210427-EAPMinutes

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY UGH­DAR­RAS PAIRC NAISEANTA Α’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH

Cairngorms Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el 27^th April 2021

5:00pm — 6:30pm — Held virtually

Minutes

Present:

Fiona McLean (Chair) Anita Howard Bo Hickey Celia Sweeny Heath­er Earn­shaw Kirsteen Allis­on Kev­in Hutchens Linda Bam­ford Vanessa Alt­weck Peter Kennedy Stu­art Hall

In Attend­ance:

Kate Christie Vicky Walk­er Louisa McDaid (Cap­tion­er) Gail (Cap­tion­er) Martyn Crawshaw Kath­er­ine Will­ing Pip Mack­ie Gav­in Miles Pete Crane

1. Intro­duc­tion and Dis­cus­sion of Last Ses­sion 1.1. Fiona wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing and intro­duced the guests. 1.2. It was agreed that the pan­el would ask all speak­ers to give ​“one-thing” they would report back to the pan­el on at a later date. 1.3. Fiona reminded the pan­el of the open invit­a­tion for those who wanted to have a one-to-one dis­cus­sion regard­ing the panel.

2. Martyn Crawshaw ‑Bad­aguish and Spey­side Trust Pro­ject Update 2.1. Martyn explained that pre­vi­ously, the Trust pre­dom­in­antly provided res­pite hol­i­days for those with a range of needs, how­ever, they are tem­por­ar­ily mov­ing away from this due to con­straints of the guidelines and change in the need for flex­ib­il­ity. The focus is cur­rently how they work with loc­al stake­hold­ers. 2.2. The Trust held vir­tu­al vis­ion­ing ses­sions and work­shops, Martyn dis­cussed the out­comes of these exer­cises. Hold­ing these vir­tu­ally was found to be help­ful in terms of access­ib­il­ity to those who wouldn’t have been com­fort­able with in-per­son meet­ings. 2.3. Martyn explained that fol­low­ing these vis­ion­ing exer­cises and work­shops the Trust has set itself four tasks:

   • Review and cla­ri­fy their iden­tity and branding.
   • Build stronger links with their com­munit­ies, part­ners and agencies.
   • Revise their char­it­able aims to bet­ter reflect their vision.
   • Make improved and wider use of their facil­it­ies. Fol­low­ing this, the trust has iden­ti­fied new aims which it hopes will help them to provide a more blen­ded approach that offers great­er flexibility.

Response from Pan­el 2.4. The pan­el raised that the aims reflect mak­ing the centre access­ible for all. The pan­el sug­ges­ted that afford­able eco­nom­ic oppor­tun­it­ies should be con­sidered in the revised aims. The pan­el sug­ges­ted there is enhanced fund­ing due to this being high on loc­al gov­ern­ment ini­ti­at­ives. 2.5. Martyn was invited to join group dis­cus­sions with mul­tiple groups from the nation­al park sur­round­ing long term fund­ing streams to make facil­it­ies fully inclus­ive, such as fund­ing chan­ging places toi­lets, reli­gious appro­pri­ate places and quiet spaces. 2.6. The issue of stop­ping res­pite was raised, Martyn explained this is in abey­ance as opposed to stopped. The centre is classed as a res­id­en­tial care centre by the care inspect­or­ate and due to dif­fi­culties with recruit­ment, resourcing and loc­al hous­ing it is not able to main­tain this stand­ard. A num­ber of con­tacts were raised such as the fam­ily hol­i­day asso­ci­ation and Con­tact for dis­abled chil­dren, Martyn expressed interest to con­tin­ue this dis­cus­sion out with the meet­ing. 2.7. The pan­el dis­cussed that fol­low­ing the ease in Cov­id restric­tions many care pro­viders will be want­ing to engage with access­ible oppor­tun­it­ies and there­fore, it may be use­ful for the Trust to build con­tacts with loc­al care pro­viders such as Corner­stone or Enable. 2.8. Martyn’s ​‘one thing’ to take away from the dis­cus­sion was to go through the list of agen­cies and people that has been recom­men­ded and felt it would be unfair to pri­or­it­ise one of these over another.

1. Pete Crane – Update on the Cov­id Recov­ery Plan 3.1. Pete dis­cussed the main areas of the Cov­id recov­ery plan and how this is effect­ing how CNPA aim to sup­port the nation­al park:
   • Vis­it­ors — there is a high­er amount of stayc­a­tions and vis­it­ors who come from the five loc­al author­it­ies which make up the park.
   • Plan­ning — Reg­u­lar meet­ings are held with the tour­ism group, key land man­agers, Cairngorm Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, loc­al coun­sel­lors and res­id­ents. These part­ner­ships meet­ings have pro­duced prac­tic­al plans for vis­it­or man­age­ment which change with the reg­u­lar meetings.
   • Mes­saging — the mes­saging focuses around ​‘Cairngorms Togeth­er’ cre­ated through con­sulta­tion with loc­al res­id­ents and vis­it­ors as well as the nation­al mes­sage of ​‘Respect, Pro­tect and Enjoy’ in com­bin­a­tion with mes­saging from the busi­ness part­ner­ship as to what’s open. The key chal­lenge is tar­get­ing the new visitor/​audience who com­mu­nic­ate differently.
   • Focus — The focus is on the activ­it­ies that vis­it­ors can exper­i­ence for free through pro­mot­ing the nation­al path net­work which encour­ages vis­it­ors to vis­it loc­al areas which helps lead to eco­nom­ic spend­ing. There is a con­tin­ued focus on irre­spons­ible beha­viour which hap­pens with­in the park, there are part­ner­ships forged with ​‘Keep Scot­land Beau­ti­ful’ and more mes­saging sur­round­ing this. 3.2. Pete explained addi­tion­al fund­ing has been secured for sea­son­al rangers and four per­man­ent rangers. Fund­ing has been increased for the six part­ner­ship rangers fun­ded by CNPA. There will also be train­ee rangers this year as part of the Kick­start Scheme. This high ranger pres­ence will help to wel­come vis­it­ors and pos­it­ively rein­force good beha­viour with­in the park. 3.3. Pete described mul­tiple examples of part­ner­ship work­ing where CNPA have fun­ded improve­ments of car­parks, sig­nage to dir­ect vis­it­ors where is busy and improve­ments to path net­works. There is also fund­ing avail­able for the green recov­ery fund. 3.4. Pete went on to dis­cuss the con­tin­ued mon­it­or­ing of socio-eco­nom­ic groups to the park and the ongo­ing chal­lenge that Cov­id presents to pro­gress­ing in this area. It is felt that there has been improve­ment on get­ting a more rep­res­ent­at­ive range of vis­it­ors from dif­fer­ent socio-eco­nom­ic groups.

