CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 10/09/2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR INFORM­A­TION

Title: CEO REPORT

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: Con­firm­a­tion is expec­ted this month of CNPA’s latest applic­a­tion to the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund for c£300,000 of fresh­wa­ter res­tor­a­tion pro­jects, delivered mainly through loc­al con­tract­ors, pro­jects to be imple­men­ted by the Catch­ment Man­age­ment Part­ner­ships. Cur­rent Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund pro­jects, totalling c£150,000 include stone dyke res­tor­a­tion in Badenoch & Strath­spey, pond cre­ation for north­ern dam­sel­fly on estates in Deeside and Strath­spey, fen­cing to pro­tect mont­ane wil­low and juni­per on Mar Lodge estate and Del­nadamph respect­ively and aspen plants for plant­ing on Deeside.

   The for­tunes of the incred­ibly rare pine hov­er­fly have seen a massive reversal through the very suc­cess­ful cap­tive breed­ing of 7,000 lar­vae at High­land Wild­life Park as part of Rare Inver­teb­rates in the Cairngorms, a Cairngorms Nature part­ner­ship pro­ject. The pro­ject is await­ing the res­ult of an NLHF bid to be able to continue.

   Three Cell­track tags were deployed on golden eagle chicks on three estates in the Nation­al Park. The tags use both mobile and satel­lite recep­tion to record and provide near real-time detail on loc­a­tion as well as an in built mor­tal­ity indic­at­or that recog­nises non-nat­ur­al beha­viour con­sist­ent with illeg­al per­se­cu­tion events.

2. Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: The latest pro­ject high­light report shows that pro­gress across all of the project’s approved pur­poses is on track.

   The vis­it­or sur­vey cur­rently run­ning in Rothiemurchus, Glen­more and Aber­nethy aims to estab­lish the motiv­a­tions of dif­fer­ent types of vis­it­ors and identi­fy ways they can help play a part in caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion. The find­ings will be shared pub­licly and used to inform the action plan­ning pro­cess. The first stage of research in Deeside is now com­plete. 30 inter­views have been con­duc­ted with key stake­hold­ers includ­ing landown­ers and land man­agers, busi­nesses related to tour­ism and recre­ation, and rep­res­ent­at­ives from com­munity and interest groups. The sur­vey for busi­nesses is now closed. 131 busi­nesses com­pleted the sur­vey. 110 had not engaged with the pro­ject before and 27 agreed to fol­low-up interviews.

   All related landown­ers, neigh­bours and the Car­rbridge & Vicin­ity Com­munity Coun­cil are being asked to com­ment on draft design con­cepts to improve paths and out­door spaces around Car­rbridge, drawn up fol­low­ing the com­munity con­sulta­tion in May. Amended and agreed pro­pos­als will then form a fur­ther round of com­munity con­sulta­tion. The tri­al sig­nage around Car­rbridge encour­aging respons­ible dog walk­ing in caper­cail­lie areas has been taken down at the end of the sens­it­ive time for caper­cail­lie. An end of sea­son report will be pro­duced about the signs and made avail­able on the pro­ject web­site. More inform­a­tion in the latest Car­rbridge Caper­cail­lie news­let­ter. The tri­al sig­nage encour­aging respons­ible moun­tain bike rid­ing in caper­cail­lie areas on High Burn­side and Bad­aguish is also being removed and an end of sea­son report produced.

   Douglas Car­chrie has joined the pro­ject team as the Moun­tain Bike Map­ping Intern respons­ible for map­ping moun­tain bike trails and sig­nage along­side caper­cail­lie data to enable the MTB com­munity to make more informed decisions about trail devel­op­ment, sig­nage and pro­mo­tion. There is a pro­ject Face­book page to enable the pro­ject to be more act­ive online and extend its reach and there is now a page on the pro­ject web­site with details of Free­dom of Inform­a­tion requests received, gov­ernance and man­age­ment, research reports and tenders.

3. Wood­land Cre­ation: The CNPA has recently been con­sul­ted about sev­er­al sig­ni­fic­ant wood­land cre­ation pro­pos­als across the Park. These include 1100 ha of nat­ive wood­land to be delivered through a mix­ture of nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion and plant­ing on Muck­rach Moor. Around 400 ha of new nat­ive wood­land by plant­ing and nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion is being pro­posed with­in the Nation­al Park’s share of the Kin­rara estate. Plans have also been advanced for an estim­ated 2200 ha of nat­ive wood­land expan­sion, primar­ily through nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion, on prop­er­ties owned by Wild­land Ltd at Lynaber­ack and Gaick over the next 10 years. Fur­ther­more, NTS at Mar Lodge has put for­ward pro­pos­als for new ripari­an wood­land cre­ation along a size­able stretch of Glen Gel­die, which would not only con­serve and enhance the aquat­ic envir­on­ment through shad­ing etc., but would cre­ate a stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant cor­ridor of nat­ive wood­land between the exist­ing wood­land of the Spey and Dee catch­ments. This last pro­pos­al has been sup­por­ted by a grant from the CNP Wood­land Chal­lenge Fund, which con­trib­uted towards the cost of a detailed peat depth sur­vey. We anti­cip­ate being con­sul­ted about fur­ther sig­ni­fic­ant wood­land cre­ation pro­pos­als across the Park in due course.

4. Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion: Two new Peat­land Action Pro­ject Officers joined the team in July bring­ing the staff com­pli­ment to five with a Peat­land GIS Officer and Pro­ject Assist­ant to be recruited this autumn. The team is receiv­ing increased interest in peat­land res­tor­a­tion from land man­agers across the Nation­al Park and from poten­tial private investors for car­bon offsetting.

The demand for res­tor­a­tion work con­tin­ues to out­strip the avail­ab­il­ity of peat­land con­tract­ors and this is likely to lim­it the deliv­ery poten­tial for sev­er­al years. For the third year in a row sev­er­al pro­jects did not attract con­tract­ors to under­take the work. This in part reflects the lack of peat­land con­tract­ors as well as the very high demand in the con­struc­tion sec­tor for machine oper­at­ors and staff short­ages due to Brexit or Covid.

The team is run­ning a train­ing pro­gramme for new peat­land con­tract­ors on Atholl and Tulchan Estates where we will work with at least 4 loc­al con­tract­ors to train them on under­tak­ing drain block­ing and re-pro­fil­ing. Fur­ther­more, gen­er­al train­ing is to be run with the assist­ance of the Peat­land ACTION train­ing team from the Crichton Car­bon Centre.

Con­tract­ors are work­ing on two Wild­land Estates, with three oth­er estates about to see con­tract­ors start in Septem­ber. Breed­ing bird, herb­i­vore impact assess­ment and peat depth sur­veys were under­taken across 9 estates cov­er­ing sev­er­al thou­sand hec­tares to help with plan­ning new pro­ject delivery.

Peat­land res­tor­a­tion is now classed as Per­mit­ted Devel­op­ment (from I April this year) and pri­or noti­fic­a­tion applic­a­tions need to be sub­mit­ted to Loc­al Author­it­ies. The Peat­land team have developed new pro­to­cols for this pro­cess and applic­a­tions were sub­mit­ted for ten estates.

Our tar­get of 557 hec­tares of peat­land res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment for this year remains chal­len­ging giv­en the con­tract­or issues des­pite the team actu­ally hav­ing 955 hec­tares of poten­tial pro­jects that could be delivered. The major­ity of our work this year will be drain block­ing and there is the pos­sib­il­ity to increase this work if weath­er and con­tract­or capa­city allow.

1. Moor­land Man­age­ment: East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship is the main focus for CNPA’s moor­land work. The Partnership’s cur­rent 5 mem­ber estates con­tin­ue to be com­mit­ted to the goals of the Part­ner­ship and are work­ing on a vari­ety of wood­land and scrub expan­sion pro­jects and peat­land res­tor­a­tion schemes, as well as con­trib­ut­ing to the Muir­burn Code Work­ing Group. Wader, moun­tain hare and rap­tor mon­it­or­ing are now being car­ried out on a routine basis and sug­gest healthy pop­u­la­tions across most spe­cies. Moor­land rap­tor breed­ing suc­cess this year has been encour­aging, with golden eagles satel­lite tagged on 4 estates and hen har­ri­ers tagged on Mar Lodge. Inter­pret­a­tion pan­els have been installed in a new vis­it­or hub in the Bal­later office which will be open­ing to the pub­lic soon.

2. Deer Man­age­ment: In line with cur­rent NPPP, CNPA is work­ing through Deer Man­age­ment Groups (DMG) to pro­duce Stra­tegic Land Man­age­ment Plans (SLMP), which will include deer man­age­ment, aimed at address­ing cli­mate change and biod­iversity loss.

   Focus will be on the DMGs in the South of CNP: West Grampi­an DMG, South Deeside North Angus DMG, South Grampi­an DMG. CNPA and the three DMGs agreed Memor­andum of Under­stand­ing (MoU) around the devel­op­ment of SLMPs that forms part of the suc­cess­ful Her­it­age Hori­zons fund­ing bid.

   Once NLHF provide per­mis­sion to start, CNPA and each DMG will begin a two-year devel­op­ment pro­gramme towards deliv­er­ing the Part­ner Object­ives con­tained in the MoUs.

