240322CNPABdPaper1CEOReport

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 1 22 March 2024 Page 1 of 18

For inform­a­tion Title: CEO Report and Con­vener Update Pre­pared by: Grant Moir, Chief Executive

Pur­pose 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. Farm­ing — The first meet­ing of the Cairngorms Agri­cul­tur­al Advis­ory Group was held on Tues­day 5 March. Mem­bers of the group have a rep­res­ent­at­ive role from agen­cies and organ­isa­tions involved in agri­cul­ture and from the farm­ing and croft­ing com­munity across the whole Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The group’s focus will be on facil­it­at­ing good engage­ment and inform­a­tion flow, provid­ing advice and guid­ance on Park Author­ity plans and polices, and col­lab­or­at­ing on deliv­ery of Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan object­ives. It was agreed to recon­fig­ure the cur­rent beaver group to move from being a group set up to plan for beaver rein­tro­duc­tion to a prac­tic­al, adapt­ive man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion on-the-ground group.
2. Land­scape-scale part­ner­ships: The Park Author­ity, in col­lab­or­a­tion with part­ner agen­cies, organ­isa­tions and com­munity rep­res­ent­at­ives, is coordin­at­ing a Dee Resi­li­ence Plan. The Plan will inform man­age­ment at a land­scape scale across the mul­tiple, inter-related object­ives of water qual­ity, flow, flood resi­li­ence, abstrac­tion, improv­ing nat­ur­al cap­it­al and eco­sys­tem ser­vices, res­tor­a­tion and improv­ing biod­iversity, and spe­cies con­ser­va­tion. The Plan will con­sider the costs and rel­at­ive impacts of dif­fer­ent nature-based and engin­eered inter­ven­tions and sup­port decision mak­ing as to where to best con­cen­trate resource and effort to deliv­er max­im­um benefit.
3. Moor­land man­age­ment: Fol­low­ing Stage 2, the Wild­life Man­age­ment and Muir­burn Bill includes a power to add addi­tion­al gamebird spe­cies to the licence and there is likely to be a rap­tor mon­it­or­ing require­ment. It is pro­posed that the muir­burn sea­son will now run from 15 Septem­ber to 31 March, a change from the cur­rent 1 Octo­ber to

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 1 22 March 2024 Page 2 of 18

15 or 30 April, and peat depth is defined as being more than 40cm. The East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship is host­ing a vis­it from NatureScot and Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment col­leagues to look at how a meth­od­o­logy for meas­ur­ing peat depth might work in prac­tice. The final Act will be backed up by two Codes of Prac­tice: one on Muir­burn and anoth­er on Grouse Moor Man­age­ment. The Codes will be developed by NatureScot involving two work­ing groups. The Park Author­ity is rep­res­en­ted on both groups.

1. Integ­rated Fire Man­age­ment Plan: Park Author­ity staff have con­sul­ted widely with land man­agers, prac­ti­tion­ers and agen­cies involved in fire man­age­ment, agree­ing a struc­ture for the Integ­rated Fore Man­age­ment Plan. The Plan will com­prise three main ele­ments: pre­ven­tion, response and increas­ing resi­li­ence in a chan­ging land­scape. The Plan will be draf­ted by the end Autumn for fur­ther input from stake­hold­ers and sub­sequent present­a­tion at the Wild­fire Con­fer­ence in November.

2. Wood­land Expan­sion: Approx­im­ately 2,800ha of new wood­land were approved in the Nation­al Park in ²⁰²³⁄₂₄. This is a sig­ni­fic­ant upward move­ment from the approx. 400ha that were approved in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. How­ever, reduc­tions to the Forest Grant Scheme of approx­im­ately 40% in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ are likely to have a sig­ni­fic­ant impact on wood­land expan­sion in future. Park Author­ity staff are work­ing closely with Scot­tish Forestry and rep­res­ent­at­ives from CON­FOR to identi­fy how the Wood­land Chal­lenge Fund and staff resource can help unblock some of the bar­ri­ers to applications.

