For Inform­a­tion

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Title: CEO Report Pre­pared by: Grant Moir, Chief Executive

Pur­pose

1. To high­light 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.

Nature and Cli­mate Change

1. Peat­land res­tor­a­tion: Cap­it­al fund­ing in grant awards to land man­agers in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ totalled £1.896m. This com­prises work on 10 estates, 900ha of res­tor­a­tion com­pleted of a fur­ther 317ha in pro­gress. If achieved, weath­er depend­ing, the total of 1217ha will exceed the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ tar­get of 905ha. We have recruited a Train­ee Pro­ject officer which will increase capa­city in the peat­land team and con­trib­ute to sup­port­ing skills and train­ing devel­op­ment in the sector.

2. Deer man­age­ment: The Stra­tegic Land Use Plans for three DMGs in the Park developed as part of Cairngorms 2030 will be presen­ted to landown­ers in March for con­sid­er­a­tion over sum­mer. The aim is to devel­op Deliv­ery Plans based around how estates can bene­fit from nat­ur­al cap­it­al and devel­op altern­at­ive income streams in a future where income from stalk­ing may be reduced. Mem­bers of the South Grampi­an DMG have recently entered into a Sec­tion 7 Agree­ment under the Deer (Scot­land) Act 1996. This Agree­ment aims to reduce deer dens­it­ies from a cur­rent level of around 16 deer per km2 to below 10 deer per km2 in three years. The DMG is included in the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme and it is hoped mem­bers will be able to devel­op new income streams as deer num­bers are reduced.

3. Moor­land Man­age­ment: The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity response to the Wild­life Man­age­ment (Grouse) Bill is avail­able on the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity [con­sulta­tions page](consultations page). Part­ners in the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship have agreed a 5yr Action Plan. Object­ives for hab­it­at res­tor­a­tion, spe­cies recov­ery, data gath­er­ing and shar­ing, socio-eco­nom­ic sus­tain­ab­il­ity and com­mu­nic­a­tions align

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with the NPPP and demon­strate the pos­it­ive role moor­land man­age­ment can play in its delivery.

1. Fresh­wa­ter res­tor­a­tion: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity con­tin­ues to sup­port and encour­age coordin­a­tion between Catch­ment Man­age­ment Part­ner­ships on the Spey, Dee and Esk. CMPs have all been very suc­cess­ful in attract­ing over £550,000 into fund­ing the design, deliv­ery and mon­it­or­ing of res­tor­a­tion in the Park via the most recent round of the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund.

2. Nature Net­works: Work to date on Nature Net­works has focused on identi­fy­ing and map­ping a wood­land net­work determ­ined by nat­ive­ness and age. A sub­set of this work is also focus­ing on a nature net­work for aspen, a spe­cies which in turn sup­ports a range of highly spe­cial­ist flora and fauna. This is pulling togeth­er data on mature aspens in the Park from aer­i­al and field sur­veys, as well as those planted in recent years. The Park Author­ity hos­ted a work­shop with staff from Scot­Gov, Nature Scot and LLTTNPA to dis­cuss the devel­op­ment of 30 x 30 with­in nation­al parks, includ­ing the role of the cur­rent sys­tem of des­ig­nated sites.

3. Spe­cies recov­ery: Sig­ni­fic­ant work has taken place over the last few months in engage­ment with land man­agers, fish­er­ies, res­id­ents and agen­cies over the planned release of beaver into the Nation­al Park later in 2023. Inform­al engage­ment with land man­agers has focussed on indi­vidu­al site vis­its, and with res­id­ent via drop-in ses­sions in com­munit­ies. More inform­a­tion is on the webpage.

