For Inform­a­tion

Title: CEO Report

Pre­pared by: Grant Moir, Chief Executive

Form­al Board Paper 1 23 June 2023

Page 1 of 13

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. Wood­land expansion

   The Park Authority’s response to the Forest Grant Scheme con­sulta­tion high­lighted oppor­tun­it­ies for revi­sion that more dir­ectly sup­por­ted part­ners and land man­agers in deliv­er­ing the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan wood­land tar­gets for nat­ive wood­land, nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion, no plant­ing on in-bye land and min­im­ising fen­cing. Since March, Scot­tish Forestry have approved 11ha of ripari­an plant­ing in Glen Muick. CNPA have com­men­ted on 15 wood­land schemes. Four of these were Long Term Forest Plans, 5 were felling per­mis­sions and 6 were wood­land cre­ation schemes. The wood­land cre­ation schemes totalled some 1600ha of nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion, which is either enclosed or par­tially enclosed by deer fen­cing, and some 700ha of new plant­ing which is deer fenced.

2. Peat­land restoration:

   15 pro­jects were com­pleted in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃, com­pris­ing an estim­ated 1080ha of peat­land brought into res­tor­a­tion. This exceeds the tar­get of 905ha and the achieve­ment of 1000ha+ is a not­able mile­stone for CNPA. There are 14 pro­jects in the pipeline for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄. If they are all delivered, the area brought into res­tor­a­tion will exceed the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ tar­get of 1300ha. Con­tract­or capa­city is sig­ni­fic­antly improved in both the num­ber, diversity and skills of oper­at­ors. Multi-year con­tracts and the new entrants’ scheme have strongly sup­por­ted this growth. Future areas for devel­op­ment include facil­it­at­ing access to con­tracts for smal­ler oper­at­ors; and increas­ing capa­city in pro­ject design and man­age­ment, lead­ing to more ​‘agent-led’ projects.

3. Fresh­wa­ter restoration:

   CNPA recently con­vened a meet­ing of key agen­cies, River Dee Fish­ery Board and Trust and the Catch­ment Part­ner­ship to agree the prin­ciples for col­lab­or­a­tion in deliv­er­ing com­mon object­ives around flood risk man­age­ment, nature-based solu­tions and river res­tor­a­tion. Park Author­ity staff atten­ded the launch of the Spey Catch­ment Ini­ti­at­ive (SCI) as a char­it­able organ­isa­tion (SCIO), shar­ing the stage with cel­eb­rated guest Fear­gal Shar­key. CNPA fund­ing has enabled SCI to scale-up oper­a­tions and provide a vehicle for match­ing pub­lic mon­ies with private investors. Increased capa­city and resi­li­ence with­in the organ­isa­tion will greatly help deliv­ery of NPPP fresh­wa­ter res­tor­a­tion object­ives at speed and scale.

4. Cairngorms Nature Index:

   The CNI will estab­lish indices for six major eco­sys­tems with­in the CNP based on indic­at­or spe­cies, spe­cies assemblages and abi­ot­ic factors. The fresh­wa­ter pilot is now com­plete and has been reviewed by a sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Group. The next step is to take this out to stake­hold­ers for com­ment and estab­lish expert work­ing groups for the remain­ing five eco­sys­tems. These groups will identi­fy indic­at­ors and estab­lish ref­er­ence con­di­tion based on best avail­able data.

5. Spe­cies recovery:

   Caper­cail­lie: Ana­lys­is of the genet­ic diversity of the caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion in the Nation­al Park shows that whilst there is no evid­ence that the levels of genet­ic diversity in Scot­land have declined dur­ing the 20^th cen­tury, the con­tem­por­ary pop­u­la­tion in Scot­land has the low­est genet­ic diversity of any of the North­ern lin­eage from which it is derived.

   The report con­tains advice that steps are taken to increase the genet­ic diversity of the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion by identi­fy­ing suit­able source pop­u­la­tions in main­land Europe. Based on exper­i­ence of attempts else­where, rein­force­ment would be a highly com­plex, poten­tially very expens­ive piece of work with a high risk of fail­ure. CNPA has con­vened a work­shop of part­ners to dis­cuss further.

