Annex 1 — Per­form­ance Report Extract from draft ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ Annu­al Report and Accounts

Fin­an­cial Per­form­ance Summary

1. This sec­tion provides a sum­mary of the Park Authority’s fin­an­cial per­form­ance for the year against the Board approved budget and grant-in-aid awar­ded by the Scot­tish Government.

2. The Park Author­ity is expec­ted to man­age its budget in accord­ance with its Fin­an­cial Memor­andum and the Scot­tish Pub­lic Fin­ance Manu­als, and to deliv­er an out­turn for the fin­an­cial year with­in Scot­tish Government’s budget lim­its. The com­ment­ary and tables below show how the budgets agreed by the Board have been applied dur­ing the year with com­par­is­ons to pre­vi­ous years’ income and expenditure.

Income

1. The main source of our fund­ing for the year was grant-in-aid fund­ing from our spon­sor­ing body, the Envir­on­ment and Forestry Dir­ect­or­ate, Nat­ur­al Resources Divi­sion, of the Scot­tish Government.

2. We also acted as Account­able Body for the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF) sup­port­ing sig­ni­fic­ant ongo­ing pro­jects: the deliv­ery phase of the Caper­cail­lie Frame­work and the devel­op­ment phase of the Her­it­age Hori­zons Cairngorms 2030 Pro­ject (Her­it­age Horizons).

3. The grant-in-aid set­tle­ment rep­res­ents an agreed budget with our spon­sor­ing depart­ment with an agreed level of fund­ing sup­port rep­res­ent­ing the Park Authority’s alloc­a­tions of Depart­ment­al Expendit­ure Lim­its (DEL) which cov­ers all expendit­ure net of income from all oth­er sources. DEL is fur­ther split between cash alloc­a­tions to meet oper­a­tion­al cost (resource or RDEL) and cap­it­al expendit­ure (cap­it­al or CDEL) and non-cash alloc­a­tions. The non-cash alloc­a­tion cov­ers depre­ci­ation and impair­ment of non-cur­rent assets, which are cap­it­al­ised tan­gible and intan­gible assets and now include, fol­low­ing the intro­duc­tion of IFRS 16, right-of-use assets (rent­al prop­er­ties, leased vehicles and leased office equip­ment) car­ried in the State­ment of Fin­an­cial Pos­i­tion at the year end.

4. The grant-in-aid set­tle­ment for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ was again favour­able and increased in total by £1.671m with uplifts for both peat­land res­tor­a­tion cap­it­al increase of £0.806m (though an increase of £1.732m was ori­gin­ally offered and reflec­ted in the budget) and a cap­it­al increase of £0.178m for con­ser­va­tion, spe­cific­ally for nature biod­iversity and recov­ery. Fund­ing received in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ to reduce the impact of COVID19 on activ­it­ies with­in the Park (£0.5m) was not provided again in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. How­ever, an addi­tion­al £0.5m was received to sup­port vis­it­or man­age­ment in the Park.

5. The fol­low­ing income and expendit­ure account provides a sum­mary of our actu­al fin­an­cial per­form­ance, cash and non-cash, for the year against the final budget. This final budget equates to the ori­gin­al budget, presen­ted to the Board on 25 March 2022, with the addi­tion of a £0.350m cap­it­al grant for nature recovery.

Income and expenditure

	Out­turn £’000	Budget £’000	Vari­ance £’000
Income
Grant-in-aid Resource funding	7,472	7,472	-
Grant-in-aid Cap­it­al fund­ing general	600	600	-
Grant-in-aid Cap­it­al fund­ing peat­land recovery	2,214	2,962	(748)
Grant-in-aid Cap­it­al fund­ing nature recovery	350	350	-
	10,636	11,384	(748)
Oth­er gen­er­ated income*	898	182	716
Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD)	366	-	(366)
Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie project	474	915	(441)
Her­it­age Horizons***	1,031	2,753	(1,722)
	2,769	3,850	(1,081)
Total income	13,405	15,234	(1,829)
Expendit­ure
Staff and board costs**	5,071	4,624	447
Run­ning costs	796	809	(13)
Oper­a­tion­al plan costs	2,818	2,834	(16)
Peat­land cap­it­al spend	1,945	2,962	(1,017)
Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD)	366	-	366
Nature Recov­ery cap­it­al spend	348	350	(2)
Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie project	474	915	(441)
Her­it­age Horizons***	1,031	2,753	(1,722)
Total expendit­ure	12,849	15,247	(2,398)
Surplus/(deficit) on cash activities	556	(13)	569
Depre­ci­ation (non-cash)	321	-	321
Out­turn taken to Tax­pay­ers’ reserves	235	(13)	248

