Approved minutes Formal Board meeting 221124

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Minutes 22 Novem­ber 2024

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Minutes of the Form­al Board Meeting

Hybrid

22 Novem­ber 2024 at 10.00am

Present in per­son Sandy Brem­ner (Con­vener) Jack­ie Brier­ton Kenny Deans Rus­sell Jones

Elean­or Mack­in­tosh (Deputy Con­vener) Peter Cos­grove John Kirk Bill Lobban

Present vir­tu­ally Chris Beat­tie Paul Gibb Dr Fiona McLean Ann Ross Michael Williamson

Geva Black­ett Han­nah Grist Steve Mickle­wright Derek Ross

In Attend­ance Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer (CEO) 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 and Act­ive Travel Oliv­er Dav­ies, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment Dan Har­ris, Plan­ning Man­ager Dav­id Berry, Head of Plan­ning and Chief Plan­ning Officer Kar­en John­stone, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies Lauren Mac­Cal­lum Duncan Miller

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Wel­come and introduction

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

Approv­al of minutes of pre­vi­ous meetings

1. The draft minutes of the last meet­ing held on the 13 Septem­ber 2024 were agreed.

Mat­ters arising not covered elsewhere

1. The Board Con­vener provided an update on the action points from 13 Septem­ber 2024 minutes:

Action	Status
Action Points from meet­ing on 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 at Sept Board meeting:
Pre­lim­in­ary data received, staff capa­city to pro­gress is lim­ited by vacancy in Agri­cul­tur­al Officer post. Recruit­ment for that post is about to begin.

Action	Status
Action Points from meet­ing on 28 June 2024:
Paper 1 – CEO Report
At para 7
i. Ensure main­ten­ance of signs and sur­round­ings on gran­ite mark­ers entry points	Com­pleted
Update at Sept Board meeting:
Glen­liv­et Mark­er was main issue as over­grown. Glen­liv­et Estate now under­tak­ing maintenance

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Paper 4 – Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan
At para 16
ii. Share afford­ab­il­ity of trans­la­tion with loc­al businesses.	Com­pleted
Update at Sept Board meeting:
Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment 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.

Action	Status
Action Points from meet­ing on 13 Septem­ber 2024:
Paper 1 – CEO Report
At para 9
iii. Board ses­sion to be sched­uled to allow mem­bers to reflect, con­sider and adopt the organ­isa­tion­al values.	In hand
Update:
CEO, Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, and Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment to discuss.

Paper 2 – Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan
At para 13	In hand
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.
Update:

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Paper 3 – Sea­son­al Fire Man­age­ment Byelaw
At para 18
i. CEO to look into the enforce­ment powers of NatureScot regard­ing muir­burn and report these back to the Board.	Com­pleted — will give update on 22 November
Update:
22 Novem­ber 2024:
The CEO updated the board — ​“The ver­sion of the muir­burn code was intro­duced by sec­tion 14 of Wild­life Man­age­ment and Muir­burn (Scot­land) Act 2024. The Muir­burn Code will play a key role in the licen­cing of muir­burn as set out in that act. Licens­ing con­di­tions can be drawn from the code and a require­ment that a licence hold­er must have regard to the code. Non­ad­her­ence to the require­ments set out in the code can res­ult in a licen­cing sanc­tion. Fur­ther details for the sanc­tion and trig­gers for sanc­tion will be set out along­side the muir­burn license guid­ance and applic­a­tions which will hap­pen in 2025 from NatureScot. An update of this will be shared with the Board when available.”

Paper 7 – Board Com­mit­tee Minutes
At para 38
ii. Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee to con­sider and decide wheth­er Plan­ning Com­mit­tee minutes should be included in this paper going forward.	Com­pleted
Update:
Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices updated Con­vener and Deputy Con­vener that the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee minutes would not come to the Form­al Board in the future as board mem­bers have already had sight of these fol­low­ing each Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meeting.

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.