6. Cairngorms Nature Festival:

   The fest­iv­al was a huge suc­cess with over 160 activ­it­ies across 10 days delivered by over 60 part­ner event pro­viders includ­ing envir­on­ment­al NGOs, com­munity groups, inclu­sion groups and land man­agers. High­light events include Deer man­age­ment on Bal­mor­al estate, Nature 4 Health for refugees; Moun­tain Bothy film fest­iv­al and the Kentish Glory Moth Trap and Egg Hunt’ event in Aviemore. The moth event led to the form­a­tion of a loc­al moth group, demon­strat­ing the value of the fest­iv­al in fos­ter­ing ongo­ing engage­ment and involve­ment in con­ser­va­tion and land man­age­ment in the Park.

Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel

1. Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan: Park Author­ity staff are work­ing on the new Action Plan, con­sult­ing with key stake­hold­ers includ­ing part­ner Ranger Ser­vices, the Equal­it­ies Advis­ory Pan­el, Loc­al Out­door Access For­um and Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group. The new Action Plan, which is to be con­sidered at the Board meet­ing in Novem­ber, will provide an oppor­tun­ity to refresh our approach to a num­ber of very top­ic­al issues includ­ing the man­age­ment of visitors.

2. Paths and Long-dis­tance Routes:

   a) Cairngorms Moun­tain Path Pro­ject- A good deal of Upland Path work has been achieved with­in Cairngorms Nation­al Park over the years in part­ner­ship with the Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land (OATS), the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (CNPA) and land own­ers. Achieved through large multi-part­ner lot­tery and EU fun­ded grant schemes includ­ing £2.6m for the East­ern Cairngorms Access Pro­ject (2002−6), £2.3m for the Cairngorms Moun­tain Her­it­age Pro­ject (2011−14) and most recently the £5.6m The Moun­tains and The People Pro­ject (2015−20). With these major cap­it­al invest­ments in the upland path net­work with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park now com­plete the focus has shif­ted to ensur­ing upkeep. The Park Author­ity is sup­port­ing OATS on a new moun­tain paths pro­ject that will focus on:

   • Path Main­ten­ance Volun­teer­ing in col­lab­or­a­tion with Volun­teer Cairngorms:
   • Paid Con­tract­or Maintenance:
   • Adopt A Path scheme:
   • Devel­op­ment of new path build­ing tech­niques to address new vis­it­or pres­sures includ­ing e‑bikes- with a focus on the Meall a’ Bhuachaille:
   • Review of the Cairngorms Upland Path Audit.

3. Ranger Ser­vices: The second group of sea­son­al Rangers star­ted in mid-April bring­ing the total num­ber of CNPA Sea­son­al Rangers to 11. A fur­ther 4 Train­ee Rangers star­ted in early June and will accom­pany exist­ing Rangers over the sum­mer months which helps to cre­ate a path­way into Ranger related careers. We now have 47 FTE Rangers work­ing across the Park, most of which are grant-aided by CNPA – spe­cial fund­ing, train­ing and sup­port has also been provided. We are increas­ing the pres­ence of Rangers in the Cairngorm and Glen­more area and the patrols in even­ing and week­ends. We are work­ing with Police Scot­land to provide guar­an­teed cov­er at key weekends.

4. Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture: New wel­come sig­nage to alert trav­el­lers to the fact they are in the Nation­al Park has been installed at all the High­land Main Line sta­tions in the Park. This uses the new Nation­al Park brand­ing. Reg­u­lar meet­ings with Forestry & Land Scot­land and the High­land Coun­cil con­tin­ue with plans for tem­por­ary over­flow park­ing and expan­sion of the capa­city at the beach and Hay­field car parks in Glen­more as the main focus. CNPA provided grnat aid towards a new car park that was launched by John Swin­ney at Beinn a Ghlo to provide park­ing for 60 cars. Pro­ceeds from the char­ging sys­tem will help fund main­ten­ance of paths in the Park though a part­ner­ship with Out­door Access Trust for Scotland.

5. Volun­teer­ing and Health Walks: Fol­low­ing the recruit­ment and train­ing of the 30 new volun­teers over the winter they have been out ​“on the ground” since early spring. This also seems to have rein­vig­or­ated some of the exist­ing volun­teers who are becom­ing more act­ive again. A staff volun­teer­ing day was held in early May to tie in with the nation­al volun­teer activ­ity being held in con­junc­tion with the King’s coron­a­tion. To man­age the high­er num­bers of volun­teers and con­tin­ue build­ing towards the NPPP4 tar­get of 200 volun­teers an addi­tion­al volun­teer man­ager post starts at the begin­ning of July.