3. Spe­cies recovery:

a) Beaver — The latest planned release at Insh Marshes took place on Monday 4 March and beavers have star­ted estab­lish­ing a ter­rit­ory with a lodge in close prox­im­ity to the release site. Site mon­it­or­ing con­tin­ues, demon­strat­ing no changes in loc­a­tion or activ­ity from the ini­tial release sites. Pro­act­ive mit­ig­a­tion con­tin­ues, with pro­tec­tion of spe­cial­ist trees near Insh Marshes release sites com­pleted. The second phase of the flood bank sur­vey is under­way, cov­er­ing from Aviemore to the Spey dam. The sur­vey is done in col­lab­or­a­tion with land man­agers and is being very well received. b) Caper­cail­lie – The Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund fun­ded Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie pro­ject is in the leg­acy plan­ning phase, work­ing with com­munit­ies, agen­cies, and land man­agers in ensur­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity of areas of work. Leg­acy work is under­pinned by the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan, sched­uled for com­ple­tion by June, when the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund pro­ject form­ally ends. Ongoing

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 1 22 March 2024 Page 3 of 18

activ­ity is focussed on a scaled-up approach to diver­sion­ary feed­ing and work with the bird­watch­ing com­munity and with dog walk­ers to reduce dis­turb­ance this breed­ing season.

Vis­it­or Ser­vice and Act­ive Travel

1. Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan: Staff are pro­gress­ing the spa­tial plan for man­aging recre­ation­al impacts on sens­it­ive spe­cies and hab­it­ats. Cur­rently this includes audit­ing what exist­ing vis­it­or man­age­ment meas­ures are in place at sens­it­ive sites and identi­fy­ing ​“quick wins” to take for­ward in 2024.

2. Paths and Long-dis­tance Routes:

a) Spey­side Way – A sig­ni­fic­ant sur­face upgrade pro­ject is under­way on a pop­u­lar sec­tion of the route near Aviemore, namely between Dou­gal Drive and the junc­tion with Nation­al Cycle Route 7. The pro­ject will imple­ment a full re-sur­face of the path along with rein­state­ment of the ori­gin­al path width, re-grad­ing of sub­base and drain­age improve­ments. b) Com­munity Paths

i. Brae­mar to Kei­loch Path- Plan­ning per­mis­sion has been gran­ted for the middle sec­tion of the new path. Out­door Access Trust Scot­land, Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil and the Park Author­ity have agreed revised costs with the con­tract­or. A start date has yet to be final­ised. ii. The recre­ation and access team in col­lab­or­a­tion with the Ranger Team have under­taken detailed path inspec­tions to devel­op a Geo­graph­ic­al Inform­a­tion Sys­tem based net­work level assess­ment of the core path net­work. This inform­a­tion has also been invalu­able in help­ing address recent storm dam­age. iii. The first of the revised com­munity path leaf­lets (Car­rbridge) has been pro­duced in a new brand­ing design. View the leaflet

1. Ranger Ser­vices: Recruit­ment of sea­son­al rangers has been under way since Janu­ary and all appoint­ments should be final­ised pri­or to the Board meet­ing allow­ing East­er patrols to take place. In broad terms levels will be the same as in 2023 but in Badenoch & Strath­spey we are tri­al­ling two week­end only posts to try and help tar­get patrols at the busiest times.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 1 22 March 2024 Page 4 of 18

With the wider fam­ily of ranger ser­vices, three Region­al Ranger Groups have been set up along with a pro­gramme of planned meet­ings / site vis­its tak­ing place for each through­out the year to help co-ordin­ate work, train­ing and mes­saging. To sup­port this a new Ranger Ser­vice Hand­book has been cre­ated and a Ranger Induc­tion Present­a­tion has been cre­ated for use by all of the Fam­ily of Ranger Ser­vices with new staff.

At present indic­a­tions are that the nation­al Bet­ter Places Fund which helped fund many part­ner ranger ser­vices will not run in 2024 which may mean few­er rangers are recruited by part­ners and this may lead to increased demand for sup­port from Park Author­ity rangers which would be dif­fi­cult to sustain.

1. Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture: The con­clu­sion of the Cairngorms 2030 devel­op­ment phase means a Trans­port Man­ager is now being recruited which in turn has allowed the Infra­struc­ture man­ager to return to their ori­gin­al role. This will focus on deliv­ery of the Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plan approved in late 2022 and sub­sequently updated to incor­por­ate rel­ev­ant pro­jects arising from the Cairngorms 2030 devel­op­ment phase. This has included includ­ing many trans­port pro­jects in an Act­ive Travel Net­work Plan which forms an appendix to the Infra­struc­ture Plan but can also be used as a stan­dalone doc­u­ment that accom­pan­ies act­ive travel fund­ing applications.

2. Volun­teer­ing and Health Walks: 26 new volun­teer rangers have been recruited spread across the Nation­al Park with a mix of ages and back­grounds and good num­bers from the south of the Nation­al Park that can sup­port Perth­shire and the Angus Glens as well as from Deeside. The first train­ing ses­sion was held on 24 Feb­ru­ary, with more to fol­low and on-site induc­tions planned for April.