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1. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) A board mem­ber praised the work being car­ried out in act­ive and sus­tain­able trans­port in the Strath­spey area and ques­tioned what work was under­way through­out the rest of the Nation­al Park. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices noted there was a range of dif­fer­ent pro­jects under­way in dif­fer­ent areas of the park; cycle friendly, bus and cycle hubs and pro­jects to get bikes on buses. b) Dis­cus­sions were had around the plan­ning call-in pro­tocol as a board mem­ber felt this has not been reviewed in a long time and could be improved. CEO noted officers would look into the pro­tocol and take it to the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee. c) A board mem­ber reques­ted an update on Brand use at a future meet­ing. CEO agreed to this. d) A ques­tion was raised regard­ing if the board will see the flood bank con­di­tion sur­vey and if it is being dis­cussed with farm­ers and landown­ers. CEO noted farm­ers and crofters are involved in the dis­cus­sions and the final report of flood banks will be shared with the board when avail­able. e) A board mem­ber ques­tioned if there was cur­rently work being done on wild­life crime and if any hot­spots are iden­ti­fied in the Nation­al Park, and if this can be shared with the Board. CEO com­men­ted that there are sur­veys being under­taken, which will provide some insight into issues around wild­life crime to give officers a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the areas of con­cern. f) A ques­tion was raised if due to the cur­rent budget situ­ation the Park Author­ity would be able to hire as many sea­son­al rangers next year. CEO noted this ques­tion would not be able to be answered until the budget has been released on 04 Decem­ber. g) A board mem­ber updated the board on the Nature and Cli­mate Change Action Plan, not­ing there were meet­ings being held in the back­ground and there would be a strategy meet­ing in early Janu­ary. An update would be brought to the board later In January.

2. The Board Con­vener gave an update on a pre­vi­ous action from a Form­al Board meet­ing regard­ing Caper­cail­lie. Board Con­vener and CEO met with the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and Con­nectiv­ity and dis­cussed the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Caper­cail­lie emer­gency plan. They raised con­cerns expressed by some of the Park Author­ity Board about the impact of pred­a­tion and the spe­cif­ic issues of pine martens, high­light­ing the inclu­sion of diver­sion­ary feed­ing as part of the plan fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful trails of this meth­od. They also high­lighted the request for work on the pop­u­la­tion sur­vey of pine marten sur­vey to be prioritised.

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The min­is­ter agreed the five-year plan provided a robust way for­ward and should be giv­en every oppor­tun­ity to suc­ceed. If any part of the pred­a­tion work was found fail­ing min­is­ters would be open to fur­ther dis­cus­sions towards the end of the plan about wheth­er a dif­fer­ent approach was needed in the future.

On the pri­or­it­isa­tion of the pine marten sur­vey, NatureScot put the com­mis­sion out to tender earli­er this year but failed to find a suit­able con­tract­or. They are now gath­er­ing fur­ther inform­a­tion to inform a revised meth­od­o­logy which will be re- tendered next year. Board Con­vener reas­sured mem­bers they are urging NatureScot to make pro­gress with this piece of work.

1. The Board noted the Paper. The Con­vener thanked the CEO and all staff on behalf of the Board.

2. Action Points Arising: i. Review the Plan­ning call-in pro­tocol and dis­cuss at a future plan­ning com­mit­tee. ii. Give an update on Brand use at a future meeting.

Well­being Eco­nomy Action Plan (Paper 2)

1. Gav­in Miles, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place intro­duced the paper which asks the Board to approve the Well­being Eco­nomy Action Plan as a work­ing doc­u­ment for the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group and its part­ners. The draft plan pro­poses action on three pri­or­ity areas for the eco­nomy in the Nation­al Park where focussed col­lab­or­a­tion and coordin­a­tion can bet­ter add value to oth­er actions delivered by the Part­ner­ship Plan and Region­al Eco­nom­ic Strategies.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) A Board mem­ber high­lighted that there was com­mit­ment from stake­hold­ers to work togeth­er on this. Skills Devel­op­ment Scot­land sug­ges­ted look­ing to do a skills col­lab­or­at­ive. It was also shared there was a meet­ing being held in August for youth related organ­isa­tions com­ing togeth­er and the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group would help to coordin­ate and share updates with the Board. Scot­land Rur­al Col­lege (SRUC) have offered to gath­er evid­ence and data to fore­cast the future. b) Reas­sur­ance was sought regard­ing how to man­age pro­tec­tions around smal­ler com­munit­ies their cul­tur­al iden­tit­ies with­in the Park while main­tain­ing the social