Vis­it­or Experience:

1. Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um: The LOAF met on 25 August dis­cuss­ing the draft NP Part­ner­ship Plan and work under­taken this sum­mer on man­aging for vis­it­ors. The main issue dis­cussed was the lock­ing of gates by Net­work Rail on a well-used path cross­ing from the vil­lage of Dal­whinne to Loch Ericht and on to Ben Alder. CNPA had not been con­sul­ted on the pro­posed change. The new arrange­ments promp­ted objec­tions from com­munity coun­cil and a range of nation­al organ­isa­tions. The For­um advised that cur­rent arrange­ments were unsat­is­fact­ory and endorsed the next steps which included that CNPA meet with Net­work Rail and part­ners to find a safe and appro­pri­ate solu­tion to ped­es­tri­ans cross­ing the rail­way at Dalwhinnie.

2. Tread Lightly in the Park: The revised ver­sion of Tread Lightly con­tin­ues to be pro­moted with key focus on respons­ible; camp­ing & cook­ing, lit­ter & toi­lets, and dog walk­ing. Link here tread-lightly.pdf (cairngorms​.co​.uk) Fur­ther work is required nation­ally to agree con­sist­ent mes­saging across Scot­land so that vis­it­ors are asked to behave in the same respons­ible way wherever they are enjoy­ing the countryside.

3. Long Dis­tance Routes: Spey­side Way: The exten­sion is now open with a branded start/​end point at New­ton­more. An offi­cial event to cel­eb­rate the new route, pro­mot­ing the path and cel­eb­rat­ing the work of a range of part­ners, is planned for next Spring. Work is ongo­ing 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 fund­ing bids for sec­tions of ori­gin­al path. Dis­cus­sions are ongo­ing with High­land Coun­cil, Sus­trans and Hitrans on improv­ing the sig­nage on the on road sec­tion from Kin­gussie to Ruthven Bar­racks. Nation­al Cycle Route 7 Sus­trans are launch­ing new route pro­mo­tion encour­aging users to explore the loc­al area using the route. Deeside Way/​NCN 195 (these routes coin­cide) Sus­trans, with part­ners, is lead­ing on work to look at the con­di­tion and require­ments of whole route from Aber­deen to Bal­later with poten­tial for exten­sion to Braemar.

4. Cairngorms Rangers: Five full time CNPA rangers are in post and ​‘on the ground’ (includ­ing one FTE post des­ig­nated to sup­port the Caper­caille Pro­ject), along with nine sea­son­al rangers includ­ing one based in Angus Glens. Four young people who joined the team as part of the nation­al Kick­start pro­gramme are ​‘half way’ through the pro­gramme with one, fol­low­ing inter­view, pro­moted to a Sea­son­al Ranger vacancy. Through­out the sum­mer the team provide sev­en day cov­er­age includ­ing week­ends and week­end even­ings. In the 21 weeks since East­er they have talked with 9,794 vis­it­ors (close to 1% of people enjoy­ing the Nation­al Park). Sadly dur­ing this peri­od they have also col­lec­ted 484 bin bags of lit­ter aver­aging 23 bags each week. 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. Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture: Work has com­menced on pre­par­a­tion of a Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plan with fund­ing from Vis­itScot­land. The Plan will set out the case for range improve­ments to be made over time in cap­it­al infra­struc­ture and also main­ten­ance of core assets, includ­ing the net­work of Core Paths and the Long Dis­tance Routes in the Park. The first phase of grants for improved vis­it­or infra­struc­ture have been offered includ­ing fund­ing for improved park­ing near Beinn a Ghlo and new vis­it­or facil­it­ies near Muir of Din­net Nation­al Nature Reserve.

6. Volun­teer­ing & Health Walks: With the eas­ing of lock­down the major­ity of the 38 volun­teer rangers are now out on the ground, sup­port­ing the work of Cairngorms rangers. A review is under­way to assess what has worked well over the last four years of our work sup­port­ing volun­teers and what we can do bet­ter going for­ward. This will be presen­ted to CNPA Board later this year. Cur­rently 12 Health Walk groups meet weekly around the Nation­al Park fol­low­ing Cov­id safe pro­to­cols. Walk Lead­er train­ing will take place in Septem­ber to increase volun­teer capa­city to sup­port these walks. and Wee Walks Week sched­uled for Octo­ber pro­mot­ing oppor­tun­it­ies to get out­doors as the ​‘clocks change’.

7. Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres: The 13 LIC’s are con­tinu­ing to provide inform­a­tion to vis­it­ors across the Nation­al Park with new inform­a­tion and inter­pret­a­tion now installed at Glen­liv­et Moun­tain Bike Café and Lag­gan Wolftrax under­go­ing redevel­op­ment aimed to be ready for Spring 2022.