The Volun­teer Exper­i­ence Pro­gramme with provides volun­teer exper­i­ences through third sec­tor part­ners has seen new part­ners join – Con­nect­ing Young Carers Badenoch and Strath­spey and Moray Refugee Care and we are plan­ning dates for exist­ing part­ners the Perth Rape and Sexu­al Viol­ence Centre, Aber­deen Refugee Care, and Home Start East Highland.

We have recently wel­comed 12 new Health Walk Lead­ers to the volun­teer team, bring­ing our total num­ber of act­ive Health Walk Lead­ers to 55. Our pro­gramme of train­ing and ongo­ing sup­port for the team con­tin­ues includ­ing a recent first aid course and forth­com­ing strength and bal­ance course allow­ing walk lead­ers to sup­port loc­al people to remain inde­pend­ent for longer. In addi­tion to our 12 ongoing

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 1 22 March 2024 Page 5 of 18

Health Walks two new Health Walks in Strath­spey are cur­rently under devel­op­ment, along with ini­tial work to grow the num­ber of groups who have attained the ​‘Demen­tia Friendly Health Walk’ standard.

1. Youth Action Team: In Janu­ary this year mem­bers of the Cairngorms Youth Action Team joined oth­er young people from around rur­al and island Scot­land to attend a debate on rur­al youth issues tabled by Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary Mar­ie Gougeon. Dur­ing the debate there was cross party sup­port for includ­ing the voice of young people in decisions that would affect their futures. They also had the oppor­tun­ity to meet the First Min­is­ter and dis­cuss their list of issues with Cab­in­et members.

Cairngorms Youth Loc­al Action Group just com­pleted the 4^th round of fund­ing approvals, spe­cific­ally aimed at indi­vidu­als. 20 applic­a­tions were received — total ask £8,897 and they decided to fund 15 pro­jects — total spend £6,504. This brings the total num­ber of pro­jects fun­ded to 84 and a total awar­ded of £84,000.

At a recent Cairngorms Youth Action Team res­id­en­tial (1−3 March) they par­ti­cip­ated in a Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan con­sulta­tion activ­ity with mem­bers of the Plan­ning Team, developed their annu­al pro­gramme for 2024 and reviewed the Youth Fund. Youth fund recip­i­ents joined them for lunch and to share their stor­ies of how the fund has made a dif­fer­ence to them.

1. Act­ive and Sus­tain­able Trans­port: Bids have been sub­mit­ted to Sus­trans for stage ³⁄₄ for Cairngorms 2030 (£1.3M across 6 pro­jects, decision in April). The Park Author­ity are also sup­port­ing Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil who are tak­ing for­ward some of the Brae­mar plans them­selves. The Park Author­ity have part fun­ded a small study with HIE about act­ive travel access to Cairngorm Mountain.

Plan­ning and Rur­al Development

1. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan: The team are build­ing the evid­ence base for the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and have star­ted the wide pre-plan engage­ment with stake­hold­ers that the Scot­tish Government’s guid­ance advises. In addi­tion to par­ti­cip­at­ing in Com­munity Action Plan­ning events that helps provide evid­ence of loc­al issues and aspir­a­tions, the team have under­taken work with the Cairngorms Youth Action Team.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 1 22 March 2024 Page 6 of 18

1. Plan­ning Case­work: the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee have determ­ined applic­a­tions for hous­ing, vis­it­or accom­mod­a­tion, attrac­tions and infra­struc­ture and a bat­tery stor­age facil­ity at recent plan­ning com­mit­tee meet­ings. On 8 March a tem­por­ary plan­ning per­mis­sion for the use of land as a beer garden while main­tain­ing pub­lic access to the River Spey core path was approved.

2. Well­being Eco­nomy: Fol­low­ing the Inform­al board ses­sion in Feb­ru­ary, a well­being and sus­tain­able bill work­shop, facil­it­ated through Well­being Alli­ance Scot­land (WEAII), and attend­ance at the first Region­al Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship sub­group on Com­munity Wealth Build­ing, officers are final­ising our Well­being Eco­nomy Action Plan, in pre­par­a­tion for the next Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group, and to come back to the board for approv­al in June.

