CAIRNGORMS

NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

UGH­DAR­RAS PAIRC NAISEANTA A’

MHON­AIDH RUAIDH

Cairngorms Equal­ity Advis­ory Panel

22^nd Feb­ru­ary 2022

5:00pm — 6:30pm — Held virtually

Minutes

Present Anita Howard Bo Hickey Kev­in Hutchens Lina Payne Peter Kennedy

Becca Mayo Heath­er Earn­shaw Lili­ana Cor­ri­eri Linda Bam­ford Vanessa Altweck

Attend­ing Fiona McLean Kath­er­ine Will­ing Vicky Walker

Kate Christie Liz Henderson

Apo­lo­gies Stu­art Hall

1. Intro­duc­tion

1.1. Fiona wel­comed the pan­el. 1.2. The minutes and action log for the pre­vi­ous meet­ing were agreed pro­vi­sion­ally with an amend­ment to the present list. 1.3. The pan­el asked for a gloss­ary or easy read ver­sion of the minutes to be pro­duced. 1.4. It was agreed that there would be a rota set up for pan­el mem­bers attend­ing the intern­al equal­it­ies group. Any pan­el mem­ber who wishes to volun­teer is asked to con­tact the equal­it­ies email address.

2. Liz

2.1. Liz gave an over­view of the work on the Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plan and asked the pan­el to com­ment on three areas;

• Com­ment on the approach
• Provide key equal­ity issues to con­sider and how to embed them dur­ing the plans development
• Sug­gest how the EAP could sup­port the plan’s development

2.2. The Approach

• The pan­el sug­ges­ted that the Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plan object­ives tie into CNPA equal­ity out­comes 2 and 3 and sug­ges­ted that it would be bene­fi­cial to link in with the team’s lead­ing these to inform future work.
• The group sug­ges­ted a few options for what should be planned to be under­taken first. These included build­ing a net­work of chan­ging places toi­lets as it was recog­nised that this can be a big barrier.
• The group also sug­ges­ted focus­ing first on small, low cost fixes with quick res­ults. Such as focus­ing on loc­a­tions where there are full cir­cu­lar routes which need a small num­ber of quick fixes that would make them access­ible for wheeling.

2.3. Key Equal­ity Issues

• Low Income Groups – It was sug­ges­ted that there was reg­u­lar con­tact with bene­vol­ent groups to sup­port this and increas­ing pub­lic trans­port on the west to east cor­ridor to make it more access­ible to those without their own means of transportation.
• Toi­let and wash­room facil­it­ies access to chan­ging places toi­lets, gender neut­ral bath­rooms and fam­ily access­ible toi­lets were all raised by the pan­el. It was made clear that there needed to be a net­work of these dif­fer­ent facil­it­ies to make an effect­ive change, the pan­el expressed that this is not cur­rently the case.
• Neurodi­versity – ensur­ing the plan con­siders changes that need to be made to make sig­nage more access­ible for neurodi­verse people.
• Imagery — Imagery used by the park author­ity and with­in the park needs to be representative.
• Per­son­al Secur­ity – The pan­el raised that work needed to be done to help pro­tect vul­ner­able groups when out using remote places or hitchhiking.
• Web­site — The pan­el sug­ges­ted that a num­ber of addi­tions to the web­site would help with access­ib­il­ity to the park. Such as maps to show chan­ging spaces, access­ible foot­paths, fam­ily friendly areas and mobil­ity scoot­er availability.

2.4. The group also sug­ges­ted a num­ber of resources for Liz to use, for example;

• Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment policies, such as, the lev­el­ling up policy.
• Region­al Part­ner­ship Boards.
• Loc­al Access Panels.
• Inclus­ive mobil­ity guid­ance, which can be found on the Trans­port Scot­land website.

2.5. Liz said that her ​‘one thing’ to take from the meet­ing was to design fund­ing to sup­port the increase in chan­ging places toi­lets. 2.6. Liz asked the pan­el to pass on any links they have to cur­rent web­sites which show facil­it­ies such as chan­ging places toilets.

