CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Offices, Grant­own on Spey, on Fri­day 25^th Novem­ber 2022 at 09.30am

PRESENT

Xan­der McDade (Con­vener) Janet Hunter (Deputy Con­vener) Chris Beat­tie Deirdre Fal­con­er Rus­sell Jones John Kirk Bill Lob­ban Elean­or Mack­in­tosh Doug McAdam Wil­lie McK­enna Dr Fiona McLean Wil­lie Mun­ro Anne Rae Mac­don­ald Dr Gaen­er Rodger Derek Ross Ann Ross Judith Webb

In Attend­ance:

Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices & Deputy CEO Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Place Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature & Cli­mate Change Colin Simpson, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel Fiona McIn­ally, Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Com­munit­ies Man­ager Heath­er Trench, Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Officer Gav­in Miles, Head of Stra­tegic Plan­ning Mari­aan Pita, Exec­ut­ive Sup­port Man­ager Oliv­er Dav­ies, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions Kar­en Arch­er, Press and Com­mu­nic­a­tions Officer

Apo­lo­gies:

Geva Black­ett

Wel­come and Introduction

1. Xan­der McDade, the Board Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing. Apo­lo­gies recor­ded above were noted.

Declar­a­tions of Interest

1. The Con­vener asked wheth­er any mem­bers had any interests to declare regard­ing items of busi­ness on the meet­ing agenda. The Con­vener high­lighted that Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive, had issued an advice note with regard to item 9, paper 4, con­sid­er­a­tion of the Park Authority’s response to the con­sulta­tion on the pro­pos­als for a new Agri­cul­ture Bill giv­en the poten­tial con­nec­tions mem­bers may have with this item.

2. Elean­or Mack­in­tosh expressed sur­prise that the email referred to by the Con­vener had been issued. Elean­or made a state­ment for pur­poses of trans­par­ency in respect of paper 4 that she has declared a fin­an­cial interest in her register of interests

   • Reas­on: Hus­band and son farm Tombreck­ach­ie Farm, Glen­liv­et and Elec­ted mem­ber of Brit­ish Wool and Mar­ket­ing Board, North­ern Committee.
   • a) Elean­or stated hav­ing reflec­ted on this mat­ter the degree of con­nec­tion did not con­sti­tute an interest in this item of busi­ness as the registered interests are suf­fi­ciently far removed from input to a con­sulta­tion response to be con­sidered as sig­ni­fic­antly influ­en­cing any con­tri­bu­tion that may be made to this item.

3. Anne Rae Mac­don­ald made a state­ment for pur­poses of trans­par­ency in respect of paper 4 that she has declared a fin­an­cial interest in her register of interests

   • Reas­on: Part­ner in Ander­son Rae & part­ners (own­er occu­pied farm), and a Mem­ber of Agri­cul­tur­al Reform Imple­ment­a­tion Over­sight Board
   • a) Anne stated hav­ing reflec­ted on this mat­ter the degree of con­nec­tion did not con­sti­tute an interest in this item of busi­ness as the registered interests are suf­fi­ciently far removed from input to a con­sulta­tion response to be con­sidered as sig­ni­fic­antly influ­en­cing any con­tri­bu­tion that may be made to this item.

4. Deirdre Fal­con­er made a state­ment for trans­par­ency that she has a con­nec­tion to item 9 by reas­on of own­ing ¼ share of fam­ily croft that she has power of attor­ney for. Deirdre stated, hav­ing reflec­ted on this mat­ter, the degree of con­nec­tion did not con­sti­tute an interest in this item of busi­ness as this con­nec­tion is suf­fi­ciently far removed from input to a con­sulta­tion response to be con­sidered as sig­ni­fic­antly influ­en­cing any con­tri­bu­tion that may be made to this item

5. John Kirk expressed shock that the email referred to by the Con­vener had been issued. John Kirk made a made a state­ment for pur­poses of trans­par­ency in respect of paper 4 that he has declared a fin­an­cial interest in his register of interests:

   • Reas­on: Own­er of Rothiemoon Farm and Man­age mains of Curr Farm
   • a) John stated hav­ing reflec­ted on this mat­ter the degree of con­nec­tion did not con­sti­tute an interest in this item of busi­ness as the registered interests are suf­fi­ciently far removed from input to a con­sulta­tion response to be con­sidered as sig­ni­fic­antly influ­en­cing any con­tri­bu­tion that may be made to this item.

6. Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive, stated in response to mem­bers’ reac­tions to his email that the note was sent out as Prop­er Officer as an advice note to all mem­bers, to ref­er­ence their respons­ib­il­ity under the Code of Con­duct. The advice note was simply to allow all mem­bers to con­sider their per­son­al respons­ib­il­it­ies under the Code of Con­duct and con­sider any links either on your register of interest, or incid­ent­al and not registered on your register of interest, to this item of busi­ness. This sought to ensure that the body con­ducts its busi­ness on basis of good gov­ernance prin­ciples that is expec­ted of all pub­lic bod­ies in Scot­land. The note was to no more than give advice to mem­bers to help con­sider their per­son­al respons­ib­il­it­ies and was neither instruc­tion­al nor expect­ing any spe­cif­ic responses.

   • a) Deirdre Fal­con­er referred to the advice note that was issued and she stated that per­son­ally we are all pro­fes­sion­al enough not to need remind­ers before we make decisions because it actu­ally feels like bul­ly­ing and intim­id­a­tion almost, and not every­one knows the code of con­duct inside out.

   • b) The Con­ven­or explained again that it is nor­mal for officers to issue guid­ance notes before meetings.

   • c) The Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices drew the board’s atten­tion to the fact that Deirdre had made it clear she felt bul­ly­ing, and intim­id­a­tion has been used by him, and had stated this in pub­lic meet­ing. The Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive high­lighted that these are very strong words stated by the mem­ber and that this needs to be noted and not passed over by the board as such beha­viour falls with­in our dis­cip­lin­ary pro­ced­ures and needs to be fully and prop­erly looked into and not passed over.

   • d) The Con­vener agreed about the ser­i­ous­ness of the state­ment made by Deirdre Fal­con­er and asked Deirdre to con­sider her pos­i­tion and state­ment made.

   • e) Deirdre Fal­con­er stated that she didn’t accuse any­body of bul­ly­ing and intim­id­a­tion, she said it could come across as, if that causes offence she will retract that.

   • f) Gaen­er Roger noted that NHS High­land used a stand­ard form of word­ing to help with state­ments for trans­par­ency in sim­il­ar cir­cum­stances. The Con­vener noted that the email with advice on this mat­ter issued had offered some stand­ard word­ing, while agree­ing this mer­ited look­ing at further.

Minutes of the Meet­ing on 26^th August and 23 Septem­ber – for approval

1. The draft meet­ings of both meet­ing held on the 26^th of August and the 23^rd of Septem­ber were agreed with no amendments.

Mat­ters Arising

1. The Board Con­vener provided an update on the Action points from 26^th of August minutes:

   • a) At Para. 5a: Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vice to seek leg­al advice on job share of Deputy Con­vener – In Hand

   • b) At Para 5b: Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices to provide recom­mend­a­tion in a paper to board meet­ing on the 9^th of Septem­ber 2022 — Complete

   • c) At Para 12i, minutes of 23^rd Septem­ber 2022: CEO to make amend­ments to the Land Reform in a Net Zero Nation Con­sulta­tion response to sub­mis­sion to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment – Complete

2. Action Points Arising: None

CEO Report (Paperl)

1. Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive, intro­duced Paper I and high­lighted 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.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the following:

   • a) Board mem­ber wanted to check if there were any cost implic­a­tions for CNPA for redesign of the Brae­mar path; and the Peat­land res­tor­a­tions are ahead of tar­get with less budget being used — will this con­tin­ue? CEO con­firmed the Peat­land res­tor­a­tion is ramp­ing up and we are ahead of tar­get with a lot of ditch block­ing work being done which is cheap­er than the bare peat works. This pro­file will catch up as soon as we start the more remote work. The cost on the Brae­mar path is still get­ting done.

   • b) Details were asked about the brand­ing refresh and, in reflect­ing the wel­come suc­cess of the staff gath­er­ing, if the board will be hav­ing a gath­er­ing? it was con­firmed that the CNPA brand refresh will go to the Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee on 9^th of Decem­ber, and they will con­sider a gath­er­ing for the board on one of the board busi­ness dates.

