240913DraftMinutesOfMeeting

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board 13 Septem­ber 2024 Page 1 of 11

Draft Minutes of the Form­al Board Meet­ing Held at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity office, Grant­own on Spey

In Per­son 13 Septem­ber 2024 at 10.00am

Present Sandy Brem­ner (Con­vener) Chris Beat­tie Dr Peter Cos­grove Dr Han­nah Grist John Kirk Bill Lob­ban Xan­der McDade Ann Ross

Elean­or Mack­in­tosh (Deputy Con­vener) Jack­ie Brier­ton Kenny Deans Paul Gibb Rus­sell Jones Dr Fiona McLean Duncan Miller

In Attend­ance Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Gav­in Miles, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change Colin Simpson, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices Oliv­er Dav­ies, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies: Geva Black­ett Lauren MacCallum

Steve Mickle­wright Derek Ross

Wel­come and introduction

1. Sandy Brem­ner, the Board Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing. Apo­lo­gies were noted.

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Approv­al of minutes of pre­vi­ous meetings

1. The draft minutes of the last meet­ing held on the 28 June 2024 were agreed with no amendments.

Mat­ters arising not covered elsewhere

1. The Board Con­vener provided an update on the action points from 22 March and 28 June 2024 minutes:

ACTION	Status
Draft Minutes 22 March 2024
Paper 1 CEO report
At para 7
ii.CEO, to pre­pare a brief­ing note on farm­ing activ­ity and stat­ist­ics with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park and dis­trib­ute to the Board.	In hand
Update:Pre­lim­in­ary data received, staff capa­city to pro­gress is lim­ited by vacancy in Agri­cul­tur­al Officer post. Recruit­ment for that post is about to begin.

Action Points from the latest meet­ing on 28 June 2024:

Action	Status
Paper 1 – CEO Report
At para 7
i. Ensure main­ten­ance of signs and sur­round­ings on gran­ite mark­ers entry points	In hand
Update:Glen­liv­et Mark­er was main issue as over­grown. Glen­liv­et Estate now under­tak­ing maintenance
Paper 3 — Update on the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan
At para 13
ii. The board mem­ber sug­ges­ted high­lighted there was a need to cla­ri­fy on land hold­ings to show expect­a­tions for land managers.	Com­pleted
Update:A work­ing defin­i­tion is included in the draft plan
Paper 4 – Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan

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At para 16
iii. Share afford­ab­il­ity of trans­la­tion with loc­al businesses.	In hand
Update:Olly Dav­ies has emailed Craig Mills (CEO of the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship) with full inform­a­tion on trans­la­tion ser­vices, and we have asked this to be included in an upcom­ing news­let­ter to part­ner businesses.
Paper 5 — Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan
At Para 20
iv. Board Con­vener to write to the min­is­ter to pri­or­it­ise a pine marten sur­vey reflect­ing con­cerns expressed by the board and ask­ing for a meeting.	Com­pleted
V. Suc­cinct sum­mary of wider bene­fits of fund­ing, e.g. expan­sion of wood­land bene­fits of biodiversity	Com­pleted
Update:Meet­ing date set 9 Octo­ber­In­cluded in the fund­ing strategy

Declar­a­tions of interest

1. There were no declar­a­tions of interest.

CEO Report (Paper 1)

1. Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer (CEO), intro­duced the paper which was to high­light to Board Mem­bers the main stra­tegic areas of work that are being dir­ec­ted by the Man­age­ment Team. These are areas where sig­ni­fic­ant staff resources are being dir­ec­ted to deliv­er, with part­ners the aspir­a­tions of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. He high­lighted the fol­low­ing. a) Due to there being budget restric­tions imposed by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, the Cairngorms Nation­al Park will not receive nature res­tor­a­tion fund­ing this fin­an­cial year. The mit­ig­a­tion plans will be brought before the Resources Com­mit­tee on 4 Octo­ber 2024. b) On 4 Decem­ber the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment budget will be announced, and the inten­tion is for a board dis­cus­sion to take place fol­low­ing the plan­ning com­mit­tee meet­ing on 13 Decem­ber 2024 to dis­cuss implic­a­tions for the Authority.

