211029_DraftPerformanceCtteeMins

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE PER­FORM­ANCE COM­MIT­TEE MEET­ING of

THE CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

held via Lifes­ize on 29 Octo­ber 2021 at 3.00pm

PRESENT Wil­li­am Mun­ro (Chair) Doug McAdam (Vice Chair) Janet Hunter Xan­der McDade Anne Rae Mac­don­ald Wil­lie McKenna

In Attend­ance: Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Steph­en Corcor­an, Peat­land ACTIOM Pro­gramme Man­ager Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place Andy Ford, Head of Con­ser­va­tion Grant Moir, CEO Vicky Walk­er, Gov­ernance and Report­ing Man­ager Pete May­hew, Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change

Apo­lo­gies: Peter Argyle Liz Hende­r­son, Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Com­munit­ies Manager

Wel­come and Apologies

1. The Chair wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing of Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee. He informed the Com­mit­tee that the meet­ing was being recor­ded and would be avail­able on web­site. Com­mit­tee reminded to look at the remit of the Com­mit­tee. The Chair ran through the Mem­bers attend­ing the meet­ing and Grant Moir, CEO, gave the names of the Staff mem­bers attending.

2. Con­grat­u­la­tions giv­en to Andy Ford re his recent appoint­ment as Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change.

Declar­a­tion of Interests

1. Doug McAdam declared an interest in: a) Item 5 sits on the Caper Board as CNPA Board Rep­res­ent­at­ive, and b) Item 9 — HH pro­ject — Inde­pend­ent Chair of the South Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group.

2. Anne Rae Mac­don­ald declared an interest in: a) Item 5 — as she was involved with the Machinery Man­age­ment Group.

Minutes of Last Meet­ings held – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 13^th August 2021 were agreed with the fol­low­ing amend­ments: a) Word­ing in the Wel­come and Apo­lo­gies sec­tion – the word ​“Con­vener” to be changed to Chair.

Mat­ters Arising

1. Action point — Per­form­ance dash­board as a stand­ard tool. This on the agenda to be dis­cussed and looked at for next meeting.

2. Request for Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee not to be last meet­ing in Com­mit­tee day each time. This had been dis­cussed at Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee and Xan­der McDade, Board Con­vener, con­firmed that this dis­cus­sion had taken place and decision made that the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee would be moved to second slot of day as a per­man­ent slot due to the fact that Extern­al Part­ners would be attend­ing. Resources and Per­form­ance Com­mit­tees would have altern­ate times in the after­noon. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee were happy with this.

Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject (Paper I)

1. Andy Ford, Head of Con­ser­va­tion, intro­duced the paper which asked the Com­mit­tee to: a) Review deliv­ery updates and con­sider: i. Pro­gress towards the project’s agreed pur­poses; ii. Any stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant impacts on deliv­ery of the CNPA’s Cor­por­ate Plan and Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan; and iii. Any mater­i­al impacts on the CNPA’s stra­tegic risk management.

b) Head of con­ser­va­tion poin­ted out that issues were marked as either, amber and green.

1. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) A Mem­ber asked if new risks/​actions should be looked at due to red risks high­lighted — Cri­ti­cism dir­ec­ted at CNPA. Need to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the CNPA and the Pro­ject. Indic­ated that per­form­ance of the Caper pop­u­la­tions was a real risk. b) Head of Con­ser­va­tion said that the big chal­lenge was to cre­ate a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the pro­jects and how com­mu­nic­a­tion is done re this. Pro­ject staff aware of the risks involved and are work­ing to address with a new com­mu­nic­a­tions plan. This not reflec­ted in the report so far but will be in the updated paper. Head of Con­ser­va­tion to dis­cuss with Doug McAdam. c) Mem­ber asked about Research work in Deeside no men­tion of this in paper. d) Head of Con­ser­va­tion replied that this was repor­ted in the NLHF report­ing plan under approved Pur­pose I – Deeside Com­munit­ies on Page 3. e) Mem­ber poin­ted out that SAC sub group look­ing at wider Caper issues not men­tioned. f) CEO respon­ded to this say­ing that Judith Webb sits on this group as an observ­er due to her back­ground expert­ise. This was taken to the Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee in August and was agreed as appro­pri­ate. No form­al feed­back would be giv­en but an inform­al response will prob­ably be done in the near future. Inter­im Report and Final report would come from this SAC Group, prob­ably in New Year, and would then be taken to Board. This group had been set up at the instig­a­tion of the CNPA. Policy decision on how to save the Caper is a Gov­ern­ment issue not a CNPA one. g) A Mem­ber brought up their con­cerned that route being taken at the moment was not help­ing to save the Caper and also caus­ing com­munity con­cern in Car­rbridge. h) Head of Con­ser­va­tion agreed that there was a wider con­text of work hap­pen­ing out­side Car­rbridge. NLHF pro­ject was set up to look at the whole pic­ture not area spe­cif­ic issues. Num­ber of dif­fer­ent factors affect­ing Cap­per, hab­it­at loss, dis­turb­ance, cli­mate change all con­trib­ute to loss of factor. Key issue of dis­turb­ance picked up by pro­ject but oth­er areas such as pred­at­ors needed to be accel­er­ated. i) Head of Con­ser­va­tion agreed changes were required but under this pro­ject the para­met­ers could not be changed. The CNPA needed to accel­er­ate work in

oth­er areas and com­mu­nic­ate bet­ter that the wider issues were being looked at as well as those affect­ing this pro­ject. j) Wild­life Park – pro­pos­ing to release wild cats Mem­ber asked how this would impact on Caper pop­u­la­tion. Head of Con­ser­va­tion to share Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment on this with Mem­ber to help inform them of the implic­a­tions of the pro­ject. k) Mem­ber felt that the Com­mit­tee remit to be taken into account. Risk factor are really for the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee. This Committee’s role was more around the per­form­ance – was there a role for the Com­mit­tee in join­ing the per­form­ance and the per­cep­tion of the per­son on the street/​community involve­ment. l) Head of Con­ser­va­tion agreed that there was a role for the Com­mit­tee to look at how to com­mu­nic­ate the pro­ject bet­ter to communities.

1. The Chair con­cluded that: a) Pro­ject pro­gress­ing well against the agreed out­comes of the pro­ject and the prin­cip­al fun­der. b) Recog­nise that Com­mu­nic­a­tion Engage­ment issues around what the pro­ject was about needs to be addressed. Nation­al Task Force ini­ti­ated to look at whole range of issues and hope­fully report from this will help with this pro­ject and stop the decline in the Capers. c) Com­mit­tee felt that Caper Pro­ject Board should look at its Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment to try to get bet­ter clar­ity out to communities.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee approved the recom­mend­a­tions in the paper with the fol­low­ing actions:

3. Actions: i. Head of Con­ser­va­tion to dis­cuss Com­mu­nic­a­tions Plan with Doug McAdam. ii. Head of Con­ser­va­tion to share Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment on this with Wil­lie McK­enna to help inform them of the implic­a­tions of the project.

Cairngorms LEAD­ER and Cairngorms Trust Deliv­ery (Paper 2)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced the paper which asked the Com­mit­tee to: a) Review the deliv­ery updates presen­ted with this paper and con­sider: i. Wheth­er the pro­grammes of activ­ity are mak­ing the expec­ted con­tri­bu­tion to the Cairngorms NPA’s agreed stra­tegic outcomes;

ii. Wheth­er the deliv­ery updates sug­gest any stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s agreed per­form­ance object­ives; and iii. Wheth­er any mater­i­al impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures arise from assess­ment of pro­gramme deliv­ery. b) Key mat­ters were out­lined. Cov­id had impacted on the role out of the funds. Still a lot of work to be done by the Trust to get pro­jects started.

1. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the deliv­ery updates and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Resource deploy­ment in par­tic­u­lar the Vol­un­tary Giv­ing Scheme – what was the tim­ing on this. b) Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices informed the Com­mit­tee that the Stake­hold­er Group had met and were in pro­cess of com­pil­ing a Pro­gress Report look­ing at resource sup­port neces­sary for this fin­an­cial year and to keep Man­age­ment Teams focused on this before March next year. c) Mem­ber asked: With LEAD­ER end­ing how would this be fun­ded? Could it be linked to Green Invest­ment which would help? d) Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices replied that nation­ally the Rur­al Team in Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment had iden­ti­fied a num­ber of key links of the Gov­ern­ment aspect for the pro­ject. 5% of LEAD­ER fund­ing had been used towards rur­al fund­ing so this might play out across the UK Gov­ern­ment fund­ing with it being alloc­ated at a more loc­al level. Value of hav­ing a LAG net­work cov­er­ing Scot­land but as LEAD­ER comes to an end then LAG might not have the same impact. CLAG set up as a char­ity which meant that it would be pro­tec­ted in the future. e) Could LEAD­ER com­pon­ent engage with UK Gov­ern­ment lev­el­ling-up fund­ing? f) Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices informed the Com­mit­tee that he had been part of a Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment group look­ing at rur­al eco­nomy and was also sit­ting on a DEFRA group look­ing at UK Gov­ern­ment lev­el­ling-up fund­ing. This was still in the early stages and huge amount of work to be done. Open to hav­ing par­ti­cip­a­tion across UK and dif­fer­ent sec­tors. He indic­ated that he was there as part of the LEAD­ER net­work. g) Para 8 — Integ­rated Trans­port Sig­nage and Elec­tric Minibus. Mem­ber asked if there was a risk that this might not come in in time. h) Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices replied that: i. Integ­rated Trans­port Sig­nage – looks as though this might be done by Decem­ber so should be ok. ii. Elec­tric Minibus — under some threat due to sup­plies. Pro­cure­ment pro­cess had been done but if there was too much of a threat by sup­ply and this can­not be done by Dec then it would not be able to go ahead. No con­trac­tu­al com­mit­ment at the moment as pro­cure­ment stated that this had to be in place by Decem­ber oth­er­wise the con­tract was voided.

2. The Chair con­cluded that: a) All object­ives had been covered with dis­cus­sions on the LEAD­ER of the future and the green investment.

3. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee approved the recom­mend­a­tions in the paper with the fol­low­ing actions:

4. Action: i. None.

Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject (Paper 3)

1. Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place, gave apo­lo­gies from Liz Hende­r­son, Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Com­munit­ies Man­ager, and intro­duced the paper which asked the Com­mit­tee to: a) Note the achieve­ments of the Pro­ject and all that it has delivered; b) Note the key chal­lenges and learn­ing points arising from the pro­ject; and c) Con­sider the leg­acy arrange­ments that have been put in place and how the impact of the pro­ject can be max­im­ised as the next NP Part­ner­ship Plan is developed.

2. He informed the Com­mit­tee 3 Board Mem­bers sit on Pro­ject Board Deirdre Fal­con­er, Pippa Had­ley and Fiona McLean.

3. There should have been a 2 day con­fer­ence at the end of the Pro­ject but this had to be can­celled due to COV­ID but cel­eb­ra­tion event with Kate For­bes attend­ing and Lord Thurso Chair of Vis­it Scot­land had taken place this year.

4. Col­our copy of final eval­u­ation report had been pro­duced and would be cir­cu­lated to Com­mit­tee in next few days.

5. Leg­acy Plan in place and would be handed on to Com­munity Organ­isa­tion chaired by Kar­en Der­rick which will take pro­ject for­ward in the future. Leg­acy activ­it­ies were also held by Erin Glover and Ham­ish Napier.

6. Admin­is­trat­ive bur­den had been very high. One pro­ject officer employed by one organ­isa­tion not CNPA which worked out very.

