For Inform­a­tion

Title: CEO Report and Con­vener Update

Pre­pared by: Grant Moir, Chief Executive

Form­al Board Paper 1 8 Septem­ber 2023 Page 1 of 15

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. Cairngorms 2030: On the 17 August 2023 the Park Author­ity sub­mit­ted its Deliv­ery Phase applic­a­tion for Cairngorms 2030 to the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund. This has been a huge amount of work across 25 pro­jects and involving over 70 part­ner organ­iz­a­tions. The Park Author­ity will find out in Decem­ber wheth­er it has been suc­cess­ful and if so, will start the 5 years deliv­ery phase in Janu­ary 2024.

2. Deer man­age­ment: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity are play­ing an act­ive role in the Steer­ing Group of the Find­ing the Com­mon Ground pro­ject, explor­ing how to improve rela­tions and build col­lab­or­a­tion between stake­hold­ers and people work­ing in the deer man­age­ment sec­tor. Fol­low­ing a recent two-day meet­ing in Stirl­ing, all who atten­ded agreed to sign an Accord com­mit­ting organ­iz­a­tions to work con­struct­ively togeth­er on deer matters.

3. The Com­mon Ground For­um: An evol­u­tion of the pro­ject, is devel­op­ing pro­jects to pro­mote sus­tain­able deer man­age­ment and bet­ter rela­tions across the deer sec­tor. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity remain on the Steer­ing Group and will lead on a pro­ject to bring as many mem­bers of the tra­di­tion­al stalk­ing com­munity into the pro­cess as can be reached. This pro­ject will be wider than the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity but the bene­fits of improved rela­tions in the deer sec­tor should be advant­age­ous to the Park as a whole.

4. Peat­land res­tor­a­tion: In 2022 – 23 we brought over 1000ha of peat­land under res­tor­a­tion which is the largest annu­al area total to date. Our tar­get in 2023 – 24 is

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1300ha and we are broadly on track to achieve that at this point in time. This year’s pro­gramme involves over a dozen pro­jects across the Park. Landown­er enthu­si­asm remains high right across the spec­trum of upland land man­age­ment object­ives. Winter weath­er and con­tract­or capa­city remain risks to this year’s programme.

1. Moor­land pro­jects: The East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship has wel­comed Abergel­die Estate fol­low­ing the recent sale. Part­ners are pro­gress­ing the deliv­ery of the 5‑year action plan with recent pro­jects on hab­it­at res­tor­a­tion, spe­cies con­ser­va­tion, mon­it­or­ing, pub­lic engage­ment and sport­ing object­ives. Pro­jects include wet­land enhance­ment, wood­land expan­sion, river res­tor­a­tion, wader, moun­tain hare and rap­tor mon­it­or­ing, peat­land res­tor­a­tion and volun­teer­ing. There have been demon­stra­tions and events high­light­ing the work and press releases from the Park Author­ity com­mu­nic­a­tions team.

2. Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan: An action arising from Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 4 is to devel­op an Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan for the Park. There is no obvi­ous tem­plate for this Plan so the Park Author­ity are cur­rently con­sult­ing with stake­hold­ers to agree the pur­pose, audi­ence, struc­ture and con­tent of the Plan. Meet­ings have been held with landown­ers, Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice and the Park Author­ity Seni­or Man­age­ment Team. The draft struc­ture was presen­ted to numer­ous inter­ested parties at the ​“wild­fire sum­mit” organ­ized by Kate For­bes, MSP in response to wild­fires at Can­nich and Dav­i­ot. The Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group dis­cussed the draft struc­ture at the August meeting.

3. Cairngorms Nature Index: Fresh­wa­ter mod­el is now com­plete and will be taken out on the road to part­ners for com­ment. The Cairngorms Nature Index meth­od­o­logy has been presen­ted to and dis­cussed widely with mon­it­or­ing ini­ti­at­ives and organ­iz­a­tions devel­op­ing indic­at­or pro­jects. Work has begun on devel­op­ing indic­at­ors and sourcing data for the remain­ing eco­sys­tems, the next step is to estab­lish spe­cial­ist work­ing groups for each ecosystem.

