Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority

Form­al Board Paper 6 23 June 2023 Page 1 of 5

For Inform­a­tion

Title: Pub­lic Sec­tor Equal­ity Duty: — Update on Equal­ity Out­comes 2021 — 2025 Pre­pared by: Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Development

Pur­pose

The Pub­lic Sec­tor Equal­ity Duty sets out a require­ment for pub­lic bod­ies to pub­lish equal­ity data every two years. This Park Authority’s Update on Equal­ity Out­comes 2021 — 2025 Report was pub­lished, as required, by 30 April 2023. The pur­pose of this paper Is to draw the Board’s atten­tion to the report, and to high­light the key equal­ity achieve­ments over the last two years.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board are asked to: a) note the report. The report cov­ers 6 chapters, up to page 60 plus 7 appendixes.

Back­ground

1. The 2010 Equal­ity Act sets three Gen­er­al Duties at its core — pub­lic bod­ies must have due regard to the need to: a) Elim­in­ate unlaw­ful dis­crim­in­a­tion, har­ass­ment and vic­tim­isa­tion and oth­er con­duct pro­hib­ited by the Act; b) Advance equal­ity of oppor­tun­ity between people who share a pro­tec­ted char­ac­ter­ist­ic and those who do not, and; c) Foster good rela­tions between people who share a pro­tec­ted char­ac­ter­ist­ic and those who do not.
2. In Scot­land, the Equal­ity Act was fol­lowed by addi­tion­al duties that applied to pub­lic bod­ies, known as the Spe­cif­ic Duties, or Pub­lic Sec­tor Equal­ity Duties (PSED). So, in Scot­land we have to demon­strate what we have been doing to take account of the Gen­er­al Duty by the fol­low­ing: a) Report­ing on main­stream­ing the equal­ity duty and pub­lish­ing pro­gress every two years; b) Pub­lish­ing equal­ity out­comes every four years and report­ing pro­gress every two years;

---

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Form­al Board Paper 6 23 June 2023 Page 2 of 5

c) Assess­ing and review­ing our policies and prac­tices (Equal­ity Impact Assess­ment); d) Gath­er­ing and using employ­ee inform­a­tion; e) Pub­lish­ing our gender, race and dis­ab­il­ity pay gap inform­a­tion; f) Pub­lish­ing state­ments on equal pay; g) Con­sider award cri­ter­ia and con­di­tions in rela­tion to pub­lic pro­cure­ment; and h) Pub­lish­ing reports in a man­ner that is accessible.

1. The Update on Equal­ity Out­comes 2021 — 2025 Report, attached as Appendix 1, deliv­ers the above require­ments, provid­ing an update on our Pub­lic Sec­tor Equal­ity Duty over the last two years.
2. The Report out­lines a num­ber of areas of work across the Park Author­ity to main­stream equal­ity, and also sets out pro­gress towards deliv­er­ing the 4 Equal­ity Out­comes that were iden­ti­fied in 2021, as fol­lows: a) Out­come 1: Our work­force will become more diverse. We will have more women In seni­or pos­i­tions In the organ­isa­tion and will have an Increased num­ber of minor­ity staff work­ing for us (spe­cific­ally with rela­tion to sexu­al ori­ent­a­tion, dis­ab­il­ity and eth­ni­city). b) Out­come 2: Pro­mot­ing and cel­eb­rat­ing a Nation­al Park for all vis­it­ors c) Out­come 3: Ensur­ing and enhan­cing more inclus­ive access to nature. d) Out­come 4: More equal­ity groups par­ti­cip­ate In CNPA led con­sulta­tions and stake­hold­er forums/​groups to Influ­ence decisions mad in rela­tion to the man­age­ment of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.

Main High­lights

1. Through both main­stream­ing of equal­ity and deliv­ery of these out­comes, there have been sev­er­al not­able high­lights, as below: a) Gender Pay Gap: as of 30 March 2023, the Park Authority’s gender pay gap was 9.55% which Is the low­est it has been since we have repor­ted this inform­a­tion. It has been on the down­ward tra­ject­ory for the last 5 years, which reflects the work we have been doing on this par­tic­u­lar area, which includes redu­cing the num­ber of essen­tial cri­ter­ia In job descrip­tions; advert­ising most posts with the poten­tial of being a part time or job share role; revamped recruit­ment advert­ising to high­light oppor­tun­it­ies for flex­ible work­ing; remov­al of core hours and Improved remote access to IT facil­it­ies; hybrid work­ing approaches; ongo­ing review of organ­isa­tion­al structure.

