CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 9^th Septem­ber 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR INFORM­A­TION

Title: CEO REPORT AND CON­VENER UPDATE

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: The tri­al fresh­wa­ter eco­sys­tem for the Cairngorms Nature Index (CNI) is com­plete. This com­prises of a meth­od­o­logy used to identi­fy and ana­lyse a suite of indic­at­ors about the health and func­tion­al­ity of fresh­wa­ter eco­sys­tem in the Nation­al Park. The next step is to share find­ings with stake­hold­ers. Recruit­ment for a Mon­it­or­ing Officer is under­way and the CNI will be rolled out across dif­fer­ent land use types and hab­it­ats in 2023. Recruit­ment is under­way for a beaver officer to lead con­sulta­tions, land man­ager sup­port, site eval­u­ation, pop­u­la­tion mod­el­ling and pull togeth­er an applic­a­tion for release in 2023.

2. Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: Work com­ing up for the pro­ject includes pro­du­cing a com­munity-led action plan work­ing with the dog walk­ing com­munity in Badenoch and Strath­spey. This aligns with the recent report by NatureScot’s Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Com­mit­tee which high­lights human dis­turb­ance as one of the main factors driv­ing poor pro­ductiv­ity. A request has been made to NLHF to extend the project’s grant expiry date from 30 July 2023 to 30 Janu­ary 2024 so that work delayed by the pan­dem­ic can be com­pleted and a firm leg­acy secured that con­trib­utes to CNPAs over­all com­mit­ments to caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion as per recom­mend­a­tions from the CNPA Board meet­ing in June.

3. Wood­land Cre­ation: We have been form­ally con­sul­ted by Scot­tish Forestry about wood­land cre­ation pro­pos­als at Glen Ban­chor, Muck­rach, and Rothiemurchus estates, con­trib­uted to sev­er­al Long Term Forest Plans, includ­ing amend­ments in response to wind­blow gen­er­ated by storm Arwen, and we are in early dis­cus­sions with forestry agents about a num­ber of oth­er poten­tial wood­land cre­ation schemes. A review of the NPPP3 peri­od showed that the 5000 ha tar­get had been achieved through the approv­al of 5195 ha of new wood­land by July this year, 43% of which was delivered through nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion, and 96% of which con­sisted of nat­ive species.

4. Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion: The peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­gramme has a sea­son­al cycle. Spring and early sum­mer are used for sur­vey work and pro­ject plan­ning, with most res­tor­a­tion work begin­ning from mid July onwards. Tenders have been issued for pro­jects through­out the Park with the area being brought under res­tor­a­tion expand­ing rap­idly over late sum­mer and autumn and we are on track to achieve the pro­gramme tar­get of 905ha in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. Steph­en Corcor­an, Pro­gramme Man­ager left CNPA in May 2022. We are grate­ful for Stephen’s efforts in estab­lish­ing the Peat­land Action Pro­gramme with­in the CNP. We have replaced Stephen’s post with two pro­gramme man­agers (Oper­a­tions and Pro­gramme Devel­op­ment) and have recruited two replace­ment Peat­land Officers to start in September.

5. Moor­land Man­age­ment: Work with the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship has focussed on wader pro­ductiv­ity mon­it­or­ing, wil­low estab­lish­ment, peat­land res­tor­a­tion oppor­tun­ity map­ping and the pro­duc­tion of a 5yr action plan clearly describ­ing what con­sti­tutes the pub­lic and private interest and how they can be delivered togeth­er through moor­land man­age­ment. Part­ners recently pro­duced a blog on [wader con­ser­va­tion in the ECMP](wader con­ser­va­tion in the ECMP)

6. Deer Man­age­ment: Work is con­tinu­ing on the Stra­tegic Land Use Plans for the West Grampi­ans DMG and for South Deeside and North Angus DMG, gath­er­ing nat­ur­al cap­it­al and impact assess­ment data. A con­tract has been issued for work with the South Grampi­ans DMG, sep­ar­at­ing out the deer mod­el­ling from the nat­ur­al cap­it­al assess­ments. CNPA staff con­tin­ue involve­ment in the work­ing groups tak­ing for­ward the recom­mend­a­tions of the Deer Work­ing Group and the CNPA CEO chairs the work­stream to devel­op incent­ives for bet­ter deer man­age­ment as well as sit­ting on the Stra­tegic Board.

