age­ment, COV­ID, Stay Safe and Out­door Access posts reached 1.8 mil­lion users on social media.
• The Spir­it of the Cairngorms respons­ible access video we made in part­ner­ship with 3 social media influ­en­cers and the RSPB gen­er­ated 179,000 views in a month.
• 20,605 people liked, com­men­ted and shared our Phys­ic­al Dis­tan­cing High­land Cow posts – pro­mot­ing the 2 metre stay safe message.
• We saw a 215% increase in people aged 18 – 24 years in Scot­land vis­it­ing the web­site dur­ing lockdown.
• We ran a series of Google Adverts pro­mot­ing respons­ible access around camp­ing, lit­ter­ing and vis­it­ing the park for 56 days which gen­er­ated 71,200 ad impres­sions and 6,900 clicks through to our web­site via the search engine.

For a more in-depth ana­lys­is please vis­it: https://​bit​.ly/​3​8​eIXVy

Annex 3 Sum­mary of CNPA Sea­son­al Ranger Engage­ment with Vis­it­ors 29 July – 30 October

Loc­a­tion	No of people spoken (exclud­ing campers)	No of campers (tents) spoken with	No of campers (camper­vans) spoken with	No of fires tackled	No of bags of lit­ter	No of Incid­ents of Fly tipping
STRATH­SPEY	1147	43	60	57	44.5	17
BADENOCH	149	10	9	26	37.7	6
DEESIDE EAST OF BALLATER	650	26	13	36	27.45	1
DEESIDE WEST OF BALLATER	516	185	54	49	31.25	0
GLEN­MORE & ROTHIEMURCHUS	2785	696	84	144	81.2	11
Totals	5247	960	220	312	222	35

1. Key ​‘hot spots’ Deeside — Muir of Din­net, Glen Tanar, Loch Muich, Linn of Dee &, lat­terly, Clunie Flats
2. Key ​‘hot spots’ Badenoch & Strath­spey – Glenmore

Improved traffic and road man­age­ment, increased sig­nage and con­sist­ent mes­saging across the park has helped enorm­ously in get­ting the mes­sage about respons­ible beha­viour to the vis­it­ors. Where capa­city has allowed work has included com­munit­ies & has expan­ded on request with inputs to Tomin­toul, Achlean, & Laggan

Annex 4 — CNPA Ranger Service

The CNPA is look­ing to the estab­lish­ment a per­man­ent CNPA Ranger Ser­vice. This will com­ple­ment exist­ing ranger struc­tures in the CNP and will not replace them or the CNPA grant sup­port for them. The CNPA Rangers have the bene­fit of being flex­ible across the Park and will look to estab­lish close work­ing rela­tion­ships with res­id­ents, com­munit­ies and land man­agers. The inform­a­tion below sets out at a high level the sorts of work the Rangers will get involved in across the year although it will not be as rigid as the time alloc­a­tions below.

1) Vis­it­or Man­age­ment from East­er to September

* Key sites, patrolling & messages (especially those areas without estate-based services)
* Engagement with existing estate-based ranger services
* Engagement with visitors and communities

2) Octo­ber to March

* Outdoor Learning (JMA's, Junior Rangers etc.)
* Nature - supporting cairngorms nature partnership
* Health - support health walks
* Maintenance – Ensure infrastructure managed by CNPA in good condition.