---

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Form­al Board Paper 6 23 June 2023 Page 3 of 5

b) Equal­ity Advis­ory Groups: the extern­al Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el (EAP), which has been oper­at­ing since Septem­ber 2020 com­prises elev­en extern­al equal­it­ies experts and enthu­si­asts who volun­teer their time and skills to meet monthly and provide the Park Author­ity with crit­ic­al advice and guid­ance on all our equal­ity work. They have provided essen­tial input to many of our policies, pro­ced­ures and strategies, and not­ably to our Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. The Intern­al Equal­ity, Diversity and Inclu­sion Advocacy Group com­prises staff from across the organ­isa­tion and equal­ity char­ac­ter­ist­ics, and was developed In tan­dem with the EAP. This group has been key to guid­ing our LGBT work, and has developed Innov­at­ive new policies around neurodi­versity and reas­on­able adjust­ments, as well as sup­por­ted our revised Equal­ity Impact Assess­ment forms and guid­ance. c) Board Elec­tions: there were a num­ber of new Ini­ti­at­ives to sup­port the loc­al elec­tions of board mem­bers in terms of encour­aging people to put them­selves for­ward, and to vote in the elec­tions. This Included videos show­cas­ing a vari­ety of res­id­ents voices from across the Park; a doordrop to every house­hold In the park; an art­icle In the Cairn magazine; ​“explain­ers” on social media, all of which exploded the myths about the ​“type of per­son” who usu­ally applies and why we’re keen to broaden it out. d) Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al: This event, show­cas­ing the unique spe­cies and hab­it­ats of the Nation­al Park, has evolved from a day-long ​“vil­lage fair” ‑style event when it first star­ted sev­er­al years ago to a 10-day event in 2023, com­pris­ing more than 150 activ­it­ies, and involving over 60 part­ner organ­isa­tions and busi­nesses. A num­ber of events were spe­cific­ally for Inclu­sion groups, with approx­im­ately 50% of events being free of charge or low cost. There were also events spe­cific­ally for people with dis­ab­il­it­ies, includ­ing canoe­ing for dis­abled fam­il­ies and adapt­ive bik­ing. A new access­ible web­site was cre­ated to serve as an Inform­a­tion hub for the fest­iv­al, which dis­played Inform­a­tion about pub­lic trans­port to events, as well as access­ib­il­ity Inform­a­tion about the events. This year’s event show­cased Cairngorms Nature on a big­ger scale than ever before and was resound­ingly suc­cess­ful. e) Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan Con­sulta­tion: The con­sulta­tion included an inform­al stage which was built around a ded­ic­ated micros­ite using the Com­mon­place plat­form, and was sup­por­ted by a vari­ety of media, web­site and social media pro­mo­tion. The con­sulta­tion was shared through vari­ous net­works like All the Ele­ments, Boots and Beards, and the Cairngorms Youth Action team,

---

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Form­al Board Paper 6 23 June 2023 Page 4 of 5

and via ded­ic­ated com­munity Face­book groups. All this work boos­ted engage­ment, with a total of 1,453 responses received to both the form­al and Inform­al con­sulta­tions, via e‑mail, online and by post. This com­pares to a total of 319 for the equi­val­ent con­sulta­tion 5 years ago. This has res­ul­ted in a Part­ner­ship Plan that has been truly Informed by Its stake­hold­ers. f) Cairngorms Green Recov­ery Fund: This part­ner­ship between the Park Author­ity and the Cairngorms Trust aimed to sup­port the recov­ery of the Cairngorms eco­nomy from the wide­spread Impacts of Cov­id-19, while pro­tect­ing and enhan­cing the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment and seek­ing to address the ongo­ing Impacts of cli­mate change. A num­ber of pro­jects have been sup­por­ted Includ­ing a pro­ject by the char­ity Coun­tryside Learn­ing Scot­land to build con­nec­tions between schools, loc­al land man­agers and employ­ers to devel­op rel­ev­ant skills amongst young people In the Park; as well as a pro­ject to deliv­er two ​“Branch­ing Out” out­door men­tal health pro­jects In Strath­spey run by the loc­al char­ity Roots and Shoots. g) Her­it­age Hori­zons Cairngorms 2030: There has been a huge amount of work around inclu­sion and diversity with regards this pro­ject. Not least the Alzheimer Centre at Bad­aguish, which was offi­cially opened this April. This pro­ject is part of the Cairngorms 20230 pro­gramme, and the unique centre enables people with demen­tia and their fam­il­ies to exper­i­ence the bene­fits of green health activ­it­ies. Anoth­er con­sid­er­a­tion of note was the com­munity engage­ment and con­sulta­tion on the vari­ety of pro­jects. Scot­in­form did a review of the Park Authority’s com­munity engage­ment and their report Iden­ti­fied that there Is sig­ni­fic­ant com­mit­ment to enga­ging with loc­al com­munit­ies and to broad­en­ing engage­ment reach, and the con­sult­ant was not aware of any oth­er loc­a­tions In Scot­land with such a high volume of com­munity engagement.

Annex 1 con­tains 6 chapters, up to page 60:

1. Key High­lights
2. About the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority
3. Main­stream­ing the Equal­ity Duty
4. Staff and Leadership
5. Vis­it­ors and Community
6. Con­sulta­tion and Partnership

---

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Form­al Board Paper 6 23 June 2023 Page 5 of 5

There are 7 appen­dices, which include:

1. The LGBT Charter Action Plan
2. LGBT His­tory Month Campaign
3. Staff and Board equal­it­ies survey
4. Staff Recruit­ment and Reten­tion Statistics
5. Equal Pay Audit
6. Occu­pa­tion­al Segregation
7. Equal­ity Out­comes Update 2021 — 2023