Vis­it­or Experience

1. Man­aging for Vis­it­ors: The Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group, chaired by CNPA and involving landown­ers and man­agers from across the Park, has con­tin­ued to meet fort­nightly dur­ing the sum­mer sea­son. Over­all, feed­back from part­ners about key hot­spots sites remains rel­at­ively pos­it­ive with staff and infra­struc­ture largely able to cope with the vis­it­or num­bers and pres­sures. There have been some not­able excep­tions, most not­ably when Glen­more / Loch Mor­lich which saw sig­ni­fic­ant park­ing and camp­ing pres­sures towards the end of the Scot­tish school hol­i­days dur­ing par­tic­u­larly fine weath­er coin­cided with the week­end. Meet­ings have taken place with High­land Traffic Enforce­ment Team to pro­mote a num­ber of actions.

2. Ranger Ser­vices: In addi­tion to the per­man­ent & sea­son­al rangers a fur­ther 4 train­ee rangers have been employed by CNPA through­out the sum­mer sea­son. Their pres­ence on the ground has con­tin­ued to be a valu­able con­tri­bu­tion to advising vis­it­ors on appro­pri­ate beha­viour and min­im­ising vis­it­or pres­sures and com­ple­ments the com­mu­nic­a­tions activ­ity on rais­ing aware­ness of the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code. In view of the recent dry con­di­tions, a par­tic­u­lar focus has been on provid­ing advice around fires. A joint event bring­ing togeth­er all the rangers in the Park, is being held in early Septem­ber to exchange exper­i­ences, review how the fam­ily of ranger ser­vices across the Park works togeth­er and imple­ments the Part­ner­ship Plan.

3. Access & Long Dis­tance Routes: Pro­cure­ment is under way for a num­ber of improve­ments to sec­tions of the Spey­side Way. These include minor repairs / main­ten­ance but also some improve­ments to ele­ments such as gradi­ents in order to widen the range of people that can use those sec­tions of the route.

4. Volun­teer­ing and Health Walks: A num­ber of Volun­teer Rangers con­tin­ue to oper­ate across the Nation­al Park, sup­port­ing the work of the ranger team. Two pilot ses­sions were held as part of the Volun­teer Exper­i­ence Pro­gramme with over 60 people con­nec­ted to the char­ity Home Start East High­land tak­ing part over the two days. Next steps will see Volun­teer Cairngorms work with two or three groups for the rest of the year, to build on rela­tion­ships and con­nect with oth­er Park part­ners. A Green Space Dark Skies event was organ­ised at Loch Insh and sup­por­ted by many volun­teers on 11^th August to give a num­ber of refugees, asylum seekers, fam­il­ies con­nec­ted to char­it­ies and loc­al people a chance to enjoy a unique event with­in the Park.

5. Act­ive Travel: Sig­ni­fic­ant activ­ity has been under­taken recently on the Sus­tain­able Trans­port & Act­ive Travel ele­ments of Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme. The con­tract for the Glen­more Sus­tain­able Trans­port Plan has been awar­ded to Stantec who have com­menced activ­ity which ini­tially includes dir­ect engage­ment with loc­al res­id­ents and busi­nesses in the Glen­more cor­ridor who will be most dir­ectly impacted by any changes that come about. A num­ber of oth­er con­tracts were advert­ised for the devel­op­ment phase of a series of loc­al Act­ive travel pro­jects. Con­tracts have been awar­ded for the Act­ive com­munit­ies: Aviemore, Act­ive com­munit­ies: Badenoch and Strath­spey and Act­ive com­munit­ies: Blair Atholl and Kil­liecrankie pro­jects while the con­tract for the Upper Deeside Act­ive and Sus­tain­able Travel pro­ject is at tender stage with a clos­ing date of 9^th Septem­ber. The con­sulta­tion portal is now live at https://​cairngorm​s2030​.com​mon​place​.is and the first face-to-face events are under way.