4. Spe­cies recovery: a) Devel­op­ing Coordin­ated Action for Caper­cail­lie work­shop was held on 16 August. Bring­ing togeth­er over 60 stake­hold­ers to work on a shared view of what a coordin­ated action plan for caper­cail­lie should look like. Work­shop groups dis­cussed redu­cing the impacts of dis­turb­ance and pred­a­tion, improv­ing and expand­ing hab­it­at and redu­cing the risk of fence strikes. The work­shop also

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explored pub­lic, private and vol­un­tary mech­an­isms to fund the coordin­ated action plan for capercaillie.

b) Six-week form­al beaver engage­ment has begun, seek­ing the views of land man­agers, fish­er­ies, com­munit­ies and busi­nesses on our pro­pos­al to bring beavers back to the Cairngorms. The pro­pos­al include three ini­tial release sites in the upper Spey catch­ment and details of hab­it­at assess­ments, impacts and mon­it­or­ing. The Beaver web­site has been updated with the engage­ment inform­a­tion and link to online questionnaire.

c) Rap­tor Con­ser­va­tion Officer starts on the 1 Septem­ber. The three-year rap­tor pro­ject is ded­ic­ated to achiev­ing healthy pop­u­la­tions of rap­tors in the nation­al park. The pro­ject will be under­pinned by robust data and evid­ence. A vital role of this pro­ject is to devel­op a strong part­ner­ship approach to rap­tor con­ser­va­tion and raise aware­ness about rap­tors and their import­ance. This will be under­taken through a pro­gram of engage­ment and com­mu­nic­a­tion with land man­agers and wider stake­hold­ers includ­ing com­munit­ies with­in the Park.

Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel

1. Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan: Work on the plan has con­tin­ued with a num­ber of engage­ment ses­sions with rel­ev­ant groups held as well as seek­ing feed­back through an online sur­vey. Draft­ing of the plan is now under way and fur­ther views on the draft will be sought from key stake­hold­ers before com­ing to the Board in November.

2. Paths and Long-dis­tance Routes: Con­tracts for main­ten­ance of sec­tions of the Spey­side Way and oth­er paths where the Park Author­ity have respons­ib­il­it­ies are in place. Fur­ther con­tracts for an Old Log­ging Way sur­vey, a River Spey access and egress point assess­ment are being tendered at present. A grant fund­ing agree­ment has been reached with the Out­door Access Trust Scot­land (OATS) that will see them under­take a Cairngorms Moun­tain Path Pro­ject that incor­por­ates repair work as well as volun­teer, skills devel­op­ment and learn­ing oppor­tun­it­ies. A plan­ning applic­a­tion for the Brae­mar to Kei­loch path is expec­ted shortly to allow the route to be completed.

3. Ranger Ser­vices: The five per­man­ent and elev­en sea­son­al rangers have con­tin­ued to under­take fre­quent patrols through­out the main hol­i­day peri­od with some later even­ing and joint patrols with Forestry & Land Scot­land and Police Scot­land in the

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busier Glen­more area. Three train­ee rangers have accom­pan­ied them over the sum­mer months and new arrange­ments with part­ner ranger ser­vices is also allow­ing the train­ees the oppor­tun­ity to work with them to exper­i­ence areas of activ­ity not under­taken by the Park Author­ity ranger team.

One Park Author­ity ranger accom­pan­ied two juni­or rangers who atten­ded the Inter­na­tion­al Juni­or Ranger Camp in Fre­derikshavn, Den­mark, from 7 to 14 July 2023. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Juni­or Ranger Pro­ject has been nom­in­ated and is a final­ist in the Edu­ca­tion Award cat­egory of Scot­tish Land & Estates ​“Help­ing it Hap­pen Awards 2023”. Win­ners will be announced in early October.

1. Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture: A call for applic­a­tions to the Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture Improve­ment Pro­gramme was held in May / June with a num­ber of grant offers sub­sequently made and work on pro­jects expec­ted to com­mence in the next few weeks.

2. Volun­teer­ing and Health Walks: Volun­teer­ing work has largely focussed on the con­sol­id­a­tion of the team of volun­teer rangers which com­prise a mix of new­er starts and some from the pre-Cov­id peri­od who may be step­ping back after a num­ber of years. A second volun­teer man­ager star­ted in July and will sup­port the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan ambi­tion of recruit­ing fur­ther volun­teers to reach the 2030 tar­get of 200.

