221209CNPAReroucesCtteePaper4AASCFMinutes7November2022V20

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 4 9 Decem­ber 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive Forum

Held via Lifes­ize 11:30am, on Monday 7 Novem­ber 2022

Present Dav­id Camer­on Ed Swales Heath­er Trench Janet Hunter (Board Mem­ber) Kate Christie Lucy Ford Pip Mack­ie Richard Hardy (Pro­spect)

Apo­lo­gies Adam Streeter-Smith Alix Hark­ness Deirdre Fal­con­er (Board Mem­ber and chair of Resources Committee)

Item 1: Wel­come and Apologies

1. Dav­id Camer­on (DC) wel­comed the group. He thanked Car­o­lyn Cad­dick (pre­vi­ous Board mem­ber) for her con­tri­bu­tions to the SCF. It was noted that Janet Hunter (Board Mem­ber and Deputy Con­ven­or) was stand­ing in as Board rep­res­ent­at­ive, as Deirdre Fal­con­er was unable to attend.
2. Apo­lo­gies were received from the above.

Item 2: Review of Minutes of 27 June 2022 Meet­ing and Mat­ters Arising

1. Minutes were agreed and action points were reviewed.

2. It was noted that the GoS office build­ing was quite chilly today, and staff asked if the heat­ing could stay on over week­ends to pre­vent Mondays being so cold, DC will pick this up with the Facil­it­ies team.

3. Richard Hardy joined the meeting.

Item 3: Paper 2: Pay Award Offer: Octo­ber 2022

1. Kate Christie (KC) intro­duced the paper and asked for feedback.

a. The con­sol­id­ated award being wel­comed. b. Con­cern regard­ing the lar­ger gap in per­cent­age pay award between salary bands D & E and that those staff in Band G get­ting more than those in Band F — if the prin­ciple was for the high­er bands to get a lower per­cent­age, then this was not being car­ried out. DC con­firmed that the pay offer was for a per­man­ent increase to salar­ies. The pay offer had been spread across the bands but with cog­nis­ance about the range of increases and it had been weighted towards lower bands. How­ever, being mind­ful of the cost-of-liv­ing crisis affect­ing all staff. Oth­er organ­isa­tions pay offers to staff had been looked at includ­ing those from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and COSLA. It was con­firmed that the Band F & G total award was 3% and that for Band E was 3.4%. c. A query if there were any steer from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment on what next year’s pay award was likely to be. KC advised that all pub­lic bod­ies were required to com­plete sur­vey regard­ing the pub­lic sec­tor pay policy and what had been imple­men­ted to date. The expect­a­tion was that next year’s pay award may be lower but there may be an oppor­tun­ity to look at doing things in a dif­fer­ent way. DC advised that the guid­ance cur­rently expec­ted would be that pay awards would have to be absorbed in a rel­at­ively flat line budget situ­ation. d. Richard Hardy advised that the increase to the 5% pay cap by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment had been due to pub­lic sec­tor uni­on pres­sure. He advised that the CNPA had made good use of the space the organ­isa­tion had to work with and thanked CNPA man­age­ment for pro­gress­ing the imple­ment­a­tion of the the pay award without hav­ing to ​“be asked” to do this He advised that next year’s fin­an­cial pay award pic­ture would poten­tially be incred­ibly dif­fi­cult. DC recog­nised that both next year’s budget and pay award may be chal­len­ging and con­ver­sa­tions would be held with staff as soon as inform­a­tion was available.

1. The paper was accep­ted with the pay award would be imple­men­ted in Novem­ber pay; back­dated to I October.

Item 4: Paper 2: New Nor­mal Sur­vey Res­ults (Sept 2022)

1. Kate Christie (KC) intro­duced the paper and asked for feedback.

a. A query if more IT equip­ment at hot desks included key­boards / mice etc. to save staff car­ry­ing equip­ment being car­ried to / from the office. KC con­firmed this would be included. DC advised that the IT team were now hold­ing a lar­ger buf­fer stock of laptops to cov­er the long deliv­ery times cur­rently being exper­i­enced. KC com­men­ted that there were still gaps in some pieces of kit due to long deliv­ery times

1. KC thanked every­one for their feed­back on the paper.

Item 5: Dis­cus­sion: Health and Safety Update

1. There were no updates from employ­er. H&S Com­mit­tee meet­ing every quarter and minutes pos­ted on R drive, with cir­cu­la­tion to SMT and the Resources Committee.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 4 9 Decem­ber 2022

Item 6: Dis­cus­sion: Leadership

1. DC gave an update on the recent Board changes. There had been a few changes due to the loc­al elec­tions held in May and some loc­al author­ity appoin­ted mem­bers terms came to an end on 30 Sept. New Mem­bers had been appoin­ted (I Octo­ber) and their bio­graph­ies were now avail­able on the CNPA web­site. A num­ber of the min­is­teri­al appointees’ terms were due to fin­ish at the end of Octo­ber, all these mem­bers had been reappoin­ted for vary­ing terms (6mths to 4 years). The pub­lic appoint­ment pro­cess was due to launch at the end of Novem­ber and new appointees were expec­ted to join in April 2023.
2. DC advised that work had com­menced on the Cor­por­ate Plan and it was due to go to Board meet­ing on 25 Novem­ber to get gen­er­al dir­ec­tion of travel. The Cor­por­ate Plan was due to be adop­ted in March 2023 and a look at first year of budget (24÷25) from that plan.

