Draft Minutes of the Per­form­ance Committee

Held online

20 Septem­ber 2024

Present

Kenny Deans (Con­vener) Chris Beat­tie Sandy Brem­ner Dr Han­nah Grist (sub for Steve Micklewirght) Elean­or Mack­in­tosh Ann Ross

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 Dav­id Clyne, Head of Cairngorms 2030 Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Man­age­ment Eilidh Todd, Com­munit­ies and Rur­al Devel­op­ment Man­ager Kar­en John­stone, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies

John Kirk Steve Micklewright

Wel­come and introduction

1. The Chair wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing of the Per­form­ance Committee.

Minutes of Pre­vi­ous Meetings

1. The minutes of the pre­vi­ous meet­ing, 14 June 2024 were approved with no amendments.

Mat­ters Arising

ACTION	Status
Draft Minutes – 14 June 2024
Action points arising from pre­vi­ous meetings
11 Feb­ru­ary 2022	In hand
ii. Item 3.13a1 an accur­ate record of Vis­it Scot­land fund­ing 2023⁄24 will be brought to the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee in due course as extern­al aud­it­ors are still work­ing through records.	Update at next meeting
Paper 2 — Cairngorms 2030: Q1 2024 (Jan – Mar)
At para 9c
i. Chair of Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee, Kenny Deans and Deputy CEO, Dav­id Camer­on to dis­cuss and make a plan for how best to share with the Board Mem­bers the for­ward look doc­u­ment to allow them to see what’s com­ing up.	Com­pleted

1. Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee meet­ing on 14 June 2024 — 9^d — update on the act­ive travel budget between Trans­port Scot­land and Sus­trans. Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer (CEO) stated this would be addressed under the Cairngorms 2030 update.

Declar­a­tions of interest

1. Elean­or Mack­in­tosh noted she sits on board of both the Cairngorms Trust and Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme Board, both of which are con­nec­ted to reports presen­ted to this meeting.

Cairngorms 2030: Quarter two 2024 (April – June) Pro­gramme update (Paper 1)

1. Dav­id Clyne intro­duced the paper which presents an update to the Park Author­ity Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee on the risks under man­age­ment by the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme team. This paper presents the status of pro­gramme man­age­ment, includ­ing risk man­age­ment status, based on inform­a­tion in pro­ject reports for the peri­od from March to June 2024, updated where appro­pri­ate to reflect cur­rent pos­i­tion as at the time of writ­ing, and the planned work to end Septem­ber 2024.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) A board mem­ber raised con­cerns regard­ing if pro­vi­sions have been made in the case that fund­ing is with­drawn due to Scot­tish Government’s (SG) cur­rent fin­an­cial situ­ation. Head of Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) reas­sured com­mit­tee mem­bers that changes to Gov­ern­ment fund­ing will not impact on the Cairngorms 2030 budget from the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund. There are some issues spe­cific­ally around the match fund­ing asso­ci­ated with trans­port pro­jects, but staff are hav­ing con­struct­ive dis­cus­sions with Trans­port Scot­land and Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. b) CEO noted from the pre­vi­ous mat­ters arising, that the Park Author­ity is in a reas­on­able place at the moment fol­low­ing recent dis­cus­sions with Trans­port Scot­land and shar­ing the Park Authority’s pro­posed expendit­ure for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ and ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ with them. CEO high­lighted the Park Author­ity are con­fid­ent they will receive fund­ing for design work as they have strong con­struc­tion match fund­ing in place. c) A board mem­ber ques­tioned if there were any pub­licly sens­it­ive pro­jects that are not pro­gress­ing at the moment. Head of C2030 noted there are a range of pro­jects all at design stage now, how­ever in Car­rbridge they have some push back relat­ing to act­ive travel designs. The team are aware of the dif­fer­ing views, it was noted that the pro­ject is not going for­ward in the fore­see­able future. d) Clar­ity was sought regard­ing the Red Amber Green (RAG) rat­ing of risk status. Head of C2030 noted that fol­low­ing a meet­ing with Trans­port Scot­land and Sus­trans, the red risk rat­ing moved to amber to reflect improved expect­a­tions of fund­ing being made avail­able and con­tin­ues to be at amber status as there is suf­fi­cient time to mit­ig­ate risk around deliv­ery of these tar­gets. e) A board mem­ber ques­tioned the scope of the infra­struc­ture of the sus­tain­able trans­port pro­jects, spe­cific­ally, if there would be places for pub­lic to park their bikes. Head of C2030 con­firmed that there would be as this was a fun­da­ment­al part of the cycle friendly and beha­viour change pro­jects, along with trans­port loc­a­tions where there will be bike parks, char­ging sta­tions. These pro­ject ele­ments will all be con­nec­ted in a stra­tegic way.

3. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

4. Action Point Arising: None

Verbal Update on Cairngorms 2030 Empower­ment Theme

1. Eilidh Todd, Com­munit­ies and Rur­al Devel­op­ment Man­ager­gave a present­a­tion on Cairngorms 2030 Empower­ment Theme.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) A board mem­ber ques­tioned how the loc­al com­munit­ies’ views were gauged without them hav­ing a com­munity coun­cil to speak for them as a whole and high­lighted that res­id­ents not engaged with the park are the most under­rep­res­en­ted groups. Com­munit­ies and Rur­al Devel­op­ment Man­ager noted that using mul­tiple chan­nels of com­mu­nic­a­tion, innov­at­ive meth­ods, listen­ing to indi­vidu­als, meet­ing people where they are based; allow­ing them to be as involved as they chose to be; and not for­cing pres­sure or opin­ions on them are all mech­an­isms being deployed to engage with loc­al res­id­ents. b) A board mem­ber ques­tioned if the SG budget restric­tions were hav­ing an impact on how they engage with the pub­lic. Head of C2030 noted that though they were not dir­ectly impacted, they have to act sens­it­ively and appro­pri­ately giv­en the cur­rent cir­cum­stances. c) A board mem­ber raised con­cern about the lan­guage used in the present­a­tion and how this would help engage the pub­lic and sug­ges­ted focus­ing more on qual­ity con­ver­sa­tions. CEO high­lighted that there has been a lot of pub­lic engage­ment from recent events. These events and their fol­low up allow the pub­lic to share their feed­back, thoughts and opin­ions with the team openly. The lan­guage used in the present­a­tion is designed to explain the pro­cesses being deployed and would not be used pub­licly. d) There was a dis­cus­sion about the reg­u­lar­ity of com­munity events, such as the recent events at Boat of Garten, the CEO con­firmed they are hope­ful to hold anoth­er event annu­ally, if not more reg­u­larly. e) A board mem­ber ques­tioned man­aging volun­teer burn out. Com­munit­ies and Rur­al Devel­op­ment Man­ager agreed that this was a con­cern, and the team are very aware of how much time and effort is involved for volun­teers. Going for­ward the team plans to improve on build­ing rela­tion­ships and cre­at­ing pos­it­ive memor­ies with the pub­lic; hav­ing open and hon­est con­ver­sa­tions, being action focused and deliv­er­ing on mean­ing­ful objectives.

3. The Com­mit­tee noted the verbal update.

4. Action points: None

Cairngorms Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme (Paper 2)