3. Youth Action Team: A suc­cess­ful and well atten­ded Youth Cli­mate Camp was held at Bad­aguish from 7 to 11 August. The event included a cel­eb­ra­tion of Youth LAG and their efforts to dis­trib­ute funds to loc­al pro­jects. Exper­i­ence from this event has also helped sup­port plan­ning for two oth­er forth­com­ing youth events – Youth action attend­ance at the Euro­parc con­fer­ence in Octo­ber and the Scot­tish Rur­al Youth par­lia­ment which the Cairngorms Youth Action Team will par­ti­cip­ate in in Fort Wil­li­am in November.

4. Act­ive Travel: Work has primar­ily been focused on the Cairngorms 2030 sub­mis­sion fol­low­ing the receipt of final con­sult­ants reports for each pro­ject. Fur­ther engage­ment has taken place with the com­munity, Trans­port Scot­land and their agents so the Park Author­ity can take over the Dul­nain to Grant­own cycle route pro­ject when the com­munity led ​“stage 4” work con­cludes. Dis­cus­sions with Trans­port Scot­land con­tin­ue regard­ing the Act­ive Travel Trans­form­a­tion Fund grant offer and how dif­fer­ent ele­ments of the pro­ject might be delivered.

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Plan­ning and Rur­al Development

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan: An inter­act­ive map has been cre­ated to sup­port early engage­ment on the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan Cairngorms Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan | Com­mon­place.

2. Plan­ning Case­work: There has only been one Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ing since the last Board meet­ing in June. The Com­mit­tee con­sidered applic­a­tions for hous­ing in Nethy Bridge, afford­able hous­ing in Aviemore, and a range of vis­it­or related accom­mod­a­tion lon the Mac­Don­ald Resort in Aviemore and at Bad­aguish. A pri­or approv­al applic­a­tion for forestry related track west of Lag­gan was also approved.

3. Hous­ing Deliv­ery: Fol­low­ing the recent Hous­ing Needs Sur­vey, The Park Author­ity have sup­por­ted Strath­don Com­munity Devel­op­ment Trust to carry out a Land Audit to fur­ther explore poten­tial sites for afford­able hous­ing devel­op­ment in the Strath­don area.

The Park Author­ity have re-estab­lished the Com­munity-led Hous­ing Group, with its first meet­ing tak­ing place in June, which invited com­munit­ies in the park that are act­ively pro­gress­ing hous­ing pro­jects to come along and dis­cuss pro­gress. The aim of the group is to share inform­a­tion and explore rel­ev­ant fund­ing or sup­port avail­able from the pub­lic sector.

1. Well­being Eco­nomy: Devel­op­ment of the Well­being Eco­nomy Action Plan was slower than planned in early 2023 so will be a focus for the Rur­al Devel­op­ment Team in late sum­mer and autumn 2023. We expect to dis­cuss with the well­being eco­nomy work­ing group and Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing group in Septem­ber and have inform­al dis­cus­sion with the Board in Decem­ber before final­ising for board approv­al in early 2024.

2. Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment: Glen­liv­et 2050, fun­ded through HIE, CES, Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity has star­ted their second phase of engage­ment, and there will be a series of engage­ment events with the loc­al com­munit­ies and stake­hold­ers with­in the Glen­liv­et Estate.

3. Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan: The Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan was sub­mit­ted to Euro­parc in Decem­ber 2022 in reapplic­a­tion for the European Charter

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for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism in Pro­tec­ted Areas. Fol­low­ing the veri­fic­a­tion vis­it in early May, the verifier’s report will be dis­cussed by the eval­u­ation com­mit­tee in mid-Septem­ber. If suc­cess­ful, the offi­cial re-award of the charter will take place in Brus­sels on 30 Novem­ber. A prin­ted ver­sion of the Cairngorms Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan22-28 is avail­able on request and the online ver­sion of the is here.

1. Busi­ness & Vis­it­or Data: We have recently received 2022 STEAM fig­ures which provide an estim­ate of vis­it­or num­bers and the eco­nom­ic value of tour­ism to the area. There were an estim­ated 1.73 mil­lion vis­it­ors to the Cairngorms in 2022 with an eco­nom­ic impact of £353 mil­lion. Com­par­ing those fig­ures with a 2019 pre-Cov­id baseline, vis­it­or num­bers are down 16%, but eco­nom­ic impact is up 2% (indexed for inflation).

The Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er Q2 2023 has just been pub­lished, con­tinu­ing to show a some­what mixed pic­ture in terms of busi­ness con­fid­ence. Short-term con­fid­ence is high­er than aver­age for the quarter, and the out­look for the next 12 months in terms of cus­tom­er num­bers and turnover is rel­at­ively strong. Longer term con­fid­ence remains below aver­age though, with bur­eau­cracy con­sidered the greatest bar­ri­er to growth. The guest ques­tion this quarter related to com­mu­nic­a­tion of inform­a­tion about respons­ible enjoy­ment. The major­ity of busi­nesses sup­port the idea of set­ting an example to vis­it­ors (79%) and over half would like to know more about how to share mes­sages on this top­ic with their cus­tom­ers (58%).

The team are cur­rently devel­op­ing the ten­der­ing mater­i­als for vis­it­or and res­id­ents sur­veys. The ten­der­ing pro­cess for this work will be pub­lished dur­ing Autumn 2023.

1. Sup­port to Busi­ness and Com­munit­ies: Sup­port to com­munit­ies to devel­op Com­munity Action Plans con­tin­ues through­out the park through grant fund­ing to Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey (VABS), Marr Area Part­ner­ship and Glen­liv­et and Tomin­toul Devel­op­ment Trust (MAP). Recently the Blair Atholl and Stru­an com­munity action plan has just been pub­lished on our web­site, and the Dal­whin­nie and Bal­later Plans are near­ing com­ple­tion. VABS are work­ing closely this year with MAP to strengthen the devel­op­ment of action plans across the park.

Sup­port to busi­nesses con­tin­ues through our part­ner­ships with Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, Grow­biz, VABS and MAP. For this quarter Grow­biz report that 30% of enquir­ies for sup­port from loc­al busi­nesses were pre –start up or start up small busi­nesses, and they have increased the num­ber of busi­ness ment­ors with­in the organ

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VABS are also run­ning a series of train­ing events to loc­al Devel­op­ment Trusts, Com­munity Coun­cils and oth­er groups focus­ing on good gov­ernance, pro­ject man­age­ment basics and fin­an­cial reporting.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions

1. Act­ive Cairngorms: Over the past six to nine months we have been work­ing closely with Vis­itScot­land to agree a way for­ward on nation­al fire mes­saging. In the warm­er weeks of late May and June vis­it­or-facing comms from dif­fer­ent part­ners var­ied sig­ni­fic­antly, with dif­fer­ent wild­fire threat levels, vis­it­or advice and core con­tent shared through vari­ous pub­lic sec­tor and part­ner chan­nels. This is in stark con­trast to the oth­er areas of the #Respect­Pro­tec­tEn­joy frame­work and presen­ted a real issue on the ground.

The Head of Comms and col­leagues in Vis­itScot­land have taken for­ward spe­cif­ic con­ver­sa­tions with Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Scot­land and they have now agreed to take a lead on this issue. They will also ensure mater­i­als around fire safety risk are stand­ard­ised and shared with all part­ner agen­cies at the same time, allow­ing us all to take our steer from the same source. Along­side this, we reviewed and updated our vis­it­or man­age­ment mes­saging (see eg this post) ahead of the busy sum­mer sea­son, and developed new ​‘alert’ style graph­ics to high­light spe­cif­ic areas of con­cern, from fires to floods and road closures.

Along­side this, we have been work­ing with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship (through the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject) to help busi­nesses play an act­ive role in encour­aging their cus­tom­ers to enjoy the Nation­al Park respons­ibly. The final con­tent, which was informed by a vis­it­or sur­vey of over 1,000 people and feed­back from 155 busi­nesses / land man­agers, con­sists of tailored social media assets and a series of ​‘explain­er’ videos, fea­tur­ing stan­dup comedi­an and reg­u­lar Cairngorms vis­it­or Ed Byrne. The assets have been shared with over 400 busi­nesses across the Nation­al Park and Cairngorm Busi­ness Part­ner­ship staff will sup­port the roll out of the cam­paign with busi­nesses over the com­ing months.

1. Cairngorms Nature: The Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al required a great deal of comms capa­city but was a real suc­cess, with our cam­paign reach­ing more than 600,000 people (up 200,000 from 2022) and receiv­ing almost 30,000 engage­ments (up 17,000 from 2022). This in turn led to a record attend­ance of nearly 2,000 people across 100 events. As part of the fest­iv­al, we cre­ated mul­tiple posts (see eg our count­down to the fest­iv­al on Face­book) which wove Gael­ic trans­la­tions of nature-themed words into the body of con­tent. Gael­ic assets and post copy was also

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provided in our part­ner toolkit for the event, cir­cu­lated to 63 part­ners across the Nation­al Park.

