210831-EAPMinutesFinal

Cairngorms Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el 29^th June 2021

5:00pm — 6:30pm — Held virtually

Minutes

Present
Anita Howard	Bo Hickey
Heath­er Earnshaw	Kev­in Hutchens
Linda Bam­ford	Peter Kennedy
Stu­art Hall	Vanessa Alt­weck

Attend­ing
Don­ald Ross	Fiona McLean
Gav­in Miles	Grant Moir
Kate Christie	Kath­er­ine Willing
Oliv­er Davies

1. Intro­duc­tion – Fiona McLean 1.1. Fiona wel­comed every­one to the first meet­ing back after the sum­mer break. Fiona intro­duced the guests; Don­ald Ross, Grant Moir, Gav­in Miles and Oliv­er Dav­ies. 1.2. The minutes were agreed with the under­stand­ing that the ver­sion without names would be added to the web­site. 1.3. The action log was dis­cussed and agreed. The change in the sched­ule was dis­cussed. Ori­gin­ally, Oliv­er Dav­ies was due to con­tin­ue the com­mu­nic­a­tions dis­cus­sion from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing but it was felt that the Park Part­ner­ship Plan and the Com­mu­nic­a­tions dis­cus­sion deserved sep­ar­ate meet­ings, the com­mu­nic­a­tions dis­cus­sion will be con­tin­ued at the next meeting.

2. Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) – Grant Moir 2.1. Grant presen­ted the pan­el with an over­view and logist­ics of the NPPP. Grant dis­cussed the key object­ives, planned achieve­ments and fin­ance sec­tions. Fur­ther, the con­sulta­tion timelines were out­lined. Response from Panel

2.2. The pan­el stated to make the NPPP access­ible it needed to be pro­duced in easy read format, in plain­er Eng­lish and access­ible for those with low lit­er­acy levels or no lit­er­acy. The pan­el sug­ges­ted using videos or dramat­iz­a­tion. It was also felt it should be organ­ised to help show them­at­ic links, per­haps through tab­u­lat­ing it, this is can be help­ful neurodi­verse groups. Olly explained the text giv­en to the pan­el is the start­ing point. In its final­ised ver­sion it will be presen­ted as a micro-web­site and a print­able doc­u­ment. The com­mu­nic­a­tions team will go through the doc­u­ment to reword as much as pos­sible into plain Eng­lish, any­thing more com­plex terms that need to be there will be included in a gloss­ary. Sev­er­al mem­bers of the pan­el expressed con­cern that this does not address how it will be access­ible for those with low or no levels of lit­er­acy. 2.3. One mem­ber of the pan­el sug­ges­ted the NPPP should be presen­ted to the Equal­it­ies and Human Rights Par­lia­ment­ary Com­mit­tee. Grant cla­ri­fied the cur­rent pro­cess but stated that he is happy to con­tin­ue to dis­cuss this with the pan­el mem­ber fol­low­ing the ses­sion once he has a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the role of the com­mit­tee. 2.4. A num­ber of pan­el mem­bers raised the new part­ner­ship between the SNP and Green Party and wheth­er some of these new par­lia­ment­ary com­mit­ments would affect the cur­rent NPPP. How­ever, it was felt by those present­ing that CNPA were already con­sid­er­ing and work­ing on these pri­or­it­ies so the NPPP should be unaf­fected. 2.5. Act­ive travel was dis­cussed by the pan­el. The pan­el dis­cussed that all infra­struc­ture needs to be con­sidered when encour­aging act­ive travel, for example con­sid­er­ing ped­es­tri­an areas such as bus stops to ensure they are safe and access­ible for all users, as opposed to just look­ing at the bus routes and times. Grant acknow­ledged this and stated it would be reflec­ted in the act­ive travel sec­tion. 2.6. The pan­el dis­cussed miss­ing policy object­ives sur­round­ing redu­cing the amount of job roles which asked for man­dat­ory driv­ing licenses with­in the park. The pan­el emphas­ised if CNPA wishes to reduce out­ward migra­tion of young­er res­id­ents then this neces­sary. Grant felt this was a well-made point how­ever, Grant felt this may be bet­ter placed in a dif­fer­ent doc­u­ment, such as the well­being action plan and dis­cus­sion with the Busi­ness Part­ner­ship. 2.7. The sup­port­ing state­ment sur­round­ing liv­ing wage was wel­comed by the pan­el, how­ever, the pan­el asked wheth­er oth­er Busi­nesses with­in the park would be encour­aged to do so as well, per­haps through mak­ing this a con­di­tion of fund­ing. Grant respon­ded to this, Grant reminded the pan­el that all busi­nesses must pay min­im­um wage which is leg­ally dic­tated but the liv­ing wage is vol­un­tary and there­fore, as an author­ity it is not pos­sible for us to dic­tate this to busi­nesses. 2.8. Sev­er­al mem­bers of the pan­el men­tioned the oppor­tun­ity for main­stream­ing equal­it­ies using the NPPP. Grant explained that CNPA hopes that equal­it­ies will be a part of all of the plans stated in the NPPP and the pan­el will con­tin­ue to be con­sul­ted. 2.9. Grant explained to the pan­el that with­in the NPPP, CNPA wished to include an equal­it­ies indic­at­or so that the author­ity can see wheth­er we are pro­gress­ing in this area. The pan­el also have a policy of ask­ing speak­ers for the one thing that they have taken away from the meet­ing. Grant asked the pan­el if they had any thoughts on what would be a good indic­at­or, and what would their one thing be for the next five years of the Cairngorm Nation­al Park Authority.

• Indic­at­or — Look­ing at how wel­come all vis­it­ors feel in the park, what is their sense of belong­ing. The pan­el felt this was a good over­all indic­at­or, how­ever it is dif­fi­cult to measure.
• Indic­at­or — Is there increased par­ti­cip­a­tion from the groups we are try­ing to reach?
• One Thing – To have CNPA staff and all the organ­isa­tions that the author­ity works with become more informed on what equal­it­ies, inclus­iv­ity and diversity mean so that all organ­isa­tions feel com­fort­able to imple­ment stra­tegic change.
• One Thing — To main­stream equal­it­ies so that the park is able to provide equal oppor­tun­it­ies and access that are afford­able for all.

1. AOB 3.1. There were no AOB’s raised.

2. Con­clu­sion 4.1. The pan­el were thanked for their time and reminded that the next meet­ing will be held vir­tu­ally on the 28^th September.

END OF MEETING