Minutes of the Form­al Board meeting

Held at Learn­ing Hive at the High­land Wild­life Park, Kin­craig, Kin­gussie PH21 1NL In per­son 26 Septem­ber 2025 at 10.00am

Present in person

• Sandy Brem­ner (Con­vener)
• Geva Black­ett
• Peter Cos­grove
• Paul Gibb
• John Kirk
• Lauren Mac­Cal­lum
• Ian McLar­en
• Steve Mickle­wright
• Michael Wil­li­am­son
• Elean­or Mack­in­tosh (Deputy Convener)
• Jack­ie Brierton
• Kenny Deans
• Rus­sell Jones
• Bill Lob­ban
• Fiona McLean
• Duncan Miller
• Ann Ross

In attend­ance

• Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer
• Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change
• Gav­in Miles, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place
• Colin McCle­an Head of Land Management
• Dav­id Berry, Head of Plan­ning and Chief Plan­ning Officer
• Oliv­er Dav­ies, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engagement
• Mal­colm Smith, Agri­cul­tur­al Adviser
• Kar­en John­stone, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies

• Han­nah Grist
• Derek Ross

Wel­come and introduction

1. Sandy Brem­ner, the Board Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing. Apo­lo­gies were noted.
2. Board Con­vener noted the sad passing of a pre­vi­ous Board Mem­ber, Greggor Rim­mel say­ing he would be sadly missed and passing on thanks for all he had done for the Park Authority.
3. A spe­cial wel­come to new Board Mem­ber, Ian McLar­en. Ian will be sit­ting on the Resources Com­mit­tee and repla­cing Peter Cos­grove on the Audit and Risk Committee.

Approv­al of minutes of pre­vi­ous meetings

1. The minutes from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing held on 27 June 2025 was approved with no amendments.

Mat­ters arising not covered elsewhere

1. There were no mat­ters arising.

Action	Status
Action Points from meet­ing on 22 March 2024:
Paper 1 CEO report
At para 7
i. CEO, to pre­pare a brief­ing note on farm­ing activ­ity and stat­ist­ics with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park and dis­trib­ute to the Board.	Com­pleted
Action	Status
Action Points from meet­ing on 22 Novem­ber 2024:
Paper 1 — CEO Report
At para 6b
i. Review the Plan­ning call-in pro­tocol and dis­cuss at a future plan­ning committee.	In hand

Update: An inform­al dis­cus­sion on call-in cri­ter­ia has been sched­uled after the last few plan­ning com­mit­tee meet­ings, although it has been deferred on each occa­sion due oth­er agenda items over-run­ning. The dis­cus­sion has been re-pro­grammed to be held later today after the Form­al Board meeting.

Action	Status
Paper 5 — Act­ive Cairngorms and end of sea­son vis­it­or report
At para 23a
i. Include key chal­lenges in mit­ig­a­tion and learn­ing in future papers.	To be included in 2025 report
At para 23c
ii. Stat­ist­ics on camp site and lux­ury camp­ing options with­in the Nation­al Park	In hand

Update: Stat­ist­ics on camp site and lux­ury camp­ing options with­in the Nation­al Park.

As there is no firm defin­i­tion of lux­ury camp­ing or ​“glamp­ing” and some premises can be lis­ted as self-cater­ing prop­er­ties, the fol­low­ing is a best estim­ate. The Park Author­ity sub­scribe to annu­al reports on the volume and value of tour­ism which in turn use a data­base of premises in the area. This shows a total of 27 busi­nesses lis­ted as camp­ing and / or cara­van sites. 21 of these busi­nesses have fur­ther accom­mod­a­tion that is neither tour­ing pitches nor cara­vans and these are con­sidered likely to be lux­ury camp­ing prop­er­ties — for example wig­wams, yurts and even a train carriage.

Action	Status
Action Points from meet­ing on 28 March 2025:
Paper 1 — CEO Report
At para 10
i. List of Cairngorms 2030 pro­jects cur­rently going through pro­cure­ment pro­cesses to be cir­cu­lated to the Board.	Com­pleted

Update: Board will be updated bian­nu­ally a list of the pro­cure­ment under­way and completed.