8. Edu­ca­tion and Inclu­sion: John Muir Award re-engage­ments fol­low­ing Cov­id-19 restric­tions con­tin­ues to grow. As the busy sea­son eases CNPA Rangers with part­ner ser­vices will look at how best to restart the Juni­or Ranger pro­gramme. Work sup­port­ing Back­bone con­tin­ues, aimed at increas­ing par­ti­cip­a­tion in the out­doors among people from a wide range of back­grounds, and on Sunday 10^th Octo­ber at the Hay­field, Glen­more, an event hos­ted by Back­bone and sup­por­ted by rangers ser­vices and extern­al activ­ity pro­viders, will run a series of enga­ging and access­ible activ­it­ies aimed at con­nect­ing 150 people to the nature and spe­cial qual­it­ies of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. This is one of three fest­ivals planned to take place in CNP over the next 12 months, with the oth­er two loc­ated in Tomin­toul and Deeside.

9. Inform­a­tion and Inter­pret­a­tion: The new com­munity art install­a­tion in New­to­more, sup­por­ted by CNPA & a range of part­ners, was opened in gust by Kate For­bes MSP in August. This sculp­tured shinty stick seat, stand­ing stones and inform­a­tion pan­els is along­side the start/​finish point for Spey­side Way. A new com­munity path leaf­let (18^th in the Nation­al Park) is being developed for Kin­craig with work on upgraded reprints for Brae­mar, Grant­own-on-Spey, Aviemore and Kin­gussie under­way. Work will start this autumn on a mobile phone app to allow easy phone access to the ​‘leaf­lets’ in a way that can be under­stood and used on screen.

   Louise Fen­lon, our new Com­mu­nic­a­tions Coordin­at­or (Pub­lic­a­tions and Inter­pret­a­tion), joined CNPA from Scot­tish Bal­let on I Septem­ber. Louise’s early focus will be on Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and Annu­al Review mater­i­als, as well as liais­ing with part­ners on a vari­ety of inter­pret­a­tion pro­jects, includ­ing activ­ity at Glen Tanar Estate.

   We have been work­ing closely with Alis­on Hub­bard of Cran­ford Guest House to devel­op Brae­mar Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centre, with a suite of new inter­pret­a­tion pan­els, leaf­let dis­plays and sig­nage being installed in the past few weeks.

Rur­al Development:

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2021: The Plan was adop­ted on 26 March and has been used to determ­ine plan­ning applic­a­tions in the Nation­al Park since then. The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee have approved three fur­ther items of plan­ning guid­ance for con­sulta­tion that will start in Septem­ber on Hous­ing, Developer oblig­a­tions and Design and Place-mak­ing Guid­ance. The Plan is act­ively mon­itored to make sure the polices are well used and the Plan is deliv­er­ing the sort of devel­op­ment we want to see in the Park – the most recent mon­it­or­ing report was presen­ted to Plan­ning Com­mit­tee in August 2021.

2. Plan­ning Case­work: There have been two Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ings since the last Board meet­ing, with applic­a­tions includ­ing vis­it­or-related facil­it­ies and accom­mod­a­tion, new hous­ing and ret­ro­spect­ive track.

3. Com­munity-led Hous­ing Deliv­ery: Works have com­menced on the Tomin­toul Com­munity Hous­ing Pro­ject that was approved at May’s Plan­ning Com­mit­tee. The CNPA has called-in the plan­ning applic­a­tions asso­ci­ated with Braemar’s com­munity hous­ing pro­ject. The Com­munity-led Hous­ing Group, facil­it­ated by CNPA, is sched­uled to meet in late October.

4. Eco­nom­ic Action Plan: The Cairngorms Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group met in June and August, con­sid­er­ing a range of top­ics includ­ing Cov­id ‑19 busi­ness sup­port activ­ity, the move towards a Well-being Eco­nomy, the Green Recov­ery Fund, Path­ways to Rur­al Work pro­ject and the draft Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. Attend­ance and par­ti­cip­a­tion at the meet­ings is good and involves the vil­lage business/​tourism asso­ci­ations, rep­res­ent­at­ive bod­ies (Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, Fed­er­a­tion of Small Busi­nesses, SCDI, etc) and the rel­ev­ant pub­lic bod­ies. Next meet­ing in Novem­ber will focus on skills and train­ing related issues.

5. Tour­ism Action Plan: Dis­cus­sions have taken place with Euro­parc to con­firm that devel­op­ment of the Tour­ism Action Plan and sub­mis­sion of the applic­a­tion to renew the European Charter for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism in Pro­tec­ted Areas can take place in 2022 to align with times­cale for devel­op­ment of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. Most recent meet­ing of the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship was in August 2021 and focused on the NP Part­ner­ship Plan and the pro­pos­al to sign up to Tour­ism Declares initiative.

