CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held via LifeS­ize Video Con­fer­en­cing on Fri­day 22^nd Janu­ary 2021 at 10.00

PRESENT

Xan­der McDade (Con­vener) | Elean­or Mack­in­tosh Car­o­lyn Cad­dick (Deputy Con­vener) | Wil­lie McK­enna Peter Argyle | Ian McLar­en Geva Black­ett | Dr. Fiona McLean Deirdre Fal­con­er | Wil­li­am Mun­ro Pippa Had­ley | Anne Rae Mac­don­ald Janet Hunter | Dr. Gaen­er Rodger John Kirk | Derek Ross John Lath­am | Judith Webb Douglas McAdam |

In Attend­ance:

Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Pete May­hew, Dir­ect­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Vis­it­or Ser­vices Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Rur­al Devel­op­ment Pete Crane, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices Oliv­er Dav­ies, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Engage­ment Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies:

Wel­come and Introduction

1. Xan­der McDade, the Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the spe­cial meet­ing of the Park Board and noted there were no apologies.

Mat­ters arising

1. There were no mat­ters arising.

Declar­a­tions of Interest

1. Declar­a­tions of interest were invited. There were no interests declared.

²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ Budget: Ranger Ser­vices (Paper 1)

1. Grant Moir, CEO and Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices presen­ted Paper I which seeks the Board approv­al to estab­lish a Sea­son­al Ranger Ser­vice for the 2021 cal­en­dar year. He explained that this is a stage point decision with­in the wider ser­vice devel­op­ment and ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ budget pro­cess, required at this point in time to facil­it­ate devel­op­ment of a core ser­vice capa­city in time for the anti­cip­ated com­mence­ment of the vis­it­or man­age­ment sea­son at end March / early April 2021.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Sev­er­al mem­bers spoke in sup­port the intro­duc­tion of Kick­start rangers and par­tic­u­larly start­ing them on the liv­ing wage rather than min­im­um wage. It was con­sidered cru­cial that we do that and sup­port it. The mem­ber did have con­cerns about the impact on the budget, and noted the need to ensure we’ve got a plan in place if we don’t get fin­an­cial set­tle­ment that we are hop­ing which would have a ser­i­ous impact on oth­er pro­jects. b) A mem­ber com­men­ted the organ­isa­tion is going to be under a huge amount of stress as we come into the sea­son in terms of our infra­struc­ture. The mem­ber believed the pro­pos­als have got an edu­ca­tion­al bene­fit as well, not only in terms of the Kick­start place­ments for young people and get­ting young people involved in work­ing in the Park, but also in terms of what the Rangers can offer in terms of edu­ca­tion to people com­ing to park for the first time. The mem­ber believed the pro­pos­al rep­res­ents money well spent and is wholly in favour of this paper. c) A mem­ber com­men­ted they sup­port this and the con­tin­ued invest­ment in a ranger ser­vice in the Park area. In regards to this spe­cif­ic pro­pos­al the mem­ber had a few queries/​concerns: the first is around the fin­ances, we’ve only really seen head­line fig­ures no detailed costs, £0.25 mil­lion is quite lot of money; the actu­al gross FTE cost on an annu­al basis equi­val­ent would be nearly £40k for these pos­i­tions, which seem expens­ive. The mem­ber indic­ated this level of spend mer­ited an options paper of how this resource could be delivered and asked what options had been con­sidered in arriv­ing at the recom­mend­a­tion. The CEO respon­ded that this is a cost-effect­ive approach for what we are doing with­in the Park. Two key things in this regard. Firstly, the flex­ib­il­ity in deploy­ment of a Park Author­ity Ranger Ser­vice is cru­cial, and it is only by employ­ing rangers that you can have that flex­ib­il­ity as they are the only Rangers that can work across land­hold­ings, which is key for what we are doing. Secondly, the CEO repor­ted the costs are broadly com­par­at­ive: in effect we are look­ing at a post which we rota on even­ings and week­ends incor­por­at­ing allow­ances with­in the salary at a BI grade which is sim­il­ar grade as oth­er ranger ser­vices at oth­er Nation­al Parks across the UK. The CEO also advised that hav­ing CNPA pres­ence on the ground is very cru­cial as a Park Author­ity. We have a mixed mod­el already with­in the Nation­al Park, we give grant fund­ing to Rothiemurchus Estate, Atholl Estate, Bal­mor­al Estate, Glen Tanar Estate, Angus Alive (who run the Rangers in the Glen Doll area) and to the RSPB Com­munity Ranger in Nethy­bridge. It’s the com­ple­ment­ar­ity between the estate based ranger ser­vices and the flex­ib­il­ity of the CNPA ranger based ser­vice that is abso­lutely cru­cial to effect­ive over­all deploy­ment and it’s that com­bin­a­tion that makes this the best way for­ward for the Park Author­ity. The CEO reit­er­ated that we will be work­ing closely with ranger ser­vices and with oth­er people to review how this all works. As things stand, it is cru­cial to have CNPA Ranger pres­ence with­in the Park. The mem­ber agreed that we need a mixed mod­el, and it would be help­ful to under­stand what the invest­ment is at the moment, where it is going into estate based rangers and work­ing with loc­al author­it­ies. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices referred to the estim­ated cost per FTE ranger and con­firmed this was estim­ated as £38,000 for dir­ectly employed rangers, com­pared with a bench­mark cost of £36,000 includ­ing VAT for con­trac­ted estate based rangers: there­fore not a sig­ni­fic­antly wide gap in terms of cost while it was best value on which the Author­ity was expec­ted to make such ser­vice decisions. The Dir­ect­or also high­lighted that the dir­ect employ­ment of rangers was also cru­cial to enable the employ­ment of Kick­start rangers which mem­bers had com­men­ted on very pos­it­ively, as we needed rangers in our employ­ment to sup­port and man­age these young people. The Con­vener con­firmed the plan to con­tin­ue to review how this is work­ing, as the Author­ity did last year on oper­a­tions through the sea­son, ensur­ing that we are get­ting value for money across all the dif­fer­ent ranger pro­vi­sion. d) A mem­ber agreed with earli­er com­ment that we are going to find ourselves under enorm­ous pres­sure again this sum­mer. The CNPA Rangers worked well last year but they couldn’t be every­where all the time and referred to ideas sug­ges­ted by the SLE paper. The mem­ber felt this would be a good oppor­tun­ity to put some fund­ing into train­ing people work­ing on ground, so that we can find a way of every­body work­ing togeth­er. The CEO respon­ded that dis­cus­sions are already under­way: in effect, all land man­agers with estate based ranger ser­vices are involved in vis­it­or man­age­ment groups and we will be work­ing with them closely over the next few months on the back of whatever the decision we make today and to pre­pare on the lead up to East­er. There will be lots of ongo­ing work with Estates to make sure we have got the right approach for the sum­mer and not just around the ranger ser­vices but also around infra­struc­ture, trans­port, traffic and all the oth­er things we need to put in place and on com­mu­nic­a­tions. Rangers remain vital as ulti­mately, we are try­ing to get as much resources as we can in the right places in the Park for this com­ing sum­mer. e) A mem­ber echoed the need for this pro­pos­al, and for vis­it­or man­age­ment gains and the import­ance of the edu­ca­tion­al bene­fit of this. The mem­ber noted the paper under­stand­ably is a stage point, estab­lish­ing the ranger ser­vice for this sea­son, and there’s a lim­it at what could be achieved at this stage. The mem­ber con­firmed their desire at the end of the sea­son to see a review to bring to the table more of that back­ground inform­a­tion that we would want to see for longer term decision mak­ing. While being keen to embed this ranger ser­vice in our activ­it­ies going for­ward, there is a need to have that inform­a­tion and the details to make all the right decisions to ensure we do have a per­man­ent ranger ser­vice going for­ward. The mem­ber assum­ing an Equal­it­ies Impact Assess­ment (EQIA) will be done for this, and wished to emphas­ise the sig­ni­fic­ance of equal­it­ies train­ing for our rangers not­ing our Equal­it­ies Pan­el would be keen to sup­port if in need of any advice for this. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed the pro­cesses and pro­ced­ures which we will be using are already equal­ity impact assessed: all of our recruit­ment pro­cesses are already assessed and oth­er strands of our employ­ment pro­cesses are also equal­ity assessed. The Dir­ect­or con­firmed the Author­ity will be draw­ing up the EQIA of the deliv­ery of our sea­son­al ranger ser­vice. f) A mem­ber agreed that it would have been good to have a dif­fer­ent options paper. They indic­ated they have done a bit of research on what rangers else­where are get­ting paid which ranges from £19k- £25k, and struggled with how we get to pay rangers £36k a year, with con­cerns about the budget as the res­ult of that. The CEO cla­ri­fied we are not pay­ing that to sea­son­al rangers: the salary will be £16,999 pro rata pay is £27k for full year, at BI grade which takes into account work­ing even­ings and week­ends. Oth­er cost is oncosts such as employ­ers’ nation­al insur­ance and estim­ated pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions so that is not paid to the indi­vidu­al. The CEO reflec­ted the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices pre­vi­ous response that this broadly com­par­able to oth­er ranger ser­vices that oper­ate. The CEO also reflec­ted his view that it is a good thing that we are pay­ing a good wage to people who are doing import­ant work out in the Park. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices also reflec­ted the Board needed to con­sider, in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate and in seek­ing to secure an effect­ive ranger ser­vice, which organ­isa­tions would be will­ing to take on the poten­tial employ­ment risks of addi­tion­al staff and wheth­er these could be guar­an­teed to be in the right areas of the Cairngorms where people would need to be deployed. The mem­ber asked wheth­er the Author­ity might employ more part time ranger posts, so that the park is not pay­ing nation­al insur­ance con­tri­bu­tions on jobs and open up the flex­ib­il­ity for people who have anoth­er job or have home com­mit­ments. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices respon­ded that as part of our equal­it­ies con­sid­er­a­tions we always offer job share or part-time work­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for recruit­ment oppor­tun­it­ies, while our nation­al insur­ance costs were estim­ated over a range of con­tracts. He also reflec­ted the poten­tial man­age­ment and rota issues over the employ­ment of a very large num­ber of part time posts. g) A mem­ber com­men­ted that this pro­pos­al is vital for our 2021 vis­it­or man­age­ment approach, and that it was great to see park rangers out and about with the park logo as it’s good for the impact of the Author­ity to be seen. While we often hav­ing a key enabling func­tion, a lot of the vis­it­ors will only see the rangers. The mem­ber reflec­ted that points were well made about FTE cost­ing, but we always offer flex­ible work­ing pat­terns which is good for equal­it­ies and good for people in the Park gen­er­ally who have more than one job but can flex. The flex­ible recruit­ment will give us that oppor­tun­ity regard­less of any sav­ing we make on nation­al insur­ance. The mem­ber reit­er­ated the wider value of a review of the mixed mod­el includ­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of and sup­port for oth­er ranger ser­vices at the end of the sea­son. An early review of any les­sons learned from last sea­son would be par­tic­u­larly help­ful. The mem­ber asked wheth­er there are any nation­al net­works to learn from while sup­port­ing the notion that wider com­mu­nic­a­tions were vital to suc­cess­ful work in this area. The CEO respon­ded that there is a UK Nation­al Parks ranger net­work and with­in Scot­land there is the Scot­land Coun­tryside Rangers Asso­ci­ation (SCRA). With­in the CNP we have a ranger get togeth­er once a year, a lot of net­work­ing things hap­pen at UK, Scot­tish and CNP level. The CEO reminded mem­bers that staff pro­duced the end of sea­son review, and have pre­vi­ously done papers on rangers. The CEO stated that he would aim to bring an over­view of ranger ser­vices with the budget paper in March. The Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices added the annu­al nation­al ranger gath­er­ing is being held vir­tu­ally on Thursday 28^th Janu­ary. The Con­vener sum­mar­ised that it would be use­ful to have a paper brought to Board in March: mem­bers want to under­stand essen­tially how our dif­fer­ent types of rangers in the Park work togeth­er. h) A mem­ber wel­comed bring­ing for­ward a sea­son­al ranger ser­vice and regard­ing the budget, felt the Author­ity has no choice but to do this: if presen­ted with a list of options and implic­a­tions for top sli­cing the budget, this would come out as top pri­or­ity. The mem­ber stated a view that this is a great news story if we agree it, while in terms of pub­li­city stated it’s really import­ant we don’t for­get the estate based rangers that are out and about all year and that we get good cov­er­age of the work they do as well as the sea­son­al rangers. The Con­vener agreed this would come out on top as pri­or­ity and expressed his view that it is vital that we do approve this today. i) A mem­ber agreed that this is a top pri­or­ity for the Park, sup­port­ing the vis­it­or man­age­ment. The mem­ber liked the mixed mod­el that we have in the Nation­al Park of the sea­son­al, volun­teer, grant-in-aid and oth­er organ­isa­tion­al rangers to see them vis­ibly across the Nation­al Park. Hav­ing Nation­al Park rangers is key to how we sup­port vis­it­or man­age­ment. The mem­bers agreed a review would be use­ful in learn­ing how to help us embed and devel­op the ser­vice going for­ward par­tic­u­larly giv­en poten­tial it as some­thing that we have forever going for­ward in the Park. j) A mem­ber agreed this is a good oppor­tun­ity to make pub­lic aware of the valu­able con­tri­bu­tion of the Author­ity and shows good col­lab­or­a­tion between land man­agers and CNPA. The mem­ber sought cla­ri­fic­a­tion around the age eli­gib­il­ity for the Kick­start rangers giv­en our rangers poten­tially deal with con­flict, so there is an increase ele­ment of man­age­ment there. The CEO con­firmed there was an age range of 18 – 24 and people must be on uni­ver­sal cred­it to be eli­gible. The CEO con­firmed there will be man­age­ment implic­a­tions asso­ci­ated with employ­ing young people through Kick­start. He noted all think it is a pos­it­ive thing to do, and we are one of the 12 Nation­als Parks doing it. k) A mem­ber sought clar­ity in terms of what the Board is being asked to approve today, refer­ring to 6b) in the paper where there is men­tion of determ­in­ing the full per­man­ent and sea­son­al ranger com­pli­ment, and not­ing dis­cus­sion and some sup­port for hav­ing a wider a review. The CEO con­firmed sea­son­al rangers will be employed on a 7 month con­tract. The pro­pos­al is to look at Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment budget out­come next week for the Park Author­ity and take for­ward the budget pro­pos­al on the 12^th March which may include per­man­ent ranger pro­pos­als depend­ing on fund­ing alloc­a­tions in response to bids made. l) A mem­ber respon­ded that they are fully sup­port­ive of it, not­ing when we looked at this as a Board back in Novem­ber the board totally agreed to pro­gress it for 2021. The pay scale seems fine, reas­on­able and prop­er, it’s not the job of the Board to set the pay scale — that’s an oper­a­tion­al issue, happy to leave that to our officers to do in the appro­pri­ate way. The mem­ber noted the 2020 sea­son was an incred­ibly dif­fi­cult and chal­len­ging one. The sea­son­al rangers did a huge amount of work to pre­vent prob­lems get­ting worse than they did. The mem­ber stated 2021 is going to be very pres­sured as well; we need to be ready for that; we need to get the rangers in place quickly; and we need to get ready to cope with what is going to be a very tough sea­son. We need to review it as we go and no doubt the pos­it­ive dia­logue with oth­er land man­age­ment estates, loc­al author­it­ies, and oth­er ranger ser­vices that hav­ing been tak­ing place will con­tin­ue to take place. The mem­ber com­men­ded the Kick­start pro­pos­al high­light­ing a lot of work has gone in to get us into this pos­i­tion: it is a very good thing and com­mend the work done on this to get us involved in the pro­gramme. The mem­ber stated their sup­port of paper m) A mem­ber noted they would be very wor­ried if this leads to spe­cial con­stables, and hoped that we are not trav­el­ling down that road as that leads to all sorts of prob­lems. The mem­ber noted it was great to have young people involved in this with loss of oth­er engage­ment with young people in some areas. The CEO respon­ded that the Author­ity runs a travel grant scheme in the Park: £8k for travel funds for schools com­ing into the park, and we are plan­ning to sup­port that going for­ward. The CEO con­firmed the Author­ity had not had any con­ver­sa­tions about any of the rangers being spe­cial con­stables in the Park, and this is not some­thing we are look­ing to devel­op. The Con­vener high­lighted it is import­ant to recog­nise the struc­ture for our ranger ser­vice is going to be integ­rated with edu­ca­tion under­taken by the Author­ity n) A mem­ber agreed it is a great idea to put in rangers, reflect­ing the expect­a­tion the Nation­al Park will be very busy over next few years as people won’t be going abroad. The mem­ber indic­ated a hope for jobs going to loc­al people and part-time too and fully endorsed the pro­pos­al. A mem­ber revis­ited the poten­tial options for ser­vice deliv­ery and wheth­er we would be able offer them con­tracts as self-employed con­tract­ors? The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices respon­ded that his under­stand­ing of HMRC guidelines are around self-employed people hav­ing to demon­strate very clearly that they are work­ing to mul­tiple con­tracts, and not effect­ively work­ing for a single con­trolling employ­er. Oth­er issue if they are VAT registered, it would be a tax­able sup­ply, we would be pay­ing 20% on top of their wage, we are not VAT registered so can­not recov­er this. These were fur­ther factors already con­sidered and for mem­bers to be aware of when we get into these wider cost con­sid­er­a­tions. o) The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices noted he had taken on board mem­bers feed­back on the bal­ance of the inform­a­tion in the paper, indic­at­ing it is always a bal­an­cing act to determ­ine how much inform­a­tion goes into the board paper and the con­sequent length of the paper, and how to much draw out in when we get in to dis­cus­sion and con­ver­sa­tion. p) The Con­vener con­cluded there had been a good dis­cus­sion about this, with a lot of dif­fer­ing points. Dis­cus­sions had been very help­ful, and although some ideas may not be taken for­ward it was help­ful that they have been con­sidered. The mixed eco­nomy mod­el that we have at the Nation­al Park provides a flex­ible approach. The estate based ranger ser­vices know their patch well and it is, good to sup­port that through grant-in-aid. It’s also a real value of hav­ing our own dir­ectly employed rangers to deploy to hot spots, on a daily basis deploy­ing people across the park to where they were required at that point in time. We had that flex­ib­il­ity last year because we were dir­ectly employ­ing staff and hav­ing that core of dir­ectly employed people that we can deploy any­where is essen­tial. The Con­vener sum­mar­ised that he is proud of the Kick­start rangers: we can really cham­pi­on this as an embod­i­ment of what the Board long term object­ive in terms of sup­port­ing youth employ­ment, work­ing and liv­ing in the Park is all about. These are job oppor­tun­it­ies for people who are unem­ployed look­ing for their next step and who might want to work in the out­doors. Rangers do so much, it is not just about sup­port­ing vis­it­ors it is edu­ca­tion which is fun­da­ment­al about how to treat the out­doors and how to enjoy out­doors in a respons­ible way.