includes pro­ject staff costs recovered includes pro­ject staff costs some income / expendit­ure phased repro­filed into ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ with exten­sion of devel­op­ment phase activ­it­ies to August 2023; some act­ive travel activ­ity repro­filed into deliv­ery phase; small under­spend in some pro­ject elements.

1. Income from all oth­er sources, primar­ily part­ner fund­ing, also increased over that received in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. Pro­ject income increase by £1.313m, with ongo­ing pro­jects (Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie and Her­it­age Hori­zons) gain­ing momentum after the dis­rup­tion caused by COVID19 in the pri­or year, and increased activ­ity in the devel­op­ment phase of the Her­it­age Hori­zon pro­ject. How­ever, expendit­ure against this income was not at the level anti­cip­ated when the budget was set.

2. Over­all total income has grown by 158% in total since ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀, with grant-in-aid grow­ing by 214%, as is shown by the graph below:

1. The sources of oth­er gen­er­ated income are vari­able depend­ing on the pro­gress of pro­jects dur­ing a fin­an­cial year and changes to the emphas­is and object­ives in the cor­por­ate plan. For the four years since ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀, the split of the income, includ­ing com­pleted pro­jects, sig­ni­fic­ant ongo­ing pro­jects and oper­a­tion­al plan activ­ity is:

1. Income from oper­a­tion­al plan activ­it­ies has con­sist­ently reduced over the peri­od reflect­ing the change in emphas­is towards sig­ni­fic­ant ongo­ing pro­jects sup­por­ted by the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund, and the realign­ment of object­ives in this trans­ition­al year (before the next Park Part­ner­ship Plan) and towards Cairngorms 2030.

2. The LEAD­ER pro­gramme has been replaced by the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment fun­ded Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) pro­gramme, which com­menced dur­ing the year and the res­ults of which are included in oper­a­tion­al and oth­er gen­er­ated out­come totals. While the Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship closed in ²¹⁄₂₂ there is a five-year man­age­ment and main­ten­ance peri­od end­ing in early ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇, with min­im­al spend in the year. The deliv­ery phase of the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie pro­ject will end in ²⁰²³⁄₂₄, as does the devel­op­ment phase of the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­ject. From min­im­al spend in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ the spend and matched recov­ery for Her­it­age Hori­zons in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ was £1.03m.

Oper­at­ing expenditure

1. Over­all, the increase in income is matched by an increase in expendit­ure, irre­spect­ive of source.

1. Staff costs, includ­ing Board fees, net of recov­er­ies, accoun­ted for 33% of total income (2021÷22 35.4%). As a per­cent­age of the grant-in-aid received this was 41.6% (2021÷22 41.1%).

2. By agree­ment, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment reduced resource grant-in-aid in the autumn of 2022 by £0.117m to assist in meet­ing con­tin­ued fin­an­cial pres­sures. This reduc­tion was sub­sequently reversed, and while we were able to util­ise this late fund­ing adjust­ment, unfor­tu­nately we were not able to com­mit it fully, res­ult­ing in a small resource sur­plus for the year of £0.018m.

3. While the Park Author­ity achieved the peat­land res­tor­a­tion deliv­ery tar­get for the year in terms of hec­tares of peat­land restored, we were unable to util­ise the full cap­it­al award drawn down for peat­land recov­ery as a con­sequence of the mix of works tendered being more straight­for­ward and less expens­ive that first expec­ted. This res­ul­ted in a sub­stan­tial cap­it­al under­spend on the peat­land award of £0.269m.

Non-cash

1. A non-cash budget of £0.510m was alloc­ated by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ (21÷22 £0.340m) to cov­er depre­ci­ation of cap­it­al­ised intan­gible and tan­gible assets and right-of-use assets.