3. Pub­lic Sec­tor Equal­ity Duty (PSED) Review – Vicky

3.1. Vicky gave an over­view of the work that has been done on this so far. 3.2. The areas of the con­sulta­tion that CNPA are focus­ing on are pro­pos­als 2, 4, 5 and area 11. 3.3. The pan­el par­ti­cip­ated in a menti-meter, an online inter­act­ive sur­vey tool, to dis­cuss their views. 3.4. The pan­el focused on the fol­low­ing regard­ing pro­pos­al 2;

• The pan­el felt that it should be fed back to Scot­tish gov­ern­ment that for inclus­ive com­mu­nic­a­tions it is import­ant to use plain Eng­lish, cre­ate work in mul­tiple dif­fer­ent lan­guages, cre­ate easy read ver­sions when needed and that the time­frame for this pro­pos­al needs to be brought forward.
• The pan­el felt to imple­ment this at CNPA it was import­ant to use pho­tos of diverse vis­it­ors and staff on the web­site, con­sider the access­ib­il­ity of the web­site and use videos with Brit­ish Sign Lan­guage (BSL) support.

3.5. The pan­el focused on the fol­low­ing regard­ing pro­pos­al 4;

• The pan­el felt the response to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment should focus on Equal­ity Impact Assess­ments (EQI­As), focus on enga­ging experts by exper­i­ence, respect for the time needed to imple­ment this pro­pos­al and remem­ber­ing that loc­al demo­graph­ics are not always rep­res­ent­at­ive of minor­ity groups, SMART object­ives need to be used and an under­stand­ing of what suc­cess will look like.
• The pan­el felt to imple­ment this pro­pos­al CNPA should focus on enga­ging with the EAP and loc­al access pan­els, ensure all groups who are rep­res­en­ted by the pro­tec­ted char­ac­ter­ist­ics in the Equal­ity Act (2010) are present in dis­cus­sions, explore anonym­ous options for feed­back and ensure that engage­ment does not only come from groups who are good at lobbying.

3.6. The pan­el focused on the fol­low­ing areas regard­ing pro­pos­al 5;

• Nation­al equal­ity out­comes could be of bene­fit to cap­ture over­all aims, how­ever CNPA should keep their own unique equal­ity outcomes.
• The pan­el felt over­arch­ing equal­ity out­comes should be simple but effect­ive, such as, pro­por­tion­ate pres­ence of minor­ity groups in pub­lic places, which could be indic­at­ive of a sense of safety or social inclusion.
• The pan­el felt key met­rics needed to be decided on pri­or to imple­ment­a­tion to ensure pro­gress can be tracked and SMART object­ives should be set.
• The pan­el felt hav­ing one single per­son in a hier­archy in con­trol of equal­it­ies risks it becom­ing a tick-box exer­cise as opposed to encour­aging every­one to take responsibility.
• The pan­el felt that equal­ity out­comes should be developed and agreed with user groups.

3.7. The pan­el focused on the fol­low­ing areas dur­ing the dis­cus­sion of area II, lead­er­ship and accountability.

• The pan­el felt account­ab­il­ity comes from the top of a hier­archy and fil­ters down. The pan­el expressed that all staff need to under­stand their role in rela­tion to the PSED.

• The pan­el felt that lead­er­ship needs to be vis­ible when it comes to cham­pi­on­ing EDI.

• The pan­el expressed the import­ance of hav­ing pro­tec­ted fund­ing to advance equal­ity and human rights across the organisation.

• Some mem­bers of the pan­el felt that embed­ding equal­it­ies via hier­archy is coun­ter­in­tu­it­ive, the pan­el felt that focus­ing on organ­isa­tion­al change is a bet­ter approach.
• The pan­el felt it was import­ant to stress that account­ab­il­ity for equal­it­ies needs to extend to part­ners as well.
• The pan­el felt that CEO should be held account­able for equal­it­ies, in the same way that the CEO is also the account­able officer for leg­al com­pli­ance across the organisation.
• The pan­el reflec­ted that this is an oppor­tun­ity for CNPA to make and record ambi­tious tasks.

4. AOBS

4.1. It was noted that the new pan­el mem­bers’ bio­graph­ies had not been added to the web­site yet. It was agreed that these would be added as soon as pos­sible. 4.2. It was raised that it would be use­ful to have a tool which could be used to keep track of what the pan­el had been con­sul­ted on and what the res­ults had been. It was agreed amongst the pan­el mem­bers that they would set up an excel spread­sheet to man­age this. 4.3. It was raised that the web­site, in par­tic­u­lar the land­ing page lacked diversity. 4.4. A mem­ber updated the group to explain that they had been in con­tact with the Scot­tish Youth Hostel Asso­ci­ation (SYHA). The CEO has agreed to come and speak at a future meet­ing. 4.5. A pan­el mem­ber raised that it would be use­ful for the pan­el to speak at the Scot­tish Coun­cil for Vol­un­tary Organ­isa­tions Gathering.

Next Meet­ing 29^th March

END OF MEETING