   • c) Con­cerns were raised about the Caper­cail­lie pro­ject in Car­rbridge as a board mem­ber is receiv­ing com­plaints from a res­id­ent. CEO con­firmed that work as agreed by the Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject Board is ongo­ing and there is an action plan in place. The Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject is there­fore deliv­er­ing as approved by the CNPA Board.

   • d) It was ques­tioned if the work on well­being eco­nomy and the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group is well linked into Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil and how enter­prise sup­port is developed by loc­al author­it­ies. It was con­firmed that there are sev­er­al rep­res­ent­at­ives from the area that come reg­u­larly to the Group which gen­er­ally works well. CNPA funds the char­ity Grow­biz to com­ple­ment the work of Busi­ness Gateway.

   • e) An update was reques­ted on deer man­age­ment and next steps for Caper­cail­lie policy. CEO con­firmed that Caper­cail­lie policy devel­op­ment is with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters to agree the next steps, and there is a Deer man­age­ment meet­ing in Decem­ber after which he will then be able to provide feedback.

   • f) With ref­er­ence to the Spey­side Way, a mem­ber repor­ted there are gaps in the path between Ruthven Bar­racks and Kin­gussie. And it was asked if the route would be exten­ded Lag­gan in the future. CEO con­firmed that there isn’t any plan to extend it bey­ond the cur­rent point.

3. The Board noted the Paper. The Con­vener thanked the Chief Exec­ut­ive and all the staff on behalf of the Board.

4. Action Points Arising: None

Sus­tain­able Tour­ism and Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plans (paper 2)

1. Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place, intro­duced two Action Plans which were presen­ted for approv­al, on Sus­tain­able Tour­ism and Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture; a sum­mary of the end of sea­son review of the man­age­ment for vis­it­ors in 2022; and an over­view of related grant expendit­ure on infrastructure.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the following:

   • a) Praise for the plans after a lot of dis­cus­sion with part­ners, as it focuses on vis­it­ors and nature and how import­ant part­ner­ship work­ing is. Also good to see the tim­ing work­ing well with deliv­er­ing of the NPPP.

   • b) The Cairngorm Club foot­bridge was brought up. It was con­firmed that the respons­ib­il­ity for main­ten­ance sits with landown­er, but CNPA are in dis­cus­sions to see how we can help.

   • c) A mem­ber made a num­ber of points and ques­tions on the paper. The cross ref­er­en­cing to trans­port in Annex 3 with vis­it­ors com­ing to the park and mov­ing around could be improved. We need to clamp down on the num­ber of fires. Could we provide grants for the oper­a­tion of pub­lic toi­lets. Con­cern was also raised on the decline in num­ber of Bed and Break­fasts facil­it­ies in Brae­mar. Con­vener high­lighted that there has been a nation­al decline in that type of accom­mod­a­tion as people tend to use glamp­ing pods, Airb­nb and oth­er altern­at­ive accom­mod­a­tion pro­vi­sion. The Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place agreed to improve cross ref­er­en­cing to trans­port. On fires, work will be led by the Head of Land Man­age­ment regard­ing a fire action plan. Regard­ing toi­lets there can be asset trans­fer fund­ing to get these trans­ferred to com­munit­ies, but the chal­lenge is ongo­ing oper­a­tions and main­ten­ance funding.

   • d) It was high­lighted that com­munit­ies don’t have the resources to main­tain toi­lets on an ongo­ing way. A mem­ber repor­ted that High­land Coun­cil has tap and pay sys­tem that works well. Officers noted that in the NPPP there is a tar­get that the num­ber of toi­lets is main­tained or increased. A mem­ber indic­ated that there are no pro­pos­als to close any toi­lets: indeed, High­land Coun­cil are open­ing new ones with the assist­ance of CNΡΑ.

   • e) A Board mem­ber asked what the plan was for Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et area as there seems to be a gap in the Plans. It was high­lighted that Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et had of course benefited from the sig­ni­fic­ant land­scape part­ner­ship pro­ject while this was still being high­lighted as a quieter area requir­ing invest­ment. Look­ing for­wards the work that is being taken for­wards by Crown Estate on their Glen­liv­et 2050 pro­ject will be significant.

   • f) The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment plans for a Loc­al Vis­it­or Levy needs to be imple­men­ted in way that bene­fits Nation­al Parks. Officers noted the pro­pos­als have a sig­ni­fic­ant way to go and loc­al work will be led by Loc­al Authorities.