Plans are under­way for the release of wild­cats into the Nation­al Park in sum­mer 2023. The Park Author­ity is rep­res­en­ted on the Sav­ing Wild­cats pro­ject board and deliv­ery group. The Park Author­ity is work­ing closely with The Roy­al Zoolo­gic­al Soci­ety of Scot­land on two fur­ther cap­tive breed­ing and release pro­grammes this year: pine hov­er­fly and Dark Bordered Beauty moth, an extremely rare moth found in only four sites in the UK — three of which are in Cairngorms Nation­al Park.

Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel

1. Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan: Park Author­ity staff have begun the pro­cess of devel­op­ing the revised Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan. Largely focused on the People ele­ment of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan it will include aspir­a­tions for Ranger Ser­vices in the Park as well as Volun­teer Cairngorms and our com­mit­ment to Man­aging for Vis­it­ors, the vis­it­or man­age­ment agenda.

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1. Paths and Long-dis­tance Routes: a) Spey­side Way — sub­stan­tial new path works have been com­pleted in Anagach Woods which is owned and man­aged by the loc­al com­munity. Works are largely fin­ished on the new path at Kin­craig from the bridge towards the water sports centre. Once com­peted, this sec­tion of path will be incor­por­ated into the pro­mo­tion of the Spey­side Way. A fen­cing con­tract­or has been appoin­ted to address fen­cing issues at Mains of Dalvey north of Crom­dale and exist­ing ​“ram­bler” style gates are to be replaced with more access­ible ones. b) Brae­mar to Kei­loch Path — Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land have com­mis­sioned a con­tract­or to looked at the design options for the re-rout­ing the path lower down the slope, along­side the road. The final designs should be com­pleted by end of March. A fur­ther plan­ning applic­a­tion will most likely be required with con­struc­tion works ideally start­ing towards early autumn. This path Is inten­ded to form part of the exten­ded Deeside Way In due course.

2. Ranger Ser­vices: The Park Author­ity Rangers have been trained and have com­menced a new path assess­ment pro­cess using a mobile path map­ping applic­a­tion that pop­u­lates the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity GIS. A gath­er­ing of all Ranger Ser­vices In the Park took place in early March at Glen Tanar to agree on com­mon ways of work­ing and pri­or­it­ies. Recruit­ment of Sea­son­al Rangers took place dur­ing Janu­ary / Feb­ru­ary with the first Sea­son­al Rangers star­ing work on 13 March to pre­pare for East­er and a fur­ther intake start­ing in mid-April.

3. Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture: The Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plan was approved by the Board in Novem­ber and sub­mit­ted to Vis­itScot­land at the end of 2022. Work is now under way to identi­fy pro­jects that can be delivered in the short term. Six pro­jects have been sup­por­ted to a value of nearly £350,000 through the Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture Improve­ment Pro­gramme. This includes two path improve­ment pro­jects on Rothiemurchus Estate, cre­ation of a new blue trail at Lag­gan Wolftrax, refurbishment/​reopening of Burn­field Toi­lets in Grant­own, Cairngorm Moun­tain Sense of Arrival pro­ject and Glen Doll over­flow car­park improve­ments. A new car park for access to Beinn a’ Ghlo in Atholl is now com­plete delivered by the Out­door Access Trust for Scotland.

4. Volun­teer­ing and Health Walks: A new intake of 30 Volun­teer Rangers took place in late 2022 with train­ing provided in the early part of 2023. The new volun­teers will be out from late March ini­tially ​“bud­dy­ing up” with Volun­teer Rangers who have been

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part of the pro­gramme for three years or more. The pro­gramme of Health Walks led by loc­al volun­teers has con­tin­ued over winter. A very suc­cess­ful and well-atten­ded Health Walk lead­ers’ gath­er­ing and train­ing day was held in Grant­own in early February.

1. Youth Action Team: Nine people from the Cairngorms Youth Action Team atten­ded a nation­al youth res­id­en­tial event in Orkney in Feb­ru­ary. This aimed to build the youth voice to inform policy and gov­ernance as well as devel­op­ing Youth Funds in Loc­al Areas to sup­port youth-led pro­jects. With the Cairngorms Youth LAG mem­bers hav­ing already been involved in man­aging youth funds via the Cairngorms Trust, they were seen by oth­er groups as being lead­ers in the field and were involved in present­ing on this to the oth­er areas.

