230609ApprovedPerfomanceCtteeMinutes

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Minutes of the Per­form­ance Meet­ing Held at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity office, Grant­own on Spey Hybrid 09 June 2023 at 2.15pm

Present Doug McAdam (Chair) Xan­der McDade Janet Hunter Kenny Deans Ann Ross Chris Beat­tie Steve Micklewright

In Attend­ance Grant Moir, CEO Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy CEO Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Man­age­ment Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change James Ade, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies None.

Wel­come and introduction

1. The Chair wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing of the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee includ­ing new Com­mit­tee Mem­bers Chris Beat­tie, Steve Mickle­wright and Kenny Deans.

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 2 — sits on the Caper­cail­lie Board as a Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Representative.

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Minutes of Pre­vi­ous Meet­ings & Mat­ters Arising

1. The minutes of the pre­vi­ous meet­ing, 10 March 2023 held in per­son, were approved.

2. Action points arising from pre­vi­ous meet­ings: a) 11 Feb­ru­ary 2022 i. Para 19ii) — Report relat­ing to Vis­it Scot­land fund­ing to be brought to the Com­mit­tee. ii. Para 19iii) — Look at Green Fund­ing Par­tic­u­larly via Her­it­age Hori­zons. Ongo­ing. b) 25 Novem­ber 2022 i. 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. c) 24 March 2023 i. Para 11i) — Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices to cir­cu­lated audit report on the Peat­land Pro­gramme. Closed.

Cairngorms Peat­land Action Pro­gramme (Paper 1)

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 pro­gramme for 2022 – 23 and pro­gress to date in 2023 – 24.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) The Chair ques­tioned wheth­er there are issues around agency led pro­jects. The Head of Land Man­age­ment respon­ded that agen­cies are a key part of scal­ing up, how­ever res­tor­a­tion is at capa­city and increas­ing private sec­tor capa­city will take time. Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change, added that although con­tract­or capa­city has grown, con­tract­ors are frus­trated by the lack of and incon­sist­ency of con­tracts. The Park has to find ways to keep con­tract­ors engaged espe­cially as con­tracts can be high risk for small con­tract­ors. b) A mem­ber raised the import­ance of the skill of con­tract­ors and wondered how the Park would man­age agent led pro­jects and if there is a focus for agent led work. The Head of Land Man­age­ment replied that Park staff will ini­tially have a lot of input until there is con­fid­ence in a contractor’s work. He also con­firmed that the Park Author­ity encour­ages con­tract­ors who are new­er to the sec­tor to take on

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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easi­er, lower elev­a­tion pro­jects where there are few­er access issues and few­er deer. The Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change added the Park Author­ity is involved in sign­ing off the grant so there is clear account­ab­il­ity for pub­lic money in test­ing com­pet­ence of con­tract­or has been estab­lished through pro­cure­ment pro­cesses.. c) Grant Moir, CEO, informed the com­mit­tee that he was meet­ing with deliv­ery part­ners and would cir­cu­late the out­comes of the meeting.

1. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

2. Action Point Arising: i. CEO to cir­cu­late out­come of the meet­ing with peat­land deliv­ery partners.

Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject (Paper 2)

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

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Mem­bers dis­cussed the trend in pop­u­la­tion num­bers of caper­cail­lie and wheth­er genet­ic diversity was a driver of the decline. Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change explained that there has been a 50% decline in pop­u­la­tion in the past five years, how­ever, genet­ic diversity has not declined and the Roy­al Zoolo­gic­al Soci­ety of Scot­land report says it is not a driver of decline. Though envir­on­ment­al and human impacts need to be addressed first, people will call for an increase in genet­ic diversity as it is seen as an easy win. The Park Author­ity and Pro­ject will need to have a strategy to release the inform­a­tion as a pos­it­ive story and will meet to engage with stake­hold­ers through work­shops. b) A mem­ber ques­tioned wheth­er lekking sites were restric­ted from pub­lic access. The Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change respon­ded that staff are focused on peer to peer engage­ment and this was a big part of the work of Act­ive Cairngorms. The Park is enga­ging with stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss the idea of lim­it­ing access at spe­cif­ic areas at spe­cif­ic times. The times are well known, how­ever the loc­a­tions are less so and a focused plan is needed.

3. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper, thank­ing the Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change and his team.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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1. Action Point Arising: none.