A con­tent strategy has been cre­ated to sup­port the form­al engage­ment pro­cess on beaver rein­tro­duc­tion, includ­ing video inter­views fea­tur­ing a range of dif­fer­ent per­spect­ives and part­ners. We also col­lab­or­ated with the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject and loc­al busi­ness Bark + Ride on a video – inten­ded to appeal mainly to loc­al dog walk­ers – pro­mot­ing respons­ible ways of enjoy­ing the Nation­al Park with dogs dur­ing breed­ing sea­son. It gen­er­ated over 9,000 views across all chan­nels and was shared widely with­in the loc­al dog-walk­ing community.

1. Pub­lic engage­ment: Park Author­ity staff atten­ded the first of a series of engage­ment events in May, kick­ing off at the Atholl Gath­er­ing. Over the course of the day they spoke to over 200 adults and 70 chil­dren, with dis­plays on our con­ser­va­tion efforts, plan­ning and com­munity activ­ity, along­side seed bomb and a but­ter­fly craft activ­it­ies for kids. Learn­ings from this event helped inform our approach to the Grant­own Show on 10 August (which included beaver engage­ment with farm­ers) and the Lon­ach Gath­er­ing on 26 August. We are also work­ing on a series of drop-in road­show events in com­munit­ies across the Cairngorms, start­ing later in the year.

High­land Pride took place in Inverness on 19 July and the Park Author­ity took a stand for the very first time, high­light­ing our work with LGBT Youth Scot­land on our LGBT Charter and listen­ing to the com­munity on how we can make the Nation­al Park more inclus­ive for every­one. The event was atten­ded by over 2,000 people from across the region and we received really pos­it­ive feed­back, includ­ing from staff of part­ner organ­iz­a­tions who were not present but hope to attend in future years.

In late May we wel­comed Black Scot­tish Adven­tur­ers (BSA) to the Nation­al Park. BSA are a fast-grow­ing com­munity of adven­ture-seekers who are pas­sion­ate about intro­du­cing new people to the out­doors, no mat­ter what their back­ground. Over 90 people (aged five to 65) joined us for a walk up Meall a’Bhuachaille, fol­lowed by food and activ­it­ies at Loch Insh. Many attendees had nev­er been for a walk in the Scot­tish coun­tryside before, let alone head­ing out into the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, so this was a great oppor­tun­ity to show­case our ​‘Park for all’ ini­ti­at­ive. A second BSA vis­it – again sup­por­ted by the Park Author­ity – took place at Glen Tanar on 12 August and was sim­il­arly well attended.

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1. Cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions: Sev­er­al Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have vis­ited the Nation­al Park this sum­mer. These include Tom Arthur MSP, Min­is­ter for Com­munity Wealth and Pub­lic Fin­ance, who came to Grant­own for a roundtable on the pro­posed vis­it­or levy; Lor­na Slater MSP, Min­is­ter for Green Skills, Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy and Biod­iversity, who (amongst oth­er things) launched the new Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund in the Nation­al Park; and Mar­ie Todd MSP, Min­is­ter for Men­tal Health of Scot­land, who is due to vis­it the new out­door demen­tia activ­ity centre at Bad­aguish. The CEO also atten­ded a roundtable with Paul McLen­nan, Min­is­ter for Housing.

Changes to the Con­vener and Vice-Con­vener pos­i­tions were a big focus for our media efforts this quarter, with our over­arch­ing media release sup­por­ted by blogs from Sandy and Xan­der cov­er­ing their respect­ive reflec­tions and hopes for the future. There was also sig­ni­fic­ant interest in our approach to man­aging wild­fires and tack­ling irre­spons­ible camp­ing – par­tic­u­larly in and around Glen­more – and on traffic man­age­ment issues around the edge of Loch Mor­lich (includ­ing from STV and the Press and Journal).

Oth­er media high­lights dur­ing the peri­od include pos­it­ive news from the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject about lek count num­bers, afford­able hous­ing devel­op­ment in Grant­own, £630,000 fund­ing for a new act­ive travel route and the announce­ment of new Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment-appoin­ted board mem­bers, fol­low­ing the dir­ect elec­tions the month before.