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1. The Board Con­vener praised the suc­cess of the careers fair in which over 400 young people had attended.
2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Praise was expressed for the extent of activ­it­ies under­taken by the board con­vener and noted that it was great to know that he had been get­ting out and about on behalf of the board. b) A mem­ber sug­ges­ted a board ses­sion be sched­uled to allow mem­bers to reflect, con­sider and adopt the organ­isa­tion­al val­ues. c) A mem­ber quer­ied the traffic man­age­ment pro­pos­als presen­ted to the Brae­mar com­munity coun­cil and sought cla­ri­fic­a­tion around the fund­ing. Would it be avail­able for some­thing else should the com­munity reject the pro­pos­als or had the money been ring­fenced? Colin Simpson, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices advised that Aber­deen­shire coun­cil were now hand­ling this work although the Park Author­ity had handled the first two stages dur­ing the Cairngorms 2030 devel­op­ment phase. The third stage will be handled by Aber­deen­shire coun­cil them­selves. He con­firmed that the Park Author­ity had not set aside any fund­ing for this work in Brae­mar. d) Could it be con­firmed that wider dis­cus­sions were tak­ing place with Sco­trail to make it easi­er for people to get to the Nation­al Park and enjoy it, par­tic­u­larly those trav­el­ling with bicycles? CEO con­firmed that the major­ity of vis­it­ors will still arrive by car in the future, but wider dis­cus­sions were tak­ing place with train and bus com­pan­ies. He added that the main focus of the Park Author­ity was the move­ment of vis­it­ors once they arrived at the nation­al park and provid­ing the right facil­it­ies and access points. e) A mem­ber asked if any thought had been giv­en into how the Park author­ity can main­tain our pro­file while redu­cing our spend on the com­mu­nic­a­tions and engage­ment front? CEO advised that the Park Author­ity still have their com­mu­nic­a­tions team but have less money to put into events. He added that the Novem­ber edi­tion of the resident’s magazine would still be tak­ing place. He explained that con­tent would still be pos­sible and what would not be pos­sible was the abil­ity to dir­ectly tar­get audi­ences. He said he hoped that this would be short term. f) A mem­ber asked if it would be pos­sible at future board meet­ing to get some over­view of the Cairngorms 2030 pro­ject? CEO advised that the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee are reg­u­larly presen­ted with papers for their meet­ings on that. And that all board mem­bers can access the meet­ing papers on the Board portal.

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1. The Board noted the Paper. The Con­vener thanked the Chief Exec­ut­ive and all staff on behalf of the Board.
2. Action Point Arising: i. Board ses­sion to be sched­uled to allow mem­bers to reflect, con­sider and adopt the organ­isa­tion­al values.

Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (Paper 2)