Janet Hunter left the meet­ing at 2.30pm

Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al (Paper 3)

1. Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change intro­duced the paper which presents an over­view of the Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al (CNF), a sum­mary of activ­ity for the event in 2023 and an assess­ment of per­form­ance against stra­tegic aims and objectives.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) The Chair asked if an explan­a­tion could be giv­en as to why the object­ives in the per­form­ance dash­board were rated amber. The Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change explained that there had been a loss of rela­tions dur­ing Cov­id and some part­ners who had had pre­vi­ously held events did not redo them. There is a plan to review this. Addi­tion­ally, there could be more com­munity engage­ment and sup­port for more loc­al involve­ment in run­ning events. Fur­ther­more, engage­ment with smal­ler busi­ness could be improved and there was no data col­lec­tion on bed nights dur­ing the fest­iv­al. b) A mem­ber raised that, while it was good that the fest­iv­al was spread out around the Park, there was a feel­ing from com­munit­ies that it could be advert­ised bet­ter. The Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change answered that although this is an ongo­ing issue the com­mu­nic­a­tions team do a huge amount of work advert­ising with a par­tic­u­lar focus on social media and loc­al radio sta­tions. c) A mem­ber wondered wheth­er there had been any dis­cus­sion on hold­ing the fest­iv­al at dif­fer­ent times of the year. The Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change respon­ded that there is a steer­ing group for the fest­iv­al that provided dir­ec­tion, and the key drivers include the focus to build activ­ity in the shoulder sea­sons. The sum­mer is already busy, and the fest­iv­al is used to launch the sum­mer and is not moved for sta­bil­ity. The mem­ber observed that they do not con­sider May to be a shoulder sea­son and it is the third busiest month of the year. The Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change assured the mem­ber that he would feed this back to the steer­ing group.

3. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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1. Action Point Arising: i. The Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change to feed­back to the fest­iv­al steer­ing group mem­bers com­ments on timing.

Cairngorms Lead­er and Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment Fund­ing (Paper 4)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy CEO, presen­ted the latest deliv­ery updates on the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme and vol­un­tary and char­it­able giv­ing activ­it­ies as man­aged by the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Loc­al Action Group Trust (Cairngorms Trust). This update focuses on the ongo­ing work to seek replace­ment for pre­vi­ous LEAD­ER fund­ing to sup­port Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD).

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) The chair raised that hav­ing a dead­line to spend money secured through the fund does not encour­age best prac­tice. The Cor­por­ate Ser­vice Dir­ect­or and Deputy CEO agreed that it does not help with step-change scale actions, nor allow­ing the whole pro­ject to be com­pleted in one go. Grant Moir, CEO, added that the key for the Park is secur­ing a multi-year fund of a level equi­val­ent to pre­vi­ous LEAD­ER Pro­grammes, val­ued at around £60m, and how much of the poten­tial future pro­gramme of fin­ance still flows down as it is cru­cial com­munit­ies have good fund­ing for their loc­al ini­ti­at­ives. b) A mem­ber raised while it is a big issue for com­munit­ies with­in the Nation­al Park it is big­ger out­side the Park, due to the Park’s oth­er fund­ing streams. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed that the situ­ation in the Cairngorms is one to be cel­eb­rated com­pared to oth­er loc­al areas. It is now a mod­el that is being recog­nised more widely, with oth­er places look­ing at a gov­ernance struc­ture like that in the Cairngorms where a char­ity has been estab­lished which, if fund­ing can be secured, allows for mul­ti­year pro­ject spend­ing com­mit­ments rather than a dead­line of 31 March each year. c) The CEO noted that the High­land Coun­cil are keen to take for­ward a vis­it­or levy. Dis­cus­sions high­lighted that this will not come into prac­tice until 2026 while there are ques­tions around: how it will look; how the levy pro­ceeds would be dis­persed; and what it can be spent on. Oth­er mem­bers raised that there are mixed feel­ings in oth­er councils.

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d) A mem­ber raised con­cerns around the amount of paper­work involved in grant applic­a­tions and ensur­ing money is being well spent so that com­munit­ies can access fund­ing in a man­age­able way. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices respon­ded that the Park Author­ity and Cairngorms Trust has strived to take as much of the audit and admin bur­den away from the applic­ant, both pre­vi­ously dur­ing the LEAD­ER fund­ing peri­od and in design­ing new grant fund­ing approaches with­in new approaches to CLLD funding.

1. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper, thank­ing the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy CEO.

2. Action Point Arising: none.

AOCB

Date of Next Meeting

1. The date of the next meet­ing is Fri­day 8 Septem­ber 2023 in person.

The meet­ing con­cluded at 3.23pm.