7. Her­it­age Lot­tery fund did not take for­ward net­work­ing of oth­er projects.

8. Final format pro­ject eval­u­ation still to be done by Her­it­age Lot­ter Fund Group.

9. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Chair thanked Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Rur­al Devel­op­ment and com­men­ded him and his team on a pro­ject which had been a great suc­cess. b) Learn­ing from this pro­ject would help with Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­ject. c) Leg­acy phase – meas­ur­ing suc­cess Mem­ber asked if there was a way of track­ing vis­it­or numbers/​spend etc which could be taken for­ward in leg­acy. d) Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and rur­al Devel­op­ment replied that the Pro­ject had been repor­ted back through Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship. Not a spe­cif­ic aim of pro­ject to increase vis­it­or num­bers so this not high­lighted in indic­at­ors. This issue was being dis­cussed with Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship to take for­ward along with the Tour­ism Action Plan Group. e) Four Aims were any of the indicators/​outcomes meas­ured against these? f) Some guid­ance giv­en on the pro­ject focus­ing on build­ing a strong case and would be con­duc­ted through the final report. g) Mem­ber asked if there was a sys­tem for sign­ing off a pro­ject and eval­u­at­ing it to ensure that it had set out what was expec­ted as this had not been pos­sible for this Pro­ject due to Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee being set in place after pro­ject was star­ted. h) In future it would be the role of the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee to look at pro­jects and to ensure that they were going for­ward prop­erly and also eval­u­ate them at the con­clu­sion of the pro­ject. This would enable the Com­mit­tee to take for­ward any les­sons learned from pre­vi­ous projects.

10. The Chair con­cluded that: a) Achieve­ments noted and agreed that they had been delivered. b) Leg­acy arrange­ments – agreed that these are covered.

11. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee approved the recom­mend­a­tions in the paper with the fol­low­ing actions:

12. Action: i. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and rur­al Devel­op­ment to pass on Com­mit­tee thanks to Liz Hende­r­son for all the work she had done on this project.

Cairngorms Peat­land Action Pro­gramme Deliv­ery (Paper 4)

1. Steph­en Corcor­an, Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Man­ager, intro­duced the paper. He poin­ted out that this was the first time a Peat­land pro­ject had been put in place.

Main emphas­is was to put pro­ced­ures in place and to get con­tract­ors organ­ised. He asked the Com­mit­tee to: a) Review the deliv­ery update and con­sider: i. Pro­gress towards the project’s agreed pur­poses; ii. Be aware of the deliv­ery risks posed by weath­er and con­tract­or capa­city; iii. Under­stand the scope and scale of the Peat­land Pro­gramme and the resource implic­a­tions for the Author­ity; iv. Wheth­er the deliv­ery updates sug­gest any stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s agreed per­form­ance object­ives; and v. Wheth­er any mater­i­al impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures arise from assess­ment of pro­gramme delivery.

1. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Mem­ber referred to ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ year tar­get of 557ha and noted that pos­sible deliv­ery might be 900ha. b) Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Man­ager con­firmed that com­mit­ment and con­tracts in place to deliv­er 900ha but con­tract­ors only able to deliv­er around 500ha. c) Mem­ber poin­ted to the Septem­ber to March win­dow which had cre­ated prob­lems from one estate and there could be prob­lems with weath­er issues. d) Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Man­ager replied that some work had been done in July. There was pro­spect of start­ing work earli­er and some estates had allowed work to start in July. Look­ing to see if work could be done dur­ing the bird breed­ing sea­son. Sur­veys had been done to see where there was a pos­sib­il­ity of doing this with pro­to­cols in place to pro­tect the breed­ing birds. Per­mis­sion down to estates. e) Con­tract­ors – Mem­ber asked if dis­cus­sions had been done with Machinery Rings. f) Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Man­ager replied not so far but some­thing to look at. Issue was not equip­ment but people to oper­ate dig­gers. Need to look at help­ing to train oper­at­ors. Gov­ern­ment needs to think about provid­ing loans to machine oper­at­ors to buy equip­ment. g) Coconut based product being used – Mem­ber asked if there was no oth­er sus­tain­able options which had less mileage in bring­ing to sites which could be used. h) Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Man­ager replied that logs are impor­ted by ship from South-East Asia so this had a high car­bon con­tent. Heath­er bales were being looked at along with Peat based products hope­fully to be used more in the future. i) Site vis­it — talked about the resource risk. Poten­tially when A9 kicks off again then there could be a massive short­age of drivers for Peat­land work. Had any