Recon­cili­ation of cash spend surplus

	£’000
Sur­plus on cash activities	556
Cap­it­al­ised tan­gible, intan­gible and right of use assets	(267)
Actu­al cash surplus	289
Rep­res­en­ted by
Under­spend on Peat­land recov­ery cap­it­al grant	269
Under­spend on resource grant	18
Under­spend on nature recov­ery cap­it­al grant	2
Trans­fer to Taxpayer’s funds	289

1. We are trans­fer­ring £0.235m for the year (2022: £0.106m) to Tax­pay­ers’ equity, sum­mar­ised in the table below, which is con­sidered anoth­er excel­lent outturn.

	£,000
Total cash grant-in-aid received	10,636
Less net expenditure	(10,080)
Less depre­ci­ation	(321)
Trans­fer for year to Tax­pay­ers’ Equity	235

20 years on…

1. The report and accounts for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ are the 20 since the estab­lish­ment of the Park Author­ity. The estab­lish­ment date was 25 March 2003 with the Park Author­ity becom­ing fully oper­a­tion­al, tak­ing on all its stat­utory powers, on 1 Septem­ber 2003.

2. Total income in the first year was £1.927m and is now £13.405m.

1. Total expendit­ure in the first year was £1,915m and is now £13.170m.

1. In the 20 years since its estab­lish­ment, £126.75m has been inves­ted in the Park (£102.91m from grant-in-aid and £23.84m from all oth­er sources).

2. Staff num­bers have grown from 35 (noted in the accounts at 31 March 2003) to 111. Of those 35, sev­en, includ­ing one Dir­ect­or, remain in post. One of the ori­gin­al board mem­bers has served con­tinu­ously through­out the two dec­ades and one of the ori­gin­al staff mem­bers joined the Board in Septem­ber 2023.

3. The suc­cess and achieve­ments of the Park Author­ity, its part­ners and staff will be cel­eb­rated through­out ²⁰²³⁄₂₄.

Changes in non-cur­rent assets

1. Move­ments in non-cur­rent assets are shown in notes 9 and 10.

Char­it­able donations

1. There were no char­it­able dona­tions made in the year or in the pre­vi­ous year.

Rela­tion­ship with sup­pli­ers and partners

1. Our sup­pli­er pay­ment policy com­plies with the terms of the Bet­ter Pay­ment Prac­tice Code. Dur­ing the year to 31 March 2023, the time taken to pay cred­it­ors achieved an aver­age of 9.11 days (2022: 9.07 days) against a tar­get of 10 days (2022: 10 days), with 73.16% (2022: 67.4%) of pay­ments being made by the tar­get date.

Anti-bribery and corruption

1. The Park Author­ity has adop­ted a zero-tol­er­ance policy against, fraud, bribery and cor­rup­tion reflec­ted in clear policies on con­duct expec­ted from staff and on hospitality.

2. Dur­ing the year a cyber-based fraud was iden­ti­fied, which res­ul­ted in a fin­an­cial loss of £15,665. Once the fraud was iden­ti­fied all bank trans­ac­tions were paused and only recom­menced fol­low­ing an intern­al invest­ig­a­tion and revi­sion of policies and pro­ced­ures. There were no reports of fraud in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂.

Min­is­teri­al Direction

1. There were no min­is­teri­al dir­ec­tions received from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃.

Oper­at­ing Per­form­ance Summary

1. As set out in the pre­lim­in­ary sec­tions of this report, the Park Author­ity has made sig­ni­fic­ant, pos­it­ive pro­gress in the real­isa­tion of our stra­tegic object­ives in this inter­im year between the four-year Cor­por­ate Plans for 2018 – 22 and 2023 – 2027.

2. The Park Authority’s Board receives quarterly updates from the Chief Exec­ut­ive on activ­it­ies and per­form­ance to sup­ple­ment the cor­por­ate per­form­ance reports linked above.

3. All quarterly update reports are pub­lished on our web­site to allow ongo­ing, open pub­lic aware­ness of the work of the Park Author­ity. We have dis­tilled the key high­lights and out­stand­ing issues in our deliv­ery of our stra­tegic aims in the fol­low­ing sec­tions of this Annu­al Report.

