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221125CNPABdPaper3FutureofNationalParksStrategyConsultationReportFinal

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 3 25 Novem­ber 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: FUTURE OF NATION­AL PARKS IN SCOT­LAND CON­SULTA­TIONPARK AUTHOR­ITY SUBMISSION

Pre­pared by: GRANT MOIR, CHIEF EXECUTIVE

Sum­mary

NatureScot is con­sult­ing on the future dir­ec­tion of Nation­al Parks in Scot­land and will provide advice to Scot­tish Min­is­ters in the new year. The con­sulta­tion can be accessed here.

Scot­land has ambi­tious tar­gets and pri­or­it­ies to meet the chal­lenges we face in tack­ling the cli­mate and nature emer­gen­cies and we need to trans­form what we do, and how we do it, if we are to deliv­er them. Scot­tish Min­is­ters wish to see Scotland’s Nation­al Parks as places that will act­ively demon­strate nature recov­ery and the trans­form­a­tion­al change needed in our approach to land-use, provid­ing lead­er­ship and show­cas­ing a just trans­ition to net zero in Scotland.’

Recom­mend­a­tion

The Board is asked to:

a) Approve the Park Author­ity response to the Future of Nation­al Parks in Scot­land consultation.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 3 25 Novem­ber 2022 Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity — Response

Over­all Stra­tegic Con­text for Nation­al Parks

  1. Con­sulta­tion — wheth­er there should be an over­arch­ing pur­pose for Nation­al Parks in Scot­land to lead nature recov­ery and a just trans­ition to net zero’

  2. The Park Author­ity think that any over­arch­ing pur­pose should be set in policy rather than legis­la­tion so that it can be adap­ted as times and issues change.

  3. The Park Author­ity thinks that the over­arch­ing pur­pose does provide a clear dir­ec­tion to Nation­al Parks and ties in with the dir­ec­tion in the recently approved Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. Nation­al Parks are good examples of tak­ing a place- based approach around which organ­isa­tions and indi­vidu­als can col­lab­or­ate and take action. The pro­pos­al also provide coher­ence across the expand­ing fam­ily of Nation­al Parks in Scotland.

Nation­al Policy Statement

  1. Con­sulta­tion — wheth­er a Vis­ion and mis­sion” for all of Scotland’s Nation­al Parks should be clearly set out in a nation­al statement.

  2. With the move to at least one more Nation­al Park in Scot­land a nation­al policy state­ment would provide coher­ence and would also provide a frame­work for Nation­al Park Author­it­ies and their Boards to oper­ate with­in. It could provide form­al nation­al guid­ance as each Park Author­ity then devel­ops its own Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan with stake­hold­ers in their area. As sug­ges­ted above it could also include an over­arch­ing pur­pose for Nation­al Parks.

  3. There is a need in any nation­al policy state­ment to recog­nise the dif­fer­ent interests with­in a Nation­al Park, and dif­fer­ing spe­cif­ic pri­or­it­ies and chal­lenges being addressed by each Park Author­ity: e.g., res­id­ents, busi­nesses, landown­ers, recre­ation takers, tour­ists, and the nation­al and loc­al inter­play in each area. It would also be help­ful to cla­ri­fy how Min­is­ters give guid­ance to any single Park Author­ity in pre­par­ing their Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) so that there is good integ­ra­tion between the nation­al state­ment and Park spe­cif­ic stra­tegic plan­ning (see sec­tion 4 below)

Aims of Nation­al Parks

  1. Con­sulta­tion — are there any spe­cif­ic changes to the exist­ing four Aims required? If so why, and what are they?

  2. The Park Author­ity think that the intent of the cur­rent aims should remain the same but that the lan­guage could be mod­ern­ised and should include a ref­er­ence to nature recov­ery and the cli­mate crisis.

  3. The cur­rent aims of the Nation­al Parks are broad, and this is a strength in that all the issues that Parks must face are inter­re­lated e.g., to be able to under­take peat­land res­tor­a­tion in the park you need good data, a skilled work­force and afford­able hous­ing for employees.

