CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 12/03/2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR INFORM­A­TION

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: The Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund and Green Recov­ery Fund included ripari­an tree plant­ing schemes, aspen hab­it­at cre­ation, fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sel trans­lo­ca­tion, pine hov­er­fly hab­it­at cre­ation and the pur­chase of new rush top­per for loan to farm­ers and crofters man­aging hab­it­at for farm­land waders. Con­tracts for sup­ply and ser­vices totalled a com­bined value of approx­im­ately £140,000. Third party pro­jects sup­por­ted by the CNPA include the Cairngorms Rare Plants pro­ject and the Rare Inver­teb­rates in the Cairngorm pro­ject. These employ loc­al pro­ject staff and work with volun­teers and estates on man­aging areas for spe­cies such as one flower win­ter­green and dark bordered beauty moth.

   The mid-term review of Cairngorms Nature Action Plan is sched­uled for May 2021. Work to date on deliv­ery actions and an assess­ment of pro­gress towards tar­gets will be cap­tured in an on-line report, pro­moted through a short video show­cas­ing the work of the wide range of land man­agers and part­ners and dis­cussed at a Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end event.

2. Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: Hab­it­at improve­ment work is pro­gress­ing and work to identi­fy the genet­ic diversity of the Caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion in the Park is under­way. His­tor­ic­al and European genet­ic samples have been gathered as part of this work.

   Loc­al moun­tain bikers have begun to identi­fy ways to help the moun­tain bik­ing com­munity improve con­di­tions for Caper­cail­lie. This work is based on a sur­vey by the pro­ject which found that almost all riders feel respons­ible for the envir­on­ment they ride in and are will­ing to change beha­viours to help pro­tect the envir­on­ment. The Car­rbridge Caper­cail­lie Group are mak­ing pro­gress deliv­er­ing the Car­rbridge Caper­cail­lie Con­ser­va­tion Strategy. The CBP is con­tinu­ing to col­late ideas from the busi­ness com­munity about ways in which the pro­ject can help more busi­nesses to pro­mote respons­ible enjoy­ment in the Park. And a qual­it­at­ive research brief has been pub­lished to enable a great­er under­stand­ing of vis­it­ors to Glen­more, Aber­nethy and Rothiemurchus. The brief has been developed with FLS, RSPB and Rothiemurchus Estate. The find­ings will be shared in Septem­ber and used to identi­fy ways to enable high qual­ity sus­tain­able vis­it­or exper­i­ences and thriv­ing Caper­cail­lie areas.

3. Wood­land Cre­ation: We have very nearly reached our 5,000ha wood­land cre­ation tar­get with a year left of the 2017 – 2022 report­ing peri­od. We are aware of quite a few wood­land cre­ation schemes cur­rently shap­ing up, and have fed sig­ni­fic­antly into early dis­cus­sions of sev­er­al of these so far. At least sev­en estates are pro­pos­ing large, pre­dom­in­antly nat­ive wood­land schemes of 500 ha or more. Fur­ther­more, over the course of the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ year the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Wood­land Chal­lenge Fund has so far assisted six nat­ive wood­land cre­ation pro­jects amount­ing to well over 200 ha across sev­en prop­er­ties with grants totalling £13,038.80.

4. Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion: Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment have agreed in prin­ciple to our 3‑year, £10m fund­ing pro­pos­al to bring over 2,700 hec­tares of peat­land under res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment. Recruit­ment for a new team is under­way with Steph­en Corcor­an appoin­ted as the Peat­land Pro­gramme Man­ager in March while Daisy Whytock joined, Emma Stew­art, as a Peat­land Pro­ject Officer in January.

   Res­tor­a­tion work on the peat­land sites on Bal­mor­al and Wild­land Estates was sus­pen­ded in Decem­ber due to heavy snow, and machines were taken off the hill. Unfor­tu­nately, none of the pro­jects had quite fin­ished and these might have to be car­ried over to com­plete this sum­mer. Pro­ject staff are pre­par­ing new pro­jects for this sum­mer and final­ising the fin­an­cial pro­ced­ures for grant aid­ing land mangers dir­ectly from April.

5. Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship: The 4 year pro­gramme of 20 major pro­jects is com­ing to an end but the leg­acy is assured. CNPA are hold­ing funds for man­age­ment and main­ten­ance for the next 5 years and a leg­acy board is in place to over­see future devel­op­ments. Board mem­bers will have received a final thank you email with links to the TGLP web­site now in the hands of the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Busi­ness Asso­ci­ation. A cel­eb­ra­tion film has been pro­duced along­side many oth­er films pro­mot­ing the area. Mar­ket­ing mater­i­als are in the final edit stage but will be avail­able very soon. Cov­id has of course been prob­lem­at­ic but the recent snow has also caused delays. We expect to get the remain­ing inter­pret­a­tion signs and way- mark­ers installed in the next few weeks, and there are still about 25,000 trees to be planted by the end of April. It’s dif­fi­cult to sum­mar­ise just how much has been done over the last 4 years, but in summary:

   • a) £3.6million inves­ted in the area
   • b) Dis­cov­ery Centre refur­bished and offices created
   • c) Blairfindy Castle sta­bil­ised and open
   • d) Scalan Mills preserved
   • e) Spey­side Way Spur restored with newly sur­faced paths
   • f) Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et – Cairngorms Dark Sky Park launched
   • g) Dark sky friendly light­ing installed
   • h) Online Digit­al archive of loc­al his­tory created
   • i) Hab­it­ats for wad­ing birds man­aged by farmers
   • j) Bird-hide built
   • k) 112 cul­tur­al her­it­age sites recorded
   • l) Com­munity Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Book­let published
   • m) Bar­ri­ers to spawn­ing sal­mon opened up
   • n) Innov­at­ive and ground-break­ing green-engin­eer­ing flood pro­tec­tion installed
   • o) 80 Events cel­eb­rat­ing our her­it­age held
   • p) 58 Train­ing & skills courses held
   • q) Oral his­tory recorded
   • r) New wood­lands created
   • s) Nat­ur­al Her­it­age pro­jects grant aided
   • t) Loc­al Edu­ca­tion resources created
   • u) New Inter­pret­a­tion dis­plays designed and manufactured
   • v) School films cre­ated and shown
   • w) Fish­ing pro­moted and made more accessible
   • x) Land­scape her­it­age & song work­shops & events held
   • y) New Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et mar­ket­ing resources
   • z) Com­munity Stor­age Facil­ity created
   • aa) New web­site created
   • bb) Pro­mo­tion­al videos produced

   For more details on all the pro­jects please vis­it the TGLP pro­jects page.

Vis­it­or Experience:

1. Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um: The For­um met on 24^th Feb­ru­ary to dis­cuss; Scot­tish Out­door Access Code mes­saging along with Tread Lightly in the Park cam­paign mater­i­als, access case­work, and the Her­it­age Hori­zons applic­a­tion. Mem­bers acknow­ledged the huge amount of work done in 2020 to address the impacts of increased vis­it­ors post lock­down and that for many hot­spots there was sig­ni­fic­ant pres­sures includ­ing camp­fires. Mem­bers sup­port a much stronger access mes­sage in Tread lightly in the Park to ensure con­sist­ency of advice around the Park and to high­light that it is very dif­fi­cult to have a camp­fire respons­ibly any­where in the Park. The Scot­tish Out­door Access Code clearly determ­ines that fires are not safe in most of Cairngorms; ​‘Nev­er light an open fire dur­ing pro­longed dry peri­ods or in areas such as forests, woods, farm­land or on peaty ground or near to build­ings or in cul­tur­al her­it­age sites where dam­age can be eas­ily caused.’ Mem­bers were also very sup­port­ive of the act­ive travel ele­ments of the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­ject, and great­er integ­ra­tion between deliv­ery on the health and well­being agenda and the net zero car­bon agenda.
2. Spey­side Way: In part­ner­ship with the New­ton­more Com­munity an offi­cial Long Dis­tance Route branded stone is now 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 sum­mer of 2021 post-elec­tion. While the route is fully useable there are sev­er­al sec­tions with­in the Nation­al Park that require upgrade and improvement.
3. Cairngorms Rangers: CNPA has appoin­ted eight sea­son­al rangers to start work mid-March to safely wel­come vis­it­ors to the Nation­al Park as Cov­id 19 restric­tions ease. CNPA met with ranger part­ners in early March to agreed how best to com­mu­nic­ate and work togeth­er in the com­ing year. The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment fund­ing to enhance the CNPA Ranger Ser­vice is covered in the Budget Paper.
4. Volun­teer­ing & Health Walks: Since the start of 2021 the 38 volun­teer rangers and 14 Health Walk Groups (sup­por­ted by Paths for All) have all be ​‘on hold’. We are reg­u­larly com­mu­nic­at­ing with both groups, shar­ing stor­ies and plan­ning how to safely reopen in 2021 as Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment guid­ance allows.
5. Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres: Vis­it­or inter­pret­a­tion is being developed for; Glen­shee Pot­tery (suc­cess­ful Green Recov­ery Fund applic­ant), Glen­liv­et Moun­tain Bike Centre, Grant­own Museum, Lag­gan Wolftrax, and the new Brae­mar tour­ism group centre with the aim of hav­ing this installed for ​‘re-open­ing’.
6. . Edu­ca­tion and Inclu­sion: Take up of John Muir Award recom­menced fol­low­ing ​‘Lock­down’ with 789 awards in 2020 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. The CYAT have also pro­duced two films and are par­ti­cip­at­ing in the Scot­tish Rur­al Par­lia­ment. The ​‘Neigh­bour­hood Res­id­en­cies Pro­ject’ in part­ner­ship with Bothy Pro­ject has been beset by Cov­id dif­fi­culties but the three res­id­ents have been chosen to spend time in Inshriach Bothy and this should be going ahead in the next few weeks, restric­tions allowing.
7. Inform­a­tion and Inter­pret­a­tion: Main activ­it­ies have focussed on devel­op­ing inter­pret­a­tion for Spey­side Way, Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres and sup­port­ing the work of Badenoch Great Place Scheme and Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship. CNPA sup­por­ted vis­it­or inform­a­tion leaf­lets are being reprin­ted ready for 2021 ​‘reopen­ing’ includ­ing; Wel­come, Explore for a Day, Gael­ic Place Names and tear off Map Pad.

Rur­al Development:

