230310DraftPerformanceCtteeMins

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Draft Minutes of the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Meeting

Held at Mac­don­ald Aviemore Resort, Aviemore

In per­son

10 March 2023 at 02.30pm

Present Wil­lie Mun­ro (Chair) Doug McAdam (Deputy Chair) Ann Rae Mac­don­ald Wil­lie McKenna

Xan­der McDade Derek Ross

In Attend­ance Grant Moir, CEO Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Dav­id Clyne, Head of Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Man­age­ment Colin Simpson, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices & Act­ive Travel Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or for Nature, and Cli­mate Change James Ade, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies Ann Ross Janet Hunter

Wel­come and introduction

1. The Con­vener wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing of the Per­form­ance Committee.

Declar­a­tions of interest

1. Doug McAdam noted for trans­par­ency the exist­ing entries in his register of interest but would still par­ti­cip­ate in dis­cus­sions with a bear­ing on the fol­low­ing items: a) Paper 1 — Inde­pend­ent Chair on the South Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group. b) Paper 4 — sits on the Caper­cail­lie Board as a CNPA Representative.

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Minutes of Pre­vi­ous Meet­ings & Mat­ters Arising

1. The minutes of the pre­vi­ous meet­ing, 25^th Novem­ber 2022, held in per­son, were approved.

2. Action points arising from pre­vi­ous meet­ings: i. ii. iii. i. i. ii. a) 11 Feb­ru­ary 2022 Para 19i) — Audit of Foot­path Main­ten­ance to come back to Com­mit­tee at some point in future. Closed. Para 19ii) — Report relat­ing to Vis­it Scot­land fund­ing to be brought to the Com­mit­tee. Para 19iii) — Look at Green Fund­ing Par­tic­u­larly via her­it­age Hori­zons. Ongo­ing. b) 13 May 2022 Para 16a) Trans­fer of the ​‘Design & Build’ Ser­vice into the private sec­tor over time should be reviewed reg­u­larly. Closed. c) 25 Novem­ber 2022 Para 8a) — For future report­ing, ensure with­in the RAG rat­ing sys­tem the col­our is writ­ten on top of the col­our for DDA com­pli­ance and explan­a­tion of RAG rat­ing sys­tem. Para 14) — Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change to pre­pare a single page brief­ing on pro­ject aims. Closed.

Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme Update (Paper 1)

1. Dav­id Clyne, Head of Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme, intro­duced the paper which presents the Q4 2022 deliv­ery update on the Her­it­age Hori­zons: Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme and the planned devel­op­ment work to end March 2023.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) The Deputy Con­vener noted the sub­mis­sion date exten­sion to 17^th August and asked for cla­ri­fic­a­tion on wheth­er spend on the devel­op­ment phase had also been exten­ded to 17^th August. Head of Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme con­firmed that the spend on the devel­op­ment phase has also been exten­ded. b) The Con­vener asked for cla­ri­fic­a­tion on future fund­ing pro­file and how risk of infla­tion was being assessed. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, respon­ded that the pro­jects will be con­sol­id­at­ing their budgets togeth­er, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion value of staff; con­tracts and ser­vices; and oth­er expenditure,

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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and put some infla­tion assump­tions against these to workout what is needed for an infla­tion con­tin­gency. From here oth­er assess­ments will then be car­ried out to look at afford­ab­il­ity and unplanned expendit­ure. Grant Moir, CEO, added that if pro­jects com­ing out of devel­op­ment stage poten­tially needed addi­tion­al fund­ing over and above that alloc­ated in the deliv­ery phase then the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity will look at oth­er fund­ing sources for these pro­jects. c) The Deputy Con­ven­or noted the issues flagged up in the risk register around Sus­trans. The Head of Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme respon­ded that work is being done to bring the main two fun­ders who have dif­fer­ent pro­ject approv­al time scales. d) The Deputy Con­vener enquired if com­munity engage­ment had cre­ated aware­ness of pro­jects in the com­munity. The Head of Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme respon­ded that it had raised aware­ness but there was still more work to be done. A key learn­ing point from the devel­op­ment stage is to keep the man­age­ment of com­munity engage­ment in house and we will be upping staff­ing levels for the deliv­ery stage to address the issue.

1. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

Action Point Arising: — none

Cairngorms Peat­land Action Pro­gramme (Paper 2)

1. Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Man­age­ment intro­duced the paper which presents an update on the deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority’s Peat­land Action pro­gram for 2022 – 23.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Grant Moir, CEO, high­lighted that at a nation­al level the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity is ahead of most oth­er places in terms of peat­land res­tor­a­tion. Mem­bers asked why peat­land res­tor­a­tion was more suc­cess­ful in the Cairngorms than else­where in Scot­land. The CEO respon­ded that some of the factors were the qual­ity of the Peat­land team in the Park Author­ity and also the scale, size and staff capa­city of landown­ers in the Cairngorms. The Head of Land Man­age­ment added that around 60% of eroded peat is held on 12 estates with which we have good rela­tions with the owners.