6. Youth Action Team: The Cairngorms Youth Action Team have entered a quiet peri­od where their avail­ab­il­ity for events and activ­ity is cur­tailed by exam and study require­ments. Des­pite this we have had a num­ber of online plan­ning ses­sions to organ­ise the Cairngorms Youth Cli­mate Camp that will take place at Bad­aguish on 6 – 11 August. There will be par­ti­cipants from EURO­PARC Youth+ Groups, NPUK Youth Voice, Scot­tish based Youth LAGS as well as loc­al young people.

   The focus of the camp will be on cli­mate, biod­iversity, nature con­nec­tion and youth action. There will also be a cel­eb­ra­tion of the work done by the Cairngorms Youth LAG in dis­trib­ut­ing the Cairngorms Youth Fund in part­ner­ship with the Cairngorms Trust.

7. Act­ive Travel: A series of engage­ment ses­sions and meet­ings with key stake­hold­ers were held in Aviemore, Brae­mar and Bal­later to seek loc­al views on the pro­pos­als that had emerged from last years engage­ment events. Fol­low­ing the Aviemore event, the final report for Aviemore has now been received while Aecom who are devel­op­ing the Act­ive Travel and Sus­tain­able trans­port plan for Deeside will deliv­er their final report dur­ing June. All these reports form part of the Her­it­age Hori­zons bid.

Plan­ning and Rur­al Development

1. Plan­ning Case­work: There have only been two Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ings since the March Board meet­ing. At the April the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ing an applic­a­tion for the relo­ca­tion of the Snow Fact­ory and its asso­ci­ated infra­struc­ture at Cairngorm Moun­tain was approved and two applic­a­tions were refused; the con­struc­tion of a forestry track, passing places and a replace­ment bridge on the Pit­main and Glen Ban­chor Estates and the erec­tion of 3 houses at Lyn­wilg out­side Aviemore. Both pro­pos­als were clearly con­trary to the Devel­op­ment Plan policies. At the 09 June meet­ing, the Com­mit­tee approved a small remix of hous­ing on an exist­ing devel­op­ment site at Byn­ack More, Aviemore, hous­ing at Dulicht Court in Grant­own-on-Spey and a gal­lery exten­sion to the House of Bru­ar near Blair Atholl.

   The teams are in the pro­cess of filling a vacancy in the devel­op­ment man­age­ment team.

2. Hous­ing Deliv­ery: CNPA are con­tinu­ing to sup­port CBP, and staff are liais­ing with key com­munit­ies who are devel­op­ing com­munity-led hous­ing pro­jects. Strath­don Com­munity Devel­op­ment Com­pany recently held a com­munity meet­ing to dis­cuss suit­able sites for afford­able hous­ing devel­op­ment and will be sup­por­ted to carry out a land audit to aid pro­gress. The CNPA will host a Cairngorms Com­munity Hous­ing group later this month, where com­munit­ies who are devel­op­ing com­munity hous­ing pro­jects can share exper­i­ence and be giv­en sign­post­ing to fur­ther help.

3. Well­being Eco­nomy and Rur­al Devel­op­ment: As part of our aim to reach res­id­ents and wider audi­ences through­out the Nation­al Park, we have com­mit­ted to attend­ing 3 High­land Games dur­ing 2023 in Blair Atholl, Strath­don (Lon­ach Games) and Grant­own to listen to loc­al voices, and to share inform­a­tion of recent and upcom­ing pro­jects with­in each area. The first of these was the Atholl Gath­er­ing, on the 28 May, where a selec­tion of teams includ­ing rangers, com­mu­nic­a­tions, nature-based solu­tions and rur­al devel­op­ment staff atten­ded to share work on con­ser­va­tion pro­jects, new infra­struc­ture pro­jects, pre­vi­ous fund­ing to com­munit­ies and to run fam­ily friendly activ­it­ies. We were busy through­out the day listen­ing and enga­ging with the public.

4. Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment: The Cairngorms Trust, work­ing with the Park Author­ity as Account­able Body, has secured an ini­tial alloc­a­tion of £225,000 for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ fin­an­cial year from the Scot­tish Government’s Com­munity Led Vis­ion Funds. This is some­what reduced from the total alloc­a­tion of £320,000 secured in the pre­vi­ous fin­an­cial year, as a con­sequence of total funds being spread more widely with more rur­al Loc­al Action Groups hav­ing reformed and recom­menced activ­it­ies. We hope to secure fur­ther fund­ing alloc­a­tions as the year pro­gresses. The call for com­munity led pro­ject applic­a­tions is now open. The Cairngorms Trust also con­tin­ues to work in part­ner­ship with the Park Authority’s teams in sup­port­ing devel­op­ment of Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­pos­als for a Com­munity Led Cli­mate Action Grant Pro­ject with­in the Cairngorms 2030 Programme.

5. Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan: The Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan was sub­mit­ted to Euro­parc in Decem­ber 2022 in reapplic­a­tion for the European Charter for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism in Pro­tec­ted Areas. As the next stage of the applic­a­tion pro­cess, we hos­ted a veri­fic­a­tion vis­it in early May. Rolan­ds Auz­ins from Latvia vis­ited over a 3‑day peri­od, meet­ing part­ners and trav­el­ling around Park to see deliv­ery on the ground. He will now be writ­ing up a veri­fic­a­tion report, with recom­mend­a­tions for future action, and an assess­ment of wheth­er or not we should be re-awar­ded the Charter. In the mean­time, the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship have dis­cussed plans for deliv­ery of the Action Plan and agreed lead part­ners for each action.

6. Busi­ness & Vis­it­or Data

   The latest edi­tion of the Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er has just been pub­lished, con­tinu­ing to show a mixed pic­ture in terms of busi­ness con­fid­ence. While prof­it­ab­il­ity con­tin­ues to be affected by rising prices, bur­eau­cracy and recruit­ment issues, cus­tom­er num­bers and turnover are gen­er­ally increas­ing. That is echoed by the recent Spring wave of the Scot­tish Tour­ism Index which shows that, while eco­nom­ic issues are still a con­cern for many, demand for domest­ic hol­i­days is hold­ing up, even as inter­na­tion­al out­bound travel recovers.

7. Sup­port to Busi­ness and Com­munit­ies: Com­munity Action Plan­ning events, known as ​‘big con­ver­sa­tions’ have taken place in Blair Atholl on 1 June and Dal­whin­nie on 15 June facil­it­ated by Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey. Fur­ther Com­munity Action plans are sched­uled for later in Sum­mer and Autumn, and will be repor­ted on in due course.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions

1. Act­ive Cairngorms: Park Author­ity staff in col­lab­or­a­tion with Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice and NatureScot as well as the Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group have pub­lished a Camp­fire and bar­be­cue advice leaf­let. In line with the pri­or­it­ies in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Plan and advice from the LOAF, this camp­fires and bar­be­cues leaf­let is for use by Ranger Ser­vices on the ground in con­junc­tion with Tread Lightly in the Park mater­i­als. The leaf­let is in response to con­cerns about dis­pos­able bar­be­cues and con­sist­ency of mes­saging around camp­fires. This advice com­pli­ments the nation­al mes­saging line, namely ​“use a stove”.

   The team worked closely with vis­it­or man­age­ment and ranger col­leagues to share rel­ev­ant mes­sages ahead of East­er and the busier sum­mer months, devel­op­ing a bank of ​‘alert’ style mes­sages to improve the speed of our response when a rel­ev­ant incid­ent occurs in the Nation­al Park, eg a wild­fire or flood. These mes­sages will com­ple­ment paid-for cam­paign activ­ity being delivered by the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship for the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject, with a suite of mater­i­als aimed at tack­ling vis­it­or dis­turb­ance due to launch before the busy sum­mer period.

   For a third suc­cess­ive year the Park Author­ity has con­trib­uted to Ram­blers Scotland’s respons­ible access cam­paign for young people vis­it­ing the Scot­tish coun­tryside. The cam­paign was co-cre­ated with a diverse pan­el of young people from across Scot­land. Three films focus­ing on leav­ing no trace, avoid­ing fires and redu­cing wild­life dis­turb­ance have been pro­duced, with the res­ults shared across Tik­Tok, Snapchat and Ins­tagram through­out the sum­mer. The cam­paign has already reached over 100,000 young people under the age of 25 across Scotland.