6. A9 Dualling pro­ject: Trans­port Scot­land con­tin­ue to lead the devel­op­ment of the non-motor­ised user (NMU) route between Aviemore and Car­rbridge with the sup­port of CNPA and High­land Coun­cil. A review of the times­cales for deliv­ery of indi­vidu­al sec­tions is expec­ted to be announced shortly.

7. Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er: The 2021 (Quarter 2) res­ults of the Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er are now avail­able. This reg­u­lar sur­vey showed a more optim­ist­ic pic­ture with busi­nesses demon­strat­ing sig­ni­fic­antly high­er con­fid­ence in the short, medi­um and long term com­pared to recent quar­ters. The sur­vey included ques­tions on the bar­ri­ers to staff recruit­ment and the responses high­light the impacts on busi­ness of the lack avail­ab­il­ity of suit­able accom­mod­a­tion for employ­ees. High­land Coun­cil are now fund­ing the CBP to under­take a fur­ther detailed sur­vey of busi­ness hous­ing needs in Badenoch and Strath­spey. Dis­cus­sions are under­way about how to get the best use out of the powers to con­trol short-term lets and HIE is fin­an­cing research on how to use oth­er non-fisc­al meas­ures to con­trol second and hol­i­day homes.

8. Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject: The pro­ject is near­ing com­ple­tion, with the Badenoch Fest­iv­al tak­ing place 18 – 25 Septem­ber, includ­ing a cel­eb­rat­ory event on 25 Septem­ber to mark the achieve­ments of the Pro­ject. This event, involving Kate For­bes MSP and Lord Thurso as Chair of Vis­itScot­land, and will bridge the gap between the pro­ject and Scotland’s Year of Stor­ies 2022. The Badenoch Story­lands App has been launched, along with new vis­it­or itin­er­ar­ies, pro­mot­ing this refreshed des­tin­a­tion with­in the Nation­al Park. Com­ple­ment­ary on-the-ground inter­pret­a­tion and sig­nage is also being planned for future years. The Green Recov­ery Fund also fun­ded a pro­ject to devel­op the story-telling cul­ture in the area, led by com­munity group Badenoch Her­it­age, all link­ing to the pro­ject leg­acy. All of the work will be pro­moted at the inter­na­tion­al Inter­pret Europe con­fer­ence in Octo­ber 2021.

9. Green Recov­ery Fund: At the June Board meet­ing, mem­bers were informed that 28 of 37 applic­a­tions for the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ Green Recov­ery Fund had been approved using the total £300k budget avail­able of 250k from CNPA and 50k from Cairngorms Trust. The pro­jects are all now under­way and a full report will be provided to resources Com­mit­tee in due course. High­lights of the pro­jects are being pro­moted by the Com­mu­nic­a­tions team in series of social media and blog posts.

Stake­hold­er Engagement:

1. Two Min­is­teri­al vis­its took place on 11 and 13 August. Mairi McAl­lan MSP (Min­is­ter for Envir­on­ment, Biod­iversity and Land Reform) vis­ited the Park to dis­cuss pro­gress with the Cairngorms Nature strategy, includ­ing a trip to the High­land Wild­life Park to hear about work on wild­cat, pine hov­er­fly and caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion, fol­lowed by a vis­it to see wood­land regen­er­a­tion at Seafield Estate and the award-win­ning Allt Lorgy river res­tor­a­tion pro­ject. Michael Math­eson MSP (Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary for Net Zero, Energy and Trans­port) trav­elled up to hear about the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­ject, vis­it­ing the site of the planned out­door demen­tia activ­ity centre at Bad­aguish, hear­ing about our ambi­tious sus­tain­able trans­port plans, and trav­el­ling along the old log­ging way via e‑bike. The vis­it was roun­ded off with a dis­cus­sion about Cairngorms Con­nect with col­leagues from FLS, RSPB and NatureScot, and a tour of improve­ment works on the Cairngorm Moun­tain funicu­lar rail­way with HIE.

A key focus for the Comms & Engage­ment team over the past few months has been the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan inform­al con­sulta­tion, which launched on 15 June. At the time of writ­ing, we have received 272 con­tri­bu­tions so far, plus a fur­ther 185 com­ments gathered through our social media activ­ity, and a smal­ler num­ber (c. 20) of face to face qual­it­at­ive inter­views. The con­sulta­tion runs until w/​c 20 Septem­ber, when the form­al con­sulta­tion will commence.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions:

1. Act­ive Cairngorms – work con­tin­ues with loc­al and nation­al part­ners on coordin­ated man­aging for vis­it­or comms over the sum­mer hol­i­days. We partnered with Vis­itScot­land on a two-day pho­toshoot to cap­ture imagery of respons­ible vis­it­or beha­viour with­in the Park, from keep­ing dogs under close con­trol to lit­ter­ing, camp­ing, wild­fires and plan­ning ahead. Over 50 dif­fer­ent social media, web and phys­ic­al assets have been cre­ated off the back of this pho­toshoot, and these have been shared with part­ners nation­wide as part of the ​‘Yours to Enjoy’ cam­paign, ensur­ing con­sist­ency of mes­sage across the board.