We also con­tin­ue to share more per­son­al per­spect­ives from across the Nation­al Park via our Cairngorms Voices plat­form. Over the past couple of months we have fea­tured the work of our Equal­it­ies Advis­ory Pan­el, artist res­id­en­cies at Inshriach Bothy, behind the scenes with a wild­cat keep­er, and one of the farm­ers tak­ing steps towards net zero as part of Cairngorms 2030.

1. Web­site and social media: From an ini­tial long­list of 50 agen­cies (which were judged on cri­ter­ia includ­ing audi­ence insight, access­ib­il­ity, design, sus­tain­ab­il­ity and tech­nic­al expert­ise), we have appoin­ted Fife-based agency Whereverly to deliv­er a new web­site for the Nation­al Park. Whereverly have recently worked on a vis­it­or wel­come app for Loch Lomond, the Scot­tish Islands Pass­port web­site and app, a ​‘Scot­land Starts Here’ web­site for the south of Scot­land and the North Coast 500 and Badenoch: The Story­lands apps. We anti­cip­ate the first phase of the build will take around 12 months, with the con­tract last­ing five years in total. As part of the tender exer­cise, we meas­ured the envir­on­ment­al foot­print of the exist­ing site and will

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be look­ing to sig­ni­fic­antly reduce this as part of the build.

A new Com­mon­place site has been developed to sup­port the work of the plan­ning team and form­a­tion of the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan. As with our oth­er Com­mon­place sites, this site is struc­tured to facil­it­ate engage­ment from the pub­lic and will ini­tially gath­er feed­back via inter­act­ive map, fol­lowed by a series of more detailed ques­tion­naires later on in the year.

Fol­low­ing our vis­it­or wel­come app research pro­ject with the Uni­ver­sity of Edin­burgh – which estab­lished (a.) that there was demand for an app and (b.) which spe­cif­ic func­tions were most import­ant – we are work­ing with col­leagues at Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity, Perth and Kinross and East Lothi­an Coun­cils and the uni­ver­sity to explore a col­lect­ive fund­ing bid for app devel­op­ment, likely in sum­mer 2024.

1. Brand­ing and pub­lic­a­tions: The third issue of Cairn magazine hit door­steps at the end of July. In addi­tion to the usu­al mix of com­munity and con­ser­va­tion news, the magazine fea­tured art­icles about the release of 20 wild­cats by the Sav­ing Wild­cats pro­ject, an intro­duc­tion to our new board mem­bers, an art­icle about the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and an inter­view with Dav­id Toovey, a farm­er who is part of our C2030 net zero farm­ing project.

As part of the brand refresh pro­ject last year, we applied for exten­ded trade­mark pro­tec­tion for the suite of logos over­seen by the Park Author­ity. This includes the main Nation­al Park, Park Author­ity, Vis­it­Cairngorms and ​‘proud to be part of’ logos, as well as the osprey brand­mark on its own. All five trade­marks are now pro­tec­ted for an ini­tial peri­od of 10 years.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development

1. Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning: We are in the pro­cess of con­sult­ing with staff on the Hybrid Work­ing Policy. This fol­lows from the Hybrid Work­ing Approach, which was recently tri­alled for 12 months. The review of the approach iden­ti­fied that it was work­ing well, and most staff are now work­ing in a hybrid way. The default pos­i­tion is being con­firmed as 50% office based:50% home based, with requests for more time home-based requir­ing a pro­cess of applic­a­tion, approv­al and con­tract review. It should be noted that whilst the major­ity of staff are work­ing to the default pos­i­tion, many are access­ing the office more than 50% of their con­trac­tu­al hours. Staff

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num­bers access­ing the office are high, and col­lab­or­a­tion is pos­it­ive. Our IT facil­it­ies have been upgraded and most of our meet­ing rooms are now con­figured to sup­port hybrid meet­ings, in terms of access to screens and noise reduc­tion kit.