2. Cairngorms Nature: Pro­mo­tion for the new Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al geared up from Feb­ru­ary onwards, with a new web­site going live in early April show­cas­ing over 160 Park Author­ity and part­ner events. The new site fea­tures fil­ter­able events list­ings, volun­teer oppor­tun­it­ies, toggles for key ele­ments such as wheel­chair access, toi­let avail­ab­il­ity, fam­ily or dog friendly events, as well as an inter­act­ive map show­ing where all the events are loc­ated. A com­pre­hens­ive digit­al cam­paign accom­pan­ied the launch (includ­ing sub­stant­ive Gael­ic ele­ments), along­side a simple toolkit for part­ners to con­nect their events into the wider fest­iv­al brand. The fest­iv­al was also pro­moted via a ded­ic­ated break­fast show com­pet­i­tion on MFR loc­al radio, adverts on North­sound and Bauer, an online fea­ture in the P&J, a takeover of the Inverness Cour­i­er homepage and advertori­al / adverts in vari­ous oth­er loc­al newspapers.

3. Cairngorms 2030: At the end of April we presen­ted our draft Cairngorms 2030 Activ­ity Plan to the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund. The plan out­lines our over­arch­ing approach to com­munity engage­ment, as well as sum­mar­ising the res­ults of nearly a year’s worth of con­sulta­tion effort as part of the devel­op­ment phase. An incred­ible 4,000 people engaged across nearly 150 dif­fer­ent work­shops, drop in ses­sions and oth­er engage­ment strands. Lot­tery rep­res­ent­at­ives com­men­ted on how ambi­tious and thor­ough the engage­ment pro­cess has been to date, with staff in almost every part of the organ­isa­tion involved in some capa­city. A revised ver­sion of the plan is cur­rently being final­ised as part of our deliv­ery phase applic­a­tion in August.

   Press activ­ity to sup­port the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme has been extens­ive, includ­ing work­ing with the team at Alzheimer Scot­land on the launch of the UK’s first out­door demen­tia resource centre, which was covered by both the BBC and STV, as well as the Press and Journ­al, The Nation­al, Aber­deen Live and the Badenoch and Strath­spey Herald.

4. Cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions: Our elec­tions activ­ity con­cluded with a video fea­tur­ing a diverse selec­tion of people from across the Cairngorms Nation­al Park encour­aging people to vote, togeth­er with simple infograph­ics show­ing them how to do so. A live stream of the count – delivered in part­ner­ship with The High­land Coun­cil – was broad­cast on You­Tube and shared via the Nation­al Park website.

   Media high­lights dur­ing the peri­od include the launch of the Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al, res­ults of the March board elec­tions, pro­mo­tion of a series of ​‘Beaver Bleth­ers’, a twin­flower con­ser­va­tion suc­cess story involving mem­bers of the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship and the approv­al of 20 com­mer­cial let­ting units at Knock­gran­ish.

   In light of the new Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and sig­ni­fic­ant changes to our core staff and board team, we have organ­ised a series of media train­ing ses­sions over the sum­mer. The four ses­sions will cov­er top­ics such as how the media works, inter­view tech­niques and devel­op­ing key mes­sages, as well as giv­ing par­ti­cipants prac­tic­al inter­view exper­i­ence on camera.

   Build­ing on the suc­cess of face-to-face engage­ment for the Part­ner­ship Plan con­sulta­tion and Cairngorms 2030, we will be tri­al­ling a range of in-per­son events this sum­mer, both in terms of more inform­al ​‘drop-in’ style con­ver­sa­tions and attend­ance at lar­ger-scale shows. We took a stall at the Atholl Gath­er­ing and will be present at the Lon­ach Gath­er­ing and Grant­own Show to explore how to best staff these events, what format works best and what mater­i­als we need to sup­port them. Depend­ing on how these go, our plan is to rotate around vari­ous com­munity events over the next few years.