6. Cli­mate Con­scious Com­munit­ies: Fol­low­ing a pro­cure­ment exer­cise, sim­il­ar pub­lic engage­ment ses­sions are now get­ting under way as part of the Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme with a num­ber of com­munit­ies across the Park and cli­mate related work with schools has recom­menced now that the sum­mer hol­i­days have finished.

Rur­al Development

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan — Plan­ning Guid­ance: Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment have recently con­firmed they are con­tent with the Sup­ple­ment­ary Guid­ance on Developer Oblig­a­tions. The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee has approved modi­fic­a­tions to the Sup­ple­ment­ary Guid­ance for Hous­ing, and it has been sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. Feed­back is awaited and, once com­plete, this will be the full suite of guid­ance for the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan in place.

2. Plan­ning Case­work: Over the past three months, the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee has approved a num­ber of applic­a­tions includ­ing form­a­tion of bike track and related infra­struc­ture at Cairngorm Moun­tain, Glen­more; Change of use of land to form 3 staff, farm­houses and the demoli­tion of Lyn­voan Cot­tage, Kin­gussie; Erec­tion of 15 Dwell­ing­houses and Asso­ci­ated Infra­struc­ture at Kin­drochit Court, Brae­mar. An appeal was upheld by Report­ers Unit about Kil­liehuntly Bothy and per­mis­sion has been grnted with con­di­tions. The Com­mit­tee also agreed not to object to the Cor­rie­garth 2 Wind­farm and agreed to approve the Tom Nan Clach in com­bin­a­tion with exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind­farms. There were three Pro­pos­al of Applic­a­tion Notices for forestry tracks at Glen Clova; and hol­i­day lodges and res­id­en­tial devel­op­ment an in Aviemore.

3. Hous­ing Deliv­ery: CNPA are con­tinu­ing to sup­port CBP and a num­ber of social enter­prises with hous­ing deliv­ery pro­jects. A series of meet­ings with Com­munit­ies Hous­ing Trust and Rur­al Hous­ing Scot­land has taken place to pro­mote key devel­op­ments, and staff are liais­ing with key com­munit­ies who are devel­op­ing com­munity-led hous­ing pro­jects. Costs have of course increased and officers have worked to include cri­ter­ia with­in the new fund­ing strems to help pro­gress plans for com­munity-led rur­al housing.

4. Well­being Eco­nomy Pro­ject and Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group: WEAII Scot­land are con­tinu­ing to pro­gress the devel­op­ment stage of this work as part of Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme. A work­ing group has been estab­lished involving HIE, Grow­biz and Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship and an update on the work pro­gramme will be provided to the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group in early Septem­ber. The ESG will also con­sider the find­ings of the recent Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er (see below) and the new NE Region­al Eco­nom­ic Strategy. The Digit­al Steer­ing Group is meet­ing in late September.

5. Tour­ism Action Plan: The Tour­ism Response Group has con­tin­ued to meet monthly, chaired by Janet Hunter, as a sub­group of the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship. A sub­mis­sion to Euro­parc for accred­it­a­tion under the European Charter for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism is due to take place by Decem­ber 2022. A Tour­ism Action Plan, to sup­ple­ment the NP Parter­ship Plan, is in pre­par­a­tion and will be presen­ted to CNPA Board for approv­al in late Novem­ber, along­side a review of vis­it­or man­age­ment activ­ity in 2022 and the Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plan.

6. Tour­ism and Busi­ness Data: The Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er sur­vey, under­taken by CBP with fin­an­cial sup­port from CNPA, focuses on Q2 from April to June 2022. In sum­mary, the per­form­ance of busi­nesses dur­ing Q2 has been mixed. CBP noted that, unsur­pris­ingly, the latest res­ults paint a more pess­im­ist­ic pic­ture than we have seen for some time. The impact of increas­ing costs is really start­ing to bite with 93% of busi­nesses report­ing increased energy costs, 86% increased sup­pli­er costs and 47% increased labour costs. Only 3% of busi­nesses have been able to pass on increased costs in their entirety with 52% of busi­nesses only able to pass on less than half of the increased costs and 31% unable to pass on any of the increases. Wor­ry­ingly, 8% of busi­nesses are con­sid­er­ing ceas­ing trad­ing all togeth­er in response to rising prices. The full report can be accessed here.

