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COR­POR­ATE PLAN REPORTING

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY Form­al Board Paper 3 Annex I 25^th March 2022

Con­ser­va­tion and Land Management

Pri­or­ity I – Sup­port land­scape-scale con­ser­va­tion, spe­cific­ally the expan­sion of nat­ive and mont­ane wood­land, peat­land res­tor­a­tion, nat­ur­al flood man­age­ment and Caper­cail­lie management

Key Work Areas	Update
• Deliv­er peat­land res­tor­a­tion and wood­land expan­sion targets	In 2021⁄22 the CNPA Peat­land Action pro­gramme is cur­rently on track to deliv­er around 550ha of peat­land res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment across 10 sites on 7 estates by March 2022. The tar­get is 557ha. Pre­cise meas­ure­ments are not yet avail­able but the team is con­fid­ent that the work done to date will be very close to tar­get. The cur­rent mild winter has enabled peat­land res­tor­a­tion to con­tin­ue through­out much of Janu­ary. If mild con­di­tions con­tin­ue into Feb­ru­ary then around 700ha of peat­land res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment could be achieved. A new entrant scheme developed on Tulchan Estate has been suc­cess­ful in that four new con­tract­ors have expressed interest in peat­land res­tor­a­tion and now have the skills to work on sites where ditch block­ing is the main res­tor­a­tion tech­nique. There is still a short­age of con­tract­ors who can work on com­plex erosion sites. The poten­tial pro­gramme for 2022⁄23 could exceed 1000ha across 18 sites on 16 estates. Scot­Gov have alloc­ated suf­fi­cient cap­it­al spend to achieve this but nego­ti­ations are ongo­ing re the resource alloc­a­tion which is largely staff costs. An intern­al audit of all con­trols and pro­cesses involved in the man­age­ment of the Peat­land Action fund will be car­ried out in Feb­ru­ary. This will aid man­age­ment of risks asso­ci­ated with the Peat­land Action fund and will provide advice on how best to scale up the pro­gramme in future years. Since the last update, 1553.5 ha of wood­land cre­ation has been approved by Scot­tish Forestry in the Nation­al Park. This is spread across the High­land, Aber­deen­shire and Perth & Kinross loc­al author­ity areas. The bulk of the hec­tar­age is accoun­ted for by an approved nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion scheme of 1425 ha, which will be delivered by Wild­land Ltd. A pro­posed nat­ive wood­land plant­ing scheme of 426 ha at Kin­rara is cur­rently out for con­sulta­tion by Scot­tish Forestry.
• Devel­op and deliv­er Cairngorms Nature Strategy with wider partnership	Fur­ther wood­land expan­sion con­tin­ues to pro­gress in key areas through man­aging deer pop­u­la­tions for nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion. Cata­lysed by the increas­ingly buoy­ant car­bon mar­ket, there are vari­ous wood­land plant­ing schemes cur­rently shap­ing up which we have been made aware of, and these would amount to sev­er­al thou­sand hec­tares of new wood­land to be delivered with­in the next few years. As well as sub­stan­tially increas­ing the amount of wood­land cov­er (across all five loc­al author­ity areas with­in the park), this and oth­er new affor­est­a­tion is likely to have sig­ni­fic­ant, pos­it­ive effects for forest hab­it­at con­nectiv­ity across the park, poten­tially bene­fit­ting a wide range of wood­land spe­cies, includ­ing caper­cail­lie. Uptake of the Wood­land Chal­lenge Fund in its second year (2020÷21) was sig­ni­fic­antly great­er than in the first year, when there were just two suc­cess­ful applic­a­tions. In Year 2 there were sev­en suc­cess­ful applic­a­tions for pro­jects that var­ied in scale from 1.4 ha to 135 ha, and in grant award from £650 to £3000. In total the sev­en fun­ded pro­jects were awar­ded £13,688.80 and rep­res­ent the cre­ation of roughly 350 ha of new nat­ive wood­land with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. In Year 3 (2021÷22), no applic­a­tions have yet been received, but sev­er­al are anti­cip­ated before the end of the fin­an­cial year. The Cairngorms Nature Action Plan (2019 – 2024) is delivered by a wide range of part­ners includ­ing 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. Land­scape scale con­ser­va­tion Map­ping of aspen and ripari­an wood­land cov­er and con­nectiv­ity across the Park is almost com­plete. Work with Catch­ment Man­age­ment Part­ner­ships, farm­ers and land man­agers, with invest­ment via the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund, con­tin­ues to aug­ment the exist­ing resource through plant­ing. Map­ping of spe­cies grass­land extent and con­di­tion will be com­pleted in sum­mer 2022 and mob graz­ing pilots are under­way to demon­strate biod­iversity gain as part of pro­duct­ive sys­tems. River res­tor­a­tion led by Catch­ment Man­age­ment Part­ner­ships con­tin­ues to focus on re-nat­ur­al­isa­tion through con­nect­ing rivers with flood­plains and intro­du­cing woody debris. A pro­gramme of pond res­tor­a­tion and cre­ation is being led by Brit­ish Dragon­fly Soci­ety. Pri­or­ity spe­cies Spe­cies con­ser­va­tion con­tin­ues to be driv­en for­wards primar­ily through the work of ded­ic­ated pro­jects, namely Rare
• Deliv­er Caper­cail­lie Framework	Inver­teb­rates in the Cairngorms, Cairngorms Rare Plants & Wild Con­nec­tions, Wet­lands and Waders Ini­ti­at­ives, Cairngorms Wild­cat and Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie pro­jects. CNPA and BTO have pro­duced sens­it­iv­ity maps identi­fy­ing key cur­lew hab­it­at and breed­ing sites across the Park and CNPA is devel­op­ing Park-wide Fresh Water Pearl Mus­sel spe­cies rein­force­ment strategy and a rap­tor con­ser­va­tion strategy. Involving people After two years of vir­tu­al activ­ity, the flag­ship nature engage­ment event in the Park, Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end, is set to wel­come back people to the land­scapes, wild­life and land man­age­ment in the Park in May 2022. Approx­im­ately 100 events run by land man­agers, organ­isa­tions, com­munit­ies and enthu­si­asts across the Park will be avail­able for people to find out more about the Nation­al Park, how it’s man­aged and the wild­life it’s fam­ous for. Cairngorms Nature part­ners are also devel­op­ing engage­ment path­ways to sup­port the jour­ney from new-to-nature to act­ive-and-engaged and spe­cial­ist audi­ences through a range of oppor­tun­it­ies for get­ting involved. The Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject is now half-way through its 3‑year deliv­ery phase. Good pro­gress con­tin­ues to be made against all five of the project’s Approved Pur­poses. High­lights include over 2,600 res­id­ents, vis­it­ors and busi­nesses shar­ing their views about caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion and ways they feel they can help; volun­teers donat­ing over 2,200 hours to the pro­ject to help deliv­er com­munity-led action for the bird; and over 7,800 hec­tares of hab­it­at improved for caper­cail­lie. Minor issues have impacted the deliv­ery of some hab­it­at improve­ment work, com­munity-led action, eval­u­ation and genet­ic research, but all work remains on track to com­plete by the end of the pro­ject (July 2023). Full details of the project’s pro­gress can be found on the pro­ject web­site https://www.cairngormscapercaillie.scot In addi­tion to the work of the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject and the ongo­ing work of many part­ners, CNPA ini­ti­ated dis­cus­sions with key stake­hold­ers at a seni­or level to invest­ig­ate the desirab­il­ity and feas­ib­il­ity of new approaches not already under con­sid­er­a­tion or being imple­men­ted, primar­ily around the man­age­ment of pro­tec­ted spe­cies, translocation/​rein­tro­duc­tion and cre­at­ing areas of min­im­um dis­turb­ance. A sub-group of the NatureScot Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Com­mit­tee will pub­lish its find­ings in March 2022. The Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject Board will con­sider the implic­a­tions of the find­ings and the oppor­tun­it­ies for the pro­ject to con­trib­ute towards any recommendations.