3. Com­munity Action Plans: The devel­op­ment of loc­al Com­munity Action Plans is facil­it­ated and sup­por­ted through our part­ner­ships and fund­ing to Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey (VABS) and Marr Area Part­ner­ship (MAP) The Nethy Bridge Com­munity Action Plan has been com­pleted and is now live on our web­site, in addi­tion the Aviemore and Kin­craig action plans are cur­rently live, in the sur­vey / inform­a­tion stage. The action plan­ning meet­ings with the loc­al com­munity will take place on ²²⁄₂₃ March for Aviemore, and ¹⁰⁄₁₁ May for Kin­craig. MAP is sup­port­ing work on the Strath­don and Brae­mar Com­munity Action Plans.

4. Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan: A report high­light­ing the pro­gress which has been made with­in the first year of the five year plan is being presen­ted to the Board. The action plan is sig­ni­fic­ant not only for the park author­ity, but our key part­ners includ­ing the des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment organ­isa­tions Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, Vis­it Moray Spey­side and Vis­it Aber­deen­shire, Loc­al Author­it­ies and Vis­it Scot­land, Through the work of the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship, chaired by Xan­der McDade, there has been great pro­gress to date on deliv­ery of the action plan, and our sus­tain­able tour­ism officer is instru­ment­al in ensur­ing this work going for­ward. One of the main focuses for next year is to con­tin­ue to sup­port com­munity led tour­ism with­in the Nation­al Park.

5. Vis­it­or and Atti­tu­din­al Sur­vey: Fol­low­ing a ten­der­ing exer­cise, MEL Research have been awar­ded the con­tact for the next 5 years for our Vis­it­or and Atti­tu­din­al Res­id­ents sur­veys. The vis­it­or sur­vey will take place every second year, will involve roughly 1,200 sur­veys per sea­son car­ried out through mar­ket research­ers across the park com­plet­ing face to face inter­views, in a range of vis­it­or attrac­tions, community

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 1 22 March 2024 Page 7 of 18

loc­a­tions and tour­ism hot­spots, to cap­ture vis­it­ors’ views on the Nation­al Park and their exper­i­ence. Addi­tion­ally, for the first time there will also be the oppor­tun­ity to com­plete this online. Pre­vi­ously, this sur­vey has been car­ried out every 5 years, and the change in meth­od­o­logy reflects that sig­ni­fic­ant changes can take place with­in 5 years, which we need to under­stand. The draft of this sur­vey has been shared with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship though work­shops, through our Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship, and with our Equal­it­ies Advis­ory Pan­el, and we are final­ising this dur­ing March.

For the first time, in addi­tion to the vis­it­or sur­vey, an online atti­tu­din­al sur­vey of res­id­ents will take place every second year, dur­ing sum­mer 2024, 2026 and 2028, advert­ised primar­ily through Cairn Magazine, to gain under­stand­ing of res­id­ents’ views of liv­ing and work­ing with­in the Nation­al Park. This sur­vey design is at the early stages, and more inform­a­tion will be shared in sub­sequent reports.

1. Busi­ness Baro­met­er, Real Liv­ing Wage Update: Dur­ing the last quarter, we asked some key ques­tions with­in Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship Busi­ness Baro­met­er, to gauge aware­ness and pay­ment of the of Real Liv­ing Wage with­in the Nation­al Park. Of the 33 busi­ness who respon­ded that employ staff, 22 (67%) pay a real liv­ing wage to all employ­ees in their busi­ness, regard­less of con­tract type. A quarter of these busi­nesses pro­mote that they pay the real liv­ing wage when advert­ising for staff.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions

1. Act­ive Cairngorms: In early Feb­ru­ary we launched a 10-week fire man­age­ment con­sulta­tion, ask­ing the pub­lic for their views on the pos­sible intro­duc­tion of fire byelaws in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Amongst oth­er things, the cam­paign has included the cre­ation of a con­sulta­tion webpage and sur­vey, social media and press assets, a doordrop to all house­holds in the Nation­al Park and an art­icle in Cairn magazine. At the time of writ­ing, we had received over 300 responses to the con­sulta­tion, with sev­er­al weeks still remain­ing. The con­sulta­tion closes on 17 April.

For the second con­sec­ut­ive year, we worked with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship on a winter mar­ket­ing cam­paign entitled ​‘where winter comes to life’. The cam­paign was based on a 2021 research pro­ject by Team Con­sult­ing, which sug­ges­ted that the Cairngorms has an oppor­tun­ity to claim the ter­rit­ory of ​‘UK cap­it­al of winter’ due to its mix­ture of spec­tac­u­lar, snow-filled land­scapes and cosy,

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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indoors retreats.