   • g) Ques­tion regard­ing the European Charter and if we are get­ting the most out of that? We have applied for Charter Stage I and there may be oppor­tun­it­ies to use Charter stage 2 which is avail­able for loc­al businesses.

   • h) Links to the nation­al eco­nom­ic strategy were ques­tioned and it was agreed to do a little more work to improve cross-ref­er­en­cing. Con­nec­tions between the ele­ment of recre­ation­al impact on high­er ground were ques­tioned – these can be caused by deer but there are also import­ant issues to address includ­ing con­trol of dogs in upland areas and changes to recre­ation in form of use of E‑bikes

   • i) Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan was raised, and the devel­op­ment of that work. Officers were keen to devel­op an approach for the refresh that provided the best over­sight going for­ward and com­ple­ments the Tour­ism Action Plan.

   • j) Pos­it­ive feed­back was giv­en on the way officers had taken account of feed­back from the Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el and the gen­er­al approach to equal­ity, diversity, and inclu­sion with­in the Plans.

3. The Board agreed to:

   • a) Note the work that has been under­taken by CNPA and part­ner organ­isa­tions on man­age­ment for vis­it­ors in 2022 (Annex I)

   • b) Note the sum­mary of the grants awar­ded by CNPA to part­ners as part of the Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture Improve­ment Pro­gramme (Annex 2)

   • c) Approve the Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan for sub­mis­sion to Euro­parc along with doc­u­ment­a­tion to apply for the European Charter for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism in Pro­tec­ted Areas (Annex 3)

   • d) Approve the Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plan for sub­mis­sion to Vis­itScot­land (Annex 4).

4. Action Points Arising:

   • i) Improve cross-ref­er­en­cing to trans­port gen­er­ally and the Nation­al Strategy for Eco­nom­ic Trans­form­a­tion in Annex 3.

   • ii) Devel­op approach for the Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan devel­op­ment and over­sight that com­ple­ments the Tour­ism Action Plan.

Future of Nation­al Parks in Scot­land Con­sulta­tion – Park Author­ity Sub­mis­sion (Paper 3)

1. Grant Moir, CEO, intro­duces Paper 3

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the following:

   • a) It was ques­tioned if we should com­ment on wheth­er new parks should not have wind­farms as per cur­rent nation­al park policy. CEO con­firmed that the Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 (NPF4) has been pub­lished con­firm­ing that there will be no wind­farms in nation­al scen­ic areas or nation­al parks, we can high­light this issue to be considered.

   • b) The man­age­ment rules were ques­tioned and if that referred to pub­licly owned land and not private busi­nesses. It was con­firmed that man­age­ment rules would apply to all land pub­lic or private and are taken from loc­al gov­ern­ment legis­la­tion. As cur­rently worded they are not fit for pur­pose. It was asked to make it clear in the word­ing that it is about beha­vi­or and not a threat to people’s legit­im­ate busi­ness decisions.

   • c) Wind­farms were brought up again and our response to this. CEO con­firmed that he would put in the response that SG need to think about the inter­ac­tion with the plan­ning frame­work and work on where the new NP will be.

   • d) A mem­ber com­men­ted that look­ing at Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment web­site there are a lot more ques­tions than in the paper, why are we not respond­ing to all ques­tions and the aims of the nation­al park could we say that the aims should stay the same and lan­guage should be modernised.

   • e) CEO con­firmed that like the land reform con­sulta­tion we decided on the main issues we wanted to con­trib­ute. We aggreg­ated the main things we wanted to put back and did the same with this con­sulta­tion to make it easi­er for dis­cus­sion around the main sub­jects. It was agreed with­in last board dis­cus­sion that the inten­tion of the aims should remain but the lan­guage mod­ern­ised to cov­er the nature and cli­mate crisis.

   • f) Con­cerns were raised regard­ing what implic­a­tions will be for loc­al author­it­ies if there was a change in access rights — spe­cific­ally rights of way. CEO advised the issue of the CNPA being the Access Author­ity but Rights of way remain­ing with Loc­al Author­it­ies looks strange and this is an oppor­tun­ity to tidy up an anom­aly. Refer­ring to the man­age­ment rules and the wider land man­age­ment mat­ters the lan­guage will be tidied up.

   • g) It was asked if Para 8 should be reworded and include cul­ture her­it­age, nature recov­ery, cli­mate crisis and just transition.