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b) A Mem­ber ques­tioned giv­en that the pro­ject is under­spent will this be a claw back. The CEO respon­ded that any under­spend on peat­land pro­jects will be returned to SG. How­ever, the Nation­al Park Author­ity is on a mul­ti­year sys­tem and would receive fur­ther fund­ing next year. c) A Mem­ber asked if sheep wool was being used to cov­er bare peat to stop dry­ing out and help sta­bil­ise the sur­face. Head of Land Man­age­ment replied that this approach is being tri­alled with­in the park. d) The Deputy Con­vener ques­tioned why there was a focus on drain block­ing over eroded peat and how much of the tar­get drain block­ing can meet. Addi­tion­ally, the Deputy Con­vener asked for cla­ri­fic­a­tion on types of peat­land res­tor­a­tion and deer dens­it­ies. Head of Land Man­age­ment stated that quite a lot of eroded peat­land res­tor­a­tion was being car­ried out though deer dens­it­ies do lim­it it in cer­tain places. We are using drain block­ing in areas with high deer dens­it­ies to pro­tect pub­lic money, with some eroded peat­land res­tor­a­tion between these drains which we are mon­it­or­ing. e) A Mem­ber ques­tioned if drain block­ing con­tin­ued at its cur­rent rate how long it would be until all the drains are blocked. Head of Land Man­age­ment respon­ded that if at the cur­rent rate in roughly five years they would all be blocked. f) Mem­bers ques­tioned if you could cov­er more hec­tares of peat erosion through drain block­ing or peat erosion tech­niques. CEO cla­ri­fied that area in hec­tares is a proxy for redu­cing car­bon emis­sions and there­fore doing less hec­tares might cap­ture more car­bon depend­ing on the type of res­tor­a­tion being under­taken. g) A Mem­ber ques­tioned the cost per hec­tare dif­fer­ence between drain­age res­tor­a­tion and deal­ing with bare peat. Head of Land Man­age­ment respon­ded that both are vari­able, but we work on an aver­age of £1400 per hec­tare for drain­age pro­jects com­pared to an aver­age of £4500 per hec­tare for eroded fea­tures. h) Mem­bers asked wheth­er the increased use of private sec­tor agents adds risk to the Nation­al Park Author­ity. Head of Land Man­age­ment cla­ri­fied that while there is risk in using private con­tract­ors, we assign one of our peat­land officers to have some super­vis­ory over­sight. This is a new mod­el, and we will approach slowly, though it has begun and been suc­cess­ful. Likely we will need to use agen­cies to meet tar­gets. i) A Mem­ber quer­ied con­tract­or capa­city. Head of Land Man­age­ment replied that there are increas­ing num­ber of con­tract­or will­ing to take on peat­land res­tor­a­tion though there are still prob­lems ahead with con­tract capacity.

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1. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

2. Action Point Arising: i. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices to cir­cu­lated audit report on the Peat­land Pro­gramme – Closed.

Cairngorms Foot­path Main­ten­ance (Paper 3)

1. Colin Simpson, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices & Act­ive Travel, intro­duced the paper which presents an over­view the approach being developed to pri­or­it­ise main­ten­ance of the Nation­al Park’s path network.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) A Mem­ber ques­tioned wheth­er the Nation­al Park Author­ity had influ­ence over oth­er land man­agers who main­tain the paths with­in the Nation­al Park. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices & Act­ive Travel con­firmed that the Park Author­ity does have some influ­ence with a vari­ety of part­ners and the rangers raise issues of path main­ten­ance with landown­ers. Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change, added that the Nation­al Park Author­ity is pulling togeth­er major land­hold­ers to encour­age the cre­ation of a vis­it­or man­age­ment plan to get clear dir­ec­tion with a bet­ter rela­tion­ship in Glen­more. b) The Deputy Con­vener ques­tioned wheth­er there was any engage­ment from Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity rangers with landown­ers pri­or to path sur­veys being car­ried out. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices & Act­ive Travel agreed this could be done.

3. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

4. Action Point Arising: — none

Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject (Paper 4)

1. Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change, added that the Nation­al Park Author­ity intro­duced the paper which presents the latest deliv­ery updates on the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Project.

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1. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) A Mem­ber ques­tioned wheth­er there was any fur­ther inform­a­tion on genet­ic test­ing with­in the Caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion of the Nation­al Park. Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change respon­ded that pre­lim­in­ary test res­ults show good diversity with five main genet­ic groups. As there remains a robust pop­u­la­tion, there is no man­date for rein­tro­duc­tion. [Since the date of the per­form­ance com­mit­tee, the res­ults from a study of Scot­tish pop­u­la­tions have been com­pared with the genet­ic diversity of oth­er European pop­u­la­tions. The aver­age across Europe is fif­teen hap­lo­types, except for one pop­u­la­tion in the Pyra­nees, which has few­er than five. This new inform­a­tion sug­gests that, in the con­text of European pop­u­la­tions, the genet­ic diversity of the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion is not good or robust]

2. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

3. Action Point Arising: — none

AOCB

1. Xan­der McDade noted that it was Wil­lie Munro’s and Anne Rae Macdonald’s last Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee, thank­ing them both for their con­tri­bu­tions and Wil­lie for his chair­ing of the Com­mit­tee. The Deputy Con­vener will become act­ing chair until the Board votes.

Date of Next Meet­ing The date of the next meet­ing is Fri­day 9^th June via Teams.

The meet­ing con­cluded at 03.55pm.