Pri­or­ity 2 — Ensure deer man­age­ment is focused on deliv­er­ing pub­lic interest pri­or­it­ies spe­cific­ally the expan­sion of nat­ive wood­lands and peat­land restoration

Key Work Areas	Update
• Sup­port pop­u­la­tion mod­el­ling and herb­i­vore impact assessments	Nature Scot plans to count open range deer across the South Deeside and North Angus DMG and the South Grampi­an DMG before March 2022 if weath­er per­mits. This count will be con­duc­ted from heli­copters and using digit­al pho­to­graphy. With heli­copters and teams in place to count the East Grampi­ans, CNPA will take advant­age of this to fund a count across the West Grampi­an DMG. Up to date count data will give us an ideal start­ing point for devel­op­ing Stra­tegic Land Use Plans in part­ner­ship with DMGs across the Park.
• Work closely with Deer Man­age­ment Groups (DMGs) to deliv­er pub­lic interest priorities	The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment accep­ted 92 of the 99 recom­mend­a­tions with­in the Deer Work­ing Group report. These recom­mend­a­tions now need to be imple­men­ted in the form of new legis­la­tion, new reg­u­la­tion, new incent­ives and a review of all the non-stat­utory instru­ments which influ­ence deer man­age­ment e.g. Best Prac­tice Guid­ance. A Pro­gramme Board has been estab­lished to take for­ward these vari­ous work streams and CNPA is rep­res­en­ted on that Board.

Pri­or­ity 3 — Sup­port sus­tain­able moor­land man­age­ment to deliv­er great­er hab­it­at diversity and good man­age­ment practice

Key Work Areas	Update
• Deliv­er with estates the work pro­gramme of the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship (ECMP)	The East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship met on 8th Decem­ber 2021 and dis­cussed how grouse moor man­age­ment could become more sus­tain­able. This dis­cus­sion was linked to forth­com­ing legis­la­tion in terms of grouse moor licens­ing. The poten­tial role of ECMP as a sound­ing board for ideas and as a link between the grouse sec­tor and Gov­ern­ment was dis­cussed. Key ele­ments of sus­tain­ab­il­ity were iden­ti­fied. These included bag size, mar­ket adjust­ment, employ­ment, muir­burn and wider hab­it­at management.
• Estab­lish a Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group	The Cairngorms Uplands Advis­ory Group (CUAG) met on 2nd Decem­ber and dis­cussed new forestry grant scheme apply­ing to deer man­age­ment on open range. This grant would sup­port the man­age­ment required to achieve unfenced nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion. The Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice atten­ded CUAG and dis­cussed the use of pre­scribed burn­ing to reduce the risk of wildfires.
• Elim­in­ate rap­tor per­se­cu­tion and develop	Await­ing latest rap­tor per­se­cu­tion fig­ures from RSPB and Police Scot­land. BTO rap­tor track­er tag devel­op­ment still ongo­ing, in the mean­time three altern­at­ive tags fit­ted to golden eagles in the

