CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper I 28^th May 2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: GOV­ERNANCE RESPONS­IB­IL­ITY STATEMENT

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SERVICES

Pur­pose

This paper presents the draft Gov­ernance Respons­ib­il­ity State­ment for con­sid­er­a­tion by the Board.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is asked to: a) Con­sider the draft Gov­ernance Respons­ib­il­ity State­ment; b) Con­sider and agree, sub­ject to any approved amend­ments, wheth­er the Gov­ernance Respons­ib­il­ity Frame­work rep­res­ents an adequate doc­u­ment to guide the Authority’s gov­ernance and decision mak­ing processes.

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. The Board agreed in March 2019 that a doc­u­ment was needed to cla­ri­fy the roles of Board mem­bers and Exec­ut­ive man­agers in decision tak­ing with­in the Cairngorms NPA. This has been rein­forced by the recent intern­al audit of gov­ernance arrangements.

2. A gov­ernance Respons­ib­il­ity State­ment has been draf­ted to ful­fil this pur­pose of cla­ri­fy­ing gov­ernance roles and decision mak­ing respons­ib­il­it­ies. As advised pre­vi­ously to mem­bers, the draft doc­u­ment now attached has been developed by the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, the Con­vener and Deputy Con­vener, and reviewed and com­men­ted on by the Gov­ernance Group; the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee; and the Seni­or Man­age­ment Team.

3. The draft doc­u­ment has been pre­vi­ously cir­cu­lated to all mem­bers to con­sider and feed­back any points of detail. The fol­low­ing amend­ments have been made fol­low­ing feed­back received: a) Cla­ri­fic­a­tion that part of the Convener’s respons­ib­il­ity is to liaise with Min­is­ters to identi­fy poten­tial future gov­ern­ment policy evol­u­tion that may impact on the Authority’s stra­tegic dir­ec­tion; b) Cla­ri­fic­a­tion that part of the Exec­ut­ive Man­age­ment Team’s respons­ib­il­ity is to liaise with Min­is­ters and seni­or gov­ern­ment offi­cials to identi­fy poten­tial future gov­ern­ment policy evol­u­tion that may impact on the Authority’s stra­tegic dir­ec­tion; c) Reit­er­a­tion in the Exec­ut­ive Sum­mary that where any of the cri­ter­ia for Non-Exec­ut­ive respons­ib­il­ity is met, the sug­ges­tion is that decision mak­ing rests with a Board level process.

4. The full, updated doc­u­ment is set out an Annex I for con­sid­er­a­tion by the Board.

Dav­id Camer­on 17 May 2021 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk