CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 11^th June 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: At the mid-term report stage, deliv­ery of the Action Plan is pro­gress­ing very well over­all. 83% of tar­gets and actions are con­sidered as either com­plete or pro­gress­ing as expec­ted; 11% are delayed or requir­ing addi­tion­al effort, largely due to COV­ID-19 restric­tions dur­ing ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁; 4 % are con­sidered to be at sig­ni­fic­ant risk of not being delivered; and 2% are unre­por­ted. See mid-term report board paper for fur­ther info.

   The two rounds of Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund have been com­pleted with works for wader hab­it­at, fresh water peal mus­sels, pine hov­er­fly and aspen plant­ing all delivered on time and budget. The Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end has again been delivered on line see comms update

2. Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion: Recruit­ment is under­way for a third Pro­ject Officer offer­ing a 3‑year con­tract fol­low­ing the lack of suit­able can­did­ates in the pre­vi­ous recruit­ment round. Recruit­ment will also start on a Peat­land GIS/​Data Officer. The Pro­gramme Man­ager is tying up all admin­is­tra­tion for the leg­acy pro­jects that we are tak­ing over the fund­ing from NatureScot. These include 5 pro­jects that were unable to be com­pleted in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ due to winter weath­er and a fur­ther 5 pro­jects that did not start due to con­tract­or capa­city. The pro­ject team are in the pro­cess of ten­der­ing for these as well as devel­op­ing sev­er­al new pro­jects for deliv­ery this year. A pro­ject on Inver­cauld Estate is not going ahead due to dif­fi­culties in agree­ing reas­on­able access to carry out the work. The pro­ject team is final­ising the grant scheme and fund­ing pro­ced­ures for the peat­land pro­gramme. We are also plan­ning to under­take some train­ing for new con­tract­ors by pair­ing them up with exper­i­enced contractors.

3. Wood­land Cre­ation: Early indic­a­tions are that these amount to roughly 10,000 ha of new wood­land and would be delivered with­in the next five years so poten­tially a doub­ling of the pace of reaf­for­est­a­tion seen in recent years, and some­thing likely to be cata­lysed by the increas­ingly buoy­ant car­bon mar­ket. In addi­tion to this, there will undoubtedly be schemes delivered in the next five years that neither the CNPA nor indeed the landown­ers them­selves are yet aware of. As well as sub­stan­tially increas­ing the amount of wood­land cov­er (across all five loc­al author­ity areas with­in the park), this new affor­est­a­tion is likely to have sig­ni­fic­ant, pos­it­ive effects for forest hab­it­at con­nectiv­ity across the park, poten­tially bene­fit­ting a wide range of wood­land spe­cies, includ­ing Capercaillie.

   Uptake of the Wood­land Chal­lenge Fund in its second year (2020÷21) was sig­ni­fic­antly great­er than in the first year, when there were just two suc­cess­ful applic­a­tions. In Year 2 there were sev­en suc­cess­ful applic­a­tions for pro­jects that var­ied in scale from 1.4 ha to 135 ha, and in grant award from £650 to £3000. In total the sev­en fun­ded pro­jects were awar­ded £13,688.80 and rep­res­ent the cre­ation of roughly 350 ha of new nat­ive wood­land with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park

4. Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: Work has star­ted in 5 of the 6 com­munit­ies of place and interest. They are each at dif­fer­ent stages in the mod­el for co-cre­at­ing plans to identi­fy how a wider range of people, not nor­mally engaged in con­ser­va­tion, can play a part in caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion. Devel­op­ing Moun­tain Bik­ing in Scot­land are devel­op­ing a plan to unlock 100Ha of caper­cail­lie hab­it­at without any net loss in trails, through rider aware­ness, signs and guid­ance and sup­port­ing a sus­tain­able trail asso­ci­ation. The Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship are run­ning a con­sulta­tion amongst busi­ness in the Park to gath­er opin­ion and identi­fy areas of con­sensus. The Car­rbridge caper­cail­lie group have recently fin­ished a con­sulta­tion on poten­tial path improve­ments around the vil­lage and now plan to devel­op the most pop­u­lar and feas­ible options with the help of a qual­i­fied sur­vey­or. Bal­mor­al estate, and oth­er landown­ers in Deeside, are gath­er­ing stake­hold­er opin­ion on caper­cail­lie issues to inform a ques­tion­naire for dis­tri­bu­tion later this sum­mer. And a vis­it­or sur­vey to under­stand more about the atti­tudes, opin­ions and beha­viours of vis­it­ors to Glen­more, developed by Rothiemurchus estate, F & LS Glen­more and RSPB Aber­nethy, will be car­ried out this summer.

5. Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship: The TGLP pro­gramme is com­plete. The last few weeks have been extremely busy ensur­ing all the inter­pret­a­tion has been installed cor­rectly, com­plet­ing the wood­land plant­ing and tying up all the many loose ends. This has included ensur­ing that things are in place for the leg­acy peri­od (min­im­um of 10 years) going for­ward. CNPA will con­tin­ue to over­see the fin­an­cial man­age­ment of the Man­age­ment and Main­ten­ance fund (over­seen by the Leg­acy Board).

6. In the final months of the pro­gramme with the sup­port of NLHF we diver­ted unused pro­gramme funds from some under­spent pro­jects to make final improve­ments to oth­ers. This has enabled us to invest a fant­ast­ic £3,475,942 in the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et area; that’s 99.8% of the total £3,483,203 budget. We are com­mit­ted to a fur­ther 10 year Man­age­ment and Main­ten­ance peri­od with an addi­tion­al budget of £99,580.00.

7. Please vis­it the TGLP web­site for a really good over­view of the huge array of pro­jects that were delivered by TGLP. The web­site will be main­tained by the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Busi­ness Part­ner­ship who are now equipped with these excel­lent addi­tion­al resources which have stemmed from the TGLP.

8. Deer Man­age­ment. Sig­ni­fic­ant CNPA resources are being dir­ec­ted at the three Deer Man­age­ment Groups in the south of CNP towards devel­op­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of plan­ning in a more hol­ist­ic Stra­tegic Land Man­age­ment approach, where deer are an import­ant part. Memor­andums of Under­stand­ing have been agreed in sup­port of CNPA’s Her­it­age Hori­zons fund­ing application.

Vis­it­or Experience:

1. Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um: The next CLOAF meet­ing is on 23 June with key dis­cus­sion points being: cur­rent mes­saging, Spey­side Way exten­sion and pro­mot­ing respons­ible access to lochs and rivers. There appears to be an increase in paddle­board use over the last year with con­cerns about dis­turb­ance to nest­ing birds.

2. Tread Lightly in the Park, encour­aging respons­ible out­door access, has been redraf­ted to make the mes­saging short­er and clear­er. Along with this posters warn­ing of fire risk are being recir­cu­lated and stick­ers, pro­mot­ing safe use, to put on dis­pos­able BBQ’s sold loc­ally are being pro­duced. Spring mes­saging focussed on care for ground nest­ing birds, includ­ing keep­ing dogs on leads where asked, and fire risk when there was a sig­ni­fic­ant danger. Keep Scot­land Beau­ti­ful and Zero Waste Scot­land are both pro­mot­ing sum­mer cam­paigns on lit­ter that CNPA will support.

3. Spey­side Way: Work with the New­ton­more com­munity on the install­a­tion to make the new start/​end point is now com­plete with a form­al open­ing date for the exten­ded route to be agreed soon. Work is ongo­ing this sum­mer to improve sec­tions of the route between Aviemore and New­ton­more that were not ​‘new build’ in the exten­sion. Kin­craig Com­munity and Anagach Wood­land Trust (Grant­own-on-Spey) are both being sup­por­ted to devel­op designs and bids for sec­tions of ori­gin­al path. Dis­cus­sions are under way with High­land Coun­cil, Sus­trans and Hitrans on improv­ing the sig­nage on the on road sec­tion from Kin­gussie to Ruthven Bar­racks that coin­cides with Nation­al Cycle Route 7. The Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land are being grant-aided to main­tain the route.

4. Cairngorms Rangers: Recruit­ment of CNPA rangers is now com­plete with; five full time rangers in post (inc. one FTE post des­ig­nated to sup­port the Caper­caille Pro­ject), and nine sea­son­al rangers includ­ing one based in Angus Glens. Four young people have also joined the team as part of the nation­al Kick­start pro­gramme where they will learn and exper­i­ence ​‘first hand’ the skills required to be a coun­tryside ranger. Through­out the sum­mer the team provide sev­en day cov­er­age includ­ing week­ends and week­end even­ings. Between April and mid-May they have been on 328 patrols and spoken with 2,362 vis­it­ors, with the vast major­ity keen to learn more about the area and what they can do respons­ibly. Sadly dur­ing this peri­od they have also col­lec­ted 219 bin bags of lit­ter: clear need to sup­port the KSB & ZWS sum­mer cam­paigns. Nature Scot­land, RSPB, Forestry & Land Scot­land, NTS and Bal­mor­al Estate have all increased their sum­mer sea­son­al staff and the grow­ing Fam­ily of Cairngorms Rangers com­mu­nic­ate via mobile phone mes­sage groups to share exper­i­ence and any requirements.

5. Volun­teer­ing & Health Walks: With the eas­ing of lock­down the major­ity of the 38 volun­teer rangers are now ​‘out on the ground’, ini­tially sup­port­ing the work of CNPA rangers and then the wider fam­ily. CNPA con­tin­ue to pro­mote coun­tryside volun­teer­ing across the Nation­al Park using Nation­al Volun­teers Week 1 – 7 June as a oppor­tun­ity to high­light this work. Most of the Health Walk groups are now back out enjoy­ing loc­al paths with 11 groups meet­ing weekly. Green Health NHS High­land has also sup­por­ted the train­ing of addi­tion­al walk lead­ers and fur­ther work is ongo­ing to col­lect­ively pro­mote the oppor­tun­it­ies avail­able for more to enjoy short walks. Anec­dot­al evid­ence, and some path coun­ters, indic­ate that in the last year more people have been enjoy­ing short walks

6. Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres: The focus over the winter has been improv­ing inform­a­tion at centres with updated inform­a­tion in Grant­own Museum, and new inform­a­tion into Glen­liv­et Moun­tain Bike Centre and the new centre in Brae­mar that will be the third unstaffed centre in the Nation­al Park, along with Blair Atholl and Nethy Bridge.

7. Edu­ca­tion and Inclu­sion: In 2020 a total of 972 John Muir Awards were com­pleted, con­sid­er­ably down on nor­mal due to Cov­id-19 restric­tions but there are cur­rently, in May 2021, 2278 people registered as under­tak­ing a John Muir Award. Activ­ity is slowly get­ting back to nor­mal as restric­tions ease. There has been no Juni­or Ranger activ­ity in 2020 or to date in 2021, it is hoped to restart some activ­ity later this year. Work sup­port­ing Back­bone con­tin­ues aimed at increas­ing par­ti­cip­a­tion in the out­doors among people of all back­grounds, and the rise of com­munity groups work­ing to get more people out into the coun­tryside. In a sym­posi­um this Septem­ber, Chan­ging Land­scapes — Action­ing Change, Back­bone will bring togeth­er out­door edu­ca­tion pro­viders and BAME rep­res­ent­at­ives to work out a strategy for change across the sector.

8. Inform­a­tion and Inter­pret­a­tion: CNPA vis­it­or leaf­lets have been redesigned and prin­ted for 2021, with fur­ther work ongo­ing on reprint­ing the com­munity path leaf­lets and, where needed, includ­ing the nation­al path grad­ing that describe the over­all char­ac­ter of the trail as easy, mod­er­ate or strenu­ous. Work con­tin­ues on Spey­side Way and Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres as out­lined above. We are cur­rently recruit­ing for a new Com­mu­nic­a­tions Coordin­at­or (Pub­lic­a­tions and Inter­pret­a­tion), who will take over this area of work fol­low­ing Jac­quie Macintyre’s depar­ture last month.

Rur­al Development:

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2021: The Plan was adop­ted on 26 March and will now be used to decide on all plan­ning applic­a­tions in the Park. The Plan was accom­pan­ied by non-stat­utory Guid­ance in a range of top­ics includ­ing Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment, Nat­ur­al Her­it­age, Land­scape, Cul­tur­al Her­it­age, Resources, Renew­able Energy and Open Space, Sport and Recre­ation. Fur­ther guid­ance on developer con­tri­bu­tions is in devel­op­ment will the sub­ject of pub­lic con­sulta­tion shortly. In order to pro­mote interest in the plan­ning pro­cess the staff team car­ried out an innov­at­ive engage­ment pro­gramme with the Cairngorms Youth Action Team using the pop­u­lar digit­al maps based game, Mine­craft. The Youth Action Team presen­ted their work to Plan­ning Com­mit­tee in April. The pro­ject gen­er­ated much pos­it­ive media cov­er­age and was very pop­u­lar with people who have used it. The Mine­craft map is now avail­able on our web­site to down­load and will be suit­able for use in many oth­er projects.

2. Plan­ning Case­work: The num­ber of plan­ning cases under con­sid­er­a­tion by the team is rising with three new applic­a­tions called-in with­in the last week. There are quite a few applic­a­tions for motor-home park­ing and increased camping/​caravan pro­vi­sion. Applic­a­tions have recently been approved on some long-stand­ing devel­op­ment sites, most recently at Tomin­toul for 100% afford­able hous­ing on the site of the old school. The School Wood Plan­ning applic­a­tion at Nethy Bridge had an appeal dis­missed by the Depart­ment of Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment­al Appeals who has agreed with the Plan­ning Committee’s decision to refuse plan­ning per­mis­sion for sites with­in the woodland.

3. Com­munity-led Hous­ing Deliv­ery: Plan­ning approv­al was gran­ted for the Tomin­toul Com­munity Hous­ing Pro­ject at May’s Plan­ning Com­mit­tee and ground works are expec­ted to com­mence later his sum­mer. The hous­ing alloc­a­tions policy is being final­ised and the list will open to applic­ants shortly. The plan­ning applic­a­tion for Braemar’s com­munity hous­ing pro­ject has now been sub­mit­ted and is likely to go for decision in Septem­ber. The next step for Brae­mar Com­munity Ltd is to tender for the con­struc­tion works and secure the neces­sary funds for deliv­ery with a view to con­struc­tion start­ing in Spring 2022. Staff are sup­port­ing oth­er com­munity-led ini­ti­at­ives in Lag­gan and elsewhere.

4. Eco­nom­ic Action Plan: The Grow­biz busi­ness enter­prise sup­port pro­gramme has had fur­ther fund­ing con­firmed until the end of Octo­ber 2021. The pro­gramme has three strands: 1:1 Busi­ness Sup­port (over 140 busi­nesses sup­por­ted last year in 232 1:1 ses­sions, totalling over 400 hours — 63 of these ses­sions were with new or pre- start-up busi­nesses.), Women’s Enter­prise Net­work and a Busi­ness Ment­or­ing Train­ing Pro­gramme. The Smart Vil­lage pro­ject has also con­cluded: Braemar’s new com­munity portal is now live while Grant­own cre­ated new aer­i­al video­graphy foot­age to enhance their web­site. The Cairngorms Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group met in May with spe­cial meet­ing with Centre for Loc­al Eco­nom­ic Strategies and Well­being Eco­nomy Alli­ance to look at Com­munity Wealth Build­ing in anti­cip­a­tion a suc­cess­ful Her­it­age Hori­zons bid out­come in June.

5. Com­munity assets map: There is grow­ing interest in com­munity wealth build­ing and staff have recently been tak­ing stock of the range of land, build­ings and facil­it­ies that are owned or man­aged by com­munity groups in the Park. The new map of com­munity-owned and man­aged assets was shown at the recent Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group and will be kept updated as new pro­jects develop.

6. Tour­ism Action Plan: A paper on the mid-term review of the Tour­ism Action Plan was dis­cussed at the CNPA Board meet­ing on 12 March. The paper out­lined pro­gress to data in deliv­ery of the plan, and changes in pri­or­it­ies for future deliv­ery on light of the Cov­id-19 pan­dem­ic. The Plan, along with the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, form the basis of our sub­mis­sion for the European Charter for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism in Pro­tec­ted Areas every five years. Dis­cus­sions have taken place with Euro­parc to align the times­cale of re-applic­a­tion to bet­ter fit Part­ner­ship Plan devel­op­ment. Ini­tial feed­back has been pos­it­ive and we expect to devel­op the next Tour­ism Action Plan in 2022. Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship was suc­cess­ful in their applic­a­tion to HIE’s Des­tin­a­tion Devel­op­ment fund and two new posts are cur­rently being advert­ised. CNPA is col­lab­or­at­ing with the CBP to ensure that cur­rent job vacan­cies are being widely pro­moted and are sup­por­ted where pos­sible with staff accom­mod­a­tion opportunities.

7. Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er: The QI 2021 res­ults of the Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er are now avail­able. This reg­u­lar sur­vey showed a fairly optim­ist­ic pic­ture with busi­nesses demon­strat­ing sig­ni­fic­antly high­er con­fid­ence in the short, medi­um and long term com­pared to recent quar­ters. Indeed, long-term con­fid­ence sur­passed the pre-pan­dem­ic level recor­ded in Q1 2019. The Nation­al Park des­ig­na­tion con­tin­ues to play an import­ant role in influ­en­cing and attract­ing busi­ness. The over­all levels of influ­ence of the Park on attract­ing first time and repeat cus­tom­ers and influ­en­cing prof­it­ab­il­ity were at their highest levels since the baro­met­er began in 2009. Look­ing to the future, dis­cus­sions are tak­ing place to try to integ­rate data with a sim­il­ar sur­vey car­ried out nation­wide by VisitScotland.

8. Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject: The pro­ject is now enter­ing its final phase and all activ­it­ies must be com­plete by 30 Septem­ber. The mul­tiple strands are being brought togeth­er in a set of pub­lic facing out­puts (App, web­site, leaf­lets and maps). The App will be launched in late June and a PR cam­paign in asso­ci­ation with Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship is being developed to coin­cide with this. This will launch ​“Badenoch: The Story­lands” as a des­tin­a­tion with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park through pro­mo­tion of the App and the new vis­it­or itin­er­ar­ies. Com­ple­ment­ary on- the-ground inter­pret­a­tion and sig­nage is also being planned for future years. A Badenoch Archive has been being set up through Am Baile and volun­teers are now being recruited to upload mater­i­al. Hi-cre­ate have been engaged to deliv­er Story­lands themed mar­ket­ing skills train­ing to loc­al busi­nesses and the Feis are work­ing with Young people to explore and record the music of Badenoch. Double­take pro­duc­tions are cre­at­ing a Badenoch story tableau which will be pro­jec­ted on the walls of Ruthven Bar­racks. Badenoch Her­it­age Fest­iv­al will be 18 – 25 Septem­ber – includ­ing fam­ily- friendly walks and talks, films and exhib­i­tions and a cel­eb­rat­ory event on 25 Septem­ber to mark the achieve­ments of the Badenoch Great Place Project.

9. Green Recov­ery Fund: A total of 13 pro­jects were fun­ded in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ and are com­plete. For ²⁰²²⁄₂₂ the Green Recov­ery Fund was re-launched using the same Prin­ciples with a budget of £300k, com­pris­ing 250k for CNPA and 50k from Cairngorms Trust. 37 applic­a­tions were received, request­ing a total of £533,000 from the Fund. (i.e. the Fund was over­sub­scribed 1.8 times). There was good geo­graph­ic spread of applic­a­tions with interest from many com­munity bod­ies, busi­ness asso­ci­ations and indi­vidu­al busi­nesses. Sev­er­al small applic­a­tions to encour­age com­munity groups to buy lit­ter-pick­ing equip­ment have already been approved, totalling less than £3k. The Pan­el mak­ing final decisions on the Fund (which is chaired by CNPA Board mem­ber Wil­lie Mun­ro) is meet­ing on 2 June. An update on the suc­cess­ful applic­a­tions will be provided at the Board meeting.

Stake­hold­er Engagement:

1. There has been sig­ni­fic­ant stake­hold­er engage­ment over the past 3 months espe­cially on vis­it­or man­age­ment. The CEO spoke at the nation­al vis­it­or man­age­ment sum­mit and has also atten­ded the nation­al vis­it­or man­age­ment steer­ing group and the chaired the infra­struc­ture sub-group. The Cairngorms Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Steer­ing Group now meets fort­nightly with key stake­hold­ers from across the Park. The CEO also attends a reg­u­lar liais­on meet­ing between pub­lic agen­cies and ENGO’s.

2. The CEO has also atten­ded the Scot­tish Biod­iversity Pro­gramme Board, NPUK CEO Meet­ing, NDPB For­um, Cairngorm Moun­tain Advis­ory Group and Young Peoples Forest Expert Advis­ory Group. The CEO has also had meet­ings with HIE, ECMP, Scot­tish Nation­al Invest­ment Bank, Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, Police Scot­land, Cairngorm Moun­tain, P&K Coun­cil, Angus Coun­cil, Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil, High­land Coun­cil, Edinglassie Estate, Din­net Estate, Crown Estate Scot­land and Seafield Estates. The CEO has also met the CEO at NTS Philip Long and Dav­id Field the CEO at RZSS. There has also been sig­ni­fic­ant engage­ment on the NPPP through the NPPP Stake­hold­er Group.

3. The vir­tu­al site meet­ing for the Her­it­age Hori­zons bid was held on 10 May with NLHF and we will find out the out­come at the end of June.

4. A new intern­al Engage­ment group met for the first time at the end of May, bring­ing togeth­er rep­res­ent­at­ives from across the organ­isa­tion to help coordin­ate our stake­hold­er engage­ment activ­it­ies, with a par­tic­u­lar focus (at least ini­tially) on the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. The inform­al phase of this lat­ter con­sulta­tion will go live in early June, includ­ing the rol­lout of a new micros­ite to col­late online responses in one place.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions:

1. Act­ive Cairngorms – man­aging for vis­it­ors com­mu­nic­a­tions – we con­tin­ue to work with part­ners at a loc­al and nation­al level to coordin­ate our approach to vis­it­or com­mu­nic­a­tions over the East­er and sum­mer peri­ods. At a nation­al level, the Vis­itScot­land ​‘Yours to Enjoy’ cam­paign has been seen by 83% of adults in Scot­land, and we are work­ing closely with their team to pro­duce social media, leaf­let and sig­nage con­tent on key themes such as lit­ter­ing, camp­ing, dis­pos­able barbeques etc. We col­lab­or­ated with VS and CBP on a large-format digit­al advert­ising van cam­paign, which took place for four weeks in May. The van was loc­ated at the south­ern edge of the Park near Blair Atholl for the first week, before mov­ing to Aviemore for the final three weeks. We used the van to encour­age vis­it­ors to plan ahead, check out the Vis­it­Cairngorms status web­site, and to deliv­er spe­cif­ic vis­it­or info around lit­ter­ing and wild­fires. Across our comms chan­nels, we anti­cip­ate SOAC mes­saging becom­ing increas­ingly import­ant as vis­it­or num­bers rise into the sum­mer months, and we are work­ing closely with the ranger team to ensure their work has a high pro­file in the run up.

2. Cairngorms Nature – The Cairngorms Nature Big Week­end (CNBW) took place digit­ally from 14 to 16 May, offer­ing a range of activ­it­ies, videos, blogs and com­pet­i­tions spe­cific­ally tar­geted to a ​‘new to nature’ audi­ence. Over 1,000 people atten­ded events on the web­site or through the webinars across the week­end, three quar­ters of whom were new to the site. This included a record 200 attendees for a webin­ar hos­ted by Scot­tish Envir­on­ment LINK, entitled ​‘We need nature, nature needs us. What to do?’ Whilst quieter than last year most likely down to grow­ing ​‘digit­al fatigue’ amongst our tar­get audi­ence we made a con­cer­ted effort to deep­en the impact of BIG Week­end attend­ance year-round. This included the cre­ation of Cairngorms Nature Explorer packs, includ­ing a bug box, sus­tain­ably made pen­cils and down­load­able con­tent which linked back to activ­it­ies on the CNBW web­site. In total, 141 fam­il­ies signed up to the scheme and we will now be able to com­mu­nic­ate with them on an ongo­ing basis about ways to get more involved in their loc­al envir­on­ment. Else­where, the Comms and Con­ser­va­tion teams worked closely on a new ​‘Guide to the Wood Ants of the UK’ book, a five-minute high­lights film for the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan, and new school resources for the Strath­spey Wet­lands and Waders Initiative.

3. Make it Yours: a new video train­ing resource, designed to provide bites­ize inform­a­tion for busi­nesses and their employ­ees, was com­pleted in early May and shared with part­ners across the Park. It is avail­able to view here: https://​www​.you​tube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​4​v​D​B​w​0​aikgg. We con­tin­ue to sup­port applic­a­tions from busi­nesses want­ing to use the CNP brand, and launched a brand new Her­it­age Inter­pret­a­tion toolkit to assist loc­al busi­nesses in incor­por­at­ing ele­ments of Gael­ic in their vis­it­or inform­a­tion in May.

4. Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions: along­side our ongo­ing pro­act­ive and react­ive media activ­ity around man­aging for vis­it­ors issues, there have been a num­ber of sig­ni­fic­ant news stor­ies in the past few months. These include our response to the golden eagle pois­on­ing on Inver­cauld Estate – and the sub­sequent depar­ture of Inver­cauld from the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship – plus fur­ther interest in our Cairngorms Mine­craft map as the resource went live for all, and good cov­er­age for the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan adop­tion. Finally, a week-long Gael­ic takeover of our social media chan­nels accom­pan­ied the launch of a new Her­it­age Inter­pret­a­tion toolkit (see above); both print and broad­cast inter­views were car­ried out with key mem­bers of staff to mark the launch.

5. Web­site and social media: To update fig­ures from the last report, our social media fol­low­ing grew by 25% to 50,654 over the past 12 months, whilst user engage­ment across all plat­forms (includ­ing video views) has increased by 112% to 770,480. All told, our social activ­ity reached nearly 7.8m impres­sions over the course of 2020, an increase of 21%. As for our web­site, we have rolled out a major upgrade to the homepage, as well as adding func­tion­al­ity to a num­ber of sub-pages in order to improve user exper­i­ence. This includes bet­ter integ­ra­tion of our social media feeds and a facil­ity to get the latest updates from ​‘boots on the ground’. We launched a new Com­munity Owned Assets webpage, which includes an updat­able map show­ing over 90 assets cur­rently owned or man­aged by com­munity interest organ­isa­tions. We are also updat­ing our Com­munity Paths and Trails page to make them more access­ible to mobile users, and to incor­por­ate an over­view map of all routes to make it easi­er for people to find walks suit­able for them. Finally, our access­ib­il­ity audit work con­tin­ues, with all pdfs cur­rently on the site being reviewed to make sure they are access­ible to users via screen reader.

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 con­tin­ues to be lim­ited to busi­ness crit­ic­al reas­ons, which are approved and logged by Heads of Ser­vice. Staff are also able to do site/​field vis­its, in accord­ance with cur­rent guid­ance. The default pos­i­tion remains that staff will be work­ing from home, and staff are sup­por­ted to do this with regards the pro­vi­sion of IT and office kit, and broad­er well­being support.

   The approach cur­rently being con­sidered by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment is to review office work­ing guid­ance at the end of June. In anti­cip­a­tion that staff may gradu­ally be able to start return­ing to the office late sum­mer, a pro­ject team has now been estab­lished to sup­port the return of staff to the office. This team meets two-weekly and is con­sid­er­ing how best to use our exist­ing space to sup­port a more hybrid approach where we expect staff will work part of their hours from home and part in the office. We are cur­rently con­sult­ing with staff around this blen­ded approach, and are gath­er­ing views about how best this may be imple­men­ted and sup­por­ted, both through vir­tu­al staff drop-in ses­sions and the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um. We expect to move towards a ​“hot desk” situ­ation, and offices may be recon­figured to sup­port more meet­ing spaces. The pro­ject team will also con­sider the Bal­later office, as well as Board meetings.

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 March, staff­ing updates are as follows:

   a) Intern­al Pro­mo­tions: The fol­low­ing staff were pro­moted fol­low­ing a com­pet­it­ive intern­al recruit­ment process:-

   • Steph­en Corcor­an was pro­moted to the Peat­land Pro­gramme Man­ager post
   • Pete Short, Polly Free­man and Duncan Mac­don­ald were pro­moted to the per­man­ent Ranger posts
   • Alan Smith was pro­moted to the Out­door Learn­ing and Engage­ment Manager
   • Lucy Ford was pro­moted to Ranger Manager
   • Sea­son­al Rangers appoin­ted were: Craig Fraser, Lianne Star­buck-Steph­en, Vicky Ing­lis, Blair John­ston, Tom Cole
   • Naomi Kaye was appoin­ted to the Ranger Admin and Policy Officer post

b) Extern­al Appoint­ments: The fol­low­ing staff were appoin­ted fol­low­ing a com­pet­it­ive extern­al recruit­ment process:-

• Sea­son­al Rangers Gil­lian Gib­son, Louise Emslie and Anthony Seivwright,
• Judy Bax­ter and Will George joined as per­man­ent Rangers
• Alan Atkins joined the Author­ity as a Plan­ning Officer
• Andy Dav­is joined as mater­nity cov­er for Sarah Hen­shall, Con­ser­va­tion Officer

c) Staff leav­ing the Authority:-

• 4 staff left through the Vol­un­tary Exit Scheme: — Alis­on Flem­ing, Jac­quie Macintyre, Catri­ona Camp­bell and Julie Jarvis
• Will Boyd-Wal­lis, Head of Land Man­age­ment left in April. This post is act­ively being recruited.

1. Youth Employ­ment:

   a) Intern­ships: We are cur­rently recruit­ing a 4‑month intern­ship to sup­port moun­tain bike trail map­ping for the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject. b) Appren­tice­ships: Luke Dig­gins is our IT Appren­tice, and has com­menced his SVQ level 6 c) Kick­start posts: The fol­low­ing young people were appoin­ted to Train­ee Ranger pos­i­tions through the Kick­start Scheme: — Scott Hast­ings; Con­or McBri­en, Max Pill­ings and Danie O’Brien

2. 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.

3. Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment: In March this year, the Author­ity was recog­nised by Flex­ib­il­ity Works as one the Top 10 Flex­ible Organ­isa­tions in Scotland.

   The organ­isa­tion will be doing the Best Com­pan­ies Staff Engage­ment Sur­vey this year, which will feed in to our over­arch­ing approach to Organ­isa­tion­al Development.

   The Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme Board meets in June and is tasked with:- a) Coordin­at­ing final imple­ment­a­tion of cur­rent Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy and the migra­tion of the organ­isa­tion from busi­ness con­tinu­ity oper­a­tions to ​“new nor­mal” oper­a­tions. b) Coordin­at­ing the devel­op­ment of revised Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy dur­ing ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ on the back of the staff sur­vey in Autumn 2021. c) Coordin­at­ing the deliv­ery of the Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy and the work asso­ci­ated with the archi­tec­ture needed for the organ­isa­tion to deliv­er (IT, data man­age­ment etc