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2021: Scot­tish Min­is­ters have con­firmed that CNPA can now adopt the Plan, sub­ject to a change that high­lights the detailed A9 dualling pro­pos­als on the Trans­port Scot­land web­site. There are no sig­ni­fic­ant policy changes. The CNPA Board will be asked to adopt the Plan on 26 March. A pro­gramme of work is planned to noti­fy part­ners and under­take train­ing to ensure deliv­ery of the Plan.
2. Plan­ning Case­work: Applic­a­tions have been approved for a sig­ni­fic­ant new bridge at Glen Gairn, a new zip wire to diver­si­fy activ­ity at the Glen­shee ski centre and con­ver­sion of farm build­ings to vis­it­or facil­it­ies near Kin­gussie. Wind­farm con­sulta­tion responses have been sub­mit­ted for Berry­burn and updates provided for Glen Clova Track where enforce­ment activ­ity is ongoing.
3. Youth engage­ment in Plan­ning: The Cairngorms Youth Action Group have been under­tak­ing a pro­ject using the game Mine­craft, using a Nation­al Park land­scape mod­el, developed by Dan Har­ris, Plan­ning Man­ager. The group have been enjoy­ing the exer­cise and the pro­ject has been picked up very sig­ni­fic­antly by nation­al and loc­al media, also gen­er­at­ing much interest from oth­ers who want to use it. The Youth Action Group will attend a Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ing in future to share their exper­i­ence. Con­sid­er­a­tion is being giv­en to how to make oth­er uses of the Cairngorms land­scape that has been developed in Mine­craft for oth­er Park-related engage­ment work.
4. Com­munity-led Hous­ing Deliv­ery: The Tomin­toul Com­munity Hous­ing Pro­ject has made sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gress – the old school has now been com­pletely demol­ished and a plan­ning applic­a­tion and was called in by the CNPA in late Feb­ru­ary. Braemar’s com­munity hous­ing pro­ject will make a plan­ning applic­a­tion early in March. Dis­cus­sions are under way with Lag­gan and oth­er com­munit­ies about fur­ther plans for com­munity-led hous­ing delivery.
5. Eco­nom­ic Action Plan: The busi­ness sup­port pro­gramme, led by Grow­biz, is now well estab­lished and is cur­rently devel­op­ing its one to one new ment­or­ing pro­gramme. The Cairngorms Women’s Busi­ness Net­work has now held sev­er­al meet­ings and feed­back has been pos­it­ive. Grow­biz are also work­ing to re-ener­gize the Cre­at­ive Cairngorms net­work, fin­anced through the Green Recov­ery Fund. The Smart Vil­lage pro­ject is devel­op­ing with groups in Grant­own, Brae­mar and Bal­later. Work is under way con­sid­er­ing a green jobs pro­ject with NatureScot, cir­cu­lar eco­nomy ini­ti­at­ives with Zero Waste Scot­land, train­ing and skills pro­jects related to peat­land con­ser­va­tion and review­ing approaches to com­munity wealth build­ing. CBP con­tin­ue to take very use­ful work on behalf of their mem­bers and are mak­ing sig­ni­fic­ant fund­ing applic­a­tion to HIE’s Des­tin­a­tion Devel­op­ment fund. Next meet­ing of the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group is in mid-March.
6. Tour­ism Action Plan: Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship met in Novem­ber and Janu­ary to review pro­gress with imple­ment­a­tion of the Tour­ism Action Plan and is the Tour­ism Action Plan is sub­ject to a sep­ar­ate paper at the March meet­ing of the Board.
7. A9 Dualling pro­ject: Trans­port Scot­land has pub­lished the design details for the Tomat­in to Moy sec­tion to the north of the Nation­al Park. Trans­port Scot­land have also resolved all the out­stand­ing objec­tions to the Cruben­more to Kin­craig sec­tion so there will not be an Inquiry on that sec­tion. Trans­port Scot­land con­tin­ue to lead on the plan­ning for a non-motor­ised user route, link­ing Aviemore and Car­rbridge and due to for deliv­ery along­side the con­struc­tion of that sec­tion, after 2024.
8. Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject: Fol­low­ing a series of suc­cess­ful Com­munity and Busi­ness Engage­ment events in Janu­ary, the BGPP is now in the final stages of devel­op­ing its pub­lic facing out­puts (App, web­site, leaf­lets and maps) that will be used to pro­mote the new vis­it­or itin­er­ar­ies and launch ​“Badenoch: The Story­lands” as a des­tin­a­tion with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The App is cur­rently under­go­ing its Beta test­ing and should go live in late Spring. Con­tent, includ­ing storytelling by Ham­ish Napi­er, music com­pos­i­tion and imagery, con­tin­ues to be developed. Inter­pret­a­tion for the Badenoch sec­tion of the Spey­side Way is being final­ised and should be in place by end April. A Badenoch archive is being set up through Am Baile and skills devel­op­ment train­ing is being organ­ised with loc­al schools (Cov­id restric­tions allow­ing). Plan­ning is now under­way for a 2 week online Her­it­age Fest­iv­al in Septem­ber which will end in a final pro­ject cel­eb­rat­ory event. A mid-term report, ​“The Story so Far”, avail­able on www​.Badenoch​Story​lands​.com was released in Janu­ary and sum­mar­ies activ­ity to date.
9. Green Recov­ery Fund: In total, 13 pro­jects were fun­ded and some are now com­plete while the oth­ers con­tin­ue to make good pro­gress. One pro­ject, the com­ple­tion of expan­ded car park for Mun­ro access near Dal­whin­nie, has had some tech­nic­al dif­fi­culties and the fund­ing agree­ment has been con­tin­ued into 2021. Plans are being made for a fur­ther Green Recov­ery Fund in 2021.
10. Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er Quarter 4 (Oct to Decem­ber 2020): This study is under­taken by CBP mem­bers (around 100 mem­bers filled in last sur­vey) and is fun­ded by CNPA. This sur­vey has been run­ning for more than 13 years and CBP com­men­ted on res­ults as fol­lows. The Quarter was very chal­len­ging for the vis­it­or eco­nomy in the Cairngorms. The tier sys­tem meant that most busi­nesses were allowed to trade, so could not access grant fund­ing, even though core mar­kets of the cent­ral belt and the rest of the UK were not allowed to travel here. This was reflec­ted in 88% of busi­nesses report­ing a decrease in turnover for the quarter, com­pared to the his­tor­ic aver­age of 40%. The import­ance of the Nation­al Park brand in attract­ing first time vis­it­ors has grown sig­ni­fic­antly with 72% of busi­nesses stat­ing that the Park had a high level of influ­ence com­pared to the his­tor­ic aver­age of 54%. These res­ults per­haps reflect people’s desire to find space in the coun­tryside when they were allowed to travel. Giv­en the trad­ing con­di­tions in Q4, it is not sur­pris­ing to see short and medi­um term con­fid­ence decline again, whilst con­fid­ence in the longer term held firm. The top­ic­al ques­tions clearly demon­strate the very real and sig­ni­fic­ant chal­lenges many busi­nesses face, many still fall through gaps in fund­ing sup­port. 53% of busi­nesses stated they are likely to reduce or fur­ther reduce staff num­bers in the com­ing months. The full Busi­ness Baro­met­er res­ults are avail­able at: https://​str​.com/​c​a​i​r​n​g​o​r​m​s​-​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​p​a​r​k​-​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​-​b​a​r​o​meter.