   In light of the tra­gic incid­ents at Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Nation­al Park earli­er in August, we high­lighted the import­ance of water safety across all our chan­nels, includ­ing shar­ing the RNLI’s ​‘Float to Live’ video and rein­for­cing nation­ally-agreed mes­saging around using appro­pri­ate equip­ment and tak­ing neces­sary pre­cau­tions around water.

   In late July we issued a media release about the enhanced police pres­ence in the Glen­more area at week­ends, in con­junc­tion with PoliceScot­land, Forestry and Land Scot­land and The High­land Coun­cil. Oth­er not­able vis­it­or-related PR activ­ity included a focus on our Kick­start ranger pro­gramme (includ­ing an inter­view on Mur­ray Firth Radio), ded­ic­ated columns on wild­fires and wider ranger activ­it­ies with­in the Park, and a BBC radio inter­view with Pete Crane on wild camp­ing and toi­let issues.

   We have also teamed up with award-win­ning film­maker Abbie Barnes, whose latest pro­ject, Abbie Bikes Bri­tain, involves bik­ing from the north­ern­most point of main­land Bri­tain to Lands’ End via each of the UK’s 15 Nation­al Parks. The pro­ject aims to raise aware­ness of the bene­fits of nature for indi­vidu­als’ men­tal health and what we can all do to pro­tect wild spaces. Abbie joined mem­bers of our ranger team to walk up Ben Mac­dui on 2 September.

2. Cairngorms Nature – The pop­u­lar Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end art com­pet­i­tion returned in July, with 200 entries from young people across the UK being whittled down to a final short­l­ist of ten. Over 2,000 votes were cast online and the com­pet­i­tion reached over 15,000 people via Face­book alone and 900 engage­ments. The win­ning entry was called ​‘Sleepy Fox’ and it was painted by a young man called lan, who received a pair of bin­ocu­lars to help with his wild­life spot­ting. The oth­er final­ists received a good­ie bag for their efforts.

   A con­cer­ted effort has been made this year to extend the peri­od of engage­ment with young people fol­low­ing the BIG Week­end, and a key strand of this work was the cre­ation of a ded­ic­ated Cairngorms Nature Explorers’ e‑zine, packed with use­ful hints and tips for young people to get act­ive in the coun­tryside / green spaces where they live. The first of these e‑zines was cir­cu­lated in August and reached an audi­ence of 144 sign ups, and we will look to expand this fur­ther over the com­ing months.

   A sep­ar­ate Cairngorms Nature e‑bulletin was sent out to over 1,200 sub­scribers with a par­tic­u­lar focus on the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­ject, as well as rap­tor breed­ing suc­cess as part of the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship and the launch of a new wood ant guide. We con­tin­ued our monthly Cairngorms Nature columns in the Strath­spey and Badenoch Her­ald and Deeside Piper, focus­ing on key spe­cies and hab­it­ats in the Park.

   Two rap­tor stor­ies con­nec­ted to the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship area made head­line news dur­ing July and August (Daily Record, Press and Journ­al, Her­ald, BBC, The Nation­al etc). The first con­cerned breed­ing suc­cess for a pair of sea eagles at Bal­mor­al — the first time that the spe­cies has bred suc­cess­fully on the estate along­side fur­ther pos­it­ive news for golden eagles, hen har­ri­ers, red kite, osprey, per­eg­rine, mer­lin and short-eared owls across the five part­ner estates. The second drew atten­tion to a suc­cess­ful golden eagle satel­lite tag­ging pro­ject, util­ising the latest ​‘Cell­track’ tech­no­logy to mon­it­or birds’ move­ments in real time and provide a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the spe­cies’ move­ments, hab­it­at pref­er­ences and mortality.

3. Make it Yours: Pro­mo­tion con­tin­ued for the new video train­ing resource for busi­nesses and their employ­ees, and dis­cus­sions have star­ted about restart­ing face to face ses­sions later in the year / early next, to provide more tailored sup­port for those who need it. We are also work­ing with col­leagues at the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship on an applic­a­tion to VisitScotland’s Year of Scotland’s Stor­ies 2022, with a par­tic­u­lar emphas­is on the Badenoch The Story­lands pro­ject and the aur­al his­tory of the Park area.

4. Cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions: along­side our ongo­ing pro­act­ive and react­ive media activ­ity around man­aging for vis­it­ors, there have been a num­ber of key news stor­ies in the past few months. These include the award­ing of £303k to 28 loc­al pro­jects as part of the Green Recov­ery Fund; a cel­eb­ra­tion of the Grow­biz busi­ness sup­port scheme; respond­ing to Rewild­ing Britain’s erro­neous claim that 44% of the Park com­prises driv­en grouse moors; and the coordin­ated announce­ment (along­side NLHF) that we had been suc­cess­ful in our bid for up to £12.5m for the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­ject. This lat­ter story was covered extens­ively by the BBC, Press and Journ­al, Daily Record, Scots­man and a num­ber of oth­er pub­lic­a­tions, and has since been fol­lowed up with a story about the pro­posed demen­tia centre and details of the min­is­teri­al vis­it on 13 August. Else­where, Grant Moir was inter­viewed by STV about the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and afford­able hous­ing in the area, and we respon­ded to vari­ous requests for com­ment on the Dal­whin­nie rail­way crossing.

   Dur­ing August we explored a rur­al work­force theme, with Doug McAdam writ­ing a column cel­eb­rat­ing the work of farm­ers, crofters, game­keep­ers, for­est­ers and more that man­age the land across the Park. A piece on farm­ing show­cased the work of the Duf­fus fam­ily at Mains of Auchriachan Farm near Tomin­toul (who are com­mit­ted to work­ing with nature to enhance and con­serve their land), whilst a column by Vicky Ander­son shed light on her work for the Strath­spey Wet­lands and Waders Ini­ti­at­ive, col­lab­or­at­ing closely with loc­al farm­ers to pro­tect waders return­ing to breed on the farms in Strath­spey. We plan fur­ther activ­ity on this theme over the com­ing months, includ­ing a game­keep­er work­ing on the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject and a path build­er work­ing with­in the Nation­al Park.

5. Web­site and social media: From Jan to August 2021 across all chan­nels (Face­book, Twit­ter, Ins­tagram and Linked­In) we now have an audi­ence of 57k fol­low­ers and have reached 3.2 mil­lion account users with con­tent about Cov­id-19, vis­it­or man­age­ment, CNPA and CNP news, Gael­ic, BIG Week­end, land man­age­ment, plan­ning and more.

   Since the start of the year, 177,176 people have vis­ited the web­site, view­ing a total of 485,771 pages and spend­ing an aver­age of I minute 47 seconds on the site. A recent batch of web­site upgrades – includ­ing an improved desktop menu, the intro­duc­tion of news and key con­tent ​‘quick links’ on sec­ond­ary pages, and the cre­ation of a new blog, photo and video sec­tion – will hope­fully deep­en vis­it­or engage­ment, and we will con­duct fur­ther ana­lys­is on this over the com­ing months.

   We launched a social media pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan on 15 July across the Cairngorms News Face­book and Twit­ter accounts, along­side Ins­tagram and CNPA Linked­In. We have pos­ted 54 unique posts, reach­ing 220,000 account users who engaged 24,443 times with con­tent, shared our posts 165 times, left 185 com­ments and clicked through to the con­sulta­tion plat­form 583 times.

   We have devised a sys­tem to col­late com­ments and assign sen­ti­ment, and will add these com­ments to the inform­al ana­lys­is. There has been an excep­tion­ally high level of debate and con­ver­sa­tion on Ins­tagram, which is some­thing we will take for­ward into the form­al con­sulta­tion phase in late September.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development:

1. Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning (BCP) Latest Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment guid­ance is that work­ing from home is encour­aged, and I metre dis­tan­cing must remain in place in pub­lic sec­tor offices. In line with this guid­ance, and our move towards a hybrid approach where it is expec­ted that most staff will work some of their con­trac­tu­al hours in the office and some at home, we have now con­duc­ted two sur­veys to inform our office return plans. Staff were asked to identi­fy their pref­er­ences regard­ing work loc­a­tion, and teams were asked to identi­fy how best we could align these pref­er­ences to make best use of the space in the office. Staff num­bers have increased over the last 18 months, and we are plan­ning for a return to a hot-desk­ing envir­on­ment, rather than for people to return to the desks they oper­ated in pri­or to the pan­dem­ic. This approach respects the import­ance of col­lab­or­a­tion, and the office will be recon­figured to sup­port this. Small on-site meet­ings will be tri­alled in Septem­ber with a view to lar­ger num­bers using the office in Octo­ber. Whilst we hope to be able to host an on-site Board meet­ing in Novem­ber, that will depend on wheth­er or not SG guid­ance removes the Im dis­tan­cing rule in pub­lic sec­tor offices, as cur­rently with this rule, the board room can only accom­mod­ate 12 people. We are how­ever explor­ing pos­sib­il­it­ies for hybrid staff and board meetings.