   • h) A mem­ber asked regard­ing Para 30 align­ing all pub­lic fund­ing to the Park Plan, reflect­ing as not all fund­ing streams would be appro­pri­ate for region­al­iz­a­tion, wheth­er we need to put caveat ​‘where appropriate’?

   • i) CEO con­firmed there is noth­ing to sug­gest all funds should align with Park Plan. This is not in the response: what we said is that pub­lic fund­ing rel­ev­ant to NPPP deliv­ery should seek to align all the fund­ing. There are spe­cif­ic things that could make a dif­fer­ence rel­ev­ant to deliv­er­ing the Park Plan.

   • j) A mem­ber reflec­ted that the word­ing at the end of para 22 refer­ring to con­vener and deputy con­vener elec­tions cap­tured the board’s sen­ti­ment in pri­or dis­cus­sions well, while sug­gest­ing the end of the para­graph reflect­ing people out­side of the Nation­al Park was not needed.

   • k) CEO con­firmed that he is happy to make those changes and will cir­cu­late paper next week with changes requested.

3. The Board is agreed to: Approve the Park Author­ity response to the Future of Nation­al Parks in Scot­land consultation.

4. Action Points Arising:

   • i) The policy regard­ing wind­farms with­in the NPF4 need to be con­sidered in apprais­ing a new Nation­al Park where there are exist­ing wind farms.

   • ii) Para 8 should be reworded and include cul­ture her­it­age, nature recov­ery, cli­mate crisis and just transition.

   • iii) Para 22 remove ref­er­ence to people in and out with the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.

Deliv­er­ing our Vis­ion for Scot­tish Agri­cul­ture – Pro­pos­als for a new Agri­cul­ture Bill (paper 4)

1. Andy Ford intro­duced paper 4

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the following:

   • a) A Board mem­ber said that under sec­tion 8 there is men­tion of deer man­age­ment being fun­ded in its own right and felt we should high­light the reas­on why, as sport­ing busi­ness mod­els will be affected, and land man­agers will need sup­port as deer man­age­ment increases in the future.

3. The Board is agreed to: Approve the Park Author­ity response to the Deliv­er­ing our vis­ion for Scot­tish agri­cul­ture – Pro­pos­als for a new Agri­cul­ture Bill consultation.

4. Action Points Arising:

   • i) High­light reas­on why deer man­age­ment needs to be funded

A Green­house Gas Emis­sions Assess­ment and Tar­get Scen­ario for the Cairngorms nation­al Park (Paper 5)

1. Gav­in Miles, Head of Stra­tegic Plan­ning, intro­duced this paper, to inform the Board of the green­house gas emis­sions assess­ment for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park under­taken by Small World Con­sult­ing; a tar­get scen­ario to reach­ing net zero; and to sum­mar­ise the work the CNPA will under­take to sup­port that journey.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the following:

   • a) Clar­ity was sought on what will hap­pen after we become Net Zero and if we then go into minus fig­ures? It was poin­ted out that we are long way away from this. The point of this paper is where car­bon can be stored; what checks do we have going for­ward and illus­trat­ing what hap­pen when we set out to deliv­er our tar­get in the NPPP4.

   • b) A Board mem­ber asked if we were on track for being Net Zero by 2025. Mem­bers were reminded that this is a mod­el show­ing that we are hit­ting our tar­gets on wood­land cre­ation, peat­land res­tor­a­tions etc. and based on that we will be on track to reach Net Zero by the end of 2025.

   • c) Com­ment was made on us being on track and hit­ting our tar­gets, and would that let oth­er people across Scot­land off the hook? CEO explained that every­one across Scot­land, includ­ing all organ­isa­tions and regions, must do their bit as appro­pri­ate to their poten­tial, and there is still a lot of work to be done by every­one if Scot­land is to reach its 2045 target.

   • d) Ques­tions were asked on what effect this will have on the people liv­ing and work­ing here, their day to day lives and the eco­nomy. It was explained that across soci­ety and the world we all must make the changes pos­sible to us and we are aim­ing to mon­it­or the dif­fer­ence nation­ally. The report is point­ing out the poten­tial of stor­ing car­bon here.

   • e) A Board mem­ber asked if this was a mod­el based on con­sump­tion not pro­duc­tion and what does that mean; and can we reverse dam­age that has been done? It was poin­ted out that if this was a pro­duc­tion mod­el it would have a lower value and to bear in mind that forestry, farm­ing, and oth­er sec­tors are also look­ing at how they are stor­ing car­bon effi­ciently and redu­cing emissions.