Action	Status
Paper 2 – 2025⁄26 Budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan
i. Inform­a­tion on the num­ber of eco­lo­gic­al bar­ri­ers that are being removed on catch­ments to be sought and cir­cu­lated to the Board and thought to be giv­en to put­ting this into a staff mem­bers for­ward work plan.	In hand
ii. Scope of extend­ing the work on spe­cies man­age­ment spe­cific­ally geese fur­ther up the Spey into Badenoch to be investigated.	In hand

Update: Inform­a­tion is being sought for the num­ber of eco­lo­gic­al bar­ri­ers that are being removed on catch­ments, but not yet avail­able. This is one of the indic­at­ors in the Cairngorms Nature Index. Will be shared with the Board once available.

There has been little or no demand from farm­ers out­with the cur­rent area to extend the goose con­trol scheme. Addi­tion­al factors in con­sid­er­ing exten­sion have been capa­city and prac­tic­al­it­ies in the con­tract­or net­work. Also, high kill rates of geese are not dir­ectly trans­lat­ing to high reduc­tions in num­bers on con­trol sites, which could indic­ate res­id­ent greylags are filling the con­trol areas and thus hav­ing an effect on the wider area, or that there is more inter­change between res­id­ent and migrat­ory geese. This needs more time to establish.

Action	Status
Paper 3 ‑Con­sulta­tion response to High­land Coun­cil Vis­it­or Levy Proposal
i. Sen­tence to be added to end of con­sulta­tion response as detailed in para­graph 18a.	Com­pleted
ii. CEO to keep the Board abreast with any devel­op­ments in the dis­cus­sions between HMRC and the UK Gov­ern­ment with regards to the impact any future tour­ism levy would have on VAT thresholds in Scotland.	Com­pleted
Action	Status
Action Points from meet­ing on 27 June 2025:
Paper 1 CEO Report
At para 6 c
i. Clerks to the Board to share the minutes from group meet­ings that Board Mem­bers sit on to the board portal.	In hand

Update: Advis­ory group meet­ing minutes that have been approved have been added to the web­site and linked to via the Board Site. Out­stand­ing advis­ory group minutes will be added fol­low­ing the approv­al of the minutes at the next meeting.

Action	Status
Paper 2 — Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan — final approval
At para 10 a
i. Update action at 2.2 Muir­burn: All muir­burn prac­ti­tion­ers to adhere to the require­ments of the new stat­utory muir­burn licens­ing system.	Com­pleted

Declar­a­tions of interest

1. There were no declar­a­tions of interest.

CEO Report (Paper 1)

1. Grant Moir, 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.
2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Board Con­vener wel­comed the Cab­in­et Secretary’s approv­al of the Fire Byelaws not­ing this was an example of the Park Author­ity hand­ling an issue of huge import­ance, listen­ing care­fully to con­sulta­tion and tak­ing action to reduce the threat of fires, save lives and wild­life. The Con­vener thanked every­one involved in help­ing with this work. b) A Board Mem­ber ques­tioned if the eco­nom­ic impact is being con­sidered in the next stage of the gamebird man­age­ment pro­cess. CEO explained the socio-eco­nom­ic impacts would be con­sidered. The main issue is to ensure that the work is cairngorms focussed as most data on gamebird impacts has been col­lated in the south of Eng­land where the land use is very dif­fer­ent. c) A ques­tion was raised regard­ing the water man­age­ment and how to encour­age people to con­sider the impacts of this in the future. CEO explained that long term water man­age­ment sup­plies are part of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) and inform­a­tion on this will be gathered as part of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (LDP). d) Dis­cus­sions were had around the new web­site, prais­ing the vast improve­ments. It was sug­ges­ted that a fur­ther improve­ment could be high­light­ing loc­al busi­nesses that have opened in the Nation­al Park with help of the grants offered by the Park Author­ity. CEO agreed this would be a pos­it­ive story to share on the web­site and some­thing the team could look into. It was also sug­ges­ted hav­ing heads of ser­vice details on the web­site to allow the pub­lic to engage bet­ter. CEO explained that due to cyber secur­ity reas­ons, the decision was taken to keep a small num­ber of email addresses / con­tact num­bers on the web­site, how­ever, agreed it would be bene­fi­cial to include Head of Ser­vice bio­graph­ies on the web­site along­side Exec­ut­ive Team.