Stake­hold­er Engagement:

1. The CEO has atten­ded a range of groups over the past 3 months includ­ing COHI Seni­or Officers Group, NPP Net Zero with Nature Steer­ing Group, Envir­on­ment and Eco­nomy Lead­ers Group, NPPP Stake­hold­ers Group, ENGO Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group, HOIP Infra­struc­ture Group, Cli­mate Ready Aber­deen­shire, Cairngorms Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group, Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship & Cairngorms Equal­it­ies Forum.
2. The CEO is a mem­ber of the nation­al Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Steer­ing Group and Chairs with Gor­don Wat­son from LLTTNPA the Infra­struc­ture and Invest­ment Sub-Group. This has met mul­tiple times. Loc­ally a series of meet­ings have been held with part­ners on vis­it­or man­age­ment pre­par­a­tions. This included a res­id­ents meet­ing, Loc­al Author­ity Coun­cil­lor meet­ing and Com­munity Coun­cil meet­ing all held on 1^st March.
3. Meet­ings have also been held with SLE, Bad­aguish, Pal­la­di­um, High­land Coun­cil, Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil, Perth­shire Wild Con­nec­tions Part­ner­ship, NatureScot, Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, NPUK, Brew­dog and with mul­tiple part­ners as the devel­op­ment of the Her­it­age Hori­zons bid progressed.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions:

