Minutes of the Form­al Board Meeting

Held at Albert Hall, Bal­later In per­son 27 June 2025 at 09.30am

Present in person

• Sandy Brem­ner (Con­vener)
• Elean­or Mack­in­tosh (Deputy Convener)
• Geva Black­ett
• Peter Cos­grove
• Rus­sell Jones
• Bill Lob­ban
• Fiona McLean
• Duncan Miller
• Derek Ross
• Jack­ie Brierton
• Han­nah Grist
• John Kirk
• Lauren Mac­Cal­lum
• Steve Mickle­wright
• Ann Ross
• Michael Wil­li­am­son

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 Clyne, Head of Cairngorms 2030
• Nancy Cham­bers, Cairngorms Trust Manager
• Brid­get Trus­sell, Com­munity Grants Manager
• Heath­er Trench, Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Officer
• Kar­en John­stone, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies

• Kenny Deans
• Paul Gibb

Wel­come and apologies

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

Approv­al of minutes of pre­vi­ous meetings

1. The minutes from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing held on 28 March 2025 was approved with no amendments.

Mat­ters arising not covered elsewhere

1. There were no mat­ters arising.

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) Praise was giv­en to the work being car­ried out on the Deeside way and to see the pro­gress of the Cairngorms 2030 pro­jects. b) Fur­ther inform­a­tion was reques­ted on the Convener’s update relat­ing to Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion (SLC) and the King’s Found­a­tion. Board Con­vener explained he would get back to the Mem­ber with an update on the SLC. Board Con­vener then explained that the King’s Found­a­tion was a fol­low up meet­ing to an event at Mar Lodge in Octo­ber where landown­ers across the Nation­al Park met to have a high-level dis­cus­sion about afford­able hous­ing and land man­age­ment. c) A Board mem­ber reques­ted updates on the advis­ory groups that Board Mem­bers sit on, ask­ing if the minutes be made avail­able for Board Mem­bers to view. CEO noted that the minutes are avail­able on the web­site to view and the Clerks to the Board will add a link to these on the Board Portal. d) A ques­tion was raised regard­ing the fund­ing for nature recov­ery and deer man­age­ment through Cairngorms 2030 being over­sub­scribed and how the Park Author­ity aims to fill this fund­ing gap. CEO noted that some applic­a­tions fit bet­ter with oth­er grants schemes avail­able and applic­ants are guided towards this. It was explained there will always be demand exceed­ing sup­ply from landown­ers, but the Park Author­ity will work closely with landown­ers to find a way to try and help. e) Praise was giv­en to the new web­site, acknow­ledging the amount of hard work that has gone into the pro­ject from the Com­mu­nic­a­tions Team. It was high­lighted that deliv­ery of com­mu­nic­a­tions is greatly improved with the new web­site. A ques­tion was raised if there was any data avail­able for the eval­u­ation and impact from a stra­tegic point of view. CEO explained there is ana­lyt­ics data avail­able which will be gathered after a few months of the new web­site run­ning and brought to the Per­form­ance Committee.

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

4. Action Points Arising: i. Clerks to the Board to share the minutes from advis­ory group meet­ings that Board Mem­bers attend on behalf of the board via the board portal.

Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan – final approv­al (Paper 2)

1. Colin McLean, Head of Land Man­age­ment intro­duced the paper which presents a final ver­sion of the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan (IWMP).

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Board mem­bers all agreed to the amend­ment to the action for ​“All muir­burn prac­ti­tion­ers to adhere to the require­ments of the new stat­utory muir­burn licens­ing sys­tem”. b) Peter Cos­grove, the Chair of the Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group (CUAG) high­lighted that all issues from that for­um were addressed and con­cluded. c) CEO high­lighted the role the Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion fund has played in sup­port­ing the IWMP with fund­ing, train­ing and equip­ment for estates. d) A Board Mem­ber ques­tioned if there was an update avail­able on the Fire Byelaw. CEO explained this was with the Scot­tish Min­is­ters and an announce­ment of the Min­is­ters decision would be shared with Board Mem­bers once available.

3. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: e) To approve the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan.

4. Action Points Arising: i. Update action at 2.2 Muir­burn: ​“All muir­burn prac­ti­tion­ers to adhere to the require­ments of the new stat­utory muir­burn licens­ing system”.

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

1. Brid­get Trus­sell, Com­munity Grants Man­ager and Nancy Cham­bers, Cairngorms Trust Man­ager intro­duced the paper which updates the Park Author­ity Board on the pro­gress made by the Cairngorms Trust in deliv­er­ing fund­ing to pro­jects across the Cairngorms. In 2026, it will be the 10-year anniversary of the Cairngorms Trust becom­ing a Scot­tish Char­it­able Incor­por­ated Organ­isa­tion (SCIO), mark­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant mile­stone in its development.

2. This paper high­lights the impact and out­comes of the Trust’s fun­ded ini­ti­at­ives to date and seeks views from the Park Author­ity board on the charity’s poten­tial future operations.

3. The paper also presents pro­gress in the evol­u­tion of new approaches to Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) fund­ing, fol­low­ing the loss of European Uni­on (EU) LEAD­ER fund­ing as a con­sequence of the UK’s exit from the EU.

4. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Board Mem­bers praised Officers for their work on these pro­jects, high­light­ing great examples of ambi­tions of com­munit­ies. It was explained that ideas are being cre­ated with­in the Nation­al Park and fund­ing allows them to take off, show they can be suc­cess­ful and allow oth­ers with­in the Nation­al Park to roll out sim­il­ar pro­jects to sup­port loc­al com­munit­ies, includ­ing as a response to rur­al poverty. b) Com­ments were made regard­ing the eval­u­ation of the mean­ing / impacts on com­munit­ies of the pro­jects which have already been fun­ded to inform future spend. It was also noted that plans need to be in place to allow pro­jects to be sus­tain­able when fund­ing ends. c) Board Mem­bers noted that they would like to con­tin­ue to see a focus on grants / fund­ing dis­trib­uted across the full Nation­al Park. d) Dis­cus­sions were had around third sec­tor organ­isa­tions hav­ing to put fund­ing into pro­jects and loc­al ini­ti­at­ives that may pre­vi­ously have been sup­por­ted by dis­cre­tion­ary fund­ing from loc­al and health author­it­ies. It was noted that unfor­tu­nately loc­al and health author­it­ies can­not fund all pro­vi­sions and