10.17am Steve Mickle­wright joined the meeting

e)  Discussions were had around consultation on the LDP Evidence Report and how the responses are gathered, suggesting it is too complicated and a lot of work for unpaid volunteers. Members asked to feedback concerns to Scottish Government (SG) as public have concerns of consultation overkill which will result in a lack of engagement during later stages of LDP preparation. CEO sympathised with this and noted this would be shared with SG.
f)   A Board Member questioned if the results from the annual beaver survey would be fed back to those in areas of high risk. CEO explained the survey will be discussed at the beaver management and mitigation group.
g)  Discussions were had around the fire management community asset register in Badenoch and Strathspey. Head of Land Management explained this was raised at a debrief regarding the Dava fire and acceptance in the community that the register needs improved. The Park Authority is working alongside the Strathspey Commander, to improve the working of the fire access register.
h)  Discussions were had around the improvement in engagement through social media and the possibility of using content creators / influencers to share specific scientific and focused content around fires to engage public. Head of Communications and Engagement agreed this can be a good way of engaging with the public, and that we had experience of this from previous campaigns. This will be explored as part of the fire byelaws work.

1. The Board noted the paper. The Con­vener thanks the CEO and all staff on behalf of the Board.

2. Action Points Arising: i. CEO to write to SG to raise con­cerns about LDP Evid­ence Report process.

Revi­sion of Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders (Paper 2)

1. Dav­id Berry, Head of Plan­ning and Chief Plan­ning Officer and Gav­in Miles, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place intro­duced the paper which seeks form­al approv­al and adop­tion of pro­posed updates to the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders. It fol­lows con­sid­er­a­tion and agree­ment of updates to the Stand­ing Orders at the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ing on 29 August 2025.
2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Dis­cus­sions were had around Board Mem­bers hav­ing their cam­er­as on while attend­ing a meet­ing online. Some mem­bers felt that it shows pres­ence in the meet­ing and can show pub­lic that you are act­ively listen­ing. Oth­er mem­bers explained due to broad­band con­nec­tions in rur­al areas it can be dif­fi­cult for cam­er­as to be on per­man­ently. Sug­ges­tions were made for Board Mem­bers to go to a loc­al pub­lic area with stronger broad­band speeds, how­ever this is not always feas­ible for mem­bers. There­fore, the decision was made to amend the word­ing in the Stand­ing Orders to read: Mem­bers should have their cam­era switched on (unless there is a spe­cif­ic tech­nic­al reas­on why it is not pos­sible at that meeting).
3. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Approve and adopt the updated Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders set out in Annex 1 to this paper.
4. Action Points Arising: i. Amend the word­ing in the Stand­ing Orders to read: Mem­bers should have their cam­era switched on (unless there is a spe­cif­ic tech­nic­al reas­on why it is not pos­sible at that meeting).

Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan annu­al update (Paper 3)

1. Gav­in Miles, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place intro­duced the paper which sum­mar­ises the mon­it­or­ing frame­work for the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) and iden­ti­fies some of the key areas where indic­at­ors show pro­gress or where officers expect pro­gress to be demon­strated in future after the third year of deliv­ery of the NPPP.
2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) A board mem­ber raised the issues of child­care with­in the Nation­al Park and how to sup­port new child­care busi­nesses and encour­age young people to start careers in child­care as this would be a fant­ast­ic busi­ness oppor­tun­ity which is des­per­ately required, espe­cially through the school hol­i­days when tour­ists vis­it the area, this can have a det­ri­ment­al impact on eco­nomy. b) A Board Mem­ber explained they felt like object­ive 12 b i) is bey­ond the Park Authority’s remit and care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to NPPP if this should be retained, and if so, this should be meas­ured against pro­por­tion of young and work­ing age pop­u­la­tions main­tained rel­at­ive to com­par­able areas in Scot­land as this would be a bet­ter way to approach it. c) Dis­cus­sions were had around ​“green jobs” and if they should just be called ​“jobs” in the next NPPP while also includ­ing tra­di­tion­al skills with­in these as well as skills and train­ing being offered. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place explained that Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group have dis­cussed how to identi­fy key areas and gaps in skills and how to identi­fy courses and pro­grammes with­in the Nation­al Park to tar­get these. Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group also dis­cussed the demo­graph­ic in the Nation­al Park, not­ing that there was more than 50% of people liv­ing in the area over 50 years old who could be encour­aged to take up employ­ment or start up a small busi­ness on a part time basis with help from pilot pro­grammes which is import­ant to be included in the NPPP to encour­age part­ners to devel­op and reach object­ives. d) A Board Mem­ber noted that pub­lic trans­port is still an issue due to bus / train times not being suit­able for those work­ing in the towns / vil­lages. Also noted that cycle paths still need improve­ment. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place explained the Park Author­ity are work­ing along­side oth­er organ­isa­tions to improve this, but noted work on Aviemore to Car­rbridge cycle path is tied in with the work being car­ried out on the A9. e) A Board Mem­ber praised the trans­port improve­ments in Deeside, not­ing the new bus route from Aber­deen to Dun­dee is being very well used and has made a big improve­ment. f) Board Mem­bers com­men­ted that the NPPP should be con­sid­er­ing the impact of peat­land work, not just the quant­ity. g) A dis­cus­sion was had around 20-minute neigh­bour­hoods and the struggles of achiev­ing this in the High­lands. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place explained the meth­od­o­logy of this was to have key ser­vices with­in a 20-minute walk, drive or cycle to rur­al com­munit­ies, which is achiev­able, espe­cially now with elec­tric vehicles being more pop­u­lar. h) A ques­tion was raised if the 75% tar­get for afford­able hous­ing was achiev­able. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place explained that this tar­get is not likely to be achiev­able for an indi­vidu­al developer on their own but will require sig­ni­fic­ant pub­lic sec­tor invest­ment as well as com­munit­ies and the pub­lic sec­tor tak­ing more own­er­ship of land.
3. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Note the pro­gress sum­mar­ised in the paper and asso­ci­ated Annex 1.
4. Action Points Arising: None.

Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2027 – 2032 Timetable (Paper 4)

1. Grant Moir, CEO intro­duced the paper which provides an ini­tial timetable for the devel­op­ment of the 2027 — 2032 Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP).
2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) A Board Mem­ber ques­tioned the safety of cyber-attacks from using mobile apps. CEO noted that the Park Author­ity have cyber essen­tial plus secur­ity, mean­ing it is as secure as pos­sible. b) Dis­cus­sions were had around con­sulta­tion fatigue and approach­ing this is a new way to more effect­ively engage with com­munit­ies. CEO explained they will build on evid­ence already gained from work on Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) such as com­munity drop in events, to speak with pub­lic and gath­er inform­a­tion in less of a con­sulta­tion situ­ation. Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment noted that the C2030 Engage­ment team have been test­ing a vari­ety of innov­at­ive engage­ment tech­niques, and these will be con­sidered as part of our plans for the NPPP con­sulta­tion. c) Dis­cus­sions were had around child­care and how to encour­age this to be a busi­ness oppor­tun­ity. CEO noted the Park Author­ity can work along­side organ­isa­tions as some aspects are for oth­er part­ners to lead on, as they would be bet­ter suited to deliv­er on cer­tain object­ives. d) A Board Mem­ber ques­tioned the change to facil­it­ate imple­ment­a­tion, ask­ing if this will affect the pro­cess to talk with oth­er agen­cies. CEO explained the Park Author­ity always works along­side oth­er organ­isa­tions with­in the pub­lic sec­tor, and if they have a stat­utory duty to facil­it­ate imple­ment­a­tion, rather than simply hav­ing regard to the NPPP, then they may be more inves­ted. Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate change noted there is a poten­tial strength in this as agen­cies could be more likely to speak with one voice, giv­ing more clar­ity to land man­agers with clear object­ives and would res­ult in more alignment.
3. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Agree the timetable for the devel­op­ment of the NPPP 2027 – 2032.
4. Action Points Arising: None.

Form­al Board broke for a com­fort break at 11.15am Form­al Board resumed at 11.30am

Agri­cul­tur­al land use and farm­ing activ­ity (Paper 5)

1. Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Man­age­ment and Mal­colm Smith, Agri­cul­tur­al Adviser intro­duced the paper which sets out an over­view of farm­ing and croft­ing in the Nation­al Park over the past 20 years, based on June census data. The inform­a­tion provides pre­lim­in­ary con­text on agri­cul­ture in the Nation­al Park, how sys­tems have changed and some of the influ­ences which have driv­en those changes. Sub­sequently, more detailed dis­cus­sions on policy set­ting and stra­tegic dir­ec­tion will take place as part of devel­op­ing the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP).

Fur­ther dis­cus­sion will be sup­por­ted by an eval­u­ation of the amount of pub­lic money inves­ted in farm­ing and croft­ing in the Nation­al Park and the out­comes towards which it is dir­ec­ted. This will be as part of a study of the envir­on­ment­al, social and eco­nom­ic value of farm­ing and croft­ing in the Nation­al Park. This work is cur­rently being com­mis­sioned in part­ner­ship with the Scotland’s Rur­al Col­lege (SRUC) and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity (LLT­NPA) and will be presen­ted to Board in due course.

1. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Board Mem­bers noted the import­ance of this work and the dif­fi­culty of gath­er­ing the data for the paper, thank­ing the authors for their work on this. b) A Board Mem­ber praised the appoint­ment of the Agri­cul­tur­al Adviser, not­ing the Park Author­ity is mov­ing in a pos­it­ive dir­ec­tion, keep­ing dis­cus­sions ongo­ing with farm­ers, crofters, and advis­ory groups. c) Dis­cus­sions were had around the change in farm­ing and how it is imper­at­ive to encour­age young farm­ers to move into the sec­tor, train­ing them and to con­tin­ue with tri­als for cut­ting costs and improv­ing busi­ness devel­op­ments. A sug­ges­tion was made to sup­port young farm­ers with cre­at­ing robust busi­ness plans to sup­port farms in times of mar­ket volat­il­ity and chan­ging policy. In order for young people to want to come into the industry, farm busi­nesses need to be able to sup­port incomes that give people a decent stand­ard of liv­ing. d) A Board Mem­ber ques­tioned the impacts of inher­it­ance tax, (not­ing some farms are keep­ing sheep graz­ing land to avoid this, if there would be a pos­sib­il­ity to re-wild land to give the same bene­fits). Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change explained that work in the C2030 Pro­gram the Nation­al Park has included look­ing at land-based business’s resi­li­ence, vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies and changes. The work is led by Land Man­agers identi­fy­ing the impacts of change in policy and income streams on busi­ness plans and how a work force strategy could sup­port a trans­ition. This will sup­port them in deal­ing with vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies and strategies that are chan­ging and nav­ig­ate an out­come from a busi­ness sense. Part of the Farm adviser’s job is to facil­it­ate Know­ledge Exchange events where farm­ers can be shown new tech­no­lo­gies and dis­cuss ideas. These meet­ings have the added bonus of improv­ing men­tal health by get­ting farm­ers off farm and speak­ing to each oth­er. e) A ques­tion was raised regard­ing the total work­force fig­ures being up and if this was affected by hol­i­day lets adding to tour­ism lists. Agri­cul­tur­al Adviser explained the data depends on the per­cent­age of the work they are doing on the farm. f) A Board Mem­ber ques­tioned when the future data will be gathered and what the inten­tion of this data will be, if it will be shared with advis­ory groups. Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change explained this is a rudi­ment­ary cut of data to give mem­bers a snap­shot of recent trends in farm­ing. Future work will be done to take the census fur­ther and look at pay­ment in the Nation­al Park to under­stand where fund­ing is being tar­geted. It was noted that advis­ory groups were made aware of the sur­vey and were con­sul­ted on the met­ric to be examined. Future data will be taken to them to con­sider and devel­op. g) Dis­cus­sions were had around the chal­lenges of tech­no­logy in farm­ing and if this was redu­cing jobs. Agri­cul­tur­al Adviser explained there are less farm­ers now due to tech­no­logy, how­ever this allows farm­ers to spend more time man­aging the farm and con­cen­trate on oth­er aspects, even though the tech­no­logy still requires the farm­er to oper­ate it. h) A ques­tion was raised regard­ing farm plans and if the Park Author­ity were sup­port­ing farm­ers to write these. Agri­cul­ture Advisor high­lighted that the whole farm plan has five meas­ures set out for farm­ers to achieve by 2028, it is in the farm­ers best interest to com­plete all meas­ures that apply to their busi­ness as it can give access to fund­ing like the recent Future Farm Invest­ment Scheme. The Park Author­ity can help them to apply for fund­ing and sup­port through­out, with the Agri­cul­ture Advisor offer­ing indi­vidu­al sup­port to those who need. Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change noted it’s import­ant to look for areas where the Park Author­ity adds value and where it might be at risk of duplic­at­ing ser­vices provided by the private sec­tor, explain­ing it is a com­plic­ated land­scape of pro­viders and the Park Author­ity should care­fully con­sider where would anoth­er organ­isa­tion be best served to lead. i) A Board Mem­ber raised con­cerns about dis­crep­an­cies in the work­force data presen­ted in the paper. It was also noted that women now make up 40% of the work­force, reflect­ing increased oppor­tun­it­ies. The Head of Land Man­age­ment will review the census data and invest­ig­ate the incon­sist­en­cies, includ­ing demo­graph­ic break­downs and trends such as the young­er age pro­file of farm­ers. j) A Board Mem­ber com­men­ted that the dates for the envir­on­ment­al pay­ments are not suit­able for the area and would encour­age SG to make changes to coin­cide bet­ter with the later sea­sons to bene­fit the wildlife.
2. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Note the over­all pic­ture of farm­ing activ­ity, trends and pre­dic­tions for the future.
3. Action Points Arising: i. Head of Land Man­age­ment will invest­ig­ate the fig­ures and amend the data, update paper and share fig­ures with Board Members.