| wild­life tour­ism pro­ject around rap­tors | Park in 2021 (one on Deeside two in Strath­spey). The Part­ner­ship for Action against Wild­life crime (PAW) group, includ­ing Police Scot­land, met on 29^th Sept to dis­cuss wild­life crime pro­ced­ures in rela­tion to poten­tial rap­tor per­se­cu­tion events in the Nation­al Park. CNPA is linked in with NE Scot­land golden eagle mon­it­or­ing pro­ject to ensure over­view and col­lab­or­a­tion. Cairngorms Nature Strategy Group is con­sid­er­ing the actions required to fur­ther address this issue and take for­ward rap­tor con­ser­va­tion in CNP. This includes invest­ig­at­ing the poten­tial for wild­life tourism. |

Vis­it­or Experience

Pri­or­ity I — Con­tin­ue to ensure vis­it­or infra­struc­ture meets the expect­a­tions of vis­it­ors to the Nation­al Park and help deliv­er a sus­tain­able tour­ism economy

Key Work Areas	Update
• Fin­ish Spey­side Way exten­sion, the Moun­tains and the People Pro­gramme and start Deeside Way extension	Spey­side Way Exten­sion – The Spey­side Way exten­sion has been con­struc­ted and is being well used. The New­ton­more ​‘sculp­ture’ start/​finish loc­a­tion was form­ally opened by Kate For­bes MSP In Aug 2021. Path sig­nage is being installed with fur­ther improve­ments at Tromie and Insh. Grant­own and Kin­craig com­munit­ies are seek­ing fund­ing for improve­ments in their com­munit­ies. Cairngorms Busi­ness Asso­ci­ation and MoraySpey­side have secured fund­ing to pro­mote the route going for­ward. Form­al open­ing of the route exten­sion is being planned for Spring 2022 Deeside Way – Brae­mar to Inver­cauld Bridge plan­ning con­sent has been exten­ded and CNPA and Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil has agreed to jointly fund OATS to con­struct the sec­tion of new path in Spring 2022. Moun­tains & People — The 5 year pro­ject was com­pleted in Jan 2021, delayed by Cov­id, but upgrad­ing 51.8 km of moun­tain path in Cairngorms out of a five year tar­get of 53 km. Fur­ther work with Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land (OATS) is ongo­ing to agree how we best sup­port the main­ten­ance of these paths and the volun­teers that the pro­ject trained in path maintenance.
• Deliv­er Tour­ism Action Plan and devel­op and deliv­er with part­ners a Vis­it­or Giv­ing scheme	Tour­ism Action Plan – Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship (CTP) has met sev­er­al times to mon­it­or deliv­ery of the Action Plan which under­pins the Park’s status with the European Charter for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism in Pro­tec­ted Areas. CNPA led on a mid-term review of the Action Plan, which was con­sidered by CNPA Board in March 2021. We are in dis­cus­sions with Euro­parc about extend­ing the cur­rent five year arrange­ment until 2022 so that devel­op­ment of the next Action Plan fol­lows on from approv­al of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.
• Pro­gress with deliv­ery of Cairngorm/​Glenmore Strategy	A Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group has met reg­u­larly, along with a Man­age­ment for Vis­it­ors Group to plan and man­age for Cov­id related work. Vol­un­tary Giv­ing – CNPA Board agreed the prin­ciples of this work June 2018 & Cairngorms Trust launched the arrange­ments in May 2019. The Trust is now work­ing with a range of busi­nesses across the Park and a Part­ner­ship Group is in place (chaired by Bri­an Woods with Pete Crane rep­res­ent­ing CNPA) to advise on devel­op­ment of the scheme and the pro­jects to be fun­ded. Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund (RTIF) — CNPA suc­cess­fully secured fund­ing for two pro­jects on Nation­al Nature Reserves at Glen­more (mul­ti­use tar­mac path) and Muir of Din­net (car park­ing, toi­let upgrade and sewage dis­pos­al) with both pro­jects now com­plete. Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil has secured fund­ing for improve­ments to Glen­shee pub­lic toi­lets (Sum­mer 2021) and CNPA has bid for Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Devel­op­ment Plan fund­ing to devel­op detailed, approved and cos­ted plans for improv­ing vis­it­or infra­struc­ture at key vis­it­or des­tin­a­tions around the Nation­al Park. Expres­sion of Interest are also being invited for CNPA cap­it­al fund­ing as part of the vis­it­or infra­struc­ture improve­ment pro­gramme that fits with the approved vis­it­or man­age­ment plans. High­land Coun­cil and CNPA have fun­ded fur­ther road­side improve­ments from Beach Car Park along Loch Mor­lich with improve­ments ongo­ing into Spring 2022. The Cairngorm Moun­tain Mas­ter­plan is com­plete and repair work on the funicu­lar rail­way is under­way with open­ing anti­cip­ated for winter 2022⁄23. CairnGorm Moun­tain opened the camper­van site at Coire Ciste and is plan­ning improve­ments to vis­it­or inter­pret­a­tion at the moun­tain. The great­er num­ber of vis­it­ors using of Glen­more and Cairngorm post COVID19 lock­down indic­ates the need for part­ners to review the cur­rent Cairngorm and Glen­more Strategy and agree a clear part­ner­ship action plan going forward.

