Cairngorms Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group

Hybrid meet­ing via Teams and in-per­son, at Grant­own-on-Spey, on 27 Novem­ber 2025 at 2pm

Present:

• Jack­ie Brier­ton: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (chair)
• Gav­in Miles: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority
• Eilidh Todd: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority
• Alastair Rhind: Aber­deen­shire Council
• Michael Dear­man: Aviemore and Glen­more Com­munity Trust
• Gor­don Hec­tor: GrowBiz
• Mike Duncan: Fed­er­a­tion of Small Businesses
• Kirsti Conti: Moray Council
• Allis­on Car­ring­ton: Skills Devel­op­ment Scotland
• Michelle Har­die: The High­land Coun­cil (THC)
• Alice Fogg: Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch & Strath­spey (VABS)
• Dav­id Boag — Present­ing: The High­land Council

Apo­lo­gies:

• Paul Macari: Aber­deen­shire Council
• Ian Robertson: Coun­tryside Learn­ing Scot­land (CLS)
• Beverly Smith: Moray Council
• Julia Latto: Scot­tish Enter­prise (SE)
• Jam­ie Bell: Scot­tish Enterprise
• Anthony Stand­ing: Skills Devel­op­ment Scotland

Wel­come and apologies Jack­ie Brier­ton wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing, gave apo­lo­gies, and all mem­bers in attend­ance intro­duced them­selves to the group.

Note of last meet­ing and mat­ters arising

The note of the last meet­ing was agreed.

• AP1 — JF WEAP as agenda item for future meet­ing. This will be agenda item for next meeting
• AP2 — Allis­on Car­ring­ton to share an update on the Careers Ser­vices Col­lab­or­at­ive, inform­a­tion on the level 5 qual­i­fic­a­tion for rur­al skills and the Sec­tor Skills Assess­ment for the Rur­al Sec­tor (annu­al report pub­lished end Octo­ber). There are a num­ber of pilot pro­jects that SDS are involved in and if suc­cess­ful they will roll out across oth­er loc­al author­it­ies, which will include the Park area.
  • Work­force North Ini­ti­at­ive (H&I) a pilot look­ing at ways that we can work more col­lab­or­at­ively togeth­er to devel­op the workforce.
  • Found­a­tion Appren­tice­ships. Con­sider invit­ing Andrew Ritch­ie (DYW lead Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil) along to speak about the FAA work that he does in Aberdeenshire.
  • Also look­ing at ways in which we can sup­port mostly young people if they’re apply­ing for appren­tice­ships. Links to updated SDS region­al and sec­tor­al skills assessments:
  • Region­al Skills Assess­ments — Skills Devel­op­ment Scotland
  • https://​www​.skill​s​devel​op​mentscot​land​.co​.uk/​w​h​a​t​-​w​e​-​d​o​/​s​k​i​l​l​s​-​p​l​a​n​n​i​n​g​/​s​e​c​t​o​r​a​l​-​s​k​i​l​l​s​-​a​s​s​e​s​s​ments

ACTION 1.: Allis­on Car­ring­ton to share a sum­mary of the above.

• AP 3 — Jack­ie Far­quhar to add Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Rur­al Deliv­ery Plan to ESG Share­Point site when it becomes avail­able. Noted and will be actioned when available.
• AP4 — Mike Duncan to invest­ig­ate min­ing Nation­al Park spe­cif­ic data from the well­being busi­ness sur­vey and the High­land FSB sur­vey. This was invest­ig­ated but turned out to impossible to drill down in that amount of detail.
• AP5 — Jam­ie Bell to con­sult with Julia Latto to see if there is any use­ful data around skills that could be extrac­ted from the Scot­tish Rur­al Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme net­work. Scot­tish Enter­prise was not rep­res­en­ted at this meet­ing so this will be fol­lowed up by email.

ACTION 2: Email Scot­tish Enter­prise re: lead­er­ship data extraction.

• AP6 — All ESG mem­bers to con­sider the poten­tial of a depos­it­ory for all oppor­tun­it­ies around skills devel­op­ment in the Nation­al Park.

High­land Coun­cil Employ­ab­il­ity Team Presentation

Dav­id Boag (The High­land Coun­cil) presen­ted on ​“Work Life High­land,” the pub­lic-facing brand for the High­land Employ­ab­il­ity Part­ner­ship (HEP).

Key takeaways from the present­a­tion were:

• Employ­ab­il­ity Ser­vices: High­land Council’s ​“Work Life High­land” brand sim­pli­fies access to ser­vices for job seekers and employ­ers, fun­ded by the Scot­tish Government’s ​“No One Left Behind” pro­gram (~£3M/​yr).
• Data Gap: The lack of gran­u­lar, park-spe­cif­ic data hinders stra­tegic plan­ning and fund­ing applic­a­tions. A pilot with SRUC to access aggreg­ated HMRC data is planned to address this.
• Hous­ing Crisis: A hous­ing crisis in Badenoch & Strath­spey is a crit­ic­al bar­ri­er to eco­nom­ic growth, with zero social hous­ing alloc­a­tions in the last six months.
• Future Agenda: Upcom­ing top­ics include the social/​wellbeing eco­nomy, com­munity wealth build­ing (CWB), and pro­cure­ment, with speak­ers from CLES and Cooper­at­ive Devel­op­ment Scot­land proposed.