1. Staff­ing update: Since June:

   a) Staff who left the organ­isa­tion were: i. Alice Fogg, fixed term con­tract as Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al Intern came to an end. ii. Alaska Stikova, fixed term con­tract as Con­tent Cre­ation Intern came to an end. iii.Stephanie Wade, Plan­ning Officer, left for career devel­op­ment to join anoth­er organisation.

   b) Extern­al appoint­ments, fol­low­ing a com­pet­it­ive extern­al recruit­ment pro­cess were as fol­lows: i. Kath­er­ine Don­nach­ie joined as Plan­ning Officer. ii. Wendy Mitchell joined on a short term con­tract to sup­port the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject Dog Walk­ing Pro­ject. iii.Isla Gra­ham joined as Rap­tor Con­ser­va­tion Officer.

   c) Intern­al recruit­ment: i. Katie Crear appoin­ted to Plan­ning Officer post, job shar­ing with Kath­er­ine Donnachie.

2. Youth Employ­ment:

   a) Graduate/​Internship/​Trainee posts: i. Say­ali Pawar joined as Access and Infra­struc­ture GIS Intern. ii. We are in the pro­cess of recruit­ing a Cli­mate Change Intern, to start in Octo­ber for 3 – 4 months.

3. Equal­it­ies:

   a) The Park Author­ity hos­ted a stand at High­land Pride in Inverness. This was an extremely suc­cess­ful engage­ment event — 5 staff were in attend­ance, each of whom engaged with at least 50 people. Many of the people we engaged with had not exper­i­enced the Park before, so it was a good oppor­tun­ity to share inform­a­tion about the Park. We also attrac­ted sev­er­al poten­tial Volunteer

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Rangers. Vis­it­ors to the stand were asked to pop­u­late a ​“Wish Tree” with sug­ges­tions about what they would like to see or do in the Park, bar­ri­ers to engage­ment and where they would like the Park to be in 2030. Over 60 sug­ges­tions were giv­en, cov­er­ing the need for more vis­ibly ​“safe” space; a Pride event based in the Park; access­ible and reg­u­lar trans­port; more LGBT rep­res­ent­a­tion dur­ing activities.

b) The part­ner­ship with Black Pro­fes­sion­als Scot­land is going from strength to strength, with a part­ner­ship video recently launched to pro­mote the part­ner­ship, and sup­port with pro­mot­ing recruit­ment oppor­tun­it­ies both to the CNPA Board and the Equal­ity Advis­ory Panel.

c) We had a suc­cess­ful recruit­ment cam­paign for the Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el and will be inter­view­ing sev­er­al can­did­ates for this volun­teer oppor­tun­ity. We hope to wel­come 4 or 5 new mem­bers to the Septem­ber meeting.

1. Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment: The High level Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy (ODS) has been agreed, with the over­arch­ing vis­ion as being ​“The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity will be an organ­isa­tion that involves all our staff in devel­op­ing our goals, tar­gets, pro­cesses and strategies; cel­eb­rates what we do well, both at an organ­isa­tion­al and indi­vidu­al level; inspires and enables out­stand­ing per­form­ance; and sup­ports our staff to achieve excel­lence in their work, their beha­viour and their rela­tion­ships with each oth­er. This will help us to achieve our ambi­tion to be the best small pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tion in Scotland”.

2. The ODS has iden­ti­fied sev­er­al themes, and work­ing groups have been formed, com­pris­ing staff across teams, con­tracts (per­man­ent and fixed term) and grades, to devel­op the action plan for the themes. The themes are focussed around: Infrastructure(IT and Facil­it­ies); Inform­a­tion and Data sys­tems; Staff Skills and Devel­op­ment; Staff Resi­li­ence and Well­being; Val­ues and Cul­ture; Communications.

3. Fin­ance: We are in the pro­cess of draft­ing the Annu­al Report and Accounts for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ in pre­par­a­tion for the annu­al audit, which is sched­uled for Octo­ber / Novem­ber. Indic­a­tions of the final pos­i­tion for the year is of an under­spend, reflect­ing the deliv­ery of peat­land res­tor­a­tion tar­gets at a lower than anti­cip­ated cost.

As we pro­gress through the first six months of ²⁰²³⁄₂₄, The Fin­ance Team are work­ing with Heads of Ser­vice on reg­u­lar mon­it­or­ing and report­ing of spend, fin­an­cial com­mit­ments, con­trac­ted expendit­ure and budget changes. At the end of June, we had com­mit­ted £1,621k towards the oper­a­tion­al plan – actu­al spend of

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£181k togeth­er with leg­al com­mit­ments of £1,440k. This rep­res­ents 24% of planned investment.