2. Act­ive Travel: Work on the series of Act­ive Travel pro­jects has con­tin­ued with draft con­cepts hav­ing been provided by the spe­cial­ist con­sult­ants for the Act­ive Aviemore and Badenoch com­munit­ies pro­jects. Five pub­lic engage­ment ses­sions have been held to get com­munity feed­back on the ideas put for­ward and a fur­ther one is still to take place. Draft reports on the Act­ive Travel net­work plan, E‑bike plan and the Deeside Act­ive and sus­tain­able Trans­port plan have been received and fur­ther engage­ment events for these are to fol­low. A second work­shop with stake­hold­ers was held to con­sider a range of options from the ini­tial engage­ment events and to fur­ther devel­op the Glen­more Trans­port Plan.

Plan­ning and Rur­al Development

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan: The Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2021 was approved in March 2021 and officers will take a two-year mon­it­or­ing report to the Board in Septem­ber 2023. The Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 came into force on 13 Feb­ru­ary and is a now form­al part of the devel­op­ment plan. Work has recently begun on pre­par­ing the evid­ence report in the new style for the next Cairngorms Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and we will take a paper to the June Board with the devel­op­ment scheme to set out the pro­cess and timetable.

2. Plan­ning Case­work: In Decem­ber the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee approved the Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter for adop­tion and pub­lic­a­tion and were briefed on the Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 was also giv­en. In the first meet­ing of 2023, Plan­ning Com­mit­tee were informed of High­land Council’s con­sulta­tion on a Draft Non- Stat­utory Short-Term Sec­ond­ary Let­ting Plan­ning Policy to accom­pany Short-Term Let Con­trol Areas in High­land. Agree­ment was sought to agree the Park Authrity

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response to the con­sulta­tion. A con­fid­en­tial paper sought the author­isa­tion of plan­ning enforce­ment action to serve a breach of con­di­tion notice in respect of applic­a­tion at the Tomin­toul wig­wams site. At the March Com­mit­tee meet­ing con­sent was gran­ted for a SuDS basin at New­ton­more to serve a hous­ing devel­op­ment, the redevel­op­ment of the Laurel Bank site in Aviemore for self-cater­ing apart­ments, shops, hotel and park­ing, and the erec­tion of 20 com­mer­cial units at Gran­ish in Aviemore. Com­mit­tee was also asked to con­sider a wind­farm just out­side the Park bound­ary (Our­ack) and the asso­ci­ated pro­posed con­struc­tion access works. Plan­ning Com­mit­tee were informed of High­land Council’s con­sulta­tion on a Draft Grant­own-on-Spey Con­ser­va­tion Area Man­age­ment Plan and asked to agree the Cairngorm Nation­al Park Authority’s response to the consultation.

1. Hous­ing Deliv­ery: The Park Author­ity are con­tinu­ing to sup­port Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship and sev­er­al social enter­prises with hous­ing deliv­ery pro­jects. A series of meet­ings with Com­munit­ies Hous­ing Trust and Rur­al Hous­ing Scot­land has taken place to pro­mote key devel­op­ments, and staff are liais­ing with key com­munit­ies who are devel­op­ing com­munity-led hous­ing pro­jects. Costs have of course increased, and officers have worked to include cri­ter­ia with­in the new fund­ing streams to help pro­gress plans for com­munity-led rur­al hous­ing. Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Devel­op­ment Trust are close to launch­ing their 12 new afford­able homes as part of a five-year com­munity-led pro­ject which saw them pur­chase, demol­ish and devel­op the former sec­ond­ary school site in Tomintoul.