5. Web­site and social media: A total of 50 agen­cies applied as part of the first ​‘single pro­cure­ment doc­u­ment’ round of our web­site devel­op­ment tender pro­cess. This list has been whittled down to a final short­l­ist of sev­en com­pan­ies who have each receive a copy of the detailed tender doc­u­ment. The dead­line for sub­mis­sions is the end of June, with con­tracts awar­ded in early July. SPD responses were scored based on five main cri­ter­ia: their approach to audi­ence-centred design; their access­ib­il­ity cre­den­tials; their design approach; pro­ject man­age­ment and tech­nic­al expertise.

   Over the past few months we have been work­ing with the Uni­ver­sity of Edin­burgh to explore options for a Cairngorms vis­it­or wel­come app. The research pro­ject was in two parts, with an ini­tial review of 20+ com­par­at­or apps, fol­lowed by audi­ence inter­views with c. 100 people on what they were look­ing for. Encour­agingly, 55% of respond­ents said that an app would be ​‘very’ or ​‘extremely’ use­ful and a fur­ther 25% said it would be ​‘mod­er­ately’ use­ful. In terms of key func­tion­al­ity, the abil­ity to use a map of the Nation­al Park off­line was most pop­u­lar, fol­lowed by tips from rangers, real-time busy­n­ess info and an inter­act­ive attrac­tions map. We are now work­ing with col­leagues at Loch Lomond and the Tross­sachs Nation­al Park Author­ity, Perth and Kinross and East Lothi­an Coun­cils and the uni­ver­sity to explore a col­lect­ive fund­ing bid for app devel­op­ment, likely in 2024.

   A pub­lic-facing LGBT His­tory Month cam­paign was shared across our web­site and social media chan­nels. Across the month we shared blog pieces from five mem­bers of the LGB­TQ+ com­munity liv­ing in the Nation­al Park and also show­cased our work towards the LGBT Youth Charter. Our Cairngorms Voices pieces had a total social media reach of 35,724 and more than 2,000 engage­ments. One piece from the own­er of River Wild Adven­tures quickly became our most read Cairngorms Voices piece ever, demon­strat­ing the impact of power­ful storytelling and audi­ence interest. An Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day post from writer Merryn Glover a few weeks later proved sim­il­arly pop­u­lar. We also cel­eb­rated World Gael­ic Week in Feb­ru­ary, fea­tur­ing some trans­la­tions of com­monly used words and phrases.

6. Brand­ing and pub­lic­a­tions: We hos­ted a third busi­ness brand­ing work­shop in Bal­later along­side CBP, fol­low­ing sim­il­ar events in Boat of Garten and online earli­er in the year. The work­shops explored how the Park Author­ity can best sup­port busi­nesses to cel­eb­rate their role in the Nation­al Park via the brand charter pro­cess. Over 130 busi­nesses respon­ded to our fol­low-up sur­vey, with the most pop­u­lar requests being maps in dif­fer­ent sizes, access to the Park logo to use on their mater­i­als, pho­to­graphy / video, leaf­lets and an annu­al wall plan­ner. Work is ongo­ing to cre­ate these mater­i­als, with the major­ity being pro­duced in part­ner­ship with loc­al businesses.

   The second issue of Cairn magazine hit door­steps in the run-up to East­er. In addi­tion to the usu­al mix of com­munity and con­ser­va­tion news, the magazine fea­tured art­icles about the Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al, the work of the ranger ser­vice, a sum­mary of Cairngorms 2030 and inform­a­tion about our work with beavers. Work has already star­ted on the next issue, which will hit door­steps at the end of July / early August.

   Work­ing with part­ners at the High­land Rail Part­ner­ship, Sco­trail and Net­work Rail, we have updated Nation­al Park sig­nage across six sta­tions on the High­land Main­line. There are around 25 signs in total along the route, fea­tur­ing the refreshed Nation­al Park brand against a sol­id purple back­ground (to avoid the fad­ing issues that occurred last time around).