1. Gav­in Miles, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place intro­duced the paper which sum­mar­ises the mon­it­or­ing frame­work for the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and iden­ti­fies some of the key areas where indic­at­ors show pro­gress or where officers expect pro­gress to be demon­strated in future after the second year of deliv­ery of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.
2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Praise expressed for the volume and range of activ­it­ies car­ried out. b) C10 — Dis­ap­point­ment expressed that the work on cre­at­ing a cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work had not yet begun. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place advised that the inten­tion was to do that work this fin­an­cial year but warned the cur­rent fin­an­cial restric­tions were likely to have an impact. c) A1 — A mem­ber asked about the meth­od­o­logy on cal­cu­lat­ing car­bon emis­sions and net zero. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place advised that he would cir­cu­late the report under­taken by the experts at Small World Con­sult­ing which provides the level of detail being asked for. d) 22C a mem­ber quer­ied the meth­od­o­logy for cal­cu­lat­ing the baseline emis­sions. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place dir­ec­ted the mem­ber to the report which he would cir­cu­late after the meet­ing. e) A mem­ber asked if the mon­it­or­ing report car­ried out by the experts would be pub­lished on the Nation­al Park Authority’s web­site. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place con­firmed that it would. f) A mem­ber com­men­ted that while the report appeared quite pos­it­ive there must be areas of work that were not pro­gress­ing well that the board should scru­tin­ise. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place explained that the report was to the end of the second year of deliv­ery of a five year pro­gramme of work and longer term out­comes, so hadn’t iden­ti­fied sig­ni­fic­ant issues. How­ever, he noted that there were areas of risk emer­ging in the third year of deliv­ery and expec­ted the next report­ing on pro­gress to high­light them. CEO added that the budget

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announce­ment on 4 Decem­ber 2024 would have a big impact on what could be delivered and spe­cific­ally there was risk around fund­ing for peat­land and nature res­tor­a­tion. g) Plea made not to wait until next year to look at what was at danger of not being delivered. Board Con­vener agreed and advised that a hori­zon scan­ning ses­sion had been sched­uled fol­low­ing the next form­al board meet­ing. h) With ref­er­ence to item B8 – A mem­ber com­men­ted that the Green Health Refer­rals work was a great ini­ti­at­ive and asked if there was a tar­get num­ber for people being referred. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place advised that it was a pion­eer­ing new pro­ject, and that the health ser­vice did not have a tar­get num­ber. i) In fol­low up to B8 – A mem­ber asked if fund­ing for this work was cut would oth­er organ­isa­tions take it on? Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place advised that this was not at risk as the work was part of C2030 fund­ing. j) Request made that future report included more of a traffic light sys­tem to explain pro­gress and risk and Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place agreed to do so.

1. The Board noted the Paper.
2. Action Points Arising: i. Future report on car­bon foot­print to be cir­cu­lated to the Board and pub­lished on the web ii. Future updates to include more detailed traffic light rat­ings to clearly show activ­it­ies at risk of being delivered.

Sea­son­al Fire Man­age­ment Byelaw (Paper 3)

1. Sandy Brem­ner, the Con­vener reit­er­ated the Board’s pos­i­tion that a byelaw was only being pur­sued very reluct­antly, and only after all oth­er options had been exhausted.
2. Grant Moir, CEO intro­duced the paper which sets out the word­ing for the sea­son­al fire man­age­ment byelaw that will be con­sul­ted on sub­ject to board approv­al for 12 weeks start­ing on 23 Septem­ber 2024. Fol­low­ing that con­sulta­tion mem­bers will be asked in Janu­ary 2025 to agree the final word­ing for sub­mis­sion to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for approval.
3. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Request made to ensure when put out to pub­lic con­sulta­tion it is writ­ten in plain Eng­lish so that people will under­stand. CEO con­firmed that the consultation

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doc­u­ment would be in plain Eng­lish but also advised that the leg­al word­ing would have to be con­sul­ted on. b) A mem­ber asked if a ranger was aler­ted to muir­burn tak­ing place by a non- license hold­er what would hap­pen? CEO advised that the ranger would report it to NatureScot who would invest­ig­ate it. c) A mem­ber quer­ied if NatureScot have enforce­ment powers for unli­cenced muir­burn? CEO advised that NatureScot will licence muir­burn and that this will come into force next year. CEO agreed to look fur­ther into it and come back to the board on that point. d) How was it pos­sible to know when Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice called a peri­od of high risk? CEO advised that it would be pub­lished on the new wild­fire for­um web­site. e) Could it be con­firmed if this byelaw would impact licensed cara­van and camp sites and inform­al areas? Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place con­firmed that it should not impact these smal­ler busi­nesses neg­at­ively where they are licenced. He added that this could be picked up in the sum­mary over­view. f) It was ree­m­phas­ized that the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity have not gone into hav­ing a byelaw lightly. This Nation­al Park Author­ity have avoided get­ting a byelaw for the last 20 years and have done so as a last resort, in response to com­munity feedback.