dis­cus­sions been held with Trans­port Scot­land to try to get work sched­ule phased with Peat­land one. j) McGow­ans one of the con­tract­ors had just been awar­ded a huge con­tract with SSE which would take away some of the drivers from this pro­ject. A9 still wait­ing for Scot­tish Min­is­ters to send out their revised schedul­ing announce­ment. k) Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group to dis­cuss skills devel­op­ment in the Park. l) Weall­Scot­land – dis­cus­sions had been held on train­ing and how skills train­ing could be taken for­ward in future. m) Estate staff could pos­sibly be trained up to use equip­ment but this was a very spe­cial­ised area of work. Work being done with Rothiemurchus at the moment to train up one per­son to work machine. Issues around this as a single oper­at­or on the hill would cause lots of risks. Need 60 dig­ger drivers to meet the tar­gets. n) Mem­ber asked if we would need to employ our own drivers. o) This was being looked at by Pro­ject Man­age­ment with the pos­sib­il­ity of employ­ing drivers over a 3 year peri­od. p) Could this con­tract­ing work be sold to young­er gen­er­a­tion as a dif­fer­ent type of job, not just as a dig­ger driver who would work on oth­er areas such as A9. This work would be in a skilled envir­on­ment. q) Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Peat­land Pro­gramme Board met this week for the first time and dis­cussed a lot of the points men­tioned above. Key issue was to get con­tract­or base. Good rur­al oppor­tun­ity to take this work for­ward with estate workers/​young people being trained. Oper­a­tion­al Group needs to be set up to look at this issue Scot­land Wide not just a Cairngorms level. r) No 21 on paper – look­ing at under­spend and the deliv­ery of a lot of drain block­ing side of the pro­ject what does this mean? s) Most of Parks peat­land was not drained but erosion was from fur­ther up the hill. This was the area which required a spe­cif­ic skill set. Pro­gramme is based on the more expens­ive high erosion areas but due to the lack of con­tract­ors, drain block­ing work had to be focused on. By start­ing con­tract­ors on drain block­ing they can quickly be moved onto the more spe­cif­ic work. Hope­fully next year more hec­tares could be worked on with less spend incurred. t) All pro­jects being done on estates just now are the more expens­ive type of erosion work. u) Sheep’s wool – could this be used for block­ing drains. This being looked at for next year. This had been tried else­where with vary­ing suc­cess. Tri­al plots would be set out next year. If this was suc­cess­ful it would provide a good mar­ket for farm­ers. v) Area tar­get ok but spend tar­get not can the under­spend be car­ried for­ward? w) Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices high­lighted that poten­tial oppor­tun­ity of being in long-term cap­it­al envir­on­ment so this would enable report to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment that although cap­it­al had not been spent it could be passed on as a re-pro­fil­ing of the more expens­ive work which would be done in fol­low­ing years.

Cap­it­al resources were more eas­ily re-pro­filed. Dis­cus­sion still to be held on this with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. x) Para 25 — At the moment the Pro­ject gives out fund­ing as a grant but in the future the CNPA might change to be in charge of the con­tracts via dir­ect deliv­ery. Peat­land Pro­gramme Board at Gov­ern­ment level would need to take this for­ward. If this does hap­pen then joint liab­il­ity will need to be looked at with estates as CNPA do not own land, there would also be insur­ance issues to be considered.

1. The Chair con­cluded that: a) Action pro­gramme is a major con­tri­bu­tion to get­ting to Nett Zero b) Review pro­gress – this was done not­ing that the area tar­gets were achiev­able but the spend tar­gets were not. c) Deliv­ery risks by con­tract­or capa­city – this not Com­mit­tee remit but ongo­ing work to see if the sea­son can be exten­ded was being done. d) Con­tract­or capa­city – this not unique to CNPA and impacts on oth­er industry sec­tors. Com­mit­tee encour­aged officers to look for oppor­tun­it­ies to work with oth­er groups such as machinery cooper­at­ives to try to get deliv­ery done. e) Under­stand the resource implic­a­tions and pos­it­ive that CNPA man­aging impacts. f) Per­form­ance object­ives – this down to con­tract­or capa­city and also wel­comed using loc­al mater­i­als. g) Risk to CNPA – this came back to con­tract­or capacity.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee approved the recom­mend­a­tions in the paper with the fol­low­ing actions:

3. Action: i. Staff to get con­tract­ors in place as soon as possible.

Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­ject Update (Paper 5)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced the paper which updated the Com­mit­tee on the Her­it­age Hori­zons: Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme and the planned devel­op­ment work to end Decem­ber 2021.