   • f) Fig­ure 5 in cov­er­ing paper was high­lighted show­ing what hap­pens if you put the right infra­struc­ture in place and it gives you a real sense of pride to see the work that has been going on and being a part of this.

   • g) Clar­ity was asked on how we would mon­it­or our own pro­gress and how things are per­form­ing: would this work be rep­lic­ated? It was con­firmed that we will be record­ing our path­way to Net­Zero. There will be good examples from busi­nesses and com­munit­ies that show reduc­tion in car­bon loc­ally along with a com­bin­a­tion of the glob­al changes.

   • h) It was noted that we should be proud of the work that we are doing in this field. The fun­da­ment­al thing is we should use our influ­ence to encour­age the use of equi­val­ent work out­side of the park. CEO explained that the work is in hand mak­ing the over­all approach to car­bon man­age­ment work bet­ter. The NPPP Stake­hold­er meet­ing had star­ted to look at this, and a lot of people were pos­it­ive and inter­ested on how we are doing this.

3. The Board: Con­sidered the green­house gas emis­sions assess­ment for the Nation­al Park and noted the tar­get scen­ario to reach net zero fol­lowed by the pos­it­ive car­bon con­tri­bu­tion that the Nation­al Park can make for Scot­land in future.

4. Action Points Arising: None

Draft Minutes of Com­mit­tee meet­ings since last Board meet­ing (paper 6)

1. Dav­id Camer­on Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced this paper that presents the approved minutes of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee which took place on the 27^th of May. The Gov­ernance and Resources Com­mit­tees which took place on the 2^nd of June 2022. The draft minutes of the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee, Resources Com­mit­tee and Gov­ernances Com­mit­tee minutes for the meet­ings which took place on the 12^th of August 2022.

2. The Board noted the minutes of the Audit and Risk, Gov­ernance, Resources and Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee meetings.

3. Action Point Arising:

Board Com­mit­tee Annu­al Reports (Paper 7)

1. Dav­id Camer­on Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced this paper which presents the Annu­al Reports of the Per­form­ance, Gov­ernance, Audit and Risk and Resources Committee

2. No com­ments were made on the annu­al reports of committees.

3. The Board noted the Annu­al Reports to the Board from the:

   • a) Per­form­ance Committee

   • b) Gov­ernance Committee

   • c) Resources Committee

   • d) Audit and Risk Committee

4. Action Point Arising: None

AOB:

1. Judith Web as Chair of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee provided an update on the extern­al audit and accounts.

   • a) The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee meet­ing was res­ched­uled from Novem­ber to Decem­ber in the hope that the audited accounts would be ready, and extern­al audit com­pleted, but this is not the case. Judith emphas­ised that this situ­ation was entirely caused by the extern­al auditor’s schedul­ing and not due in any part to the work of the Author­ity and its fin­ance team. The Decem­ber Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee meet­ing will still go ahead, and Judith will be writ­ing form­ally say how this will impact on us to extern­al aud­it­ors and Audit Scot­land as the Park Author­ity does not con­trol the appoint­ment of its extern­al aud­it­ors or the audit contract.

   • b) Con­cerns were raised on how this would impact staff. It was noted that it does impact staff as there are a lot of work going on in sup­port of the extern­al audit, at a time which would nor­mally be sched­uled for in year budget man­age­ment and doing future budget work.

   • c) We will miss the dead­line to lay the final accounts before par­lia­ment, but we are in ongo­ing com­mu­nic­a­tion with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment on timetable and pro­cess. We expect the extern­al aud­it­ors will present an ini­tial find­ing report pri­or to the fest­ive break and this report beside the draft accounts report should provide suf­fi­cient assur­ance for Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment fin­ance around their over­all accounts position.

   • d) A mem­ber ques­tioned the ref­er­ence by the Chair of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee that the Park Author­ity did not appoint their extern­al aud­it­ors. The Chair of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee con­firmed this was the case. The Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive explained that all Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Bod­ies in Scot­land had their extern­al aud­it­ors appoin­ted on their behalf by the Aud­it­or Gen­er­al for Scot­land, through Audit Scot­land. A pro­por­tion of the extern­al audits, thought to be roughly one third, were con­duc­ted by Audit Scotland’s in house teams, with the remainder con­trac­ted to audit firms.