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vibrancy. It was explained that the sus­tain­able tour­ism action plan is pro­moted across the whole Nation­al Park and there was emphas­is on winter cam­paigns and dark skies, encour­aging tour­ism into dif­fer­ent areas. c) Dis­cus­sions were had around sup­port­ing and start­ing com­munity groups, such as walk­ing, cyc­ling, run­ning, cold water swim­ming and men’s sheds and the bene­fits of these groups to com­munit­ies. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and place agreed and high­lighted the green health pre­scrip­tions through C2030 will pro­mote these com­munity groups. d) Ques­tions were raised regard­ing how the mat­rix of suc­cess was being meas­ured. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place com­men­ted that data from part­ners such as Grow­Biz and oth­er part­ners will help to cre­ate a data­base, and inform­a­tion gathered from SRUC with accur­ate data from HMRC will help to ensure that funds are being shared effect­ively between small busi­nesses, com­munit­ies and enter­prises. e) Clar­ity was sought on the mean­ing of items five and six. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place stated this was through Vol­un­tary Action, Badenoch and Strath­spey (VABS) have been lead­ing on this and pulled com­munity actions plans closer to bring in the loc­al place plan­ning. The Park Author­ity are treat­ing this as stat­utory loc­al place plan­ning doc­u­ments. f) Clar­ity was sought on where the fund­ing comes from to sup­port new com­munity lead fund­ing stream. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices noted fund­ing was sourced from a range of grants from the Park Author­ity and Cairngorms Trust togeth­er with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment domest­ic fund­ing which has replaced LEAD­ER fund­ing. g) Dis­cus­sions were had around ensur­ing trades and appren­tice­ships are pro­moted and emphas­ised with­in the Nation­al Park as con­cerns raised related to the chal­lenges faced with Green Port. h) A board mem­ber com­men­ted that they felt the Park Author­ity would need to man­age their expect­a­tions, feel­ing a lot of this it out with the Park Authority’s con­trol as they need to rely on part­ners. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place explained this doc­u­ment would focus part­ners’ action: this work­ing doc­u­ment would demon­strate the dif­fer­ence and make bet­ter use of the money avail­able from dif­fer­ent partners.

1. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tion to: a) Agree the Well­being Eco­nomy Action Plan as a work­ing doc­u­ment for the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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1. Action Points Arising: None.

Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan – Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2024 (Paper 3)

1. Dan Har­ris, Plan­ning Man­ager intro­duced the paper which presents the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme (2024) for the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (LDP). The Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme is an import­ant com­mu­nic­a­tions tool. It is key to sup­port­ing deliv­er­able and people-focussed plans by let­ting stake­hold­ers know when and how they can get involved in the pre­par­a­tion of the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and keep­ing them informed of pro­gress. The Park Author­ity must pub­lish and sub­mit a Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme to Scot­tish Min­is­ters each year.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) A board mem­ber ref­er­enced the youth engage­ment in Kin­gussie High School, ask­ing if work is under­go­ing in oth­er areas of the Nation­al Park. Plan­ning Man­ager noted that there was also work under­way with Grant­own High School, Cairngorms Youth Action Team and the team have been explor­ing sim­il­ar exer­cises in Blair Atholl and Aboyne. It was high­lighted that there was pro­gress being made with Edin­burgh Uni­ver­sity, High­life High­land and oth­er youth groups to engage young people out with the school sys­tems and gain­ing data from sur­veys. The report from Kin­gussie High School will be shared with the Board once avail­able. b) Dis­cus­sions were had around engage­ment with small busi­ness com­munit­ies and acknow­ledging that not all busi­nesses are part of the Cairngorm Busi­ness Part­ner­ship (CBP). Plan­ning Man­ager com­men­ted that work is evid­ence based, and suf­fi­ciency of inform­a­tion is con­sidered. The Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group will carry out fur­ther sur­veys once reports on eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment are ready. c) It was high­lighted by the Chair of the Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group that the engage­ment would go to Fed­er­a­tion of Small Busi­nesses (FSB), High­land and Islands Enter­prise (HIE) and Grow­biz. d) A board mem­ber raised a ques­tion about the capa­city to intro­duce sup­ple­ment­ary guid­ance. Plan­ning Man­ager explained that the Park Author­ity has full sup­ple­ment­ary and stat­utory guid­ance in the LDP. Ques­tions were raised if there was an emer­gency, would the Park Author­ity be able to make amend­ments, it was noted that this would be pos­sible how­ever this would affect the next LDP and there is guid­ance in place to stop these situ­ations occur­ring. e) Dis­cus­sions were had around the pro­cess, not­ing that it is a dif­fi­cult bal­ance of cost effect­ive and loc­al devel­op­ment. Board mem­bers would like to see this

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improved to include loc­al char­ac­ter. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place noted that the Board and Plan­ning Com­mit­tee will dis­cuss this when pre­par­ing the next LDP.

