CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held by telephone/​video con­fer­ence on Fri­day 23^rd Septem­ber 2022 at 9am

PRESENT

• Xan­der McDade (Con­vener)
• Geva Black­ett
• Peter Argyle
• Car­o­lyn Cad­dick (Deputy Convener)
• Deirdre Fal­con­er
• Pippa Had­ley
• Janet Hunter
• John Kirk
• Elean­or Mackintosh
• Wil­lie McKenna
• Ian McLar­en
• Dr Fiona McLean
• Wil­lie Munro
• Dr Gaen­er Rodger
• Derek Ross

In Attend­ance:

• Grant Moir, Chief Executive
• Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Place
• Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature & Cli­mate Change
• Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies:

• John Lath­am
• Anne Rae Macdonald
• Judith Webb

Wel­come and Introduction

1. Car­o­lyn Cad­dick, Board Deputy Con­vener informed every­one that the Board Con­vener was run­ning late so she would Chair until he arrived. She wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing. Apo­lo­gies were noted.

Declar­a­tions of Interest

1. The Board Con­vener invited declar­a­tions of interest.
2. There were no interests declared.

Minutes of Last Meet­ings held – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 10^th June 2022 were agreed with no amend­ments. Gaen­er Rodger pro­posed the minutes and Peter Argyle seconded the minutes.

John Kirk arrived at the meet­ing at this point.

Mat­ters Arising

1. The draft Con­fid­en­tial Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 10^th June 2022 were agreed with no amend­ments. Gaen­er Rodger pro­posed the minutes and Fiona McLean seconded the minutes.

2. There were no actions arising from the pre­vi­ous minutes.

3. Action Points Arising: None

Land Reform in a Net Zero Nation (Paper 1)

1. Grant Moir, CEO intro­duced Paper I which presents the response of the Park Author­ity to the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG) con­sulta­tion – Land Reform in a Net Zero Nation which was launched on 4 July by SG and would close this com­ing Sunday. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment will use these responses and build up pro­pos­als accordingly.

Xan­der McDade, Board Con­vener and Geva Black­ett joined the meeting.

1. As the Board Con­vener, Xan­der McDade had arrived, the Deputy Board Con­vener passed the chair­ing on to him at this point. The Board Con­vener thanked the Deputy Board Convener.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions were made:

