211026-Minutes-V1

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY UGH­DAR­RAS PAIRC NAISEANTA Α’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH Cairngorms Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el 26^th Octo­ber 2021 5:00pm — 6:30pm — Held virtually

Minutes

Present Anita Howard Heath­er Earn­shaw Peter Kennedy Bo Hickey Linda Bam­ford Vanessa Altweck

Attend­ing Fiona McLean Kath­er­ine Will­ing Vicky Walk­er Kate Christie Polly Freeman

Apo­lo­gies Kev­in Hutchens

1. Intro­duc­tion 1.1. The minutes from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing were agreed sub­ject to the change of the con­sulta­tion dead­line date. 1.2. It was agreed that the timeline for recruit­ment of new mem­bers to the pan­el would be agreed and passed on to Fiona. 1.3. It was shared with the group that fol­low­ing their advice the need for a driver’s license has been removed from all Her­it­age Hori­zons posts.

2. Out­door Fest­iv­al for All – Polly Free­man 2.1. Polly gave an over­view of the fest­iv­al explain­ing that it is run by Back­bone, CNPA’s con­tri­bu­tion to the fest­iv­al and the groups that are involved in the pro­ject. 2.2. The pan­el asked wheth­er there were plans to assess the impact of the fest­iv­al on diver­si­fy­ing the nation­al parks vis­it­ors. Polly agreed to speak to Back­bone about this

but explained it may be dif­fi­cult to meas­ure as it aims to have an accu­mu­lat­ive effect which is dif­fi­cult to sur­vey. 2.3. The group asked wheth­er par­ti­cipants fill in an eval­u­ation. Poly explained that all par­ti­cipants come as part of wider groups, the group lead­ers and activ­ity pro­viders will provide feed­back, this feed­back will be included with­in the inter­im reports. It has been agreed with Back­bone that CNPA will receive cop­ies of these reports. These reports will be brought to the panel.

1. Pan­el Response to the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 3.1. The pan­el were asked to dis­cuss the response so far and dis­cuss the next steps before the response is agreed at the Novem­ber meet­ing. The pan­el were spe­cific­ally asked whether;

   • They agreed with the over­all struc­ture of the document.
   • They were happy with the response to the strongly dis­agree to strongly agree ques­tions. 3.2. The pan­el expressed thanks to the pan­el mem­ber who col­lated the responses and draf­ted the response. 3.3. It was felt that the length of the con­sulta­tion response was right giv­en the import­ance and depth of the con­sulta­tion. The pan­el men­tioned there were over­laps but that this should be left in as dif­fer­ent sec­tions have over­laps. 3.4. The pan­el asked wheth­er their response would be anonym­ous or named, the pan­el were advised that it would be known that this response is from the Equal­it­ies Advis­ory Pan­el. 3.5. There was worry from some pan­el mem­bers that due to the dead­lines set, there would not be time to include any­thing that may arise from COP26, how­ever it was felt that this would affect the nature sec­tion the most. The pan­el were advised to focus on the people and eco­nomy sec­tions and add in on nature where they can. 3.6. The next steps were agreed as:
   • All mem­bers would read through the cur­rent draft of the report to see if there was any­thing else that needed to be added.
   • Any mem­bers that have not yet been able to con­trib­ute were asked to send in responses. A dead­line would be sent through cor­res­pond­ence later by the panel.
   • A doodle poll will be sent round to allow all mem­bers to agree the responses to the strongly disagree/​strongly agree section.

2. CNPA Intern­al Equal­it­ies Group 4.1. Kate gave an update on the pro­gress of this group. Kate explained the group was still at the recruit­ment phase and there will be a dis­cus­sion once the group has been appoin­ted as to wheth­er a mem­ber of the seni­or man­age­ment team will be included in the group. 4.2. The over­all ques­tion for the pan­el was how do the pan­el see the intern­al and extern­al groups work­ing together?

4.3. The Pan­el dis­cussed incent­ives for being part of the group. Many ideas were dis­cussed as to how to encour­age indi­vidu­als to sub­scribe to the group and recog­nise their work and achieve­ments. 4.4. The seni­or man­age­ment team being want­ing to be involved was seen as a pos­it­ive by the group. A dif­fer­ent ways this could be incor­por­ated was dis­cussed. It was felt that if the group pre­ferred for the seni­or man­age­ment team not to be dir­ectly involved with group it would be import­ant to estab­lish a feed­back loop to ensure what is dis­cussed has weight. 4.5. There was con­cern that the terms of ref­er­ence appeared pass­ive, the pan­el sug­ges­ted revis­it­ing these to cor­rect this. 4.6. There was con­cern that due to the struc­ture the group will place respons­ib­il­ity on those from equal­it­ies groups to edu­cate the rest of the organ­isa­tion. 4.7. It was felt that the way the group was able to feed­back needed to be looked at, the pan­el rein­forced that all forms of par­ti­cip­a­tion need to be avail­able to the group, includ­ing a way to feed­back anonym­ously. 4.8. Finally, the makeup of the group was dis­cussed. The pan­el explained that the group will need to com­prise of both those who identi­fy with an equal­it­ies char­ac­ter­ist­ic but equally, for real cul­tur­al change, buy-in needs to hap­pen from those who do not identi­fy with an equal­ity characteristic.

1. AOB 5.1. The group dis­cussed recruit­ment of new pan­el mem­bers and under­stand­ing what skills and know­ledge were under rep­res­en­ted in the pan­el. It was decided that the pan­el will under­take a skills and know­ledge mat­rix. Once gaps have been iden­ti­fied, adverts will be able to go out stat­ing that the pan­el is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in the skills and know­ledge that has been iden­ti­fied as being as gap.

2. Con­clu­sion 6.1. Fiona thanked the pan­el for their time and con­firmed the next meet­ing as the 30^th November.

END OF MEETING