Tar­get­ing pre­vi­ous sum­mer vis­it­ors across the Cent­ral Belt, Aber­deen and North East Eng­land via Google, social media and Spo­ti­fy ads, we have so far reached 472,283 people and gen­er­ated over 5,000 click-throughs to the Vis­it­Cairngorms land­ing page. The cam­paign also provided mar­ket­ing resources for loc­al busi­nesses to tie into the cam­paign, and 15 busi­nesses fea­tured in a ded­ic­ated short film called ​‘The longest shortest day’. Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship will organ­ise a busi­ness work­shop towards the end of the cam­paign to gath­er feed­back on how they feel it has performed.

Over the winter we launched our first #Ranger­Rambles video series on social media, fea­tur­ing rangers from the Park Author­ity and fam­ily of ranger ser­vices. The series was designed to share more about the breadth of work our rangers under­take, demon­strate their pas­sion and inform our audi­ences about how best to sup­port the rangers in the Nation­al Park. Over­all, the 21 posts reached 63,924 people (79,480 impres­sions), 41,302 video views and 1,852 likes / reactions.

1. Cairngorms Nature: The end of 2023 was dom­in­ated by press and wider comms activ­ity sur­round­ing the return of beavers to the Cairngorms for the first time in 400 years. Fol­low­ing the grant­ing of a licence in early Decem­ber, a com­pre­hens­ive media plan was pulled togeth­er includ­ing a part­ner media release and a series of inter­views with broad­casters such as BBC Alba (for wider BBC News), STV and Scot­land Out of Doors.

On 20 Decem­ber, we announced that the first beaver releases had taken place at Rothiemurchus and on land owned by Wild­land Cairngorms Ltd. Media interest in the event was sig­ni­fic­ant and the story was covered by out­lets includ­ing the BBC, Press and Journ­al, Sky News, The Nation­al, The Scots­man and The Times. The team also ful­filled inter­views with BBC News, STV and vari­ous third-party news agen­cies. A fur­ther release took place on 4 March and the story was again covered extens­ively, includ­ing by the BBC and Daily Mail.

As part of the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject and in part­ner­ship with Seafield Estate, we will be tri­al­ling beha­vi­our­al ​‘nudge’ tech­niques to encour­age great­er levels of respons­ible dog walk­ing in areas sens­it­ive for caper­cail­lie. The learn­ing from the tri­al will be used to inform future work for man­aging recre­ation­al impacts on sens­it­ive spe­cies and habitats.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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1. Pub­lic engage­ment: A protest out­side the Park Author­ity offices in Janu­ary by mem­bers of the Cairngorms Farm­ers’ and Crofters’ Group attrac­ted sig­ni­fic­ant media interest. We handled enquir­ies from out­lets includ­ing the BBC, STV, The Her­ald, The Scots­man, Scot­tish Farm­er and the Press and Journ­al, and pub­lished a fol­low-up blog from Grant Moir a few days later, reflect­ing on the meet­ing and sum­mar­ising the Park Authority’s work with farm­ers to date. Fol­low up inter­views were arranged with the Press and Journ­al and the BBC, and the story was also included in the latest edi­tion of Cairn res­id­ents’ magazine.

On 25 Janu­ary we began a six-week con­sulta­tion on the draft third edi­tion of our Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan. We have agreed a set of key pri­or­it­ies with Bòrd na Gàidh­lig to increase the use of Gael­ic, the learn­ing of Gael­ic and pro­mote a pos­it­ive image of Gael­ic, and the plan sets out how we and part­ners intend to sup­port the devel­op­ment of the lan­guage over the next five years. At the time of writ­ing, we had received 396 responses in Eng­lish and 31 in Gael­ic. The con­sulta­tion closed on 7 March, with an amended draft of the plan com­ing to the board in June for consideration.

1. Cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions: In Feb­ru­ary, First Min­is­ter Humza Yousaf and Min­is­ter Lor­na Slater joined us and rep­res­ent­at­ives from The Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund at Mar Lodge Estate to launch Cairngorms 2030. A huge amount of coordin­a­tion went into brief­ing and plan­ning for the event; inter­views took place with the BBC and MFR on the day, and the story was covered by out­lets includ­ing BBC News, Sky News, the Press and Journ­al, The Scots­man and The National.

Oth­er press stor­ies dur­ing the peri­od include the Nation­al Park receiv­ing a pres­ti­gi­ous sus­tain­able tour­ism award, a new caper­cail­lie lek exper­i­ence at Bal­mor­al, the appoint­ment of a new Plan­ning Con­vener, and con­sulta­tions on our draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan and fire man­age­ment with­in the Nation­al Park.

