Approved Resources minutes - 16 May 2025

Minutes of the Resources Com­mit­tee meeting

Held at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity office, Grant­own-on-Spey Online 16 May 2025 at 01.00pm

Present online

• Rus­sell Jones (Chair)
• Lauren McCal­lum (Deputy Convener)
• Sandy Brem­ner
• Jack­ie Brierton
• Chris Beat­tie
• Peter Cos­grove
• Han­nah Grist
• Elean­or Mackintosh
• Derek Ross
• Michael Wil­li­am­son

In attend­ance

• Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer
• Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services
• Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Development
• Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Operations
• Kar­en John­stone, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies None.

Wel­come and introductions

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

Approv­al of minutes of pre­vi­ous meetings

1. The draft minutes from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing on 24 Janu­ary 2025 were approved with the amend­ment of adding Derek Ross as an attendee of the meeting.

Mat­ters arising not covered elsewhere

1. There were no mat­ters arising.

Actions from 24 Janu­ary 2025 meeting:

Paper	Action	Status
Paper 3	i. Staff and Board Mem­ber train­ing on nav­ig­at­ing social media while adher­ing to the policy.	Com­plete / scheduled
Paper 3	ii. Mon­it­or­ing officer from Moray Coun­cil to share their guid­ance on mis­use, shar­ing and copy rights of web­casts with Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services.	Com­plete
Paper 3	iii. Share FOI policy with Board mem­bers to high­light the work being done in this area.	Open – FOI update to Audit / Risk Com­mit­tee June 2025 will cov­er this.
Paper 1	i. Return to com­mit­tee the new policy on staff recog­ni­tion and reward once available.	Open. Policy still in development
Paper 2	i. Arrange for a budget mon­it­or­ing inform­a­tion ses­sion with board members.	Ses­sion was delivered — 3 mem­bers attended.
Paper 5	i. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Jack­ie Brier­ton to Invest­ig­ate the pos­sib­il­ity of Cred­it Uni­ons for staff and park wide.	Open

1. The Chair dis­cussed the per­son­al use of social media policy which was brought to a Board Busi­ness ses­sion on 09 May. a) Con­cern was raised that Board Mem­bers were expec­ted to fol­low the same policy as staff and ques­tioned if there would be an oppor­tun­ity to make amend­ments to this. Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer (CEO) and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that the expect­a­tions for Board Mem­bers per­son­al social media use are set out in the Code of Con­duct and sup­por­ted by spe­cif­ic guid­ance issued by the Stand­ards Com­mis­sion. The Park Authority’s policy is com­ple­ment­ary guid­ance to the Stand­ards Com­mis­sion doc­u­ment and should provide addi­tion­al help in com­ply­ing with expect­a­tions of the Code of Con­duct. b) A ques­tion was raised that if a Board Mem­ber was to fall foul of the guid­ance, what the reper­cus­sions would be. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that the Park Author­ity may receive com­plaints dir­ectly from Stake­hold­ers or mem­bers of the pub­lic. This would be high­lighted to the Con­vener, the com­plaint con­sidered under estab­lished pro­cesses, and the Con­vener may write or dis­cuss the mat­ter with the mem­ber. How­ever, the com­plaint may be made by the stake­hold­er or mem­ber of the pub­lic to the Stand­ards Com­mis­sion, in which case the Com­mis­sion would handle the situ­ation from there. It was high­lighted that the Park Author­ity have a duty to provide train­ing / aware­ness on this top­ic, which has now been done, there­fore if a com­plaint was made, Stand­ards Com­mis­sion would be noti­fied that Board Mem­bers have received the train­ing. c) Dis­cus­sions were had around the con­fu­sion of under­stand­ing around the aim of the policy at the Board Busi­ness Ses­sion and there­fore was agreed for Officers to make this clear to mem­bers that this is sup­ple­ment­ary guid­ance for best prac­tise. Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, agreed to devel­op an advice note for mem­bers in fol­low up to this dis­cus­sion and the train­ing session.

Declar­a­tions of interest

1. There were no declar­a­tions of interest.

²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ estim­ated out­turn (Paper 1)

1. Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions presen­ted the paper which sets out an estim­ated out­turn pos­i­tion for the ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ fin­an­cial year.
2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) Clar­ity was sought on the £300,000 under­spend in peat­land res­tor­a­tion. Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions explained that of a total £3 mil­lion in grant aid avail­able, the Park Author­ity drew down £2,620,000. How­ever, they should have drawn down £245,000 less as this was not spent. This unspent money goes back to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG) as a new alloc­a­tion of money has been set for this year. b) Ques­tions were raised regard­ing the under­spend if this has implic­a­tions in the future to poten­tially restrict budget as pro­jects have been delivered with less money. CEO explained the cost of pro­jects depends on if the land is eroded or drained, remote­ness and oth­er factors. Estim­a­tions are made of the cost of a pro­ject, how­ever, until pro­cure­ment and works start on the ground it is dif­fi­cult to gauge the cost. It will not affect the alloc­ated budget for the fol­low­ing year. It was noted that under­spend will likely decrease due to increas­ing com­plex­it­ies of pro­jects. c) A Board Mem­ber asked if the Peat­land under­spend could be spent on cap­it­al items to facil­it­ate oth­er peat­land work through­out the year, eg thermal kit. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed the under­spend can be deployed to pur­chase cap­it­al items rel­ev­ant to the over­all peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­gramme sub­ject to SG approv­al. d) A ques­tion was raised if peat­land applic­a­tions are scru­tin­ised to ensure the claimants have adhered to muir­burn code and not car­ried out any mis­de­mean­ours. CEO con­firmed if an applic­ant has burnt out on an area of peat­land and request­ing res­tor­a­tion, then this would not be awar­ded. Also, if an area has high deer num­bers, then this would not be a plaus­ible res­tor­a­tion pro­ject for cer­tain types of res­tor­a­tion. How­ever, dis­cus­sions will be needed with NatureScot regard­ing if an applic­ant has had a muir­burn or grouse licence revoked are they still eli­gible for peat­land res­tor­a­tion funding.

3. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the paper agree­ing to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Note the estim­ated out­turn pos­i­tion for the ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ fin­an­cial year.

4. Action Points Arising: None.

Budget mon­it­or­ing (Paper 2)

1. Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions presen­ted the paper which sets out an over­view of the Park Authority’s budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion at the end of April – month one of the ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ fin­an­cial year.
2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) Fol­low­ing intern­al dis­cus­sions on Cairngorms 2030 spend to date, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions gave an update to mem­bers in respect of the pro­por­tion of Month one spend relat­ing to recharged staff costs, rather than expendit­ure on dir­ect deliv­ery. There is a budget of £38 mil­lion for the whole pro­ject, of which £27 mil­lion relates to cap­it­al costs: wood­land expan­sion, peat­land res­tor­a­tion and trans­port pro­jects. Of the remain­ing £11 mil­lion, £5.5 mil­lion is staff costs, and a sim­il­ar amount is for dir­ect deliv­ery of activ­it­ies (non-cap­it­al spend). An inter­pret­a­tion had been made that staff costs were too high a per­cent­age of the total amount spent in first month, but the Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions reas­sured the Com­mit­tee that the dis­tri­bu­tion of spend between staff costs and dir­ect deliv­ery was in line with the budget alloc­a­tion. b) CEO gave an update on the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund (NRF) not­ing the Park Author­ity have received con­firm­a­tion on the funds how­ever, we are wait­ing on terms; it is hoped that addi­tion­al intern­al funds can go into the Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund. A fur­ther update was giv­en in respect of fund­ing from SG and Trans­port Scot­land, not­ing the Park Author­ity is still wait­ing for an answer. This is being fol­lowed up with both organ­isa­tions and we should have an answer by the end of May. More inform­a­tion will fol­low to the Board.
3. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the paper agree­ing to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Con­sider the budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆.
4. Action Points Arising: None.

Health and Safety Com­mit­tee minutes (Paper 3)

1. Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment presen­ted the paper which sets out the minutes from the most recent Health and Safety Com­mit­tee Meeting.
2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) Board Mem­bers praised the response work car­ried out by the staff fol­low­ing a ser­i­ous incid­ent. It was also acknow­ledged that the increase on report­ing of acci­dents and incid­ents would be due to the sim­pli­fic­a­tion of the report­ing sys­tem, which was a pos­it­ive. b) Dis­cus­sions were had around some staff being unaware the office had a defib­ril­lat­or avail­able at recep­tion, to which a board mem­ber offered to provide train­ing defib­ril­lat­ors for staff to prac­tise on and build con­fid­ence in using these. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment said that we were look­ing to deliv­er train­ing provided through the Brit­ish Heart Found­a­tion, which used the same defib­ril­lat­or as ours dur­ing the course and agreed that while equip­ment was designed to be used by any­one, train­ing and famil­i­ar­isa­tion would be help­ful. c) Dis­cus­sion was had around domest­ic abuse; spot­ting the signs and if the rangers were giv­en train­ing to handle these situ­ations. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment explained that Rangers receive con­flict and safe­guard­ing train­ing which would cov­er aspects of domest­ic abuse. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices high­lighted that as an Author­ity we must tread care­fully not to expect too much of our ranger ser­vices. Rangers should not be blind to these issues arising; how­ever, the Park Author­ity should be aware of poten­tial issues and how far they can expect Rangers to go dur­ing a brief con­tact. d) A Board Mem­ber sug­ges­ted in rela­tion to the bike pro­ject that staff make con­tact with Police Scot­land as they have schemes relat­ing to recovered or stolen goods, such as bikes and may be help­ful to the sus­tain­able trans­port team. Officers agreed to pass this inform­a­tion on to the rel­ev­ant Head of Service.
3. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the paper agree­ing to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Note the Health and Safety Com­mit­tee meet­ing minutes.
4. Action Points Arising: None.

Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um minutes (Paper 4)

1. Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment presen­ted the paper which sets out the minutes from the most recent Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um meeting.
2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) There were no com­ments made.
3. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the paper agree­ing to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Note the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um meet­ing minutes
4. Action Points Arising: None.

AOCB

1. None.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The date of the next meet­ing is 29 August 2025 in person.
2. The meet­ing con­cluded at 01.52pm

Motion to move to a con­fid­en­tial ses­sion to pro­tect capa­city to under­take pub­lic busi­ness in con­duct of pay nego­ti­ations; con­fid­en­ti­al­ity of staff pay considerations.

Action points from today’s meet­ing 16 May 2025

Mat­ters Arising At para 4 c) i. Provide an advice note to Board Mem­bers to give a clear under­stand­ing that the per­son­al use of social media policy is sup­ple­ment­ary guid­ance for best practise.