Grant Moir August 2023

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Con­vener Update

1. Min­is­teri­al Vis­it: We were delighted to wel­come Lor­na Slater MSP, the Min­is­ter for Green Skills, Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy and Biod­iversity, for a vis­it in August which covered a wide range of loc­a­tions and top­ics includ­ing vis­it­or man­age­ment, caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion, pub­lic health and the out­doors, and the chal­lenges around effect­ive deer management.

   The Min­is­ter was briefed on the pro­gress of the latest pub­lic con­sulta­tion on the rein­tro­duc­tion of beavers to the Cairngorms, and the crit­ic­al issue of afford­able hous­ing for the future of our com­munit­ies and the deliv­ery of Gov­ern­ment objectives.

   Dur­ing her vis­it, the Min­is­ter announced £300,000 of fund­ing to sup­port our eco­lo­gic­al res­tor­a­tion and spe­cies recov­ery pro­jects as part of the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund.

2. Vis­it­or Levy: I chaired a meet­ing of loc­al author­ity, private-sec­tor and oth­er stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss the implic­a­tions of the pro­posed vis­it­or levy, at which the Min­is­ter for Com­munity Wealth and Pub­lic Fin­ance, Tom Arthur MSP, respon­ded to con­cerns and expres­sions of hope about what a levy could mean for the fur­ther devel­op­ment of vis­it­or exper­i­ence in the Nation­al Park.
3. Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice Response: Fol­low­ing earli­er dis­cus­sion by the Board, I wrote to the Chief Officer of the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice (SFRS), express­ing our ser­i­ous con­cerns about the poten­tial effects of SFRS fund­ing cuts on the service’s abil­ity to fight wild­fires in the Nation­al Park. He respon­ded, insist­ing that resources were appro­pri­ate and that cur­rent arrange­ments ensured flex­ib­il­ity of response.
4. Wild­fires Dis­cus­sion: Along with oth­er Board mem­bers, I met with rep­res­ent­at­ives of Forestry and Land Scot­land (FLS) and com­munity groups at Loch Mor­lich beach, ques­tioned the level of Ranger resource provided by FLS as land man­agers there, gave assur­ances that the Board was determ­ined to enhance stra­tegic solu­tions to respond to the threat of wild­fires bey­ond cur­rent meas­ures, and that the com­munity would be con­sul­ted on any options involving pro­posed restrictions.
5. Busi­ness Rela­tion­ships: I had an early meet­ing with the Chief Exec­ut­ive of the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship to dis­cuss devel­op­ing fur­ther our working

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rela­tion­ship, to be fol­lowed by a meet­ing with the Chair and Chief Exec­ut­ive in September.

1. Beaver Rein­tro­duc­tion: As part of the pub­lic con­sulta­tion on beaver rein­tro­duc­tion, I met with farm­ers and anglers at an engage­ment ses­sion at the Nethy Bridge Hotel, listened to con­cerns about poten­tial impacts, and dis­cussed the range of mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures which could be applied if neces­sary. I also vis­ited an area where farm­ers have expressed con­cern about the pos­sible impact on land use. Rep­res­ent­at­ives of both groups expressed sat­is­fac­tion that the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity was the body tak­ing the lead on the applic­a­tion of this aspect of Gov­ern­ment policy.
2. Pub­lic Events: I atten­ded the Grant­own Show and the Lon­ach Gath­er­ing, meet­ing a wide range of stake­hold­ers. I had con­struct­ive dis­cus­sions with a num­ber of loc­al and nation­al politi­cians includ­ing Edward Moun­tain MSP and Fer­gus Ewing MSP.
3. Youth Action Team: I met with attendees of the Youth Cli­mate Camp at Bad­aguish. The event show­cased inspir­a­tion­al loc­al pro­jects fun­ded by the Youth LAG. It also helped lay the ground­work for upcom­ing youth events at the Euro­parc con­fer­ence in Octo­ber and the Scot­tish Rur­al Youth par­lia­ment which will involve the Cairngorms Youth Action team at Fort Wil­li­am in November.
4. Wider Engage­ment: As part of my com­mit­ment to engage with stake­hold­ers across the Park, I accep­ted invit­a­tions to meet the factors of two major estates, and a lead­ing blog­ger on Nation­al Park issues, listen­ing to con­cerns, explain­ing our pri­or­it­ies, and explor­ing oppor­tun­it­ies to find com­mon ground to fur­ther our priorities.

Sandy Brem­ner August, 2023