1. Board mem­ber, Paul Gibb expressed his dis­sent on the basis that he was not com­fort­able with the enforce­ab­il­ity of the byelaw and lack of vis­ib­il­ity of plans which need to be put in place to sup­port enforce­ment and there­fore could not sup­port it at this time.
2. The Board agreed the word­ing of the fire man­age­ment byelaw for a 12-week stat­utory con­sulta­tion as per the Nation­al Park (Scot­land) Act 2000.
3. Action Points Arising: i. CEO to look into the enforce­ment powers of NatureScot regard­ing muir­burn and report these back to the Board.

Code of con­duct addi­tion (Paper 4)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced the paper which seeks to update the Park Authority’s Code of Con­duct with addi­tions based on the pro­vi­sions for quasi-judi­cial and reg­u­lat­ory activ­it­ies and decision mak­ing approved by the Stand­ards Com­mis­sion for Scot­land in the mod­el code for coun­cil­lors. The paper seeks to ensure the Park Authority’s code of con­duct is

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appro­pri­ate to the range of activ­it­ies and decisions under­taken by Park Author­ity mem­bers using pro­vi­sions already approved by the Stand­ards Com­mis­sion and sup­por­ted by exist­ing guidance.

Elean­or Mack­in­tosh left the room at 11.14 am

1. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and the fol­low­ing was posed: a) With regards to stake­hold­er engage­ment had it been brought to gov­ernance Com­mit­tee before com­ing to the board? Deputy CEO con­firmed that it had.

2. The Board: a) Approved the pro­posed addi­tion­al pro­vi­sions set out in Annex 1 to the paper for inclu­sion in the Park Authority’s Code of Con­duct. b) Agreed the sub­mis­sion of the updated Code of Con­duct to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for approval.

3. Action Point Arising: None.

Stand­ing Orders: Elec­tion of Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Deputy Con­vener (Paper 5)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced the paper which noti­fies the board of the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Deputy Convener’s upcom­ing end of term of appoint­ment and of the elec­tion pro­cess for this role.
2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and the fol­low­ing point of clar­ity was reques­ted: a) The cur­rent Stand­ing Order pro­vi­sion relied on the vote tak­ing place in per­son and allows can­did­ates to give an in-per­son state­ment. Could it be agreed that the statement(s) is/​are made pub­lic? Deputy CEO con­firmed that it had been the pro­cess for some time to make the can­did­ate state­ments pub­lic to rep­lic­ate in per­son meet­ings and he had for­got­ten to include it in the paper. He went on to explain when there are mul­tiple can­did­ates then the state­ments are made pub­lic on Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity website.

Elean­or Mack­in­tosh returned at 11.18 am

1. Elean­or Mack­in­tosh, cur­rent Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Deputy Con­vener made the fol­low­ing points:

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a) Not stand­ing again for deputy Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener b) Would be happy to chat to any­one con­sid­er­ing stand­ing about what the role entails

1. Sandy Brem­ner, Board Con­vener thanked Elean­or Mack­in­tosh for her con­tri­bu­tion in the pos­i­tion of Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Deputy Convener.
2. The Board agreed the pro­cess for elec­tion of the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Deputy Con­vener, as set out in this paper.
3. Action Point Arising: None.