7. Com­munity Engage­ment: Con­sult­ants have been appoin­ted and are under­tak­ing a review of our approach to com­munity engage­ment with­in the Nation­al Park as part of the Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme. A meet­ing has taken place with Dir­ect­ors of the Asso­ci­ation of Cairngorms Com­munit­ies to determ­ine their aspir­a­tions and they are plan­ning a sig­ni­fic­ant meet­ing for their mem­ber organ­isa­tions dur­ing the autumn is planned to help determ­ine their future.

Stake­hold­er Engagement

1. Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan: our fourth Part­ner­ship Plan was launched at Boat of Garten Com­munity Hall on 23 August by Lor­na Slater MSP (Min­is­ter for Green Skills, Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy and Biod­iversity). Around 115 people were in attend­ance, rep­res­ent­ing the over 100 part­ners involved in deliv­er­ing the plan on the ground. The event was BSL inter­preted and live cap­tioned. The launch was covered by a range of out­lets includ­ing STV, The Scots­man, P&J, Strath­spey and Badenoch Her­ald, and Aber­deen Live, and a series of video inter­views and mater­i­als from the event have been shared across social media draw­ing out key ele­ments of the plan. In addi­tion to pro­du­cing the main Part­ner­ship Plan doc­u­ment, we mailed a 16-page shortened ver­sion to all 14,000 house­holds across the Park at the end of August, sum­mar­ising both the plan and how res­id­ents’ feed­back helped shape the final out­come. Both doc­u­ments were prin­ted on 100% recycled paper using eco-friendly inks to min­im­ise our envir­on­ment­al impact. The door-drop was the first of a new series of phys­ic­al news­let­ters, due to be pub­lished three times a year (the next of which will go out in the winter).

2. Com­munity drop-in ses­sions: Linked to the new res­id­ents’ news­let­ter above, dis­cus­sions have taken place with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship about broad­en­ing our exist­ing man­aging for vis­it­ors’ com­munity meet­ings to estab­lish a reg­u­lar pat­tern of com­munity drop-in ses­sions with a more flex­ible agenda. If suc­cess­ful, these events would allow us to roll out everything from Her­it­age Hori­zons engage­ment to con­ser­va­tion and land man­age­ment pro­ject updates.

3. LGBT Youth Charter: CNPA signed up to the [LGBT Youth Charter](LGBT Youth Charter) in mid-May and we have held intro­duct­ory meet­ings with the LGBT Youth team, at which a range of activ­it­ies were dis­cussed includ­ing a tar­geted comms cam­paign enga­ging and cel­eb­rat­ing LGBT res­id­ents and vis­it­ors in the Park (due to be delivered with­in the next 12 months).

4. Green Space Dark Skies: A com­munity-focused event took place at Loch Insh on 11 August, wel­com­ing over 300 vis­it­ors to the Park (many for the first time). Green Space Dark Skies is spe­cific­ally designed to reach out to under-rep­res­en­ted audi­ences, giv­ing people a unique oppor­tun­ity to engage with nature as part of a col­lab­or­at­ive cul­tur­al exper­i­ence. The event was cap­tured on film both for the pro­ject web­site and as part of a Coun­try­file spe­cial in the autumn.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions

1. Act­ive Cairngorms: We launched our first digit­al Man­aging for Vis­it­ors advert­ising cam­paign in June, tar­get­ing those who do not typ­ic­ally fol­low our exist­ing chan­nels. Whilst the cam­paign has yet to con­clude, we had already reached an audi­ence of over 1.5m in the first month, with posts ran­ging from respons­ible dog walk­ing to wild swim­ming, lit­ter­ing, toi­let­ing and the danger of wild­fires. Cus­tom­is­able assets were shared with all estate, DMO and NGO part­ners, and accom­pa­ny­ing videos were also cre­ated. Data from the cam­paign will inform our long-term comms approach and help us refine mes­saging for hard-to-reach audi­ences. [You can see an example here](You can see an example here).