   • a) Query around land­hold­ings own­ing ground around com­munit­ies and char­ity type landown­ers would there be restric­tions on them com­ing in and buy­ing up the land? Land clear­ances would be the last thing would want to see, con­cern raised around car­bon cred­its and land clear­ances of people work­ing on the ground. CEO advised that the con­sulta­tion was aimed at address­ing issues to do with scale and con­cen­tra­tion of land own­er­ship> how­ever, the pub­lic interest test was aimed at poten­tial future pur­chases of land rather than cur­rent own­er­ship. The con­sulta­tion does have pro­pos­als that land could be broken up into smal­ler par­cels when it is sold or pur­chased to encour­age a great­er range of ownership.
   • b) Agreed with sug­ges­tion that land respons­ib­il­ity state­ment and land man­age­ment plans are rolled into one. Resource implic­a­tions to for all parties in tak­ing for­ward this pro­pos­al includ­ing any sign-off pro­cess. CEO advised that it would be depend­ent on which way land man­age­ment plans are imple­men­ted, how they are set up and what the landown­ers may need to pro­duce as to the resource implic­a­tions. Not enough inform­a­tion yet on this in the con­sulta­tion. With regards to Para 11; trans­par­ency, the idea would be for the poten­tial own­er to be registered for tax in UK or EU. Would this impact invest­ment? CEO advised that it was quite dif­fi­cult to say and would depend on the afore men­tioned struc­tures if the land hold­er can register for tax in UK. CEO agreed to put ​‘poten­tial’ on point one.
   • c) With regards to com­munity empower­ment, plea made to put some­thing to SG as need to get some­thing for com­munity groups as to how they work through pro­cure­ment. The Board Con­vener com­men­ted that he did not think going find dis­agree­ment of import­ance of SG being com­mit­ted prop­erly to com­munity involve­ment. Real drive from some of those involved to see that com­munity own­er­ship. Con­vener shared the con­cerns of the mem­ber that com­munit­ies are part of the solu­tion and that this bill should aim to make involve­ment easier.
   • d) Con­cern raised around para 7 and land man­age­ment plans, danger going to become hugely com­plic­ated or so simplist­ic become an expens­ive tick box exer­cise. We as a group have 5 basic con­cerns who is going to answer the ques­tions and which point will the answers come out for fur­ther con­sulta­tion. CEO com­men­ted that the ques­tions have been included in the draft response as these are the types of issues that the land reform bill team will need to address as the Bill is developed and it goes through scru­tiny through parliament.
   • e) The Board Con­vener com­men­ted that these were inter­est­ing ques­tions and that there is poten­tial scope of the NPA to look at poten­tial answers over the com­ing peri­od. Com­ment made that the CNPA were one rel­at­ively small area in the whole of Scot­land, we might think it’s sor­ted while anoth­er organ­isa­tion may dif­fer of opin­ion. SG Land Reform Team would have to take that into account.
   • f) Agree­ment that help and sup­port is required for com­munity groups on how to use the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Register and as Nation­al Park Author­ity we could be provid­ing train­ing and expert­ise to sup­port these groups.
   • g) Ques­tion posed around Item 2, con­cern­ing land hold­ings over 3000Ha, how many of those 40 land­hold­ings had dif­fer­ent own­ers? Com­ment made that there was already a con­cen­tra­tion of a few people own­ing a lot of the land in the Nation­al Park and the effect that is already hav­ing caus­ing undue influ­ence in the Nation­al Park. CEO advised that it was just shy of 40 dif­fer­ent own­ers’ ret­ro­spect­ive element
   • h) Com­ment made about using the word estates, sug­ges­tion made to use the term large scale land­hold­ings, need to remove the word and replace, char­it­ies own this too. CEO advised that he thought that estates was the right word e.g., Aber­nethy Estate is run by RSPB, Mar Lodge Estate by NTS, Atholl Estate by Atholl Estates.
   • i) With ref­er­ence to No. 13 car­bon cred­its, con­cern that we fail to be spe­cif­ic enough, sug­ges­tion made to high­light that money is also used for help­ing to secure jobs, more resi­li­ent and social infra­struc­ture which is word­ing lif­ted from a SG report pub­lished in July 2022. CEO advised that he would be happy to explain the term Just trans­ition if the Board felt that would be helpful.
   • j) Agree­ment with an earli­er point made that the chal­lenge lay wheth­er there will be scru­tiny of land man­age­ment plans. Will a plan be pro­duced by a con­sult­ant that sits on a shelf. Poten­tial it just cre­ates its own industry. Poten­tial to think about wheth­er com­munit­ies could avoid tax when pur­chas­ing land. CEO advised that he’d be happy to add this in, at end, tax régime around tax­a­tion in com­munity purchases.
   • k) Recog­ni­tion that it was early days in the pro­cess, more ques­tions than answers, paper does good job of that, hop­ing for more detail pro­pos­als. Chal­lenge for us will be how it will be imple­men­ted, what works for rest of Scot­land may not work for the High­lands, would not want to end up with bur­eau­crat­ic sys­tem that is expensive.
   • l) Com­ment made that they agree with the com­ments already made on land man­age­ment plans. Key thing is link to pub­lic fund­ing, scru­tiny and com­pli­ance should be set when grants are awar­ded. 40 land­hold­ings, appeals pro­cesses, sign off plans, rela­tion­ship implic­a­tions, NPPP con­sen­su­al par­ti­cip­a­tion. CEO com­men­ted that the resource is inter­est­ing, if spent time upstream refin­ing a plan then there is poten­tial to spend less time try­ing to resolve indi­vidu­al schemes fur­ther down­stream in the pro­cess. Reas­on we have NP is to be a bit dif­fer­ent and we have an oppor­tun­ity to try to link to the min­is­teri­ally approved stra­tegic man­age­ment plan for this area.
   • m) One mem­ber sug­ges­ted that what was in the NPPP should be reflec­ted in what people should put in land man­age­ment plan.

3. The Board approve the pro­posed Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity response (as detailed in Annex I) to the Land Reform in a Net Zero Nation con­sulta­tion sub­ject to the agreed changes in para­graph 10a) to 10m) above will be made pri­or to sub­mis­sion by the CEO.

4. Action Point Arising:

   • i. CEO to make amend­ments to the Land Reform in a Net Zero Nation Con­sulta­tion Response pri­or to sub­mis­sion to Scot­tish Government.

AOCB

1. The Board Con­vener gave spe­cial men­tion to Board Mem­bers Peter Argyle, Pippa Had­ley, Ian McLar­en, Car­o­lyn Cad­dick and John Lath­am who would be leav­ing at end of the month. He gave spe­cial thanks to Peter Argyle who was a seni­or eld­er of the Board and who was once Con­vener of the Board and Deputy Con­vener of the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee. He gave spe­cial men­tion to Pippa, Ian and John who have cham­pioned nature. Wish­ing you all the best, with going to do with your free time, don’t stay a stranger.

2. Mem­ber asked for some more inform­a­tion on what happened with Glen­more Com­munity Trust and what sort of learn­ing could be taken for­ward with that.,

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 25^th Novem­ber 2022.

2. The pub­lic part of this meet­ing closed 9.48am