Kar­en Arch­er, our Press and Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions Officer, is due to leave the Park Author­ity on 20 March after nearly 20 years with the organ­isa­tion. Kar­en has been instru­ment­al in rais­ing the pro­file of the Nation­al Park and cham­pi­on­ing the work of the Park Author­ity pretty much since its incep­tion, and the whole team will miss her greatly. Kar­en is due to start her new role with High­life High­land just after Easter.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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1. Web­site and social media: The pro­ject to devel­op the new web­site for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park is pro­gress­ing well via with our developers Whereverly. The ini­tial research phase has been com­pleted, includ­ing around 60 user inter­views across a range of audi­ence types, an online sur­vey for exist­ing users and ini­tial ​‘tree test­ing’ (in which real world users are asked to find spe­cif­ic items with­in our pro­posed new menu structure).

In Janu­ary 2023 we changed our approach to ana­lyt­ics and began col­lect­ing monthly fig­ures rather than by cam­paign. This bet­ter allows us to meas­ure over­all pro­gress in audi­ence engage­ment as well as meas­ur­ing fluc­tu­ations in sea­son, to enable bet­ter plan­ning. The below provides a snap­shot of where we are as of Janu­ary 2024 across all social media plat­forms, com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year:

• 230,421 impres­sions (up 70,992, or 45%) • Reach of 184,480 (up 107,922, or 141%) • 11,938 engage­ments (up 7,140, or 149%) • 13,841 video views (up 8,748, or 172%) • 4,994 likes / reac­tions (up 3,354, or 205%)

To mark the 200^th anniversary of the Lon­ach High­land and Friendly Soci­ety, we spoke to the Gor­don fam­ily, who have been involved with the Soci­ety since it began, to find out more about the Lon­ach Games and what it means to them. Click here to read the full inter­view. In anoth­er Cairngorms Voices piece, Con­ser­va­tion Officer, Sally Mack­en­zie, explores how the Allt Lorgy has become a cel­eb­rated example of river res­tor­a­tion in the Nation­al Park thanks to the Spey Catch­ment Ini­ti­at­ive and Seafield Estate.

1. Brand­ing and pub­lic­a­tions: In Decem­ber we released a poem writ­ten by High­land poet John Glenday com­mem­or­at­ing 20 years of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Nar­rated by Amber Beange, who was raised in the Nation­al Park, the poem was inspired by the voices and land­scapes of the place and fea­tured char­ac­ters from across the Cairngorms. The video of the poem, shot and edited by loc­al video­graph­er Rupert Shanks, has been well received and shared by mul­tiple part­ners, includ­ing a screen­ing at a loc­al com­munity event. You can view the poem here.

The fifth edi­tion of Cairn magazine is due to hit door­steps at the end of March. In addi­tion to the usu­al mix of com­munity and con­ser­va­tion news, the magazine fea­tured art­icles about busi­ness sup­port in the Nation­al Park, Cairngorms 2030

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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fund­ing suc­cess, recent farm­ing engage­ment, and an inter­view with peat­land con­tract­or Sean Wil­li­am­son. A plain text ver­sion of the pub­lic­a­tion has also been cre­ated for screen read­er users, in line with advice from our Equal­it­ies Advis­ory Panel.

We con­tin­ue to work closely with part­ners on a num­ber of inter­pret­a­tion pro­jects, includ­ing on a beaver trail at Rothiemurchus (due to launch this East­er), the new wild­life dis­cov­ery centre at the High­land Wild­life Park, and a refresh of the vis­it­or inform­a­tion centre at Blair Atholl. Work has now been com­pleted on a new set of inter­pret­a­tion tem­plates in the Nation­al Park brand, and we are using them as a start­ing point for the design of new com­munity pan­els. Pan­els in Anagach Woods delivered in part­ner­ship with the Anagach Woods Trust – and the new vir­tu­al lek install­a­tion at Bal­mor­al have both been installed.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development

1. Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan­ning: Staff are cur­rently work­ing to 36 hours/​week con­trac­tu­al terms, which will be redu­cing to 35 hours/​week form 1^st April 2024.