   We are cur­rently in the ini­tial plan­ning stages for Wee Walks Week with the out­door access team, review­ing con­tent we cur­rently have and explor­ing the pos­sib­il­ity of using the event as an oppor­tun­ity to mark the com­ple­tion of the Spey­side Way.

2. Cairngorms Nature: Fol­low­ing the Cairngorms Nature Big Week­end in May, the team have been review­ing our activ­ity across the web­site and social media. Across all chan­nels, our posts reached 350,000 people and attrac­ted nearly 3,000 likes and shares.

3. Press and media: Recent news updates include plan­ning stor­ies about [afford­able hous­ing in Braemar](affordable hous­ing in Brae­mar) and the approv­al of a [fam­ily bike trail at Cairngorm Mountain](family bike trail at Cairngorm Moun­tain). Con­ser­va­tion news items includ­ing beaver and caper­cail­lie board papers and fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sels were also picked up fairly widely.

   The fourth and final epis­ode of our new pod­cast series Cairngorms Char­ac­ters (pro­duced in part­ner­ship with CBP and The Big Light) aired last month. The series attrac­ted an audi­ence of over 2,000 people in its first five weeks of trans­mis­sion, and all four epis­odes will remain avail­able for the fore­see­able future for fur­ther pro­mo­tion. We are cur­rently explor­ing options for fol­low up activ­ity, includ­ing the poten­tial of a broad­cast plus pod­cast series with BBC Scot­land, Chan­nel 4 or Chan­nel 5.

   Along­side a num­ber of new Cairngorms Voices posts (show­cas­ing the people who help make the Nation­al Park tick), we pro­duced a [long-format news piece and photo story](long-format news piece and photo story) high­light­ing the East Cairngorms Moor­land Partnership’s con­ser­va­tion work help­ing pro­tect wader spe­cies. As part of the piece we com­mis­sioned a loc­al pho­to­graph­er to go out with Michael Ben­net, Head Keep­er at Del­nadamph, and we hope to repeat this approach in future sea­sons to paint a more com­plete pic­ture of the work being car­ried out on estates across the Cairngorms.

4. Her­it­age Hori­zons: The Her­it­age Hori­zons engage­ment pro­gramme con­tin­ues to gear up, with media releases cre­ated for the launch of the [new cre­at­ive directory](new cre­at­ive dir­ect­ory), a blog from Janet Hunter on the well­being eco­nomy, plus the launch of our [act­ive travel consultation](active travel con­sulta­tion). We have also pro­duced a second 3‑min video explain­ing how the pro­gramme hangs togeth­er. The film is nar­rated by 16-year-old loc­al res­id­ent Cailean Mck­er­ron, and fea­tures many of the indi­vidu­als and part­ners who will be instru­ment­al in mak­ing the pro­ject a success.

5. Web­site and social media: The web­site redevel­op­ment pro­ject has geared up sig­ni­fic­antly, with a range of stake­hold­er work­shops tak­ing place with Park res­id­ents, loc­al busi­nesses and the Equal­it­ies Advis­ory Pan­el (fur­ther work­shops are planned with land man­agers and vis­it­ors). We are also pre­par­ing an online sur­vey to gath­er views of exist­ing users of the site, and our agency part­ners are con­duct­ing a full review of both our site and a num­ber of part­ners’ (eg Vis​it​Cairngorms​.com) to bet­ter chart how vis­it­ors and data move between them, identi­fy­ing any pinch points.

   Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of a Digit­al Access­ib­il­ity Centre (DAC) audit, we have now updated cairngorms​.co​.uk so that it com­plies to the AA stand­ard under the Web Con­tent Access­ib­il­ity Guidelines. This work has included chan­ging the col­our of key nav­ig­a­tion ele­ments to make them more legible, provid­ing text altern­at­ives to maps and graph­ics, amend­ing mul­tiple down­load­able pdfs, and mak­ing all ele­ments con­trol­lable by key­board. DAC have also delivered two bespoke train­ing ses­sions for staff across the organ­isa­tion on how to cre­ate con­tent, design web­sites and edit doc­u­ments to make them access­ible to the widest audi­ence possible.