2. Staff­ing update: Since June, staff­ing updates are as follows:

   a) Staff who left the organ­isa­tion were:

   i. Diane Buchan, who retired from her role as Finance Officer,
   ii. Lianne Starbuck-Stephen, who was a Seasonal Ranger, left for a permanent Ranger position.
   

   b) Intern­al pro­mo­tions, fol­low­ing a com­pet­it­ive intern­al recruit­ment pro­cess were:

   i. David Clyne was appointed the Head of Heritage Horizons post
   ii. Andy Ford was promoted to the Director of Nature and Climate Change post
   

   c) Extern­al appoint­ments, fol­low­ing a com­pet­it­ive extern­al recruit­ment pro­cess were as follows:

   i. Matt Watson and Thomas Plant have joined the Authority, as Peatland Action Project Officers, to the expanding Peatland Action team.
   ii. Jenny Allen has joined the Ranger Services as Ranger Admin and Policy Assistant
   iii. Joanna Hampson has joined the Communications and Engagement Team as Digital Content Coordinator.
   iv. Colin Mclean has been appointed to the Head of Land Management post, replacing Will Boyd-Wallis.
   

3. Youth Employ­ment:

   a) Intern­ships:

   i. Douglas Carchrie was appointed to a 4-month mountain Bike Trail internship
   ii. Vanessa Altweck was appointed through Inclusion Scotland to an 8-month internships as Admin Assistant
   

   b) Kick­Start posts: Scott Hast­ings was appoin­ted to replace Lianne Star­buck-Steph­en as a Sea­son­al Ranger. It was fant­ast­ic to see one of our Kick­start Rangers devel­op so much as to have the con­fid­ence to apply for this pro­moted post, and he had a very suc­cess­ful interview.

4. 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

5. Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment: 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 has met twice since 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.

   This Board have informed the Hybrid Work­ing Approach, and the ​“New Nor­mal Pro­ject”, as well as ICT infra­struc­ture enhance­ments to sup­port these approaches.

6. LEADER/CAIRNGORMS TRUST: The LEAD­ER Pro­gramme con­tin­ues toward a clos­ure at end of Decem­ber 2021, with a small num­ber of live pro­jects com­ing to a con­clu­sion over the final part of 2021 cal­en­dar year. All out­stand­ing grant claims to the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment from the Author­ity as Account­able Body have now been settled, giv­ing a clear fin­an­cial pos­i­tion for the Author­ity on our LEAD­ER man­age­ment. The audit peri­od for this pro­gramme could extend up to 10 years bey­ond the clos­ure of the pro­gramme at the end of the year.

   Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment are now tri­al­ling new approaches to fund­ing of Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD). The Cairngorms Trust, act­ing as the Loc­al Action Group (LAG) has secured £50,000 from the ​‘Test­ing Change’ fund to tri­al a grant award­ing Youth LAG and extend the Green Recov­ery Fund approach as a mod­el of future loc­al level, com­munity led invest­ment. These approaches will be developed over Septem­ber and will include the Cairngorms Youth Action Team in the devel­op­ment of a ​‘Youth LAG’ in the design and award­ing of grants to youth initiatives.

Grant Moir Septem­ber 2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 10/09/2021

Board Mem­ber Updates

Doug McAdam

On the 27^th July togeth­er with Deirdre Fal­con­er and Car­o­lyn Cad­dick I vis­ited the ongo­ing peat­land res­tor­a­tion work high up in upper Glen Tromie. Steph­en Corcor­an CNPA’s Peat­land Action Pro­gramme Man­ager was on hand to talk us through the site activ­ity as was McGow­an from the con­tract­or under­tak­ing the work.

This was an excel­lent and inform­at­ive site vis­it. As well as see­ing areas of com­pleted work one year on, we saw areas in the pro­cess of being restored which high­lighted the skilled work required from the dig­ger drivers. Sam Hesling the con­tract man­ager from McGow­an the con­tract­ing firm also explained to us about the chal­lenges of work­ing in such a high alti­tude and remote site. He also told us about his firm’s approach and com­mit­ment to this work includ­ing their appren­tice­ship pro­gramme. The work is quite del­ic­ate and detailed, the envir­on­ment very sens­it­ive and chal­len­ging and the res­ults are by no means guar­an­teed. All high­light­ing the skill that is needed by the guys doing the work on the ground. One of the biggest risks high­lighted was what could hap­pen when the next phase of the A9 duelling kicks off and the demand for dig­ger and plant oper­at­ors increases. This is a real poten­tial risk to the peat­land deliv­ery pro­gramme and some­thing that high­lights the need to train and skill more young people into this trade.

Giv­en peat­land res­tor­a­tion is one of, if not the biggest single pro­ject activ­ity the CNPA are under­tak­ing, I would highly recom­mend such a vis­it to my Board colleagues.