Item 7: Dis­cus­sion: Equalities

1. KC advised that most staff had now been through the equal­it­ies train­ing (delivered by JRS KnowHow). There was to be a mop up ses­sion held in Decem­ber and a ses­sion for Board mem­bers in April 23. The Board Ses­sion would be delivered in person.
2. KC advised that SMT and the LGBT Ambas­sad­ors had now under­taken live LGBT Youth train­ing. Feed­back received from the online (webin­ar) train­ing had been very pos­it­ive, 31 people had com­pleted the online train­ing and this would be opened up again for more staff to under­take. The online train­ing could take place in either Decem­ber or Janu­ary and KC sought views on when staff felt would be most appro­pri­ate (the intern­al equal­ity group would also be con­sul­ted). Staff agreed that Decem­ber would be preferable.

Item 8: AOB

STAFF SOCIAL GROUP

1. A request for the set­ting up of a staff social com­mit­tee was received. The group would be respons­ible for arran­ging inform­al lunch talks, social gath­er­ings, Christ­mas party etc. DC happy for staff to form a com­mit­tee if they wish and recog­nised that some staff wouldn’t want to be involved in all ele­ments of organ­ising social events e.g. some may just wish to help with Christ­mas. KC added that many new staff have joined since lock­down and an invite for people to come for­ward would be included in the Wed­nes­day Well­being email. She advised that the HR team don’t have the capa­city to take this on but will help coordin­ate evol­u­tion of new group.
2. The intern­al recruit­ment pro­cess was raised and that staff don’t seem to see many oppor­tun­it­ies being cir­cu­lated from NatureScot, LLT­NPA & SEPA. There­fore this may mean that staff from these oth­er organ­isa­tions are not neces­sar­ily see­ing our vacan­cies. KC advised that all intern­al vacan­cies are sent to the indi­vidu­al organ­isa­tions but we don’t have con­trol over how part­ner organ­isa­tions choose to

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 4 9 Decem­ber 2022

share this inform­a­tion. It was advised that LLT­NPA has with­drawn from the intern­al pool. KC will raise this mat­ter with EELG group at next meeting.

1. DC sug­ges­ted that the next sched­uled SCF meet­ing (for Decem­ber) be post­poned until Janu­ary 23. This was agreed.

The meet­ing con­cluded at 12:25pm.

Ref	Action	Respons­ible	Due Date
24.06.19	Men­tal Health First Aid Policy:Additions to policy:Review in one year’s time­In­clu­sion of flow diagram.	KC
Para 7	15.06.20: Ongoing06.10.20: Ongoing06.12.21: Ongo­ing – MHFA train­ing last week, policy to be looked at with new MHFA and reviewed in New Year07.11.22: Ongoing
09.12.19	Travel & Sub­sist­ence Policy:Include a worked example of an expenses claim.	DC	Mar 20
Para 4h	15.06.20: Ongoing05.10.20: Ongoing06.12.21: Ongoing27.06.22: With fin­ance team for feed­back pri­or to reis­sue — mileage rates 45p per mile depend­ent on HMRC for amend to rates, if move above entirety of pay­ment would be tax­able Com­plete and reissued
09.12.19	Amend Terms & Conditions:Any staff deal­ing with payroll to be con­sul­ted regard­ing hav­ing a spe­cif­ic con­fid­en­ti­al­ity clause inser­ted into their contract.	KC	June 20
Para 6	05.10.20: Ongoing06.12.21: Ongoing27.06.22: Ongoing07.11.22: Ongoing
06.12.21	Elec­tric Car Salary Sac­ri­fice SchemeFu­ture updates to be brought back to SCF	KC	June 22
Para 19	27.06.22: Fin­ance team look­ing into and any pro­pos­al will be brought to MT07.11.22: Still progressing
07.3.22	Best Com­pan­ies Survey:	KC and DC
Para 5b

Para 51 CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 4 9 Decem­ber 2022

	KC and DC to pro­pose indi­vidu­al team dis­cus­sions of the res­ults atten­ded by KC at a future seni­or man­age­ment team meeting.KC and DC to fur­ther dis­cuss re-sur­vey­ing par­tic­u­lar sec­tions of the sur­vey.	KC and DC
	27.06.22: Ongoing07.11.22: Ongoing
27.06.22	Staff Induc­tion Pro­cess­Feed­back from staff sur­vey on induc­tion pro­cess to be presen­ted at SCF	PM	Sep 22
Para 12a
07.11.22	Intern­al recruit­ment­Cir­cu­la­tion of posts to be raised at next EELG meeting	KC	Jan 23
Para 16