Pri­or­ity 2 — Increase phys­ic­al activ­ity in both res­id­ents and vis­it­ors and sup­port deliv­ery of Scotland’s Nat­ur­al Health Service

Key Work Areas	Update
• Devel­op and deliv­er Act­ive Cairngorms with Act­ive Aviemore and Health Walks as flag­ship projects	Act­ive Aviemore – High­land Coun­cil, Hitrans, Sus­trans, NHS High­land are devel­op­ing an act­ive travel link to the new Aviemore Hos­pit­al and Trans­port Scot­land are design­ing a Non-Motor­ised User (NMU) link from Aviemore to Car­rbridge with the pre­ferred route being fol­low­ing ​‘old A9’.. The main multi use infra­struc­ture in Aviemore will form part of the Her­it­age Hori­zons bid. Dul­nain Bridge has secured Sus­trans sup­port for con­struc­tion of an NMU link to Grant­own-on-Spey. Lag­gan com­munity has secured funds for stage one design, and Grant­own has stage two fund­ing for act­ive travel design in the village.
• Expand and deliv­er volun­teer­ing pro­gramme and spe­cific­ally Volun­teer Rangers	Act­ive travel is a sig­ni­fic­ant part of the Her­it­age Hori­zons Lot­tery Bid and will sup­port the deliv­ery of act­ive travel in many more com­munit­ies. Sus­trans are sup­port­ing a 3 year act­ive travel post in the Nation­al Park to take for­ward this work. 16 Health Walk groups with­in the Nation­al Park are slowly start­ing to re-open Health Walks as we come out of Lock­down 38 Volun­teer Rangers have now been trained and are sup­port­ing the work of part­ners cross CNP as part of our ongo­ing pro­ject sup­por­ted by Cairngorms LEAD­ER. After being ​‘on hold’ due to Cov­id the volun­teers star­ted to return to the role in May 2021. A fur­ther 9 volun­teers are being trained in Spring 2022.

Pri­or­ity 3 — Cre­ate a ​‘Park for All’ by encour­aging people from all back­grounds to come and recre­ate, learn in or vis­it the Nation­al Park

Key Work Areas	Update
• Con­tin­ue to sup­port and pro­mote the John Muir Award and Juni­or Ranger programme	In 2020 a total of 972 John Muir Awards were com­pleted, and 832 in 2021, con­sid­er­ably down on nor­mal due to Cov­id-19 restrictions.
• Work with Inclus­ive Cairngorms and part­ners to reduce bar­ri­ers and encour­age participation.	In 2020 a total of 972 John Muir Awards were com­pleted, and 832 in 2021, con­sid­er­ably down on nor­mal due to Cov­id-19 restric­tions. CNPA Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el meets monthly since its incep­tion in Octo­ber 2021 and has received input to a range of CNPA pro­grammes and is engaged in sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of Equal­ity Out­comes for the next 3 years. The CNPA sup­por­ted Back­bone Sym­posi­um event in June 2021 with 90 par­ti­cipants aimed at improv­ing rep­res­ent­a­tion of BAME groups with­in the sec­tor. In Octo­ber some 130 engaged with out­door activ­ity intro event at Glen­more. Fur­ther events are being planned for 2022. Back­bone are being sup­por­ted to work with some 100 Syr­i­an refugees based in and around Inverness encour­aging them to vis­it and enjoy the Nation­al Park while learn­ing how to repeat and share these exper­i­ence with oth­ers but this work is now on hold with COVID19.

Rur­al Development

Pri­or­ity I — Sup­port deliv­ery of hous­ing for loc­al needs through an effi­cient and effect­ive plan­ning service

Key Work Areas	Update
• Devel­op and imple­ment Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020	Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2021 adop­ted by CNPA Board on 26 March 2021 and is now used to determ­ine all plan­ning applic­a­tions in the Nation­al Park.
• Sup­port com­munity-led hous­ing in the Nation­al Park	5 com­munit­ies are act­ively look­ing to devel­op com­munity led hous­ing pro­jects. Boat of Garten – Plan­ning per­mis­sion in Prin­ciple was gran­ted by the CNPA in 2021 for 2 afford­able units through the Com­munit­ies Hous­ing Trust. Tomin­toul – Fol­low­ing plan­ning approv­al in May 2021, the Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Devel­op­ment Trust (TGDT) were able to secure the required fund­ing to com­mence con­struc­tion. Con­struc­tion com­menced in sum­mer 2021 with the build­ings now water­tight. Expec­ted to be com­plete and ready for occu­pancy in 2022. Dul­nain Bridge – A com­munity work­ing group star­ted a pro­ject to deliv­er self-build house plots. The pro­ject is now being invest­ig­ated in detail by the Com­munit­ies Hous­ing Trust and Seafield Estate. Brae­mar – Com­munity took own­er­ship of the site in 2021. Plan­ning applic­a­tion to build 15 afford­able houses for rent, was sub­mit­ted in Sep 21 and called in by CNPA. There have been some road and drain­age issues which have delayed its present­a­tion to com­mit­tee. Lag­gan – Com­munity now look­ing to expand their com­munity owned hous­ing stock and have employed CHT to invest­ig­ate poten­tial for new units in the village

Pri­or­ity 2 — Sup­port com­munit­ies, spe­cific­ally focus­sing on the most fra­gile, to deliv­er their agen­das for change

