230221 Minutes

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY UGH­DAR­RAS PAIRC NAISEANTA Α’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH

Cairngorms Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el Tues­day 23^rd Feb­ru­ary 2021 5:00pm — 6:30pm — Held virtually

Minutes

Present: | Fiona McLean (Chair) | Linda Bam­ford | | —- | —- | | Celia Sweeny | Kev­in Hutchens | | Heath­er Earn­shaw | Anita Howard | | Bo Hickey | Patrycja Kupiec | | Kirsteen Allis­on | Peter Kennedy |

In Attend­ance: | Kate Christie | Vicky Walk­er | | —- | —- | | Louisa McDaid (Cap­tion­er) | Gail (Cap­tion­er) | | Mur­ray Fer­guson | Liz Henderson |

Apo­lo­gies: Vanessa Altweck

1. Intro­duc­tion 1.1. Fiona wel­comed every­one and intro­duced Mur­ray Fer­guson and Liz Hende­r­son who were attend­ing to dis­cuss Plan­ning and the Badenoch Great Place pro­ject. 1.2. The meet­ing notes for the pre­vi­ous meet­ing were agreed.

2. Pan­el Mem­ber Talk 2.1. The pan­el member’s talk reflec­ted on their per­son­al exper­i­ence of being deaf with a visu­al impair­ment and helped to edu­cate the group on chal­lenges deaf people face, as well as how organ­isa­tions and indi­vidu­als can help to tackle these bar­ri­ers. 2.2. The five dif­fer­ent types of deaf­ness were dis­cussed. 2.3. The pan­el mem­ber dis­cussed adjust­ments, emphas­ising that this should be looked at indi­vidu­ally as dif­fer­ent adjust­ments might not work for every­one. For example, not all deaf people are able to use hear­ing aids or coch­lear implants or are able to lip read. Make sure the deaf indi­vidu­al has con­trol over the adjust­ments. 2.4. The pan­el mem­ber described how they use a hear­ing dog to alert them to import­ant sounds such as a fire alarm or door­bell. The pan­el mem­ber explained that all types of assist­ance dogs have the same access rights, how­ever, this is not always recog­nised. 2.5. If any of the pan­el mem­bers had fur­ther ques­tions that they were not able to ask at the time they were asked to email this to the equal­it­ies email address.

Response from the Group 2.6. It was asked wheth­er Brexit had affected the abil­ity to travel with an assist­ance dog — it was iden­ti­fied that this is a recog­nised issue that is being dis­cussed but has not been resolved as of yet. 2.7. It was asked how live meet­ings such as CNPA board meet­ings can be made more access­ible. Live cap­tion­ing was dis­cussed, the import­ance of book­ing cap­tion­ers who are prop­erly trained and recog­nising the lim­its of auto­mat­ic cap­tion­ing. 2.8. It was asked how recep­tion areas can be made more access­ible. The pan­el mem­ber dis­cussed the use of clear face masks or using Per­spex screens. Ensur­ing there are details of how to access a BSL inter­pret­er and con­tact details for organ­isa­tions such as Con­tact Scot­land. The pan­el mem­ber stressed the import­ance of keep­ing loop sys­tems on at all times as it is not always pos­sible for the indi­vidu­al to say they need it switched on. 2.9. In response, a pan­el mem­ber sug­ges­ted that CNPA pur­chase clear facemasks for use at recep­tion and to hand out to groups CNPA works with as they can be dif­fi­cult to pur­chase due to a lack of supplies.

1. Mur­ray Fer­guson – Over­view of the Plan­ning and Rur­al Devel­op­ment Work 3.1. Mur­ray dis­cussed the fol­low­ing five key areas of his work;
   • Form­a­tion of the Nation­al Park – Mur­ray described how this focused on people valu­ing spe­cial places. The form­a­tion of the board was dis­cussed and the com­mit­ment to avoid­ing the park becom­ing an elit­ist environment.
   • Plan­ning Pro­cess — Mur­ray explained it is a con­ten­tious but trans­par­ent pro­cess which is reviewed yearly.
   • Com­munity Work — Mur­ray explained the cur­rent com­munity group reach and the aim to improve this through grant funding.
   • Tour­ism — Mur­ray emphas­ised the import­ance of being able to use the term sus­tain­able tour­ism as well as dis­cuss­ing the Tour­ism part­ner­ship, the right of respons­ible access and how this is help­ful for equal­it­ies work.
   • Busi­nesses and Eco­nomy – The Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship was dis­cussed and how grant fund­ing is used to encour­age the part­ner­ship to act on our behalf. It was sug­ges­ted that it may be a use­ful exer­cise to have someone from the part­ner­ship speak at the equal­it­ies pan­el. 3.2. The pan­el were asked to note how the part­ner­ship approach is used to affect change with­in the nation­al park and identi­fy any future areas of dis­cus­sion for the panel.

Response from the Pan­el 3.3. It was asked how CNPA encour­age engage­ment from all sec­tors of com­munit­ies and how do we ensure there are not a select group of dom­in­ant voices, for example com­munity coun­cils. The struc­ture and power of CNPA was dis­cussed and how this is mainly com­pleted through grant fund­ing and the com­munity action plan­ning pro­cess. 3.4. It was asked how the pan­el can influ­ence areas that are out with the gift of the nation­al park author­ity? The response was to get the right influ­en­tial people to the meet­ings, grant assist­ance and exploit­ing the brand of the nation­al park to influ­ence part­ners. 3.5. There were sev­er­al top­ics iden­ti­fied for wider discussion;

• Sus­tain­able tour­ism and how do we ensure that it is access­ible for all socio-eco­nom­ic groups.
• Com­munity involve­ment and funding.
• How do we encour­age people who don’t even know they want to come to the park/​voices we don’t hear?
• Busi­ness partnership.
• Detail about the sphere of influ­ence of the panel.
• People on the pan­el from the loc­al coun­cil or dif­fer­ent part­ners so they can hear the thoughts of the panel.

1. Liz Hende­r­son — Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject 4.1. Liz gave an over­view of the Badenoch great place pro­ject, includ­ing the part­ners that the pro­ject works with, how it is fun­ded and the main aims of the pro­ject. 4.2. Liz dis­cussed the plan­ning phases, look­ing at the dif­fer­ent stor­ies that could be involved and the access­ib­il­ity of sites which could be part of CNPA’s vis­it­or offer­ing. This was com­bined to cre­ate a brand. 4.3. Liz also dis­cussed the impact of Cov­id-19 on some of the pro­jects that were planned and how this effected rela­tion­ships with part­ners and con­sumers of brand. The fund­ing from the lot­tery was exten­ded, which Liz explained has been bene­fi­cial for con­tent cre­ation which had fallen behind. 4.4. The web­site and the Badenoch Great Place app was dis­cussed. Some of the dif­fer­ent exper­i­ences that indi­vidu­als can use on the app were dis­cussed such as aug­men­ted real­ity, music and stor­ies. Liz explained there will be more tra­di­tion­al forms of media inter­pret­a­tion such as inter­pret­ive boards. Liz explained a lot of this work is the devel­op­ment­al stage, the next part is to use the tools that have been developed and work with loc­al com­munit­ies such as school groups.

Response from Group 4.5. It would be use­ful to integ­rate with the Badenoch and Strath­spey access pan­el who have an app which is through test­ing. 4.6. Due to the short amount of time at the end of the meet­ing any fur­ther ques­tions were asked to be sent to the equal­it­ies email which can then be for­war­ded on to Liz.

END OF MEETING