1. Act­ive Cairngorms – East­er man­aging for vis­it­ors comms: Fol­low­ing the First Minister’s announce­ment of a phased approach to eas­ing lock­down restric­tions, we have been work­ing with part­ners at a loc­al and nation­al level to coordin­ate our approach to vis­it­or comms. We have fed into two nation­al cam­paigns – led by Vis­itScot­land and NatureScot — that will set the over­all frame­work for East­er; have chaired a spe­cif­ic group on comms for motorhomes and camper­vans; and have fed into oth­er groups on wild­fires, lit­ter­ing and SOAC. Our plans will be guided by a com­bin­a­tion of this Scot­land-wide frame­work, les­sons learnt from last year includ­ing the #Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er frame­work, and feed­back from key stake­hold­ers. We are work­ing closely with col­leagues in CBP, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire, FLS etc to devel­op a suite of resources that can be used by all part­ners to ensure con­sist­ency of mes­saging, includ­ing digit­ised com­munity path guides, traffic light sys­tem for attrac­tions / busi­nesses that are open, simple SOAC mes­saging, and guides to some of the less busy parts of the Park that still have capa­city to wel­come lar­ger num­bers of visitors.
2. Cairngorms Nature – BIG Week­end plans: Pre­par­a­tions are under­way for the Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end, May 14^th – 16^th. Build­ing on the suc­cess of last year’s on-line event and the increased appet­ite for enjoy­ing nature and recog­ni­tion of its import­ance to health and well­being, this year’s pro­gramme, also on-line, will focus primar­ily on the new-to-nature audi­ence and the increased reach we saw in this sec­tor from last year. We are plan­ning a whole host of activ­it­ies, videos, blogs and com­pet­i­tions, and are also hop­ing to launch ​‘at home’ packs to engage young fam­il­ies with the week­end. These will be a mix­ture of phys­ic­al packs, includ­ing things like a mag­ni­fy­ing bug box and sus­tain­ably made pen­cils, and downloadable/​printable con­tent, which will link back to activ­it­ies on the CNBW web­site. We are talk­ing to part­ners includ­ing NatureScot about ways to more effect­ively spread the word about the fest­iv­al through their net­works, and are also explor­ing ways of deep­en­ing the impact of BIG Week­end attend­ance year-round, par­tic­u­larly for those ​‘new to nature’ audiences.
3. Make it Yours: In the absence of the usu­al in-per­son ses­sions with vis­it­or-facing staff across the Park, we are devel­op­ing a video train­ing resource c. 10 mins in length, designed to provide bites­ize inform­a­tion for busi­nesses and their employ­ees. Our aim is that, once lock­down meas­ures are eased, the video will provide vis­it­or-facing staff with inform­a­tion about the Nation­al Park and help them under­stand a bit more about what vis­it­ors are look­ing for from their vis­it (based on vis­it­or sur­vey data etc).
4. Cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions: We con­tin­ue to rein­force Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Cov­id-19 health and safety mes­saging across all our chan­nels, along­side key mes­sages around respons­ible vis­it­or beha­viour and chal­lenges posed by heavy snow­fall. In addi­tion, we have had suc­cess with a num­ber of pro­act­ive news stor­ies over the past few months, includ­ing the announce­ment of the sea­son­al ranger team in Janu­ary (which fea­tured in the Press and Journ­al, Cour­i­er, Daily Record, Scot­tish Field and Strath­spey Her­ald), and the devel­op­ment of a Mine­craft ver­sion of the Park to engage young people in the plan­ning sys­tem. This lat­ter story was fea­tured on the BBC web­site, BBC Scot­land News, News­round, and is now being picked up by print news out­lets includ­ing the Daily Mail.
5. Web­site and social media: Over the course of the last 12 months our social media fol­low­ing has grown by 19% to 48,159, whilst user engage­ment across all plat­forms (includ­ing video views) has increased by 98% to 717,446. All told, our social activ­ity reached nearly 7.5m impres­sions over the course of 2020, an increase of 15%. A full break­down of stat­ist­ics will be provided in the comms update to board in June. On the web­site side of things, we are about to roll out a major upgrade to the homepage of cairngorms​.co​.uk and add addi­tion­al func­tion­al­ity to a num­ber of sub-pages. We are also plan­ning a web­site access­ib­il­ity audit over the com­ing months, in line with recom­mend­a­tions from our Equal­it­ies Advis­ory Pan­el. Over­all traffic to the web­site increased by 11% in 2020 to 243,107 unique users.