1. Colin McLean intro­duced the paper which presents an update on the deliv­ery of the Park Authority’s Peat­land ACTION pro­gramme in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ and con­sid­er­a­tion of plans for the ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ pipeline of activity.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) CEO stated the Park Author­ity had atten­ded a peat­land con­fer­ence in Aviemore with 400 people from across the UK where Jim Farlie con­firmed £250 mil­lion of cap­it­al from SG over the next 10 years and the Pro­gramme for Gov­ern­ment for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ con­firms at least 10,000 hec­tares will be restored in Scot­land per annum. Fund­ing appears to be pos­it­ive for next year, espe­cially with the match fund­ing, how­ever not­ing that it is always bene­fi­cial to have private fund­ing as well. It was also high­lighted that there were three more peat­land pro­jects applic­a­tions sub­mit­ted before clos­ing the pro­gramme for this year, tak­ing the hec­tares restored over tar­get, and sig­ni­fic­antly redu­cing the fore­cast under­spend. b) A ques­tion was raised regard­ing the cir­cum­stances around los­ing a big pro­ject. Head of Land Man­age­ment stated that this was due to a unique situ­ation with com­plic­ated land own­er­ship around the car­bon cred­its, how­ever noted that this is unlikely to have con­straints on the pro­gramme going for­ward for oth­ers. c) The CEO noted ongo­ing part­ner­ship between aca­dem­ic insti­tu­tions and oth­er part­ners regard­ing long term agree­ments on car­bon cred­its and will share the update with the com­mit­tee when inform­a­tion is avail­able. SG are cur­rently car­ry­ing out work regard­ing ten­ant and landown­ers on forestry and peat­land car­bon cred­its and if there is some Inform­a­tion, this will be shared.

3. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

4. Action Point Arising: i. Updated on car­bon cred­it work being under­taken with­in the sector.

Cairngorms Trust and Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment update (Paper 3)

1. Dav­id Camer­on intro­duced the paper which presents an update on the work of the Cairngorms Loc­al Action Group Trust (‘the Cairngorms Trust’) and the col­lect­ive work of the Cairngorms Trust and the Park Author­ity in Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) activity.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the update and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) A dis­cus­sion was had around the pos­sib­il­ity of using lev­el­ling up funds, how­ever Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices noted that this was dif­fi­cult for the Park Author­ity to access as it is alloc­ated to loc­al author­it­ies and as the Park Author­ity sits in five dif­fer­ent loc­al author­it­ies this would be a chal­lenge to coordin­ate. b) Ques­tions were raised if Cairngorms Trust have com­bined with sim­il­ar organ­isa­tions to lobby for a change in fund­ing. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices assured the Com­mit­tee that this work is already ongo­ing, how­ever not­ing this is a slow pro­cess as it involves cre­at­ing a new struc­ture. c) Com­ments were made regard­ing the frus­tra­tion around the slow decision-mak­ing pro­cess on award­ing funds by gov­ern­ment to the Trust, res­ult­ing in fears of job loss. d) A board mem­ber ques­tioned wheth­er the three fund­ing streams on offer were pro rata or if they were con­cen­trat­ing on altern­at­ive funds. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices stated that regard­ing Com­munity Lead vis­ion funds, some pro­jects have already been fun­ded, some are ready to go wait­ing on approv­al from SG. Nature fun­ded steams are fully com­mit­ted, alloc­at­ing £90,000. There are still three strands of fund­ing, but the com­munity lead vis­ion fund had to be paired down.

3. The Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

4. Action Point Arising: None.

AOCB

1. None

2. Date of next meet­ing 13 Decem­ber, hybrid at the moment, but may get moved to online only.

3. The meet­ing closed at 11.27am

Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Action Points:

ACTION	Status
Action points arising from pre­vi­ous meetings
14 June 2024
Action points arising from pre­vi­ous meetings
11 Feb­ru­ary 2022	In hand
ii. Item 3.13a1 an accur­ate record of Vis­it Scot­land fund­ing 2023⁄24 will be brought to the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee in due course as extern­al aud­it­ors are still work­ing through records.	Update at next meeting
Vis­itScot­land through Rur­al Trans­port Infra­struc­ture Fund­ing which had been car­ried in deferred income deployed in 23⁄24 to:
Glen­more toi­let refur­bish­ment £35,000
Path sur­vey work £12,339
Oth­er pro­jects £6,371
Action points arising from this meeting
20 Septem­ber 2024
Cairngorms Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme (Paper 2)
At para 13c
i. Updated on car­bon cred­it work under­taken with­in the sec­tor between aca­dem­ic insti­tu­tions and landowners.