4. LEADER/​Cairngorms Trust: A ret­ro­spect­ive update on the LEAD­ER Pro­gramme deliv­ery is set out in the cor­por­ate per­form­ance updates to be con­sidered as a sep­ar­ate item at this Board meet­ing, while the Board received the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Exec­ut­ive Sum­mary of the Mon­it­or­ing and Eval­u­ation of the cur­rent pro­gramme at its pre­vi­ous meet­ing. A small num­ber of pro­jects remain open and under man­age­ment of the Loc­al Action Group. Not­ably the sus­tain­able trans­port pro­ject has now moved from its design and pro­cure­ment phase into deliv­ery. The first 19 par­ti­cipants have now received a free loan of an ebike from the Cairngorms Trust, to encour­age a more act­ive life­style, sup­port health improve­ment and offer altern­ate, act­ive travel and ultra-low emis­sion travel solu­tions. Par­ti­cipants have ranged from 18 — 24 to 65+ age ranges; 8 female and II male par­ti­cipants; and with ini­tial par­ti­cipant feed­back extremely pos­it­ive. Pro­cure­ment of ebikes was delayed by COVID19 with res­ult­ant delays in start­ing deliv­ery phase. The Trust is cur­rently seek­ing to extend the part­ner­ship sup­port of Cyc­ling UK Scot­land for the pro­ject over the remainder of the cur­rent fin­an­cial year, with par­ti­cipants to Decem­ber sup­port­ing the final LEAD­ER outcomes.

   There is a devel­op­ing impetus behind con­sid­er­a­tion of the future of Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment Fund­ing (CLLD) after the close of the LEAD­ER Pro­gramme in Decem­ber 2021. An ini­tial options paper has been issued by Scot­tish Government’s Rur­al Policy team with work­shops led by the Scot­tish Rur­al Net­work. Both the Author­ity and the Cairngorms Trust is enga­ging in dis­cus­sions on the options paper and wider dia­logue on the future of CLLD.

5. Cairngorms Trust: char­ity activ­it­ies and vol­un­tary giv­ing: The Trust is fully engaged in the Green Recov­ery Fund Grant pro­cesses, while con­tinu­ing to evolve ideas around vol­un­tary giv­ing schemes. Both these areas are covered in oth­er items con­sidered by the Board at this meet­ing. Des­pite the hiatus in devel­op­ing work around the vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme caused by COV­ID restric­tions through­out ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁, a total of £4,300 was raised from busi­ness and indi­vidu­al dona­tions over the course of the year. The Trust has com­pleted its first two main char­it­able cam­paign pro­jects: Kin­gussie Path Net­work Improve­ments and ​“An Osprey Nest for the Osprey Vil­lage” in Boat of Garten, and is now con­sid­er­ing a call for its next cam­paign focus. The charity’s first self-fin­anced com­munity grants scheme is also now completed.

Grant Moir June 2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 11^th June 2021

Board Con­vener Report – For Information

1. The past few months have been busy ini­tially with final pre-elec­tion meet­ings includ­ing the Con­ven­tion of the High­lands & Islands and of the Envir­on­ment Dir­ect­or­ate with the Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary for Envir­on­ment, Cli­mate Change & Land Reform and Rur­al Affairs & Nat­ur­al Envir­on­ment Minister.

2. The CEO and I met with the Chair & CEO of High­lands & Islands Enter­prise to dis­cuss sev­er­al aspects of ongo­ing work and future rela­tions between HIE and CNPA. The Deputy Con­vener and I also met with the Chair and Vice Chair of the CBP to dis­cuss the ongo­ing COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic and our coordin­ated response to it. This was a very pos­it­ive meet­ing and it was agreed to have a fol­low up meet­ing in six month time.

3. Out­side of these extern­al engage­ments, I have met reg­u­larly with the Deputy Con­vener, CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices to pro­gress the on-going gov­ernance work which the Board agreed at the Board meet­ing on the 28^th May. Fol­low­ing the elec­tion of the final mem­bers of the Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee, it is my inten­tion to make the appoint­ments to com­mit­tees a pri­or­ity so that the new com­mit­tees can be in place for after the summer.

Xan­der McDade Board Convener

Extern­al Engage­ments (4^th March 2021 – 3^rd June 2021)

1. 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
15/03/21	Con­ven­tion of the High­lands & Islands (part) with Car­o­lyn Cad­dick, Deputy Convener	Vir­tu­al
16/03/21	Meet­ing with Alistair Dodds & Char­lotte Wright, High­lands & Islands Enter­prise and Grant Moir, CNPA CEO	Vir­tu­al
17/03/21	Meet­ing of Envir­on­ment Dir­ect­or­ate with Roseanna Cun­ning­ham MSP, Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary, and Ben Macph­er­son MSP, Minister	Vir­tu­al
18/03/21	Meet­ing with Claire Bruce, Chair and Ross Coulter, Vice Chair of Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship and Car­o­lyn Cad­dick, Deputy Convener	Vir­tu­al