2. Staff­ing update: Since November:

a) Staff who left the organ­isa­tion were:

i. Douglas Car­chrie (CCP B&S Trail Coordin­at­or – end of con­tract) ii. Kar­en Arch­er (Press Officer) — resig­na­tion b) There were no extern­al appoint­ments in the peri­od repor­ted, but there has been very act­ive recruit­ment under­way for the Sea­son­al Rangers posts, as well as Cairngorms 2030 posts.

c) Intern­al recruitment:

i. Cairngorms 2020 posts were appoin­ted fol­low­ing a com­pet­it­ive intern­al recruit­ment pro­cess: ii. Pat Dou­glass was appoin­ted to the Cairngorms 2030 Cyc­ling Devel­op­ment Officer post. iii. Josie Slade was appoin­ted to the Cairngorms 2030 Com­munity Engage­ment Officer post. iv. Mat­thew Hawkins was appoin­ted to the Cairngorms 2030 Nature Based Solu­tions Man­ager post. v. James Ade was appoin­ted to the Cairngorms 2030 Learn­ing Coordin­at­or post.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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vi. Catri­ona Strang was appoin­ted to the Cairngorms 2030 Com­munity Cli­mate Grants Officer. vii. Anna Ronayne was appoin­ted to the Cairngorms 2030 Sus­tain­able Travel Beha­viours Officer. viii. Oth­er staff moves include: Elspeth Grant, a per­man­ent staff mem­ber was deployed to the vacant Rur­al Devel­op­ment Officer post, fol­low­ing the end of her seconded role as CCP Pro­ject Officer.

1. Youth Employ­ment:

a) Calum Guy and Craig Lewis joined the organ­isa­tion in 2022 in Gradu­ate Train­ee roles. They have both developed their skills and been jointly appoin­ted to the pro­moted post of Payroll, Accounts and Fin­ance Officer post, which became vacant fol­low­ing the pre­vi­ous incumbent’s resig­na­tion. b) Amber Beange joined us on a short term intern­ship, as Con­tent Cre­ation Intern. c) Joyce Aranuwa joined the organ­isa­tion on a short term intern­ship as Cli­mate Change Intern.

1. Equal­it­ies: The Equal­it­ies Advis­ory Pan­el par­ti­cip­ated in a face to face event in March, which included inter­sec­tion­al­ity train­ing with Tal­at Yaqoob, as well as a vis­it to Atholl estate. This was a great oppor­tun­ity for the 7 new mem­bers to meet the exist­ing mem­bers, and for mem­bers to see and get a feel for the Nation­al Park and issues in that region of the Nation­al Park.

2. Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment: The Park Author­ity has awar­ded a con­tract to sup­port our Val­ues and Cul­ture work. The Best Com­pan­ies sur­vey res­ults are in the pro­cess of being ana­lysed. The Park Author­ity has achieved One Star status, which is a sig­ni­fic­ant improve­ment on the last four sur­veys that have been con­duc­ted since

3. The res­ults will feed into the over­arch­ing Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy which will be con­sul­ted with staff and the Resources Committee.

4. Fin­ance:

a) As we approach the end of the fin­an­cial year, we are draw­ing to com­ple­tion the fin­an­cial com­mit­ments arising from the year’s activ­it­ies. Over the past 12 months, the Fin­ance Team has been work­ing with Heads of Ser­vice and pro­ject teams on the reg­u­lar mon­it­or­ing and report­ing of spend, fin­an­cial com­mit­ments, con­trac­ted expendit­ure, and budget changes. This mon­it­or­ing has been shared monthly with

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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the Seni­or Man­age­ment Team, and with the Resources Com­mit­tee through­out the year. b) Our payroll mod­el­ling for the com­ing year (2024 / 25) builds on the awards made in ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ and is informed by the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment main group award. c) The start of the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme, fun­ded by the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund, has involved us in the design of report­ing, and the devel­op­ment of pro­cesses and pro­ced­ures to assist with ongo­ing mon­it­or­ing and facil­it­ate the man­age­ment of cash flow.

Grant Moir

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Title: Con­vener Update Pre­pared by: Sandy Brem­ner, Convener

1. Afford­able Housing

The biggest single area of engage­ment since the last report has been around the crisis in the sup­ply of afford­able hous­ing, affect­ing every com­munity in our Nation­al Park, and our Board’s determ­in­a­tion to tackle the issue.

1. Hous­ing Minister

Met with Scotland’s Hous­ing Min­is­ter Paul McLen­nan, explain­ing the range of issues impact­ing the pro­vi­sion of afford­able hous­ing in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, our Board’s deep con­cern about the situ­ation, and the factors likely to influ­ence sup­ply here and across Scot­land for the fore­see­able future.

Out­lined the ini­ti­at­ives already being pro­gressed to tackle the crisis, includ­ing sup­port for pion­eer­ing work by High­land Coun­cil, while under­lin­ing the lim­ited likely impact of exist­ing schemes.