6. Pub­lic­a­tions: Earli­er this sum­mer we com­mis­sioned four pho­to­graph­ers to cap­ture a range of people images for use in the new Part­ner­ship Plan, Her­it­age Hori­zons and across a vari­ety of CNPA pub­lic­a­tions and chan­nels. The pho­to­graph­ers cap­tured just shy of 1,000 new images, over 100 of which fea­ture non-white and dis­abled audi­ences, nearly 200 people ​‘new to nature’, and over 300 fea­tur­ing young people and fam­il­ies. Anoth­er key strand of this work was cap­tur­ing rur­al work­ers in the Park, from game­keep­ers to stalk­ers and farm­ers. We will con­tin­ue to update this image bank over the next few years to ensure we rep­res­ent all facets of the Nation­al Park in our comms materials.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development

1. Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning (BCP). Staff are now work­ing to the Tri­al Hybrid Work­ing Approach dur­ing which the default work­ing loc­a­tion is 50% at home and 50% in the office. Staff attend­ance in the office has not­ably increased, and the minor­ity of staff have reques­ted more than 50% home work­ing. This approach, and the office con­fig­ur­a­tion to sup­port it, is being eval­u­ated every 3 months to identi­fy what is work­ing well, or not. The eval­u­ation will inform any moves to a more per­man­ent arrangement.

2. We are arran­ging a day-long, face to face Staff Gath­er­ing in Octo­ber, recog­nising that approx. 25% of our staff group were appoin­ted and joined remotely, and that many staff have not met up with col­leagues on a face-to-face basis since the pan­dem­ic star­ted. This event will be an oppor­tun­ity for staff to get to know each oth­er, and for some on-site col­lab­or­at­ive work around key themes and pro­jects for the next few years.

3. Staff­ing update:

   Since June, staff­ing updates to 1^st Septem­ber are as follows:

   a) Staff who left the organ­isa­tion were:

   i. Mike Woolv­in, Research and Know­ledge Exchange Man­ager, left on a 12-month career break

   ii. Vicky Ing­lis, Sea­son­al Ranger, left to move to a per­man­ent pos­i­tion elsewhere

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

   i. Catri­ona Strang joined as Clerk to the Board, job shar­ing along­side Alix Harkness

   ii. Mari­aan Pita joined as Exec­ut­ive Sup­port Man­ager, new post.

   iii. Colin Simpson joined as Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel, repla­cing Pete Crane.

   iv. Beccy Stan­ton joined as Facil­it­ies Assist­ant, new post.

   v. Andy Smith joined as Access & Infra­struc­ture Tech­ni­cian, new post

   vi. Lisa Maclsaac joined as Data, Gov­ernance and Report­ing Man­ager, repla­cing Vicky Walker

   vii. Kasia Stringer-Ladds joined as Her­it­age Hori­zons Comms and Engage­ment Officer, new post

   viii. Sally Phil­lips seconded by RSPB as Peat­land Action Pro­ject Assistant.

   c) Intern­al staff appoint­ments, fol­low­ing a com­pet­it­ive intern­al recruit­ment pro­cess were:-

   • Matt Wat­son was appoin­ted to the Peat­land Action Pro­gramme Man­ager (Pro­gramme Devel­op­ment) role, and Emma Stew­art was appoin­ted to the Peat­land Action Pro­gramme Man­ager (Oper­a­tions) role. The Peat­land team was restruc­tured when Steph­en Corcor­an left, and these roles are part of the new struc­ture. Matt and Emma’s roles as Peat­land Officers have been recruited, with appoint­ments to Ewan Camp­bell and Simon Thomas who both start in September.

4. Youth Employ­ment:

   a) 4 Train­ee Rangers joined on a 3‑month con­tract: — Sam Phil­lips, Tom Fre­driks­son, Joe Mcil­wraith, Kirsty Menzies

   b) In addi­tion to the two work exper­i­ence rangers (Chelsea Hewitt and Liam Car­ruth­ers), the Author­ity is also host­ing Alfie Ford, from Grant­own Gram­mar School, on IT work exper­i­ence. Alfie work shad­owed the IT team for two afternoons/​week dur­ing the school hol­i­days and will do one afternoon/​week dur­ing term time.