2. Paper high­lighted to Com­mit­tee that lot of work had been done since the begin­ning of July until the form­al start date which was 1^st Octo­ber. Key appoint­ments had been made. Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment and her team had been sup­port­ive in recruit­ment of these appointments.

3. Inform­a­tion had been sent out to Stake­hold­ers on work and Pro­gramme Board/​Advisory Board meet­ings to be held in November.

4. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Thanks giv­en to Dav­id Clyne for paper. b) Inter­ac­tions with land man­age­ment com­munity – missed oppor­tun­ity to liaise with this sec­tor. Only dir­ect inter­ac­tion is with Factor of Bal­mor­al Estate but this might not be truly rep­res­ent­at­ive of land man­age­ment sec­tor. Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion was down as to improve the account­ab­il­ity on how the land was used, how will this cov­er pro­ductiv­ity? c) CEO replied that this was their remit so could not be changed. d) Pro­ject Advis­ory Group – look­ing at mem­ber­ship of group when they hold their first meet­ing. e) Pro­ject Board – this Board will look at fund­ing man­agers so is set and will not be changed. f) Fund­ing going into this pro­ject was from private interests includ­ing land man­age­ment groups. Should this group be included in the Pro­ject Board: g) CEO to think about this but this area prob­ably fits bet­ter with Advis­ory Pan­el work. h) Mem­ber poin­ted out that farm­ing was under the con­ser­va­tion head­ing in the paper as opposed to being under land man­age­ment. Con­cern that this may send out the wrong mes­sage to those involved in land man­age­ment. Act­ive farm­ing involve­ment would be use­ful. i) Private fund­ing should per­haps have a voice on the Advis­ory Pan­el. CEO to take this on board. j) CEO replied that all sec­tors would con­trib­ute to all of the areas not just land man­age­ment etc. Each of the dif­fer­ent pro­jects had their own group of people involved so only the top level was high­lighted at the moment.

5. The Chair con­cluded that: a) Advis­ory Pan­el – mem­ber­ship would be looked at to see if there were any gaps.

6. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee approved the recom­mend­a­tions in the paper with the fol­low­ing actions:

7. Action: i. CEO to look again at the Advis­ory Pan­el mem­ber­ship ii. Any changes to the Advis­ory Pan­el to be taken for­ward after their first meeting.

Update on Private Fin­ance (Oral Update)

1. Grant Moir, CEO, gave an update to the Com­mit­tee on Private Finance.

2. Launch of the Nett Zero re nature. This looks at tak­ing private fin­ance into NPs. Work with Pal­la­di­um being taken for­ward in CNPA. Also work­ing with them to get Sant­and­er fund­ing for the Peat­land Pro­ject. Still work to be done over the next two years.

3. CEO asked Pal­la­di­um to do a ses­sion with the CNPA Board. Video Con­fer­ence to be set up over the next couple of months to take this for­ward. Date would be sep­ar­ate from nor­mal Board Days. Rela­tion­ship with Pal­la­di­um was non-exclus­ive. Land Man­agers would be able to work with oth­er com­pan­ies. Com­munity bene­fits being dis­cussed to see how the bene­fit could flow back into Communities.

4. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Chair felt that a Board ses­sion would be very use­ful. b) Worth giv­ing some thought about how to give reas­sur­ance to the wider com­munity about the work with Pal­la­di­um. CEO to take this forward.

5. The Chair con­cluded that: a) More inform­a­tion to both Board and wider com­munity would be useful.

6. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee thanked the CEO for his update and recor­ded the fol­low­ing actions:

7. Action: i. CEO to look into bet­ter com­mu­nic­a­tion with Board and wider community.

AOCB

1. Chair wished Pete May­hew all the best in his retire­ment and gave thanks for all his work with the CNPA.

2. Minutes — timeline of the issue of the draft minutes. Draft of minutes should be issued before next Form­al Board meet­ing so that Com­mit­tee Mem­bers have sight of them before they are sent to the Form­al Board.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The next meet­ing of the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee II Feb­ru­ary 2022 via Lifes­ize (all Com­mit­tees to be held on the same day so will remain via Lifesize)

2. The meet­ing fin­ished at 16:50 hours.