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 the Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Team. Access is cur­rently strictly restric­ted to key ser­vices only 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. With the latest guid­ance that we are only likely to move out of Tier 4 at the end of April, all cur­rent guid­ance will remain at least until then. We are how­ever start­ing to con­sider a return to the office, and have drop in ses­sion sched­uled to engage with staff on early con­ver­sa­tions in this regard. We have also con­duc­ted a ​“les­sons learnt” sur­vey of how busi­ness con­tinu­ity went over the last year, and will seek to address any emer­ging themes as we pro­gress to the nest stages of busi­ness con­tinu­ity planning.
2. Office Exten­sion Pro­ject: Plans to upgrade the meet­ing and social space in the old build­ing remain on hold, 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, the old build­ing was fully repainted over the winter, and the kit­chen and social space in that side of the office was revamped significantly.
3. Staff­ing update: Since Novem­ber, staff­ing updates are as follows:
   • a) The Cairngorm Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject team is now fully resourced, with the fol­low­ing appoint­ments hav­ing been made since November:
     • i. Naomi Kaye was appoin­ted to the CCP Pro­ject Admin­is­trat­or post (0.6 fte).
     • ii. Jocasta Mann was appoin­ted to the CCP Com­mu­nic­a­tions Officer post (0.8 fte).
     • iii. Elspeth Grant was appoin­ted to the CCP Pro­ject Officer post (Ifte)
   • b) Oliv­er Dav­ies joined the Author­ity in Janu­ary as Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions, repla­cing Fran­coise van Buuren.
   • c) Daisy Whytock joined our Peat­land team in Janu­ary as a peat­land Action Pro­ject Officer
   • d) Rob­bie Cal­vert (Plan­ning Officer – DM) and Andrew Teece (Plan­ning Officer – For­ward Plan­ning) both left in Decem­ber. We are cur­rently recruit­ing a Plan­ning Officer to replace Rob­bie. Andrew’s fixed term con­tract came to an end and the For­ward Plan­ning team is fully resourced with Katie Crerar’s return from mater­nity leave.
4. Youth Employ­ment:
   • a) Intern­ships: In addi­tion to Kath­er­ine Will­ing who recently joined as HR Intern, we have exten­ded Bruce MacDonald’s con­tract to sup­port the Com­mu­nic­a­tions team as a Comms Intern. Bruce had been work­ing as Gael­ic Vis­it­or Research Intern.
   • b) Appren­tice­ships: In addi­tion to Luke Dig­gins who joined as IT Appren­tice, we recently signed up with Inclu­sion Scot­land who will be sup­port­ing the recruit­ment and man­age­ment of an Admin Intern.
   • c) We are still 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.
   • d) We have suc­cess­fully bid as part of the UK NPA net­work to host 6 Kick­start place­ments. These are posts aimed at young people who are on Uni­ver­sal Cred­it. The aim of the pro­ject is to give the young employ­ment, whilst at the same time coach­ing them on employ­ab­il­ity skills to sup­port their full trans­ition into the workplace.
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: The con­sulta­tion on the staff restruc­ture closed on 26^th Feb­ru­ary and the new struc­ture will be imple­men­ted from April 2021. We had six applic­ants for the Vol­un­tary Exit scheme for staff – four applic­ants were approved for VES, all applic­a­tions hav­ing been scored on the basis of pay­back peri­od; fit to organ­iz­a­tion­al struc­ture plan and cost/​benefit ana­lys­is. In terms of broad­er organ­isa­tion­al devel­op­ment, we will be upgrad­ing our IT infra­struc­ture to SWAN (Scot­tish Wide Area Net­work) increas­ing our net­work band­width by a factor of 10, enhan­cing staff access to sys­tems while work­ing remotely and also mov­ing into an estab­lished, man­aged and secure network.
7. LEADER/CAIRNGORMS TRUST: The Cairngorms Trust is near­ing com­ple­tion of the cur­rent LEAD­ER Pro­gramme and received the final ver­sion of an inde­pend­ent eval­u­ation report, under­taken by EKOS, at its Board meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary. The Exec­ut­ive Sum­mary of the eval­u­ation is attached as an Annex to this paper.
8. The report high­lights a strong part­ner­ship between the Cairngorms Trust act­ing as the LEAD­ER Loc­al Action Group and the Cairngorms NPA as a key con­trib­ut­or to the suc­cess of the pro­gramme, while find­ing that over­all the key aims and aspir­a­tions of the ​‘LEAD­ER approach’ to com­munity-led loc­al devel­op­ment have been achieved. Des­pite well-known con­cerns about the admin­is­trat­ive bur­den of LEAD­ER nation­ally, the primary research found that every grant recip­i­ent iden­ti­fied at least one bene­fit for them as an organ­isa­tion from tak­ing part in LEAD­ER, such as devel­op­ing or strength­en­ing rela­tion­ships and part­ner­ships or increas­ing their under­stand­ing of their com­munity. The report has also recog­nised the value of the sup­port provided by the LEAD­ER staff team, employed and man­aged by the Author­ity as Account­able Body, in assist­ing applic­ants and inter­ested groups with the process.
9. The research notes that ​“the CLAG became a registered char­ity (a SCIO) in 2016. The new set-up has allowed the CLAG to diver­si­fy its approach to com­munity-led loc­al devel­op­ment, run­ning a small grants scheme and fun­drais­ing cam­paigns. This rep­res­ents a more stra­tegic and adapt­able approach and, in par­tic­u­lar, will help con­tin­ue its leg­acy post-Brexit. Work­ing towards char­it­able object­ives has also helped cre­ate addi­tion­al com­munity and social bene­fits”. The Cairngorms Trust and the Author­ity aim to fur­ther devel­op their work­ing part­ner­ship over the com­ing years and poten­tial devel­op­ment in this area will be covered in a paper to a forth­com­ing Board meeting.
10. Cairngorms Trust: char­ity activ­it­ies and vol­un­tary giv­ing: The Trust con­tin­ues to sup­port the deliv­ery of the Green Recov­ery Grants pro­gramme for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ and com­plet­ing its sep­ar­ate com­munity grant cam­paigns and grant schemes with over £20,000 of char­ity fund­ing awar­ded to pro­jects. The impact of the COV­ID pan­dem­ic has set back the charity’s plans for the ongo­ing devel­op­ment and roll out of the vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme con­sid­er­ably. Des­pite this, the level of vol­un­tary dona­tions to date in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ of £4,700 is already high­er than the pri­or year total of £3,400, giv­ing pos­it­ive under­ly­ing signs of the poten­tial for this work to real­ise high­er levels of char­it­able con­tri­bu­tions to sup­port com­munity, con­ser­va­tion and infra­struc­ture pro­jects in the future.