Response from Pan­el 3.5. The pan­el asked how is CNPA meas­ur­ing the socio-eco­nom­ic groups of vis­it­ors and staff of CNPA par­tic­u­larly with­in the ranger ser­vice? Pete explained there is a 12 monthly vis­it­or sur­vey which asks about socio eco­nom­ic group and dis­cussed how this is being used with loc­al busi­nesses. In ref­er­ence to staff­ing Kate poin­ted the pan­el mem­ber to the equal­it­ies main­stream­ing report which is pub­lished on the web­site. 3.6. Relat­ing to the paper sent out pri­or to the meet­ing, a pan­el mem­ber asked for cla­ri­fic­a­tion regard­ing a num­ber of upgrades to pub­lic toi­lets and wheth­er these were now fully access­ible or wheth­er this had been con­sidered. Pete explained that cur­rently, the pro­jects he had inform­a­tion for, none are fully access­ible how­ever, there is the pos­sib­il­ity of a future pro­ject fun­ded by CNPA to cre­ate a fully access­ible toi­let. 3.7. The pan­el enquired about spe­cial­ised equal­it­ies train­ing for the rangers to make sure they are able to give advice on access­ib­il­ity when greet­ing vis­it­ors. Pete and Kate explained all rangers and staff are required to com­plete a gen­er­ic equal­it­ies train­ing when they are first employed and CNPA are invest­ing in a com­press­ive equal­it­ies train­ing pro­gramme this year for all staff and board. Cov­id-19 has cre­ated chal­lenges for giv­ing spe­cif­ic train­ing to the rangers on this. 3.8. The pan­el asked what was being done to pro­mote and link, act­ive travel and pub­lic trans­port links to and with­in the park. Pete explained CNPA are cur­rently work­ing with High­land coun­cil to tri­al a reg­u­lar bus ser­vice dur­ing the Scot­tish and Eng­lish sum­mer hol­i­days for the Glen­more to Aviemore cor­ridor for those who have pre-arrived. Pete explained the her­it­age hori­zons bid, if suc­cess­ful will look at act­ive trans­port with­in the park. Pub­lic trans­port out with the park is harder to con­trol and requires more part­ner sup­port. Pete explained sev­er­al con­cerns with mak­ing the bus infra­struc­ture access­ible. 3.9. Pete’s ​‘one thing’ was to work with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship to devel­op how we bet­ter share inform­a­tion between busi­nesses and the vis­it­or as to what’s access­ible which Pete feels will be an ongo­ing project.

1. Gav­in Miles — Mine­craft Plan­ning 4.1. CNPA have an object­ive to encour­age young people to get involved with the plan­ning pro­cess so they feel able to par­ti­cip­ate in the plan­ning pro­cess. Pre­vi­ous classroom based attempts have had mixed suc­cess. Gav­in explained that they decided to engage the Cairngorm Youth Action Team. 4.2. Gav­in explained that Cov­id has impacted our abil­ity to engage with young people in the ways we had tra­di­tion­ally, so one mem­ber of staff has cre­ated a Mine­craft world which rep­res­en­ted the Nation­al Park. It was used with mem­bers of the Cairngorm Youth Action Team to learn about plan­ning with­in the park, the group watched a plan­ning com­mit­tee and then repor­ted back to the com­mit­tee on their Mine­craft exper­i­ence. 4.3. Gav­in explained the map is now open to any­one to use and was inter­ested in if any­one had ideas on how this could be used in the future.

Response from the Pan­el 4.4. Some of the dif­fi­culties of using this with small edu­ca­tion­al groups were dis­cussed. It was sug­ges­ted by a mem­ber of the pan­el that a good part­ner­ship may be with the Uni­ver­sity of High­land and Islands to use and devel­op a Hack­a­thon to look at it becom­ing more access­ible. 4.5. The pan­el were inter­ested in how it could be used to cre­ate more equal engage­ment with the plan­ning pro­cess. 4.6. The pan­el sug­ges­ted the plat­form could be used to engage those who have long term ill­ness who may not be cur­rently be able to access the park. 4.7. There was some con­cern from the pan­el due to the user stat­ist­ics for Mine­craft, and wider stat­ist­ics for gam­ing that this may encour­age more males to engage in plan­ning and increase the gender gap of those who engage or pur­sue a career in planning.

1. AOB 5.1. No AOB’s were raised.

Next Meet­ing: 25^th May 2021

END OF MEETING