Form­al Board broke for lunch at 12.00pm Form­al Board resume at 12.30pm

Kenny Deans and Bill Lob­ban left at 12.30pm

Pub­lic Sec­tor Reform (Paper 6)

1. Grant Moir, CEO intro­duced the paper which provides an over­view of the Pub­lic Sec­tor Reform (PSR) agenda with­in Scot­land and the role the Park Author­ity will play in deliv­er­ing this.
2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) A Board Mem­ber ques­tioned how PSR would work with loc­al author­it­ies. CEO explained that there is close work­ing through the place pro­to­type work, both nation­ally and loc­ally. b) A Board Mem­ber was con­cerned about the times­cale as there would be an elec­tion and if this would affect the Park Authority’s pos­i­tion. CEO noted that there would be the same gen­er­al pres­sures around budgets post elec­tion but that the solu­tions may be slightly dif­fer­ent depend­ing on the Gov­ern­ment. c) A Board Mem­ber quer­ied if fund­ing could be ring fenced at a nation­al level, for example for ranger ser­vices. CEO explained that the Park Author­ity can­not ring fence fund­ing, the Board make the decision on what the fund­ing is spent on. The PSR com­mit­ment is to reduce 20% of cor­por­ate costs, how­ever the Park Author­ity still needs to deliv­er on the ground, cut­ting budget will affect front line deliv­ery and the Board need to be aware of the impacts of cut­ting budgets in dif­fer­ent areas. d) A Board Mem­ber quer­ied mon­it­or­ing the pro­gress of the work that could impact the Park Author­ity. CEO explained there is a PSR meet­ing in Octo­ber, and the Park Author­ity are involved through their SG spon­sor team and col­lect­ive gov­ern­ment work, com­mis­sions that are all linked togeth­er, and the Board will be updated on all stra­tegic impacts.
3. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Note the stra­tegic dir­ec­tion from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. b) Note the place pro­to­type work in the Dee and South Esk catch­ments as part of the devel­op­ing PSR work.
4. Action Points Arising: None.

Envir­on­ment Strategy and Land Use Strategy con­sulta­tion (Paper 7)

1. Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change intro­duced the paper which explained that Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment are cur­rently con­sult­ing on the draft Envir­on­ment Strategy and Scotland’s Fourth Land Use Strategy, to be pub­lished March 2026. The paper presents the key points the Park Author­ity wishes to make in order for pub­lic policy and strategy to best sup­port deliv­ery of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP).
2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) A Board Mem­ber shared sup­port for the multi bene­fits approach of the strategy, not­ing that the dir­ect link between peat­land res­tor­a­tion and upland biod­iversity are under­played and under­val­ued. b) Dis­cus­sions were had around the strategy mov­ing in the right dir­ec­tion, how­ever, clear, defined guid­ance to sup­port land use decision mak­ing would be required. CEO noted the key factor is what this strategy influ­ences, it is only as strong as how it aligns fund­ing and reg­u­la­tion below it. Con­sulta­tion response to SG will high­light this.
3. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Note the key points the Park Author­ity wishes to make as part of the con­sulta­tion responses
4. Action Points Arising: None

Com­mit­tee Minutes (Paper 8)

1. Con­vener intro­duced the paper which presents the minutes for the fol­low­ing meet­ings from 14 March 2025 to 13 June 2025 (Annex 1). a) Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee, 21 March 2025 b) Resources Com­mit­tee, 16 May 2025 c) Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee, 13 June 2025
2. This paper also presents the con­fid­en­tial minutes for the fol­low­ing meet­ings from 24 Janu­ary 2025 to 14 March 2025 (Annex 2). a) Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee, 21