²⁰²²⁄₂₃ Activ­ity Highlights

Nature and Cli­mate Change

1. Wood­land expan­sion: Our wood­land expan­sion tar­get of 5,000 ha over a five-year peri­od was met, with the approv­al of 5,195 ha of new wood­land by July 2022 – 43% of this expan­sion was delivered through nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion, of which 96% con­sisted of nat­ive spe­cies. Our deliv­ery through sup­port­ing the Forestry Grant Scheme and our Wood­land Chal­lenge Fund­ing con­tin­ued, with sig­ni­fic­ant interest com­ing from land man­agers in wood­land expan­sion fund­ing, com­ple­men­ted by wider action on deer management.

2. Cairngorms Nature Action Plan: The Cairngorms Nature Action Plan (2019 – 2024) is delivered by a wide range of part­ners includ­ing Non-Gov­ern­ment­al Organ­isa­tion (NGOs), land man­agers, aca­dem­ic and pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tions. Pro­gress towards the three main aims of land­scape-scale con­ser­va­tion, action for pri­or­ity spe­cies and involving people is over­seen by the Cairngorms Nature Strategy Group.

3. Peat­land res­tor­a­tion: Cap­it­al fund­ing in grant awards to land man­agers for peat­land res­tor­a­tion totalled £1.945m. 15 pro­jects were com­pleted in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃, com­pris­ing an estim­ated 1,080 ha of peat­land brought into res­tor­a­tion. This exceeds the tar­get of 905 ha, and the achieve­ment of more than 1,000 ha brought into res­tor­a­tion in a single year is a not­able mile­stone for Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority.

4. Nature res­tor­a­tion: The Park Author­ity con­tin­ues to sup­port and encour­age coordin­a­tion between Catch­ment Man­age­ment Part­ner­ships on the Spey, Dee and Esk. These part­ner­ships have been suc­cess­ful in attract­ing over £0.5 m from the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund towards the design, deliv­ery and mon­it­or­ing of fresh­wa­ter res­tor­a­tion in the Park.

We con­tin­ue to work with a wide range of part­ners on our stra­tegic object­ive to elim­in­ate rap­tor per­se­cu­tion and devel­op wild­life tour­ism pro­ject around rap­tors. How­ever, this aspect of our work con­tin­ues to be high­lighted as an escal­ated risk in our deliv­ery. New approaches to tag­ging rap­tors are being tri­alled along with our partners.

Sig­ni­fic­ant work has taken place 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 res­id­ents via drop-in ses­sions in communities.

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.

The Park Author­ity con­tin­ues to act as lead account­able body for the part­ner­ship deliv­er­ing the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject, and through this work fun­ded by Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF) con­trib­utes to the deliv­ery of the Caper­cail­lie Frame­work. Caper­cail­lie hab­it­ats are hybrid spaces where people and nature coex­ist. Involving people to secure wider own­er­ship of solu­tions and treat­ing con­ser­va­tion as a socio-eco­nom­ic issue as well as an eco­lo­gic­al one is now crit­ic­al to pre­vent extinc­tion in Scot­land. The pro­ject com­ple­ments the ongo­ing, eco­lo­gic­ally focussed work being done by agen­cies and organ­isa­tions with a people focussed approach, empower­ing com­munit­ies of place and interest to devel­op and take own­er­ship for their own ideas as to how they can play their part in caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion. Our cur­rent assess­ment of the con­tri­bu­tion tar­geted by work in the Cairngorms on caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion sug­gests caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion num­bers are unlikely to be met and is now flagged as a red rated risk in our cor­por­ate per­form­ance frame­work. Full nation­al sur­vey res­ults are due in 2022 but oth­er sur­veys sug­gest pop­u­la­tion has declined ser­i­ously from the 1,100 birds estim­ated 2016.

Our work with Deer Man­age­ment Groups (DMGs) to deliv­er pub­lic interest pri­or­it­ies has con­tin­ued. Stra­tegic Land Use Plans for three DMGs in the Park.

have been presen­ted for con­sid­er­a­tion, with the aim of devel­op­ing deliv­ery plans based around how estates can bene­fit from nat­ur­al capital.