2. Well­being Eco­nomy Action Plan: Work is con­tinu­ing to devel­op the Corner­stone Indic­at­ors, as part of Her­it­age Hori­zons in Part­ner­ship with Well­being Alli­ance (WEAII) Scot­land. The key themes iden­ti­fied as pri­or­it­ies for the Plan, iden­ti­fied through stake­hold­er and com­munity engage­ment, and the Well­being Eco­nomy Work­ing Group, a sub-group of the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group include Trans­port, Com­munity, Health, Nature, Skills and Busi­ness. A timetable for deliv­ery the Action Plan is in devel­op­ment and will be shared with Board in due course.

3. Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan: In Decem­ber, the Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan was sub­mit­ted, along­side the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments, to Euro­parc in applic­a­tion for the European Charter for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism. As part of our assess­ment for the Charter, we will have a veri­fic­a­tion vis­it from a sus­tain­able tour­ism expert from Romania and arrange­ments for that are cur­rently being dis­cussed, with a likely times­cale of mid-May.

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1. Sup­port to Busi­ness and Com­munit­ies: The Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er for Q4 2022 has just been released and over­all shows a fairly mixed pic­ture in terms of busi­ness per­form­ance and con­fid­ence, prob­ably reflect­ing con­tinu­ing uncer­tainty in the tour­ism sec­tor. How­ever, con­fid­ence levels are now close to the long-term aver­age. As in pre­vi­ous quar­ters, recruit­ment and sup­pli­er costs con­tin­ue to be issues. The biggest bar­ri­er to growth cur­rently though is bur­eau­cracy and legis­la­tion, with con­cerns about short-term let licens­ing and the planned Depos­it Return Scheme flagged as par­tic­u­lar con­cerns. The res­ults are avail­able here.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions

1. Act­ive Cairngorms: Along­side our part­ners in the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, we launched a tar­geted social media advert­ising cam­paign in Janu­ary encour­aging people to vis­it dur­ing the winter months. The cam­paign pos­i­tions the Cairngorms as a place ​‘where winter comes to life’ and is designed to address object­ive C5 of NPPP4, spe­cific­ally to ​‘sta­bil­ise vis­it­or num­bers in the peak sea­son, focus­ing growth on quieter months’. It is based on detailed mar­ket research last year with 1,000 adults from Scot­land, the north of Eng­land and the south of Eng­land, which showed that the Cairngorms was seen by many as a pree­m­in­ent winter des­tin­a­tion. The cam­paign has three main strands – inter­act­ive Google Dis­play adverts, Face­book and Ins­tagram Stor­ies, and Spo­ti­fy / pod­cast audio ads. In its first few weeks the cam­paign reached well over 500k people, with 97% of our Spo­ti­fy audi­ence listen­ing to the whole 20 – 30 sec advert. A toolkit has also been developed for loc­al busi­nesses to ​‘brand’ their con­tent as part of the cam­paign. Activ­ity runs until late-March, at which point we will engage with busi­nesses in the area to judge its effect­ive­ness and plan next steps. Ahead of the new vis­it­or sea­son we are updat­ing our ​‘Tread Lightly’ mater­i­als for rangers to hand out on the ground, includ­ing the cre­ation of a simple guide around avoid­ing wild­fires in the Nation­al Park. We have also taken a lead role in help­ing coordin­ate nation­al mes­saging around wild­fires, pulling togeth­er rep­res­ent­at­ives from the Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um, Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue and Vis­itScot­land (who coordin­ate all vis­it­or mes­saging across Scot­land). Else­where in the realm of vis­it­or man­age­ment sig­nage, the Out­door Access Team has developed a toolkit to assist land man­agers in cre­at­ing signs and using con­sist­ent mes­saging across the Park- [Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Sig­nage — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority](Visitor Man­age­ment Sig­nage — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority).