The fact the Cairngorms pro­posed the Kick­start scheme for UK NP and that has been taken on by 12 oth­er Nation­al Parks is a fant­ast­ic oppor­tun­ity that has been opened up and the Con­vener hoped every­one will pro­mote through their net­works locally.

As a final point, the Con­vener noted that hav­ing a ranger ser­vice is an intrins­ic part of being a Nation­al Park. How we make up that ranger ser­vice is import­ant: a mixed eco­nomy mod­el is best for the Cairngorms and that includes dir­ectly employed rangers even if there is slight addi­tion­al cost. That premi­um to the Con­vener is worth it so that our com­munit­ies can see we are dir­ectly sup­port­ing them, and that our rangers are sup­port­ing busi­nesses, our res­id­ents and our com­munit­ies. It is very import­ant that people can see the phys­ic­al embod­i­ment of what being in a Nation­al Park is about and the bene­fits it can bring. The Con­vener remarked that the good dis­cus­sion has opened up a lot of dif­fer­ent points, and the Chief Exec­ut­ive has com­mit­ted to bring­ing back fur­ther inform­a­tion in March as part of the budget process.

The Con­vener also noted this dis­cus­sion has been very use­ful in terms for officers to under­stand what Board Mem­bers would like to see in future papers, and that will be a dis­cus­sion for us to have after­wards to pick up on the feedback.

q) The Convener proposed the recommendations, the Deputy Convener seconded the recommendations.

1. The Board: a) Approved a com­mit­ment of £236,000 to fin­ance a sea­son­al ranger ser­vice to start by 22 March 2021 and oper­ate until 31 Octo­ber 2021. b) Approved a fur­ther com­mit­ment of £3,000 to aug­ment the Sea­son­al Ranger Ser­vice with five ​‘Kick­start’ Youth Place­ment oppor­tun­it­ies for young people seek­ing a start in this employ­ment sec­tor. c) Agreed that should the budget set­tle­ment com­mu­nic­ated on 28 Janu­ary show a sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion in the Authority’s fund­ing for the com­ing year a reduc­tion in grant in aid in excess of 5% — the man­age­ment team will post­pone the devel­op­ment of these ser­vices and bring the ser­vice ini­ti­at­ive back as part of the full budget pro­pos­als for con­sid­er­a­tion in March. d) Noted the Kick­start com­mit­ment min­im­um of £3,000 may rise to £30,000: that increase if required to be con­firmed as part of the main budget con­sid­er­a­tion by the Board in March.

AOCB

1. None.

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 12 Feb­ru­ary 2021 via Lifes­ize video Conferencing.

2. The meet­ing con­cluded at 11.17am.