Grant Moir March 2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 12/03/2021

Board Con­vener Report – For Information

1. Dur­ing the past quarter I have met with a rep­res­ent­at­ive of Azets, our intern­al aud­it­or, to dis­cuss our work on cor­por­ate gov­ernance. The intern­al audit report was con­sidered by the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee on 3^rd Feb­ru­ary 2021 to dis­cuss its find­ings. I’m pleased to report that sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gress is being made on a num­ber of pieces of on-going gov­ernance work includ­ing on: the new frame­work agree­ment with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment; the intern­al scheme of del­eg­a­tion; new com­mit­tee terms of ref­er­ence; and a report on pro­pos­als to make the Board more effect­ive. This work con­tin­ues to be sup­por­ted by the Deputy Con­vener, CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and I’m grate­ful for their sig­ni­fic­ant work in this area. We hope to bring a final ver­sion of these to the Board in late spring fol­low­ing fur­ther dis­cus­sions in the com­ing months.
2. The Chief Exec­ut­ive and I, along with the CBP Chair and CEO, met with Ben Macph­er­son MSP, the new Min­is­ter for Rur­al Affairs and the Nat­ur­al Envir­on­ment. We dis­cussed the COV­ID-19 situ­ation in the Cairngorm Nation­al Park includ­ing the con­cerns of busi­nesses and the need to sup­port our com­munit­ies with the expec­ted influx of stayc­a­tion vis­it­ors in the sum­mer through a ranger pro­vi­sion. We also high­lighted the pos­it­ive work the Nation­al Park and our part­ners are already doing in rela­tion to green recov­ery and the sig­ni­fic­ant grants that were awar­ded last sum­mer to sup­port this.
3. Finally, I atten­ded a vir­tu­al meet­ing of com­munity coun­cils hos­ted jointly by CNPA and CBP, chaired by Janet Hunter as Chair of the Cairngorm Tour­ism Part­ner­ship. Our CEO out­lined our plans to sup­port com­munit­ies with vis­it­or man­age­ment over the sum­mer and there was an enga­ging dis­cus­sion about many of the issues exper­i­enced last year. My thanks to Janet for her con­tin­ued sup­port of our tour­ism eco­nomy over this dif­fi­cult period.

Xan­der McDade Board Convener

Extern­al Engage­ments (28^th Novem­ber 2020 – 4^th March 2021)

In addi­tion to sched­uled Board meet­ings and intern­al meet­ings, I have atten­ded the fol­low­ing extern­al engage­ments in my capa­city as Con­vener of the Board since our last Board meeting.

Date	Engage­ment	Ven­ue
4⁄12	Cor­por­ate Gov­ernance Intern­al Audit Meeting	VC
13⁄1	Meet­ing with Min­is­ter for Rur­al Affairs and Nat­ur­al Envir­on­ment regard­ing Green Recov­ery and Vis­it­or Management	VC
1⁄3	Com­munity Coun­cil Drop in Ses­sions hos­ted by CBP and CNPA	VC