  4. As well as mod­ern­ising the lan­guage con­sid­er­a­tion needs to be giv­en to how sec­tion 9(6) is applied. a. The Park Author­ity thinks that the need to provide great­er weight” to the first aim if the aims are in con­flict should apply to all rel­ev­ant pub­lic bod­ies oper­at­ing in the Park and not just the Park Author­ity. b. The Park Author­ity sug­gests that great­er weight’ should be form­ally defined in the nation­al policy state­ment and guid­ance giv­en about how that approach should be applied with­in a Park.

Nation­al Park Plan Implementation

  1. Con­sulta­tion — any sug­ges­tions for improv­ing part­ner­ship work­ing to sup­port the imple­ment­a­tion of the Nation­al Park Plan.

  2. The cur­rent Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan pro­cess works well in cre­at­ing pos­it­ive man­age­ment plans for Nation­al Parks. Hav­ing a place-based approach is a strength. How­ever, mak­ing oth­er pub­lic bod­ies who have sec­tor­al respons­ib­il­ity account­able for their deliv­ery is com­plex and the legis­lat­ive phrase have regard to’ is not strong nor defin­able. It would be bet­ter if the phrase in the legis­la­tion was more act­ive e.g., pub­lic bod­ies have a duty to imple­ment the NPPP in the work they under­take in Parks’.

  3. By stat­ute the Park Author­ity must pro­duce the man­age­ment plan for the Park but sig­ni­fic­ant pub­lic fund­ing rel­ev­ant to the deliv­ery of the Plan (e.g. agri-envir­on­ment pay­ments) are not neces­sar­ily aligned to the deliv­ery of the Plan. There is an oppor­tun­ity to change this and align fund­ing more closely to deliv­ery of the Plan giv­ing this type of fund­ing a more region­al focus. Scot­tish Min­is­ters have to sign-off the 5 year man­age­ment plan so it would make sense that pub­lic fund­ing is aligned to help deliv­ery of the agreed Plan.

  4. Fur­ther thought should also be giv­en to ensur­ing that key pub­lic bod­ies are giv­en a stronger steer by Min­is­ters in set­ting their pri­or­it­ies and resource alloc­a­tion to sup­port deliv­ery of NPPPs.

Powers and Func­tions of NPA’s

  1. Con­sulta­tion — what should the powers and func­tions be for a Nation­al Park Authority.

  2. The powers of a Nation­al Park Author­ity are cur­rently lim­ited (plan­ning, access). The main role of a NPA should still be to try and achieve out­comes by part­ner­ship work­ing, fund­ing and per­sua­sion. How­ever, there is a need for Min­is­ters to con­sider what powers may be needed as a back­stop to ensure that the aims and Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plans are delivered.

  3. The powers and func­tions of each Nation­al Park Author­ity should be decided on a case-by-case basis but some need to be across all Parks to ensure a degree of con­sist­ency in sup­port­ing Nation­al Park Author­it­ies deliv­er­ing the key nation­al policy aims. Plan­ning is a good example. All Parks should have a role in the plan­ning sys­tem, but it is appro­pri­ate that these should vary, depend­ing on cir­cum­stances of each Park, from full-plan­ning powers to call-in powers to only pro­du­cing the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan.