   We have been work­ing with mobile out­door activ­ity pro­vider Able 2 Adven­ture to pro­duce a suite of images of people using all ter­rain wheel­chairs and adapt­ive bikes, with a view to increas­ing diversity in the images that we use for comms. This fol­lows sim­il­ar pho­toshoots with eth­nic minor­ity com­munit­ies, game­keep­ers and land man­agers, the Peat­land Action team and vari­ous com­munity groups.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development

1. Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning (BCP): We have now con­cluded the tri­al hybrid approach, and are in the pro­cess of agree­ing the terms of the final, per­man­ent policy in this regard. The 12-month tri­al has been broadly pos­it­ive, and whilst most staff are work­ing in a hybrid way, it should be noted that staff num­bers access­ing the office are high­er than for sim­il­ar pub­lic sec­tor organisations.

2. Staff­ing update: Since Feb­ru­ary, staff­ing updates are as follows:

   a) Staff who left the organ­isa­tion were:

   i. Don­ald Ross, Digit­al Developer left the organ­isa­tion for a Career Break ii. Alan Atkins, Plan­ning Officer left to pur­sue anoth­er role.

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

   i. Joel John­son joined the Author­ity as Cairngorms Peat­land Action Train­ee Officer. ii. Paul Dav­is­on joined the Author­ity as Inform­a­tion Man­ager iii. Mar­ie Smith was appoin­ted to the Recep­tion­ist role. iv. Adam Alex­an­der was appoin­ted to the Digit­al Pro­jects Coordin­at­or role. v. Jonath­an Wil­lett joined the Park Author­ity as its Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager vi. The Sea­son­al Rangers who joined in March and April are: Lewis Barr, Tom Fre­driks­son, Scott Hast­ings, Toni Lamont, Sarah Lawth­er, Danny O’Brien, Becki Red­mond, Tony Seivwright, Craig Fraser, Jen­nifer Clark and Fiona McClure. Scott, Danny, Tony and Craig were Sea­son­al Rangers last year, and Tom was one of last year’s Train­ee Rangers. Danny and Scott were in the Train­ee Ranger cohort in 2021, and both worked as Sea­son­al Rangers last year. vii. The four Train­ee Rangers who joined in June are: John Calder, Craig For­syth, Jessie Grant and Cath­er­ine Wilkinson.

3. Youth Employ­ment:

   a) Graduate/​Internship posts:

   i. Alaska Stikova joined us as on a 4‑month intern­ship as Digit­al Con­tent Intern. We are also in the pro­cess of recruit­ing an Access and Infra­struc­ture GIS Intern. The intern­ship mod­el is prov­ing to be very suc­cess­ful. This mod­el requires the iden­ti­fic­a­tion of a spe­cif­ic, time bound piece of work. It gives young people the oppor­tun­ity to exper­i­ence work in the cor­por­ate envir­on­ment, whilst deliv­er­ing a mean­ing­ful pro­ject for the Park Author­ity. It also provides us with the oppor­tun­ity to devel­op the line man­age­ment skills of exist­ing staff, as interns are usu­ally line man­aged by staff who are new to the line man­age­ment role.

4. Equal­it­ies:

   a) We have recently adop­ted two innov­at­ive policies that were developed through the Intern­al Equal­ity, Diversity and Inclu­sion Advocacy Group, and con­sul­ted with the extern­al Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el. They are the Neurodi­versity Policy, and the Reas­on­able Adjust­ments Pass­port Policy.

   b) The Park Author­ity has signed up to a part­ner­ship agree­ment with Black Pro­fes­sion­als Scot­land, through which we get access to ment­or­ing oppor­tun­it­ies, racial diversity train­ing, access to the job board, and tar­geted intern­ship recruitment.

5. Organ­isa­tion­al Development

   a) The Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment cross cut­ting Pro­gramme Board was refreshed and had its first meet­ing in the last quarter. The organ­isa­tion has grown sig­ni­fic­antly since the last Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy was estab­lished, which is now out of date, and we are in the pro­cess of identi­fy­ing the key areas for organ­isa­tion­al devel­op­ment and change man­age­ment for the next few years.

6. Fin­ance

   a) Our draft fin­an­cial pos­i­tion shows a near break-even pos­i­tion for the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ fin­an­cial year, achiev­ing our tar­get of max­im­ising our effect­ive deploy­ment of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment grant in aid made avail­able to the Park Author­ity. Fur­ther detail on the pos­i­tion will be presen­ted to the Resources and Audit and Risk Com­mit­tees in their forth­com­ing meet­ings with regard to budget man­age­ment and final accounts audit pos­i­tions respectively.

Grant Moir June 2023