2. Cairngorms Nature: The Comms team have been work­ing closely with col­leagues in Con­ser­va­tion to arrange and pro­mote a [num­ber of ​‘Beaver Blethers’](number of ​‘Beaver Bleth­ers’) on 9, 16 and 22 March in Kin­gussie, Kin­craig and Aviemore. The ses­sions are designed to provide res­id­ents and loc­al land man­agers with a clear pic­ture of what hap­pens next,

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address any con­cerns they may have and high­light poten­tial mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures. A num­ber of ​‘vox pop’ video inter­views have been cre­ated with key stake­hold­ers and mem­bers of the pro­ject team to bring this work to life, along­side a suite of prin­ted mater­i­als, web­site updates and social media posts. A new web­site is cur­rently in the works for the Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al, which is due to replace the Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end this May. Inverness-based agency Strut (who look after our cur­rent site) won the con­tract to deliv­er the site. You may remem­ber that last year our digit­al team turned around a fairly basic £250 Word­Press tem­plated site for the BIG Week­end to address struc­tur­al issues with its pre­de­cessor; how­ever, this pro­ject is much lar­ger in its scope, includ­ing a ded­ic­ated events sys­tem that can ​‘plug in’ to oth­er sites once the new Cairngorm Nation­al Park web­site is live. We plan to have the new site live before the end of March to coin­cide with wider pro­mo­tion of the event itself.

1. Her­it­age Hori­zons: Her­it­age Hori­zons con­tin­ued to dom­in­ate our media out­put, with releases to high­light a series of [com­munity road­show events](community road­show events), [cli­mate emer­gency workshops](climate emer­gency work­shops), [an artist res­id­ency opportunity](an artist res­id­ency oppor­tun­ity), and a [report on when the Nation­al Park is likely to reach net zero](report on when the Nation­al Park is likely to reach net zero). We con­tin­ue to explore broad­cast / pod­cast oppor­tun­it­ies to devel­op some of these stor­ies fur­ther as Her­it­age Hori­zons enters its deliv­ery phase. Our [Her­it­age Hori­zons microsite](Heritage Hori­zons micros­ite) has also been fully updated to reflect feed­back from vari­ous stake­hold­er con­sulta­tion exer­cises and to explain next steps.

2. Cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions: Board elec­tions were a key strand of activ­ity dur­ing the peri­od, ini­tially to encour­age mem­bers of the pub­lic to stand and later for them to vote. Along­side the usu­al pro­mo­tion­al effort – a fly­er cir­cu­lated to all house­holds via High­land Coun­cil, social media con­tent, updates to our web­site etc – we have cre­ated a couple of videos (see eg [this Twit­ter version](this Twit­ter ver­sion)) fea­tur­ing people from across the Park talk­ing about what they look for in future board mem­bers. We pro­moted a series of drop-in ses­sions in each of the five wards before Christ­mas, fol­lowed by an online drop-in in mid-Janu­ary. An art­icle was also included in the first issue of Cairn magazine.

3. Web­site and social media: A form­al invit­a­tion to tender has now been draf­ted by our part­ner agency to help select a new web­site devel­op­ment con­tract­or. The tender includes a detailed ana­lys­is of our exist­ing digit­al estate (both that con­trolled by the Park Author­ity and by third-parties), audi­ence per­so­nas and key user jour­neys, and design stand­ards we expect the suc­cess­ful bid­der to meet. A core part of this pro­ject is to meet and ideally exceed inter­na­tion­al Web Con­tent Access­ib­il­ity Guidelines (WCAG), and find­ings from last year’s web access­ib­il­ity audit have been baked into