Employ­ab­il­ity Ser­vices in the Park

• Mis­sion: Poverty alle­vi­ation by con­nect­ing people to sus­tain­able, fair work.
• Fund­ing: Primar­ily Scot­tish Government’s ​“No One Left Behind” pro­gram (~£3M/​yr), sup­ple­men­ted by UK Shared Prosper­ity Fund (SPF).
• Deliv­ery: A hybrid mod­el using in-house staff, a pro­vider frame­work, and chal­lenge funds.

Ser­vices for Clients:

• Per­son-centred sup­port (CVs, job applic­a­tions, confidence).
• Train­ing & work exper­i­ence access.
• Sup­port for self-employ­ment via the ​“Launch­pad” scheme.

Ser­vices for Employers:

• Match­ing job-ready clients.
• Paid place­ments (3 – 6 months) for job-ready candidates.
• “Hero” grant for SMEs to sup­port new hires.

• Pro­mot­ing flex­ible work options.

• Data: DWP Uni­ver­sal Cred­it stats can be broken down to coun­cil ward/​postcode level to provide park-spe­cif­ic data.

Careers Col­lab­or­at­ive — SDS update

Allis­on Car­ring­ton will provide a sum­mary of activ­ity to the ESG as dis­cussed at the begin­ning of the meeting.

Eco­nom­ic Pro­fil­ing & Data Needs

A new eco­nom­ic pro­file for the park is needed to inform the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, as the last one is ~15 years old.

Key Data Gaps:

• Accur­ate busi­ness counts (exclud­ing non-func­tion­ing entities).
• Scale of the tour­ism economy.
• Num­ber of eco­nom­ic­ally inact­ive people (esp. older residents).
• Evid­ence of rur­al poverty, which is often hid­den and not cap­tured by stand­ard met­rics like SIMD, cre­at­ing a bar­ri­er to funding.

CNPA is explor­ing a pilot with SRUC to access aggreg­ated HMRC data.

Pre­ced­ent: Michelle Har­die noted the North West 2045 col­lab­or­at­ive, which used socio eco­nom­ic pro­fil­ing by Big­ger Eco­nom­ics to cre­ate a ​“call to action” for sys­tem­ic change.

Part­ner Updates

• FSB (Mike Duncan):
  • Shared Highland/​North East sur­vey data on skills gaps (e.g., hos­pit­al­ity, trades).
  • Repor­ted pos­it­ive sen­ti­ment from the Cairngorm Busi­ness Part­ner­ship conference.
  • Plan­ning an Aviemore net­work­ing event for late Jan/​early Feb.
• High­land Coun­cil (Michelle Hardie):
  • A report on the vis­it­or levy con­sulta­tion goes to com­mit­tee on Dec 11; papers will be pub­lic beforehand.
  • Seek­ing park-area pro­jects for the High­land invest­ment prospectus.
• Moray Coun­cil (Kirsty Conti):
  • Vis­it­or levy pre-con­sulta­tion is pending a new tour­ism strategy (due Dec).
  • Hos­ted a suc­cess­ful pro­cure­ment event for 32 businesses.
• Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil (Alastair Rhind):
  • The new busi­ness start-up grant is closed due to high demand; seek­ing more funds.
  • Aber­deen­shire Res­taur­ant Week included 5 park busi­nesses out of 80.
  • A pub­lic con­sulta­tion is open for a new mobil­ity hub in Ballater.
  • The Bal­later Vis­it­or Inform­a­tion Centre closed in Oct; feed­back is requested.
• Cairngorms Hous­ing Part­ner­ship (Mike Dearman):
  • Repor­ted zero social hous­ing alloc­a­tions in Badenoch & Strath­spey in the last six months.
  • A High­land Coun­cil decision to can­cel a guar­an­teed rent scheme with the Part­ner­ship is seen as a key factor.
• Grow­Biz Scot­land (Gor­don Hector):
  • Launched a pro­gram for entre­pren­eurs over 50.
  • Expand­ing the SEED pro­gram into schools in Angus, Aber­deen­shire, and Moray to pro­mote self-employment.
• SDS (Alis­on Carrington):
  • Shared links to updated region­al and sec­tor­al skills assessments.
  • Offered to help mem­bers nav­ig­ate the SDS data matrix.
• Cairngorms NP Author­ity (Gav­in Miles):
  • Devel­op­ing the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.
  • Plan­ning a ​“call for sites” for the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan in Feb/​Mar.

Next meet­ing

Thursday 23 April 2026 2pm, hybrid meet­ing on Teams or in-per­son at Park Author­ity office, Grantown-on-Spey.