5. Equal­it­ies: Fol­low­ing an open pro­cure­ment pro­cess, the Author­ity appoin­ted JRS KnowHow to deliv­er equal­it­ies train­ing for staff and Board. All staff have now atten­ded the one-day Equal­it­ies Aware­ness ses­sion. The Seni­or Man­age­ment Team will attend two fur­ther half day ses­sions focus­sing on Ally-ship, Reas­on­able Adjust­ments, and Lead­ing by Example, and all line man­agers will attend a ses­sion on Dis­ab­il­ity in the Work­place. The Board train­ing has been sched­uled for 21^st April.

6. Cairngorms Trust: sup­por­ted by the Author­ity as its Account­able Body, has secured a Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment grant of £281,000 for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ to sup­port Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) invest­ment from a £7 mil­lion fund put in place to con­tin­ue to sup­port CLLD in the absence of LEAD­ER. While not achiev­ing our tar­get of find­ing LEAD­ER replace­ment of equi­val­ent value to the 2014 to 2021 pro­gramme, this fund­ing is a step change in scale to the £50,000 secured in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. Trust­ees have estab­lished an invest­ment plan includ­ing con­tinu­ation and increas­ing scale of the Cairngorms Youth Loc­al Action Group and com­munity grant fund­ing. The Trust con­tin­ues its evol­u­tion of ideas around vol­un­tary dona­tions as had been repor­ted reg­u­larly and in more detail to the board’s Per­form­ance Committee.

Grant Moir Septem­ber 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 9^th Septem­ber 2022

Board Con­vener Report – For Information

Extern­al Engage­ments (I June 2022 – 30 August 2022)

I atten­ded the Roy­al High­land Show on Thursday 23^rd June and Fri­day 24^th June includ­ing the Pres­id­ents lunch being hos­ted by the High­lands & Islands and the min­is­teri­al recep­tion hos­ted by Mairi McAl­lan, Min­is­ter for Envir­on­ment, Biod­iversity and Land Reform. Good engage­ment was made with stake­hold­ers and Min­is­ters at both func­tions and around the wider event with future meet­ings with part­ners set up on the back of it. Anne Rae Mac­don­ald and I also vis­ited the Nat­ur­al Cap­it­al stand hos­ted by the High­lands and Islands and fun­ded by a cross sec­tion of gov­ern­ment bod­ies includ­ing the Cairngorm Nation­al Park Author­ity and had been well vis­ited dur­ing the event.

The launch of the new Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan was very well sup­por­ted by a wide range of part­ners, includ­ing new ones, and by Board Mem­bers. It was very pos­it­ive to have Lor­na Slater MSP along as our Min­is­ter to help us launch the plan and we hope she will be able to join us for a Board meet­ing in the future. A huge thanks on my part to the staff for the incred­ible amount of organ­isa­tion that went into mak­ing the day such a big suc­cess, and for the enorm­ous amount of work that went into the plan over the past couple of years.

In addi­tion to sched­uled Board meet­ings and intern­al meet­ings, I have atten­ded the fol­low­ing extern­al engage­ments in my capa­city as Con­vener of the Board since our last Board meeting.

Date	Engage­ment	Ven­ue
23/6/22	Pres­id­ents Lunch­eon at the Roy­al High­land Show (RHS)	Edin­burgh
24/6/22	Mairi McAl­lan Even­ing Recep­tion at RHS	Edin­burgh
23/8/22	NPPP Launch with MSP Lor­na Slater	Boat of Garten

Xan­der McDade Con­vener – Cairngorm Nation­al Park Authority

Oth­er Board Mem­ber Engage­ment Updates:

Car­o­lyn Cad­dick (Board Deputy Convener)

Date	Engage­ment	Ven­ue
13/06/22	Rep­res­en­ted Board at Dave Fal­lows Funeral	New­ton­more
27/06/22	Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um Meeting	Grant­own on Spey
28/7/22	Land Reform meeting	Online
23/8/22	NPPP Launch with MSP Lor­na Slater	Boat of Garten