   • e) A new a Head of Ser­vice in that area start­ing on the 5^th of Decem­ber and mon­it­or­ing the impacts on activ­it­ies to best man­age this, there­fore we are keep­ing it under review.

2. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate ser­vices provided an update on dir­ect elec­tions. We have been work­ing closely with High­land Coun­cil and their Elect­or­al Regis­tra­tion Office who will be run­ning the dir­ect elec­tions again on behalf of the NPA. The elec­tion pro­cess will start on 18 Jan 2023: at that time High­land Coun­cil will put a noti­fic­a­tion on their web­site and issue let­ters to all registered elect­ors. Bal­lot papers will be issued 28 Feb until elec­tions close on 23 March when votes will then be coun­ted. All this inform­a­tion will be put in the next board newsletter.

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 24^th March 2023.

2. Motion to move into con­fid­en­tial session.

3. The pub­lic part of this meet­ing closed 13.58.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT CON­FID­EN­TIAL MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Offices, Grant­own on Spey, on Fri­day 25^th Novem­ber 2022 at 09.30am

PRESENT

Xan­der McDade (Con­vener) Janet Hunter (Deputy Con­vener) Chris Beat­tie Deirdre Fal­con­er Rus­sell Jones John Kirk Bill Lob­ban Elean­or Mack­in­tosh Doug McAdam Wil­lie McK­enna Dr Fiona McLean Wil­lie Mun­ro Anne Rae Mac­don­ald Dr Gaen­er Rodger Derek Ross Ann Ross Judith Webb

In Attend­ance:

Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices & Deputy CEO Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Place Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature & Cli­mate Change Colin Simpson, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices Gav­in Miles, Head of Stra­tegic Plan­ning Mari­aan Pita, Exec­ut­ive Sup­port Man­ager Oliv­er Dav­ies, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions Kar­en Arch­er, Press and Com­mu­nic­a­tions Officer

Apo­lo­gies:

Geva Black­ett

Minutes of Last Meet­ing held – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last con­fid­en­tial meet­ing held on 26 August 2022 were agreed with no amendments.

Devel­op­ment of 2023 to 2027 Cor­por­ate Plan (Paper 8)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vice intro­duced this paper which presents an early draft of the Cairngorms NPA next Cor­por­ate Plan and seeks board mem­bers’ views on the poten­tial struc­ture and con­tent of the Cairngorms NPA Cor­por­ate Plan for 2023 to 2027.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the following:

3. The Board con­sidered the early draft of the pro­posed 2023 to 2027 Cor­por­ate Plan struc­ture and provided feed­back to sup­port the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of this document.

4. Action Point Arising: None

   • a) It was high­lighted that the columns are very draft, and the full doc­u­ment will come back to the Board in March.

   • b) Com­ments were made regard­ing the part­ner­ship plans and that we need to be mind­ful to try and main­tain those rela­tion­ships for plans in the future. CEO con­firmed that he had an NPPP Stake­hold­er group. Stake­hold­ers were happy with these plans and will in time identi­fy leads with­in their organ­iz­a­tion that will report on the activ­ity they are under­tak­ing. The Cor­por­ate Plan we are high­light­ing will set out the work that sits with­in CNPA.

   • c) Pos­it­ive feed­back was giv­en on the format and mem­bers felt it worked well sim­pli­fy­ing exactly what we are aim­ing to achieve.

   • d) A Board mem­ber asked why the qual­it­at­ive and quant­it­at­ive KPI’s were not there as there is a pro­cess and noted that we need con­sist­ency over the whole piece regard­ing how we meas­ure the out­comes. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate ser­vices advised that we would work to devel­op KPIs and dif­fer­en­ti­ate the Park Authority’s deliv­ery respons­ib­il­it­ies from the part­ner­ship involve­ment with a cor­por­ate per­form­ance frame­work, look­ing to evolve our object­ives and the dir­ect and indir­ect aspects of our cor­por­ate deliv­ery into a suite of KPIs which also link to NPPP and nation­al KPIs. We will be look­ing to evolve this, focus­ing on the recom­mend­a­tion of the intern­al audit and to stream­line our cor­por­ate per­form­ance frame­work that ties back to NPPP outcomes.