People

1. Paths and Long-dis­tance Routes: Sub­stan­tial new path works have been com­pleted on the Spey­side Way, includ­ing those in Anagach Woods, and a new com­munity led sec­tion at Kin­craig which the Park Author­ity sup­por­ted. Access issues are being addressed with the replace­ment of ​“ram­bler” style gates with more access­ible ones. The Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land con­sidered revised design options for the re-rout­ing of the Brae­mar to Kei­loch Path; this path is inten­ded to be built dur­ing ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ and will form part of the exten­ded Deeside Way in due course.

2. Ranger Ser­vices: The Park Author­ity Rangers 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 bike trail at Lag­gan Wolftrax, refur­bish­ment of Burn­field Toi­lets in Grant­own with motorhome waste dis­pos­al facil­it­ies, 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 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.

5. 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.

6. 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 were held to get com­munity feed­back on the ideas put for­ward with those in remain­ing areas due to be held in April / May. Draft reports on the Act­ive Travel net­work plan, E‑bike plan and the Deeside Act­ive and sus­tain­able Trans­port plan have been received. 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.

Place

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan: Fol­low­ing adop­tion of the Cairngorms Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (LDP) 2021 in March 2021 the Park Author­ity has been car­ry­ing out a two-year mon­it­or­ing exer­cise and will report on this in Septem­ber 2023. The Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 came into force on 13 Feb­ru­ary 2023 and is a now form­al part of the devel­op­ment plan. Work has begun on pre­par­ing the evid­ence report for the next LDP.

2. 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 liais­on con­tin­ues with those com­munit­ies who are devel­op­ing com­munity-led hous­ing pro­jects. 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.

3. Well­being Eco­nomy Pro­ject and Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group: Engage­ment events and online work­shops were held dur­ing the year, as part of our work, in Part­ner­ship with Well­being Alli­ance (WEAII) Scot­land, towards devel­op­ment of corner­stone and busi­ness indic­at­ors. Find­ings were presen­ted to the Well­being Eco­nomy Work­ing Group and Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group in Decem­ber. This work is cru­cial in devel­op­ing the Well­being Eco­nomy Action Plan in 2023. The key themes iden­ti­fied include Trans­port, Com­munity, Health, Nature, Skills and Business.

4. 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.

5. Com­mu­nic­a­tions and engage­ment: Com­mu­nic­at­ing with res­id­ents, vis­it­ors, land man­agers, busi­nesses and oth­er stake­hold­ers is vital for the work of the Park Author­ity and for the wider repu­ta­tion of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. It sup­ports the work being under­taken across the organ­isa­tion to deliv­er on the Nature and cli­mate, People and Place object­ives set out in our Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.

Our role is to raise the pro­file of the Nation­al Park and cre­ate a con­nec­tion and com­mit­ment to care for it with iden­ti­fied audi­ences, so they act­ively sup­port the Nation­al Park and bene­fit from doing so. In par­tic­u­lar, we deliv­er com­mu­nic­a­tions cam­paigns and activ­ity that encour­age audi­ences to adapt their beha­viour and help the Nation­al Park achieve its net zero targets.

1. Pri­or­it­ies:

• Deliv­er the Com­mu­nic­a­tion and Engage­ment Strategy and increase aware­ness, engage­ment and involve­ment with the Nation­al Park.

• Engage a wide range of stake­hold­ers in the work of the Nation­al Park and Park Author­ity, ensur­ing they have a voice and that their pri­or­it­ies are reflec­ted in the mater­i­als we produce.

• Coordin­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions and engage­ment activ­ity for Cairngorms 2030, ensur­ing that this five-year, Lot­tery-fun­ded pro­gramme deliv­ers on its stated out­comes and engages iden­ti­fied tar­get audiences.

• Deliv­er and sup­port activ­ity that ensures that every­one no mat­ter who they are, where they come from, what their beliefs or their needs are is wel­come in the Nation­al Park. This includes widen­ing par­ti­cip­a­tion from a range of under-rep­res­en­ted groups for whom spe­cif­ic bar­ri­ers to engage­ment exist.

• Ensure high-qual­ity intern­al com­mu­nic­a­tions that help deliv­er the key pri­or­it­ies of the Cor­por­ate Plan.