  4. There are oth­er areas where the Park Author­ity sug­gest that changes should be con­sidered: a. Pub­lic Land — what is the role of Park Author­it­ies in the man­age­ment of pub­licly owned or man­aged estates in the Park? The oppor­tun­ity should be taken through this work to con­sider how pub­licly owned and man­aged estates (Forest & Land Scot­land, Crown Estate Scot­land, NatureScot, & High­lands and Islands Enter­prise in the Cairngorms) are more coher­ently man­aged as a whole to deliv­er the agreed NPPP. b. Core Area – With­in Nation­al Parks con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to poten­tially identi­fy­ing core areas of land for nature recov­ery that could be giv­en addi­tion­al pro­tec­tion that con­trib­utes to the 30×30 tar­gets and the 10% highly pro­tec­ted tar­gets. As an example this could mean areas des­ig­nated as cat­egory II Nation­al Parks with­in a wider cat­egory V Nation­al Park, lar­ger Nation­al Nature Reserves or a Nature Recov­ery Zone. Work would need to be taken for­ward to look at the poten­tial advant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of such an approach. c. Access – As an Access Author­ity powers over access issues cur­rently reserved to Min­is­ters or NatureScot or Loc­al Author­it­ies (with respect to Rights of Way) could be del­eg­ated to Nation­al Park Author­it­ies. d. Man­age­ment Rules – The exist­ing man­age­ment rules in the legis­la­tion are dated and apply only to cer­tain areas of land. These could poten­tially be updated to provide NPAs with the poten­tial to have man­age­ment rules on all land with­in the Park to help man­age vis­it­or pres­sure or spe­cif­ic land use issues. Updated legis­la­tion would be enabling and the power to take for­ward such an approach would reside with indi­vidu­al Nation­al Park Authorities.

Gov­ernance

  1. Con­sulta­tion — Are there any changes you would want to see to the gov­ernance and man­age­ment arrange­ments of all Nation­al Park Authorities.

  2. There needs to be gov­ernance for each Nation­al Park Author­ity based on loc­al cir­cum­stances. For example, the num­ber of Loc­al Author­it­ies that cov­er a Nation­al Park, the size of the Nation­al Park or the pop­u­la­tion with­in a Nation­al Park. Boards do need to con­tin­ue to provide a bal­ance between loc­al and nation­al views. This is a strength of Nation­al Park Author­it­ies. The fund­ing for Nation­al Parks comes from the nation­al tax­pay­er and there is a need to deliv­er on nation­al pri­or­it­ies and at the same time there is a need to take account of loc­al views and bring these together.

  3. The Park Author­ity Board is strongly of the view that the cur­rent gov­ernance struc­ture for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park is fit for purpose.

  4. The Park Author­ity Board believes that it is import­ant that the Con­vener and Deputy Con­vener remain elec­ted by the Board giv­en that some of the powers the Park Author­ity exer­cises would nor­mally be exer­cised by demo­crat­ic­ally elec­ted coun­cil­lors and without loc­al account­ab­il­ity a demo­crat­ic defi­cit could be cre­ated between cit­izens liv­ing with­in Nation­al Parks and those outwith.

  5. The Park Author­ity Board believes the Board mix of appoint­ment meth­ods is bene­fi­cial. In par­tic­u­lar, the Board feels the role of dir­ectly elec­ted mem­bers is import­ant and needs to be kept.

Role of Nat­ur­al Cap­it­al, Green Fin­ance & Communities

  1. Con­sulta­tion — What oppor­tun­it­ies are there for Nation­al Parks to gen­er­ate private invest­ment in nat­ur­al capital

  2. The role of green fin­ance could be cru­cial in provid­ing fund­ing to achieve nature and cli­mate change out­comes. How­ever, there is a need for this to be well-reg­u­lated, provide a return to loc­al com­munit­ies with­in the Nation­al Park and genu­inely reduce the car­bon foot­print of a Nation­al Park.

  3. There is a need to ensure that this is closely linked to deliv­er­ing a just trans­ition (as defined in the Just Trans­ition, Fairer, Green­er Scot­land), cli­mate mit­ig­a­tion and adapt­a­tion and nature res­tor­a­tion with­in the loc­al area. The bene­fits of the car­bon mar­ket can­not just be to landown­ers and/​or com­pan­ies. There needs to be bene­fits to com­munit­ies as well.

  4. The Park Author­ity have the staff expert­ise and data to ensure that the use of private fund­ing is car­ried out to a high stand­ard. There is poten­tial to look at an accred­it­a­tion scheme with­in Nation­al Parks that would provide assur­ance that any green fin­ance deals with­in Nation­al Parks deliv­er across car­bon, nature and provide bene­fits for com­munit­ies in Nation­al Parks in line with the agreed Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.

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