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our approach on the new site. We plan to run a two-part tender exer­cise start­ing this month. This is expec­ted to take approx­im­ately 14 weeks with the hope of start­ing work in autumn this year. In the mean­time, work con­tin­ues with intern­al work­shops involving key organ­isa­tion­al teams on user jour­neys and site map­ping. Don­ald Ross, our Digit­al Developer, is tak­ing an 18-month career break at the end of March to com­plete a BA Hons in Fine Art at UHI. Don­ald has been instru­ment­al to the devel­op­ment of mul­tiple digit­al pro­jects over the past few years, includ­ing an upgrade to the cur­rent cairngorms​.co​.uk site in 2019 and the cre­ation of micros­ites for NPPP4 and the Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end. Recruit­ment has begun for a new Digit­al Pro­jects Coordin­at­or to pick up some of Donald’s work­load and we hope to have someone in place before the award of our web­site devel­op­ment tender. All major Park Author­ity-led social media accounts have been updated in line with our new brand guidelines to demon­strate a much clear­er ‘ fam­ily resemb­lance’ between our primary and sec­ond­ary chan­nels. This includes updates to Cairngorms Nature, Cairngorms Rangers and Cairngorms Volun­teers, with the Cairngorms Youth Action Team soon to fol­low. We are also work­ing closely with col­leagues in CBP to provide advice on how they can update their social chan­nels and web­site to incor­por­ate the new Vis­it­Cairngorms brand. Per­haps more sig­ni­fic­antly, we are now begin­ning to see the impact of our new tone of voice / con­tent guidelines on the type and present­a­tion of con­tent we’re shar­ing on our chan­nels. A major strand of this is show­cas­ing the people of the Nation­al Park through our Cairngorms Voices plat­form. Stor­ies over the past few months include a [spot­light on our juni­or rangers](spotlight on our juni­or rangers), inform­a­tion on the [UK’s first out­door demen­tia resource centre](UK’s first out­door demen­tia resource centre), a fea­ture on the [access­ib­il­ity work of Able2Adventure](accessibility work of Able2Adventure), a cel­eb­ra­tion of the [Inter­na­tion­al Day of Women and Girls in Science](International Day of Women and Girls in Sci­ence) and a series of stor­ies to mark [LGBT His­tory Month](LGBT His­tory Month) in Feb­ru­ary. We are also work­ing with the Uni­ver­sity of Edin­burgh on an options apprais­al for cre­at­ing a vis­it­or wel­come app to the Nation­al Park. The research team have reviewed over a dozen com­par­at­or apps from else­where in Scot­land and the UK to see what func­tion­al­ity is most desir­able and determ­ine wheth­er such an approach might work for the Cairngorms. The next step is to sur­vey vis­it­ors to the Park, explor­ing the vari­ous app options in more detail, ahead of a final report in April / May.

1. Brand­ing and pub­lic­a­tions: A full set of brand guidelines for the Nation­al Park fam­ily of brands has now been final­ised, along­side the devel­op­ment of a series of prac­tic­al tem­plates and user guides for staff and third-party con­tract­ors to use.

In Janu­ary – along­side CBP – we held two events for busi­nesses in the Park, look­ing at how we can best sup­port them to cel­eb­rate their place in the Nation­al Park via the new brand­ing suite. The inter­act­ive ses­sions gave us an oppor­tun­ity to high­light the

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new ​‘proud to be part of’ brand charter, and to explore which branded mater­i­als would be most bene­fi­cial to busi­nesses. We are also hold­ing a fol­low-up ses­sion in con­junc­tion with the Bal­later Busi­ness Asso­ci­ation AGM on 16 March to gath­er views from the east of the Park, and have cir­cu­lated a sur­vey to all busi­nesses on CBP and our data­bases to inform this work. The [inaug­ur­al issue of Cairn magazine](inaugural issue of Cairn magazine) was due to be dis­trib­uted in early Decem­ber; how­ever, sig­ni­fic­ant issues with a third- party dis­trib­ut­or (com­plic­ated fur­ther by bad weath­er and ongo­ing Roy­al Mail strikes) meant we were unable to con­firm which house­holds received cop­ies. We have received a full refund on the print and dis­tri­bu­tion of the last issue as a res­ult, and will attempt to reuse some con­tent in a bump­er 20-page spring edi­tion in late- March. We are work­ing closely with the High­land Main­line Com­munity Rail Part­ner­ship to update around 25 Nation­al Park signs across six sta­tions in the Cairngorms. The cur­rent pan­els are very faded and on a num­ber it is now impossible to read the word ​‘Cairngorms’ or to see ele­ments of the osprey brand­mark. This will be a good oppor­tun­ity to roll out the refreshed brand to a wider audience.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development

1. Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning (BCP): We have con­duc­ted the 6‑month review of the tri­al Hybrid Approach, which com­menced on 1^st June 2022 and is due to be form­ally reviewed on 12^th June 2023. Res­ults indic­ate that staff are now fully accus­tomed to the new way of work­ing, and adapt­ing well to it. The office is busiest on Tues­days – Thursdays and we estim­ate that it is typ­ic­ally at 50% — 60% capa­city on these days. This would appear to be an increase on what part­ner organ­isa­tions are experiencing.

2. Staff­ing update: Since Novem­ber, staff­ing updates to end Feb­ru­ary 2023 are as fol­lows: a) Staff who left the organ­isa­tion were:

   i. Lisa McIsaac, Data Governance and Reporting Manager left for personal reasonsร
   

   b) Intern­al pro­mo­tions, fol­low­ing a com­pet­it­ive intern­al recruit­ment pro­cess were:

   i. Sara Denner, who was our Receptionist was appointed to the Visitor Services Admin Officer post, replacing Jenny Allen
   

   c) Extern­al appoint­ments, fol­low­ing a com­pet­it­ive extern­al recruit­ment pro­cess were as follows:

   i. Louise Allen was appointed to the new Head of Finance and Corporate Operations
   

   ii. James Ade joined as Clerk to the Board, provid­ing mater­nity cov­er for Alix Hark­ness for 12 months

Paper 1 24 March 2023 Page 10 of 10

iii. Sarah Fletcher joined as Planning Officer (Development Planning & Environmental Advice), replacing Nina Caudrey

1. Youth Employ­ment: a) Graduate/​Internship posts:

   i. Alice Fogg joined us on a 6-month internship to support the Cairngorms Nature Festival
   

   b) Work with Schools: -.

   i. The HR team supported Grantown Grammar School with a careers event to support S2 pupils about to make their subject choices. A team of staff attended to provide insight into roles across the organisation and career paths to these roles
   

   ii. A sim­il­ar team sup­por­ted anoth­er event at Grant­own Gram­mar, but this time geared toward S4 stu­dents, and to there­fore assist them in decisions about further/​higher edu­ca­tion options. iii. The HR team also sup­por­ted a Career’s Fair at Afford Academy which was an oppor­tun­ity for young people to chat to employ­ers, and find out more about the organ­isa­tion and the roles the organ­isa­tion employs.

2. Equal­it­ies:- a) The Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el had a suc­cess­ful ​“in-per­son” event in the Autumn, dur­ing which they toured the Aviemore Hos­pit­al, and vis­ited Bad­aguish. The EAP con­tin­ues to meet vir­tu­ally every month and has provided invalu­able advice on our equal­it­ies work. We also have an intern­al Equal­ity, Diversity and Inclu­sion Advocacy Group who are sup­port­ing our LGBT Charter jour­ney, and who have been instru­ment­al in devel­op­ing new policies, includ­ing the Neurodi­versity Policy. b) All board mem­bers will be attend­ing an in-per­son Equal­it­ies Train­ing day in April. This train­ing will be delivered by JRSKnowHow who suc­cess­fully bid for the con­tract through our pro­cure­ment pro­cess. They have already delivered staff train­ing, which was extremely successful.

3. Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment a) We are imple­ment­ing a new sign-in sys­tem, which is elec­tron­ic, and facil­it­ates sign in by all staff, board mem­bers and vis­it­ors via an Ipad at the main office entry points. This is key to man­aging or Fire Risk approaches. The Facil­it­ies Team will roll out train­ing to staff and board over March and April.

Grant Moir March 2023