Key Work Areas	Update
• Con­clude Tomintoul/​Glenlivet Land­scape Part­ner­ship, devel­op new focus area in	The Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship pro­ject com­pleted in Feb­ru­ary 2021, with the final report sub­mit­ted to the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund in May 2021. The leg­acy pro­jects are now under­way. The Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject con­cluded in Septem­ber 2021 with anoth­er hugely suc­cess­ful Badenoch Heritage
Badenoch and help deliv­er Great Place Scheme	Fest­iv­al plus a clos­ing Con­fer­ence and con­cert. The web­site www​.badenoch​story​lands​.com has a final report of the pro­ject togeth­er with inform­a­tion and resources on the cul­ture of the area and inform­a­tion col­lated as part of the project.
• Sup­port com­munity organ­isa­tions to deliv­er pro­jects that help deliv­er NPPP	Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch & Strath­spey (VABS) — Have con­tin­ued to be at the fore­front of the com­munity recov­ery from COV­ID in Badenoch and Strath­spey, sup­por­ted by the CNPA’s Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Com­munit­ies Man­ager. They secured and admin­istered over £100k of COV­ID sup­port fund­ing for area and provided sig­ni­fic­ant sup­port to a myri­ad of com­munity-led groups and organ­isa­tions. They are now refo­cus­ing on their core work of sup­port­ing a huge range of com­munity groups with gov­ernance, fin­ance and pro­ject sup­port whilst also being a key part­ner in the Badenoch Great Places Pro­ject, sit­ting on the Board, Team and employ­ing the Pro­ject Officer. VABS now instig­at­ing a pro­gramme to restart Com­munity Action Plan­ning which has been in abey­ance since 2019, start­ing with Car­rbridge in March. Marr Area Part­ner­ship (MAP) – Has con­tin­ued to provide a vital COV­ID com­munity sup­port net­work on Deeside work­ing closely with Aber­deen­shire coun­cil to meet loc­al needs includ­ing man­aging an Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil sup­port fund for the Marr area com­munit­ies. Aber­deen­shire coun­cil is with­draw­ing its (sub­stan­tial) fund­ing to all its area part­ner­ships over 3 years. MAP is also deal­ing with the chal­lenges of 100% turnover of staff twice in 3 years. Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Devel­op­ment Trust – Hav­ing been forced to close both its income gen­er­at­ing busi­nesses (hostel and Dis­cov­ery Centre) in 2020, both were reopened in sum­mer 2021 with reduced turnover. With Green Recov­ery Fund sup­port they are cre­at­ing a new Dark Skies exhib­i­tion to enhance offer­ing at the Dis­cov­ery Centre. They are hop­ing that their 12 afford­able homes will be ready for occu­pa­tion early this sum­mer (8 for rent, 4 to sell). Hav­ing secured extern­al fund­ing they have also under­taken a feas­ib­il­ity study into devel­op­ing a camp­ing, camper­van site.
Suc­cess­fully con­clude LEAD­ER pro­gramme and con­sider future fund­ing for Com­munity Led Loc­al Development	The 2014 – 2021 LEAD­ER Pro­gramme has been suc­cess­fully con­cluded, with all pro­jects com­plet­ing in full with the excep­tion of the inab­il­ity to secure deliv­ery of an elec­tric minibus as part of the sus­tain­able trans­port pro­ject. Mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation data is still being drawn togeth­er, with ini­tial ana­lys­is show­ing all tar­gets have secured a good level of activ­ity against plans, with many tar­gets exceeded. The first two pro­jects tri­al­ling new approaches to Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) have been implemented

Pri­or­ity 3 — Work closely with the busi­ness com­munity and part­ners to sup­port a sus­tain­able Park economy

Key Work Areas	Update
• Review and help deliv­er Eco­nom­ic Strategy for the Park with partners	The CNPA approved Eco­nom­ic Action Plan for the Nation­al Park in Decem­ber 2019 and approved a Green Recov­ery Plan for the Nation­al Park in response to the impacts of COVID19 on the eco­nomy in June 2020. The pro­jects fun­ded by the CNPA’s Green Recov­ery Fund of 2021 are now being delivered.
• Ensure impacts of A9 dualling are under­stood and addressed where appro­pri­ate by the Park Authority	Trans­port Scot­land has now pub­lished its pre­ferred route for the pro­ject to deliv­er an altern­at­ive non-motor­ised user route to link Aviemore and Car­rbridge. A plan­ning applic­a­tion for the route will be made in early 2022.

Cor­por­ate Services

Pri­or­ity I — Imple­ment the Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy and embed the organ­isa­tion­al and cul­tur­al improve­ments to make the CNPA the best small pub­lic body in Scotland