There was a short com­fort break until 11.35am Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2019 – 2024 final report (Paper 6)

1. Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change intro­duced the paper which presents the report detail­ing deliv­ery of pri­or­it­ies, actions and tar­gets in the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2019 – 2024, for approv­al pri­or to pub­lic­a­tion. It con­siders the role of the Cairngorms Nature part­ner­ship as the key mech­an­ism dir­ect­ing and deliv­er­ing con­ser­va­tion in the Nation­al Park and the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan nature objectives.
2. The Board Con­vener praised the incred­ible record of achieve­ment that the pub­lic­a­tion demonstrates.
3. Chris Beat­tie, Chair of the Cairngorms Nature Strategy Group praised the pos­it­ive report as it demon­strates the chal­lenge of work­ing with­in the con­text of extern­al factors that affect land­scapes, hab­it­ats and spe­cies. He added that he was look­ing for­ward to the next reit­er­a­tion of work over the next strategy
4. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Con­grat­u­la­tions to staff and part­ners on the strategy group who have man­aged to show pro­gress. b) Sug­ges­tion made that in the future it would be good to be able to artic­u­late the threats asso­ci­ated with cli­mate change, for example the impacts on rivers or to tease out which spe­cies cli­mate change threatens. Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change agreed.

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c) Com­ment made that it was a pos­it­ive report which provides a lot of mater­i­al to go for­ward with. A sug­ges­tion for more dir­ect engage­ment with the busi­ness com­munity and more socio-eco­nom­ic inform­a­tion could be provided around the impact on how it has benefited or provided chal­lenges on loc­al busi­ness in the com­munity. Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change agreed that both the dir­ect and indir­ect bene­fits could be included in the next report. d) A com­ment made around nature dis­turb­ance spe­cific­ally nest­ing times, should be included in a future report. Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change agreed and com­men­ted that had been a key learn­ing from the Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject. He went on to advise that it was included in the Act­ive Cairngorms action plan. CEO added that the Act­ive Cairngorms annu­al update report would be brought to the next board meet­ing. e) A mem­ber quer­ied the times­cale for the next plan, should it not be more seam­less? Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change explained that the delay was because there is legis­lat­ive and policy change at present which would then need to be incor­por­ated to ensure accur­ate rep­res­ent­a­tion of them. f) A mem­ber raised con­cern on the river Dee which con­tains fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sels while sup­ply­ing the city of Aber­deen and Deeside with water. Con­cern was expressed on the neg­at­ive effect it was hav­ing on the spe­cies and asked what could be done to pro­tect the spe­cies. Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change explained that rather than look­ing at spe­cies con­ser­va­tion in isol­a­tion, they need to look at the resi­li­ence of the eco­sys­tem He added that they try to align organ­isa­tion­al and spe­cies-spe­cif­ic out­comes with the issues of eco­sys­tem resi­li­ence, for example for the trans­lo­ca­tion of spe­cies to be suc­cess­ful, it is neces­sary to make sure the hab­it­at is restored before that g) With ref­er­ence to pine hov­er fly, Roy­al Zoolo­gic­al Soci­ety of Scot­land (RZSS) should be men­tioned? Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change con­firmed that it had been an over­sight and agreed to add it in.

1. The Board noted the key achieve­ments of the part­ner­ship and deliv­ery against tar­gets and approve the pub­lic­a­tion of the report.
2. Action Points Arising: None.

Board Com­mit­tee Minutes (Paper 7)

1. Dav­id Camer­on intro­duced the paper which presents the minutes from pre­vi­ous Com­mit­tee meet­ings for the Board to note.
2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and raised the fol­low­ing point:

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a) Should the plan­ning com­mit­tee minutes be included in this pack? Deputy CEO advised that for com­plete­ness and in respond­ing to audit recom­mend­a­tions officers decided to put them in. Deputy CEO wel­comed board views and would take that through gov­ernance com­mit­tee on wheth­er to keep them.

1. The Board noted the Paper.
2. Action Point Arising: i. Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee to con­sider and decide wheth­er Plan­ning Com­mit­tee minutes should be included in this paper going forward.

AOCB

1. None.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The date of the next meet­ing is 22 Novem­ber 2024 in person.
2. The meet­ing con­cluded at 11.54 am