Cor­por­ate Services

1. Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment (OD) Strategy: Over the last 12 months, the Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment (OD) Strategy has focussed on sup­port­ing staff through the changed work­ing envir­on­ment that the pan­dem­ic promp­ted, around hybrid work­ing and hot desk­ing, and ensur­ing staff wel­fare in this work­ing envir­on­ment. Going for­ward, an OD Pro­gramme Board has now been estab­lished to coordin­ate the devel­op­ment of revised Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy dur­ing ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ on the basis of sev­er­al staff sur­veys, drop-in ses­sions, and col­lab­or­at­ive feed­back oppor­tun­it­ies that have been imple­men­ted over the last year. Key themes for the OD strategy that have emerged from this col­lect­ive feed­back are around Infra­struc­ture, Data Man­age­ment, Staff Skills, Staff Resi­li­ence and Well­being; Organ­isa­tion­al Cul­ture and Val­ues, Intern­al communication.

2. Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um: Our Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um con­tin­ues to work effect­ively, and oper­ated through­out the last year. This has remained a very valu­able con­duit for staff con­sulta­tion which has com­ple­men­ted drop-in ses­sions for all staff where dir­ect con­ver­sa­tions have been held on any ques­tions or ideas offered by all staff.

3. Shared ser­vices: We have worked col­lab­or­at­ively with our col­leagues at Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity over a num­ber of years, shar­ing both expert­ise and resources. ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ saw a renewed com­mit­ment to this part­ner­ship, with the aim of devel­op­ing fur­ther resi­li­ence in our respect­ive IT pro­vi­sions, shar­ing expert­ise in organ­isa­tion­al devel­op­ment and find­ing effi­cien­cies to the bene­fit of both organ­isa­tions and the wider pub­lic sec­tor. We con­tin­ue to work on the devel­op­ment of a shared GIS pro­vi­sion, a pro­ject that will bring to full col­lab­or­a­tion dur­ing ²⁰²³⁄₂₄.

The Park Author­ity also provides shared ser­vices to oth­er organ­isa­tions and groups, in par­tic­u­lar con­tinu­ing to provide HR advice and sup­port to the Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion and facil­it­ies sup­port to a range of com­munity part­ners in their deliv­ery of NPPP and com­munity devel­op­ment objectives.

1. Inform­a­tion Tech­no­logy and Cyber Secur­ity: Fol­low­ing the major modi­fic­a­tion of our IT infra­struc­ture over the course of the past two years, ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ has seen the organ­isa­tion con­sol­id­ate the bene­fits of a hybrid work­ing envir­on­ment. Cyber secur­ity remains a high pri­or­ity, with par­tic­u­lar atten­tion giv­en to redu­cing the risks inher­ent in the trans­ition to cloud com­put­ing structures.

2. Audit: Our intern­al and extern­al audit review pro­cesses con­tin­ue to con­firm the effect­ive­ness and effi­ciency of our man­age­ment and con­trol sys­tems in our deliv­ery of effect­ive and effi­cient man­age­ment and con­trol systems.

3. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity and cli­mate change: The Park Author­ity con­tin­ues to refine our intern­al mon­it­or­ing meth­od­o­logy and par­ti­cip­ate in the nation­al mod­el estab­lished by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment for report­ing on car­bon emis­sions gen­er­ated through our busi­ness activ­it­ies. Emis­sions for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ were cal­cu­lated at 58 estim­ated tonnes of CO2 (tCO2e), a reduc­tion of 91 tCO2e (more than 60%) against our baseline year (2007÷08). The most sig­ni­fic­ant con­trib­ut­or to these emis­sions is that gen­er­ated from busi­ness mileage, and we are man­aging this by increas­ing the pro­por­tion of hybrid and fully elec­tric vehicles in our fleet.

4. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity and cli­mate change remain key under­ly­ing themes with­in our Cor­por­ate Plan and also with­in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, under­pin­ning the stra­tegic work of the Park Author­ity and all its part­ners in the Nation­al Park. It is an object­ive of the Part­ner­ship Plan to ensure that the Cairngorms Nation­al Park reaches Net Zero as soon as pos­sible and con­trib­utes all it can to help­ing Scot­land to meet its Net Zero com­mit­ments. To this end, the Park Author­ity will work with part­ners includ­ing the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment to estab­lish a Com­munity Cli­mate Action Hub. We will mon­it­or and report on the organisation’s pro­gress towards the achieve­ment of Net Zero, and lead on empower­ing indi­vidu­al con­tri­bu­tion to our Net Zero ambitions.