Stressed the need for a fresh, stra­tegic approach to help the Park Author­ity meet tar­gets agreed with Min­is­ters, build­ing on the work of the Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion, in the pro­cess address­ing sim­il­ar prob­lems in oth­er areas of the country.

The Min­is­ter com­mit­ted to report­ing back to the First Min­is­ter on our dis­cus­sion and wel­comed the oppor­tun­ity for fol­low-up meet­ings to help deliv­er pro­gress on a long- stand­ing issue.

1. John Swin­ney

Intro­duct­ory meet­ing with John Swin­ney MSP for Tay­side North. Out­lined the spe­cif­ic impacts of the short­age of afford­able hous­ing on the range of Park Author­ity goals, from the effects on com­munit­ies, to the influ­ence on busi­ness pro­spects and the deliv­ery of the Nation­al Park’s nature aims.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Explained the gap between agreed afford­able hous­ing tar­gets and the like­li­hood of deliv­er­ing them, and the need for nation­al sup­port to realign an eco­nom­ic sup­ply mod­el that was clearly broken.

Among oth­er issues, dis­cussed the Park Authority’s plans for catch­ment-scale nature res­tor­a­tion and the poten­tial for mit­ig­a­tion against flood­ing at a time of increas­ing fre­quency of severe flood events.

1. Kate For­bes

Intro­duct­ory meet­ing with Kate For­bes MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch. Dis­cussed the need for a new approach to the pro­vi­sion of afford­able hous­ing, so the issue could be tackled at scale.

Also dis­cussed man­age­ment for vis­it­ors in her con­stitu­ency, the Park Authority’s con­sulta­tion on the pos­sib­il­ity of fire byelaws, the import­ance of effect­ive resourcing for rangers ser­vices, and the poten­tial impacts and oppor­tun­it­ies of a Tour­ism Levy in the Nation­al Park.

1. Ariane Bur­gess

Briefed Ariane Bur­gess MSP for High­lands and Islands on the spe­cial chal­lenges posed by the lack of afford­able hous­ing in the Nation­al Park, the impacts on com­munit­ies, as well as the deliv­ery of nature and cli­mate change projects.

1. Rur­al Hous­ing Scotland

Intro­duct­ory meet­ing with the Con­vener of Rur­al Hous­ing Scot­land to dis­cuss the cur­rent crisis in the avail­ab­il­ity of afford­able hous­ing and explore ini­ti­at­ives which would bene­fit the Nation­al Park and oth­er areas of the coun­try facing sim­il­ar problems.

Atten­ded the annu­al con­fer­ence of Rur­al Hous­ing Scot­land at Aviemore, and a pre-con­fer­ence pan­el event, explor­ing the chal­lenges and oppor­tun­it­ies in the sector.

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1. Con­ven­tion of the High­lands and Islands

Con­trib­uted to the Con­ven­tion of the High­lands and Islands Octo­ber meet­ing, urging the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment to take a bold approach to the devel­op­ment of an eco­nom­ic mod­el that was more likely to help deliv­er agreed targets.

The Chair and Deputy First Min­is­ter Shona Robison MSP respon­ded, agree­ing there were import­ant issues around land val­ues and con­struc­tion costs espe­cially which deserved attention.

1. High­land Council

Met with High­land Coun­cil Con­vener and fel­low Park Author­ity Board mem­ber Bill Lob­ban to review the pro­vi­sion of afford­able hous­ing in the area, assess cur­rent plans to increase sup­ply, and agree on areas where the Nation­al Park and the loc­al author­ity can work togeth­er fur­ther to address the crisis. There was agree­ment that the cur­rent nation­al eco­nom­ic mod­el would not meet demands.

1. Com­munit­ies Hous­ing Trust

Met with Com­munit­ies Hous­ing Trust CEO Ron­nie Mac­Rae, to dis­cuss how the Nation­al Park could help sup­port the pro­vi­sion of afford­able hous­ing at an extremely chal­len­ging time in the sec­tor. Agreed on the need to encour­age flex­ib­il­ity among all key stake­hold­ers to ensure max­im­um impact, and for the Nation­al Park to take the case for a fresh approach to the issue to Scot­tish Government.

1. Beaver Rein­tro­duc­tion

Met with rep­res­ent­at­ives of Nation­al Park crofters and farm­ers to dis­cuss imple­ment­a­tion of the CNPA’s enhanced mit­ig­a­tion scheme ahead of the release of beavers into the Spey’s upper catch­ment, and con­tin­ued dia­logue with mem­bers of the group.

Sub­sequently met with a wider group of farmers