Key Work Areas	Update
• Imple­ment, review and refresh Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy as part of con­tinu­al improve­ment work.	Staff com­pleted the Best Com­pan­ies Staff Engage­ment sur­vey in Octo­ber 2021. The Com­mu­nic­a­tions update below sets out the pre­lim­in­ary pub­lished res­ults of that exer­cise and those are not repeated here, while we wel­come the pos­it­ive over­all feed­back received from our staff group. We are cur­rently in the pro­cess of ana­lys­ing the res­ults, and identi­fy­ing the key high­lights (areas in which we are doing well and would seek to retain); and shad­ows (areas we are not doing as well, and would seek to change). An action plan will be developed in this regard, and this will inform the next phase of the Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy – ODS4. We are cur­rently in the pro­cess of enhan­cing our organ­isa­tion­al approach to equal­it­ies, which will feed in to the over­arch­ing ODS4. With regards IT, we are in the pro­cess of imple­ment­ing SWAN (Scot­tish Wide Area Net­work), and mov­ing to Microsoft Teams. We have enhanced our remote cap­ab­il­it­ies to sup­port the organ­isa­tion­al move towards the hybrid
Sup­port effect­ive staff con­sulta­tion processes	work­ing approach. As we emerge out of the Cov­id-response Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan and move to a more agile work­ing envir­on­ment, we will seek to eval­u­ate how this approach is work­ing at 3, 6 and 9 month inter­vals. We have quarterly Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um meet­ings, and have recently invited staff to join the For­um. 3 exist­ing mem­bers have returned for a second term, and two new mem­bers have joined the SCF. Key areas for con­sulta­tion over the last 6 months have included the ways of work­ing (office con­fig­ur­a­tion and move to a hybrid work­ing approach), as well as ques­tions to ask staff for con­sid­er­a­tion around the Scot­tish Government’s Fin­ance Pay Policy pro­pos­als that organ­isa­tions con­sider mov­ing to a 35 hour week. These con­ver­sa­tions will be ongo­ing over the com­ing year as this is very much the start of con­sid­er­a­tions in this regard, and is cur­rently being sup­por­ted both through a staff sur­vey and staff drop-in sessions

Pri­or­ity 2 — Ensure that the office exten­sion, exist­ing accom­mod­a­tion and ICT facil­it­ies are ​‘fit for pur­pose’ and help to deliv­er the ODS

Key Work Areas	Update
• Com­plete exten­sion project	Exten­sion com­pleted on budget in August 2018, and staff have now settled well in the build­ing. Rent­al for the exten­sion has now com­menced on basis of expec­ted values.
Imple­ment GIS Strategy	This work will not com­plete by the end of the Cor­por­ate Plan peri­od, with delays to work dur­ing COV­ID restric­tions. Plans are in place to take this strand of work for­ward in 2022⁄23 in part­ner­ship with Loch Lomond and the Trossachs NPA.
• Imple­ment cyber secur­ity frame­work and wider IT development	Sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gress has been made over the last 18 months in this area of our work. As noted under the OD Strategy com­ment­ary, the cur­rent focus is on imple­ment­ing new, robust, secure net­works and tak­ing ser­vices and records man­age­ment into cloud based pro­vi­sion. This will not com­plete fully by 31 March and will con­tin­ue imple­ment­a­tion into the for­ward year.

Pri­or­ity 3 — Deliv­er ongo­ing ser­vice improve­ment, includ­ing appro­pri­ate shared ser­vice devel­op­ment and oper­a­tion, to the Author­ity, oth­er pub­lic bod­ies and the com­munity and char­it­able organ­isa­tions we support

Key Work Areas	Update
Deliv­er cor­por­ate sup­port to Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion (SLC), and char­it­able and community	The author­ity has agreed to SLC’s request to extent the shared ser­vice arrange­ments provided by Cairngorms NPA for a fur­ther two years. We con­tin­ue to sup­port their pay remit sub­mis­sions and wider organ­isa­tion­al devel­op­ment; staff con­sulta­tion and HR advis­ory require­ments. The Author­ity con­tin­ues to play a role sup­port­ing a wide range of char­it­able and com­munity organ­isa­tions formally,
• Provide accom­mod­a­tion and facil­it­ies sup­port to NPPP deliv­ery partners	through mem­ber­ship of Boards, Com­mit­tees and groups, and inform­ally through pro­vi­sion of advice and grant sup­port. Dur­ing the lock­down peri­od of the pan­dem­ic, the Author­ity deployed pool cars and oth­er facil­it­ies in sup­port of com­munity responses to the pan­dem­ic. In plan­ning around the reopen­ing of our offices, we are con­scious that many organ­isa­tions are rethink­ing their staff deploy­ment and office needs, as are we. We will be involved in dis­cus­sions with the aim of facil­it­at­ing part­ners and their staff con­tinu­ing to play their pri­or­ity roles in NPPP deliv­ery, mak­ing flex­ible use of the Authority’s facil­it­ies where possible.

Pri­or­ity 4 — Pro­mote and sup­port the highest stand­ards of gov­ernance and man­age­ment, includ­ing equal­it­ies actions, with­in the Author­ity, oth­er pub­lic bod­ies and the com­munity and char­it­able organ­isa­tions we support

Key Work Areas	Update
• Design and imple­ment effect­ive and effi­cient man­age­ment and con­trol systems.	Our intern­al and extern­al audit work con­tin­ues to demon­strate our man­age­ment and con­trol sys­tems are gen­er­ally effect­ive and effi­cient, while high­light­ing a num­ber of typ­ic­ally low and mod­er­ate risk level recom­mend­a­tions for fur­ther improve­ment which the staff group are work­ing to imple­ment. Our areas of con­trol have changed sig­ni­fic­antly over the cor­por­ate plan peri­od, with sig­ni­fic­ant extern­ally fun­ded pro­grammes of activ­ity now under man­age­ment and new areas of dir­ect staff deliv­ery. Man­age­ment and Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee con­tin­ue to dir­ect intern­al audit work into sup­port­ing review of the highest risk areas of man­age­ment and intern­al control.
• Imple­ment Green­ing Strategy and deliv­er Youth Devel­op­ment Strategy	The Green­ing Group con­tin­ues to meet as part of the broad­er Cli­mate Change Pro­gramme Board, which focusses on both extern­al and intern­al green­ing chal­lenges. The Author­ity recently signed up as a Young Person’s Guar­an­tee organ­isa­tion, which aligns with our Youth Devel­op­ment Strategy. Our IT Appren­tice con­tin­ues with his SVG Level 6 in IT; and in addi­tion we have just appoin­ted two Gradu­ate Train­ee Account­ants to sup­port the work of the fin­ance team. We also sup­por­ted an intern­ship with­in the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject team. The 4 x Kick­start Train­ee rangers com­pleted their place­ments, with one suc­cess­fully apply­ing for one of the Sea­son­al Rangers posts in the 2021 sea­son, fol­low­ing an unex­pec­ted vacancy. For 2022, we are seek­ing to sup­port 2 more Train­ee Rangers.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions

Pri­or­ity I — Deliv­er the Com­mu­nic­a­tion and Engage­ment Strategy and increase aware­ness, engage­ment and involve­ment with the Park

Key Work Areas	Update
• Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions & Social Media	In 2021, we reached 351,820 web­site ses­sions, a 7% increase on the 2020 fig­ure but short of our 400k tar­get. On social media we reached 72,300 fol­low­ers across 3 Face­book pages, I Ins­tagram account, I Linked­In account and 5 Twit­ter accounts. This was an increase of 50% on the pre­vi­ous year. This growth can be attrib­uted to focus­ing on build­ing our Ins­tagram and Linked­In audi­ences, includ­ing reach­ing our end of year goal of 10,000 fol­low­ers on Ins­tagram. Due to major changes to the pro­vi­sion of ana­lyt­ics data from all social media chan­nels access to audi­ence insights has been lim­ited, there­fore we are under­go­ing a review of how best to ana­lyse end of year data for each plat­form. One impact of this is that our reach data is lim­ited – based on what we can access for Face­book and Twit­ter, this fig­ure stands at 2.54m, but the true fig­ure is likely to be much high­er (Cairngorms News, for instance, accoun­ted for 2.45m on Twit­ter alone). A full audit of our web­site was con­duc­ted in Novem­ber by access­ib­il­ity experts DAC (Digit­al Access­ib­il­ity Centre). This included auto­mated test­ing in line with best prac­tice guid­ance (WCAG 2.1), along with an expert manu­al com­pli­ance audit and test­ing by users with a range of dis­ab­il­it­ies. The audit was com­ple­ment­ary about a num­ber of ele­ments of the site; how­ever, spe­cif­ic issues were flagged around third-party plu­gins to the site (map­ping, forms etc) which do not meet the latest access­ib­il­ity guidelines, pdf down­loads not always being screen-read­er access­ible, and images need­ing easi­er to under­stand altern­at­ive text. We will be work­ing through these find­ings with our web developers over the com­ing months.
Cam­paigns: Cairngorms Nature, Act­ive Cairngorms & ​‘Make it Yours’	Cairngorms Nature: The Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end ​‘At Home’ event ran in May and, as expec­ted, it was a dif­fer­ent beast entirely from the 2020 lock­down ​‘10 Days’ event. Con­cerned that ​‘digit­al fatigue’ may have set in we tried a new approach to engage fam­il­ies with the launch of CN Explorers. This was a great suc­cess, with 200 fam­il­ies signed up for the activ­ity packs to engage over the week­end and 145 sign-ups for a new Explorers Club E‑Zine, designed to deep­en engage­ment through­out the rest of the year. The level of response was hugely encour­aging and gives us some­thing to build on in 2022 as we move back to a phys­ic­al fest­iv­al. Over the BIG Week­end the web­site received 1,622 page views from 600 users. Two events required book­ing and we saw 50 attend­ing the wild­cat webin­ar and 200 at the Scot­tish Envir­on­ment LINK webin­ar. One of the areas that was markedly down was the Children’s Art com­pet­i­tion, with around 160 entries as opposed to the usu­al 200 – 300. We sus­pect this was impacted by schools com­ing out of lock­down and being busy with oth­er things, but will keep an eye on
num­bers in 2022.	We already have around 60 events being developed for the 2022 pro­gramme and are hop­ing the bulk of activ­ity will be out­side in per­son, although some of the offer­ing will con­tin­ue to be online to reach those people who are unable to attend phys­ic­ally. Two flag­ship events are being planned – a pan­el-based webin­ar which will expand on the People/​Nature theme of NPPP4 and a live tra­di­tion­al music event. We have offered the ​‘com­munity hub’ to Grant­own on Spey this year and hope to run an event in Anagach Woods to round off the week­end. A new BIG Week­end web­site is also being developed. Act­ive Cairngorms: Septem­ber saw our man­aging for visitor’s activ­ity slow down and atten­tion turn­ing to review­ing the suc­cess of the pre­vi­ous six months. On a nation­al basis, the #Respect­Pro­tec­tEn­joy cam­paign reached 205m people on social media between March and Septem­ber, the cam­paign video was viewed 584k times, and at least 83% of Scot­tish adults saw some form of cam­paign activ­ity at least once (57% saw it 3+ times). In total, CNPA activ­ity reached 950k people across our social media chan­nels, and our PR activ­ity was fea­tured across the BBC, STV, P&J, Cour­i­er, Scots­man and vari­ous loc­al titles. A par­tic­u­lar suc­cess was focus­ing on the work of rangers across the Park, with lots of atten­tion on the Kick­start Ranger posts, inter­views with key staff and con­sist­ent SOAC mes­saging. We will be look­ing to ramp up respons­ible vis­it­or mes­saging over the com­ing months, par­tic­u­larly around dogs on leads from mid-Feb­ru­ary. As we found improved suc­cess run­ning vis­it­or man­age­ment mes­sages via our Cairngorms