1. The Board agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions to: a) Agree the updated Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2024

2. Action Points Arising: i. Share report from Kin­gussie High School.

Review of Board Stand­ing Orders (Paper 4)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced the paper which presents an update to the Park Authority’s Stand­ing Orders, which were last reviewed in 2019.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) The Board Con­vener and Deputy Con­vener high­lighted con­cerns over point 53b in Annex 1, all board mem­bers agreed to remove point 53b. Board mem­bers agreed that decisions and dis­cus­sions should be with the quor­um num­ber and not rat­i­fied by email or a future meet­ing, com­ment­ing that board mem­bers minds can be changed while tak­ing part in a dis­cus­sion. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices acknow­ledged this and agreed to amend. b) A board mem­ber noted at para­graph 32 in the paper it men­tioned tele­phone link instead of video call. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices thanked the board mem­ber for noti­cing this and agreed to make the amend­ment for con­sist­ency. A dis­cus­sion was then had relat­ing to tele­phone link con­tinu­ing to be an option in case of any IT issues, it was decided that video calls would be the pref­er­ence for hybrid or online meet­ings, how­ever in excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances a board mem­ber can make arrange­ments with the Com­mit­tee Chair or Board Con­vener if tele­phone link was the only option avail­able to allow the mem­ber to attend the meet­ing. c) Mem­bers dis­cussed para­graph 34 regard­ing pro­cesses for resolv­ing decisions with mul­tiple amend­ments and the ori­gin­al recom­mend­a­tion. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices appre­ci­ated dif­fer­ent amend­ments can come from dif­fer­ent points of view, while respect­ing the recom­mend­a­tion had also been developed from extens­ive work and tak­ing advice in devel­op­ment of pro­pos­als. The board need to make a major­ity view and agree on a decision and the Stand­ing Orders give a struc­tured pro­cess of nar­row­ing down a range of

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amend­ments to allow for one amend­ment to be con­sidered against the recom­mend­a­tion. d) Dis­cus­sions were had around the pres­sure of secur­ing a sub­sti­tute with­in a sev­en-day peri­od at short notice or late changes of meet­ing times. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices noted that suf­fi­cient notice should be provided to mem­bers to ensure they can make schedul­ing arrange­ments or arrange for sub­sti­tutes if required. If they are unable to secure a sub­sti­tute, then apo­lo­gies will be noted. e) Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that the sev­en-day sub­sti­tute notice peri­od was for Board Mem­bers to have suf­fi­cient time to review the papers and come back to officers with ques­tions or cla­ri­fic­a­tion if required, par­tic­u­larly where they may not have been engaged in the detail of busi­ness pri­or to the meet­ing in ques­tion. It was agreed to remain as it is and review again in six months.

1. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions to: a) Con­sider pro­posed changes to the Park Author­ity board’s Stand­ing Orders b) Agree stand­ing orders.

2. Action Points Arising: i. Remove point 53b in annex 1 ii. Add in the addi­tion­al word­ing to allow flex­ib­il­ity to allow phone calls if this is the only pos­sib­il­ity. iii. At para­graph 32 amend tele­phone link to video call to for con­tinu­ity in the paper.

Act­ive Cairngorms and end of sea­son vis­it­or report (Paper 5)

1. Colin Simpson, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel intro­duced the paper which com­ple­ments the Sus­tain­able Tour­ism and Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plans, which col­lect­ively describe the Park Author­ity and part­ners’ work in rela­tion to the tour­ism industry and the man­age­ment of vis­it­or impacts on the Park. This report is inten­ded to give Board mem­bers over­sight of pro­gress towards the plan’s object­ives while also provid­ing an over­view of vis­it­or related activ­ity over the pre­ced­ing sum­mer season.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the following:

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a) A board mem­ber noted the good pro­gress being made and sug­ges­ted for future reports it would be use­ful to learn about the key chal­lenges and any mit­ig­a­tion efforts and learn­ing. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel agreed to do this in the future. b) Dis­cus­sions were had around enfor­cing a no bin policy due to an increase in fly tip­ping and rub­bish being left at sites, encour­aging vis­it­ors to take rub­bish home. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel noted Rangers have exper­i­enced people behav­ing respons­ibly with their rub­bish and unsure if no bin policy would encour­age more rub­bish being left behind. It was also men­tioned there was less fly tip­ping and aban­doned camp­ing equip­ment than pre­vi­ous years. c) A board mem­ber ques­tioned if there had been records of more motor homes in the Nation­al Park, if there was stat­ist­ics or inform­a­tion on the reduced space in camp sites, and if tour­ists are going towards lux­ury end of the camp­ing mar­ket. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel explained there are a num­ber of camp sites where pitches have been reduced and peak times are full, but noted this is some­thing that can be looked into to identi­fy trends or use­ful inform­a­tion from this. d) A board mem­ber noted that the water access guid­ance does not include access points to the Spey. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel explained the final­ised report fol­low­ing a meet­ing on this mat­ter had just been com­pleted and this would be shared with the board mem­bers. e) Dis­cus­sions were had around the pos­sib­il­ity of a vis­it­or app and if there would be prob­lems around hav­ing one of these for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel explained there is a lot of work to be under­taken to con­firm the pur­pose and func­tion of the app. Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions noted that there is to be one app rolled out across the two Nation­al Parks in Scot­land hence there is more of a delay on this.

1. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions to: a) Note the pro­gress towards deliv­ery of the object­ives con­tained with­in the Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan. b) Note the report on the vis­it­or focussed activ­it­ies of the Park Author­ity and part­ner ranger ser­vices dur­ing the 2024 sum­mer season.

2. Action Points Arising: i. Include key chal­lenges in mit­ig­a­tion and learn­ing in future papers. ii. Stat­ist­ics on camp site and lux­ury camp­ing options with­in the Nation­al Park. iii. Share final­ised report on water access guidance.

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Cor­por­ate Plan Deliv­ery Update (Paper 6)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced the paper which draws the per­form­ance report for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ against our cor­por­ate plan object­ives spe­cific­ally to the board’s atten­tion. This takes a more focused look at the Park Authority’s deliv­ery toward agreed stra­tegic object­ives in the con­text of the wider update on Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan deliv­ery con­sidered by the board at its pre­vi­ous meet­ing. The paper also presents the Park Authority’s draft annu­al report and accounts to the board, fol­low­ing the approv­al of this doc­u­ment by the Board’s Audit and Risk Committee.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) The board con­vener noted the for­mid­able achieve­ment by the Park Author­ity for those who live and work in the Nation­al Park as well as those who vis­it the area, not­ing the major achieve­ment for nature and for deliv­ery against the wide range of object­ives the Park Author­ity are work­ing to meet. The Con­vener also high­lighted the record-break­ing year for income des­pite the chal­lenges cur­rently being faced. b) A board mem­ber ques­tioned if the amber indic­at­ors related to hous­ing should now be red. Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place explained that this was a finely bal­anced mat­ter. At the time the paper was writ­ten amber was the right decision, how­ever they could also now be at a red rating.

3. The Board noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions to: a) To note the draft annu­al accounts for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ b) To note the status of deliv­ery toward Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives as set out in the Annu­al Report c) To con­sider any actions needed to address deliv­ery of those Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives high­lighted as at increased deliv­ery risk.

4. Action Points Arising: None.

Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee annu­al report (Paper 7)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced the paper which presents the Annu­al Report of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee to the Board.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Minutes 22 Novem­ber 2024

Page 13 of 13

1. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Chair thanked the intern­al and extern­al aud­it­ors for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism, being highly sup­port­ive and a pleas­ure to work with. Thanks, were also giv­en to Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions and the team for the excep­tion­al res­ults in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances and ongo­ing changes. Fur­ther thanks were giv­en to the Deputy Chair of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee as well as all com­mit­tee mem­bers for their sup­port and efforts.

2. The Board agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions and noted the paper.

3. Action Points Arising: None.

Minutes from Com­mit­tee Meet­ings (Paper 8)

1. Sandy Brem­ner, Board Con­vener intro­duced the paper that presents the approved minutes and con­fid­en­tial minutes of the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee, 14 June, Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee, 21 June and Resources Com­mit­tee, 09 August

2. The Board agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions and noted the paper.

3. Action Points Arising: None

AOCB

1. None

Date of Next Meeting

1. The date of the next meet­ing is 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025.

2. The meet­ing con­cluded at 12.01pm