News chan­nels on Face­book, Twit­ter and Ins­tagram, we con­tin­ued to use these accounts over Act­ive Cairngorms for the dur­a­tion of 2021. How­ever, with the intro­duc­tion of the CNP Rangers account on Twit­ter this has provided us an altern­at­ive aven­ue to pro­mote vis­it­or man­age­ment mes­sages through the Rangers to com­ple­ment our cor­por­ate mes­saging. ​‘Make it Yours’ (MIY): In the absence of the usu­al in-per­son MIY ses­sions with vis­it­or-facing staff across the Park, we have developed a video train­ing resource, designed to provide bites­ize inform­a­tion for busi­nesses and their employ­ees. As restric­tions ease we plan to offer the face-to-face ses­sions again. At the start of the Cov­id-19 lock­down the CNPA set up a weekly Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group, chaired by Janet Hunter. Mem­ber­ship con­sists of CNPA, Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, VisitAberdeenshire,
• Deliv­er stake­hold­er engage­ment & events	Through­out the peri­od our comms activ­ity con­tin­ued to be coordin­ated via a cent­ral Com­mu­nic­a­tions Grid, with a vari­ety of themes cov­er­ing a range of key stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies for the organ­isa­tion. In June we focused on Cairngorms Nature and the BIG Week­end, as well as launch­ing a new Gael­ic Toolkit to sup­port busi­nesses in integ­rat­ing Gael­ic into their vis­it­or offer. In July and August we con­tin­ued to provide updates on man­aging for vis­it­ors, announced the recip­i­ents of the Green Recov­ery Fund, and drew togeth­er stor­ies of our rur­al work­force, includ­ing land-based work­ers, caper­cail­lie keep­ers, loc­al farm­ers and con­ser­va­tion pro­ject officers. We launched the inform­al phase of the NPPP4 con­sulta­tion in Septem­ber and ran a Gael­ic takeover of our social media chan­nels to great suc­cess. And in Octo­ber we ran the res­ched­uled Wee Walks Week – which included the launch of our newly digit­ised Com­munity Paths and Routes maps. Novem­ber and Decem­ber focused on driv­ing form­al con­sulta­tion responses, along­side pro­mo­tion of COP26 and asso­ci­ated cli­mate change and con­ser­va­tion themes. We also sup­por­ted the pro­mo­tion of the Youth LAG and Cairngorms Trust pro­ject fund. Media activ­ity is planned this Feb­ru­ary around the Young Person’s Guar­an­tee, a com­mit­ment to bring togeth­er employ­ers, part­ners and young people to con­nect every 16 to 24 year old in Scot­land to a job, train­ing, learn­ing or volun­teer­ing opportunity.
• Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions: pub­lic­a­tions, con­sulta­tions, media & issues man­age­ment, Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan	COP26 took place in Glas­gow from 31 Octo­ber to 12 Novem­ber and CNPA staff were present for a vari­ety of events across the two weeks. Park staff engaged with hun­dreds of del­eg­ates as part of an Envir­on­ment and Eco­nom­ies Lead­ers’ Group stand, which was loc­ated right out­side the main plen­ary rooms (where the main dis­cus­sions were tak­ing place). The Chief Exec­ut­ive was invited to deliv­er a speech on the impacts of cli­mate change on snow levels in the Park at the Cryo­sphere Pavil­ion, and also took part in a pan­el event with oth­er UK Nation­al Parks, show­cas­ing our Net Zero with Nature work with Pal­la­di­um. The Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Rur­al Devel­op­ment par­ti­cip­ated in a Vis­itScot­land event about Cli­mate Change and Tour­ism, and Janet Hunter atten­ded their ​‘Des­tin­a­tion Net Zero’ event in her role as Chair

of the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship. CNPA signed up to the Glas­gow Declar­a­tion (an off­shoot of the Tour­ism Declares ini­ti­at­ive) as part of these activities.

The form­al phase of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan con­sulta­tion ran from Thursday 23 Septem­ber to Fri­day 17 Decem­ber, with the draft plan made avail­able via a ded­ic­ated Com­mon­place web­site, long-format pdf, print and screen read­er-friendly ver­sions. We are cur­rently col­lat­ing and read­ing through all responses; how­ever, we estim­ate that around 1,400 people respon­ded to the con­sulta­tion, nearly five times the num­ber five years ago. Over 50% of respond­ents came from with­in the Park boundary.

Part of the reas­on behind the sig­ni­fic­ant uptick in response was the vari­ety of on and off­line pro­mo­tion that has taken place over the past few months. Ded­ic­ated press releases and videos were cre­ated, includ­ing a part­ner­ship with the Press and Journ­al and Inverness Cour­i­er, and paid advert­ising in the Deeside and Don­side Piper, Strath­spey Her­ald and the Dun­dee Cour­i­er. This was accom­pan­ied by a paid social media advert­ising cam­paign, which reached over 250k people includ­ing loc­al res­id­ents, work­ers and vis­it­ors to the Park.