Draft minutes of the Resources Com­mit­tee meeting

Held online 7 Novem­ber 2025 at 01.00pm

Present

• Rus­sell Jones (Chair)
• Lauren McCal­lum (Deputy Chair)
• Jack­ie Brierton
• Ian McLar­en
• Michael Wil­li­am­son
• Sandy Brem­ner (Board Convener)
• Han­nah Grist
• Derek Ross

In attend­ance

• 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
• Mari­aan Pita, Exec­ut­ive Sup­port Manager
• Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies

• Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer

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 29 August 2025 were approved with no amendments.

Mat­ters arising not covered elsewhere

1. There were no mat­ters arising.

Actions from 24 Janu­ary 2025 meeting:

Inform­a­tion set out in Paper-6-FOISA_Complaints.pdf
Paper 1
i. Return to com­mit­tee the new policy on staff recog­ni­tion ad reward once available.	Open. Policy still in development
Paper 5
ii. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Jack­ie Brier­ton to invest­ig­ate the pos­sib­il­ity of Cred­it Uni­ons for staff and park wide.	Open

Action points from 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 practice.	Closed and issued.

Action points from 29 August 2025

At para 15 g
i. Cap­ture if staff are mov­ing on to more seni­or roles out with the Park Author­ity in future reports.	In hand.

Declar­a­tions of interest

1. There were no declar­a­tions of interest.

Budget mon­it­or­ing (Paper 1)

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 Septem­ber — month six of the ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ fin­an­cial year.
2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) Chair praised the pro­gress, and that all was on track. b) Board Con­vener com­men­ded Head of Fin­ance and Oper­a­tions and the wider team for the usu­al high level budget mon­it­or­ing, recog­nising it had been a time-con­sum­ing extern­al audit pro­cess, on top of everything else. Head of Fin­ance and Oper­a­tions agreed it had been a team effort and would pass the praise onto the team. The Com­mit­tee Chair echoed these comments.
3. The Resources Com­mit­tee con­sidered the budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆.
4. Action Points Arising: None.

Health and Safety Com­mit­tee Minutes (Paper 2)

1. Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment presen­ted the paper which sets out the minutes for the Health and Safety Com­mit­tee meet­ing on 9 Septem­ber 2025.
2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) Chair asked if the three incid­ents where Rangers had been sub­jec­ted to abuse, was that more or less than we would nor­mally expect or was it get­ting worse? Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment advised that this was the first report­ing peri­od dur­ing which they had three instances noted of aggres­sion. She added how­ever that this report­ing peri­od was at the height of the sea­son, where vis­it­or num­bers were at a max­im­um and there­fore not unex­pec­ted that could hap­pen. Pat­terns would inform future train­ing if it was felt cur­rent train­ing was not suf­fi­cient, but cur­rent train­ing cov­er­ing con­flict man­age­ment and per­son­al safety seems appro­pri­ate now. b) A mem­ber com­men­ted on the paddle board­ing incid­ent and asked if any dry runs of pro­ced­ures were car­ried out, without hav­ing a near miss first. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment advised that they do check the equip­ment but would take that sug­ges­tion on as an action to pass onto the team. c) A mem­ber asked for more detail around the level of aggres­sion dir­ec­ted at the Ranger for hav­ing asked the per­pet­rat­or to extin­guish a fire. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment advised that the level of aggres­sion was not par­tic­u­larly high how­ever it was a group of people so that meant it was escal­ated as it was more than one per­son being aggress­ive towards the Ranger. Typ­ic­ally, the incid­ents that involve the Rangers would be invest­ig­ated either by Alan Smith or by Colin Simpson. They were rel­at­ively com­fort­able that there was no imme­di­ate danger to the indi­vidu­als con­cerned and that they handled the situ­ation appro­pri­ately. d) A mem­ber asked when the Rangers start to enforce the bylaw, will there be more train­ing. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment con­firmed that some restruc­tur­ing in the Ranger team is under­way includ­ing addi­tion­al train­ing for all the rangers, recog­nising skill levels of the team. e) A mem­ber asked if the sab­bat­ic­al policy that was cur­rently under devel­op­ment would be com­ing to the Resources Com­mit­tee? Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment advised that it was for short term sab­bat­ic­als con­sist­ing of 10 to 20 days depend­ing on level of ser­vice. It would be brought to the staff con­sultat­ive for­um in Decem­ber 2026 and cap­tured with­in the minutes that comes to com­mit­tee. f) A mem­ber asked if the van stuck in reverse had been a mech­an­ic­al fail­ure? Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment con­firmed that it was due to a mech­an­ic­al fail­ure, vehicles are reg­u­larly main­tained and under­go a robust ser­vice sched­ule. g) The Chair asked if the staff AED train­ing had taken place? Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment advised that it was sched­uled for 15 Janu­ary 2026 and would be delivered dur­ing a lunch and learn.
3. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the minutes from the Health and Safety Com­mit­tee meeting.
4. Action Point Arising: i. Dry runs of new pro­ced­ures inten­tion­ally trig­ger­ing health and safety tri­als to be con­sidered by the Health and Safety Committee.

Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um Minutes (Paper 3)

1. Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment presen­ted the paper which sets out the draft minutes from the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um meet­ing on 10 Septem­ber 2025.
2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) A mem­ber com­men­ted with regards to the staff award scheme, that they had seen lots of schemes with unin­ten­ded con­sequences, the best awards to staff remained to be good con­struct­ive daily feed­back to staff. b) A mem­ber asked about hybrid cars, was there a risk that people would drop down a tax level to pur­chase a car. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment advised that 23% of staff would not qual­i­fy for this salary sac­ri­fice scheme due to salary and con­tract type, which was one of the reas­ons the decision had been made to not pro­gress with this scheme. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that with most of the bene­fit arrange­ments to staff, deduc­ted from salary before tax, there was poten­tial that they might drop their tax­able earn­ings down a band with mar­gin­al impact. Agreed to talk fur­ther to the mem­ber about this out with this meet­ing. c) A mem­ber sug­ges­ted mak­ing sure staff were aware of the num­ber of bene­fits that they have: a sum­ma­tion of what staff get fin­an­cially and in kind. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment advised that on the back of feed­back from this SCF meet­ing, the HR team had draf­ted a doc­u­ment set­ting out all the bene­fits avail­able to staff which had been cir­cu­lated to staff. She offered to cir­cu­late to Resources Com­mit­tee. d) The Chair con­grat­u­lated staff for receiv­ing the Her­ald and S1 Jobs Top Employ­er Award and com­men­ted that it was great recog­ni­tion for the organisation’s pro­gress­ive policies. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment com­men­ted that they had been delighted to have won it for the cat­egory ​“best diversity and inclu­sion dynam­ic” which reflec­ted all our work on devel­op­ing a suite of diversity and Inclu­sion policies, thank­ing Han­nah Grist, Board Mem­ber and Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy CEO for attend­ing the awards. e) A mem­ber who works with non-gov­ern­ment organ­isa­tions shared that they get teams to shout out about what they’ve been doing in a cas­u­al set­ting with the rest of the organ­isa­tion and wondered if there would be an appet­ite for that in the Nation­al Park Author­ity? Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment agreed it was a good idea and explained that at the recent all staff away­day, the after­noon was spent with key staff talk­ing about their work. She agreed the need to con­tin­ue doing that. She stated that the Park Author­ity were in the middle of the best com­pany sur­vey and hopes to bring the res­ults to the Com­mit­tee in February/​March, and then devel­op action plan from this. f) Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy CEO added that in addi­tion to the annu­al staff gath­er­ing, monthly staff updates take place. The cur­rent aim is to provide more oppor­tun­ity for staff to high­light pro­jects com­ing up or are work­ing on and enhance scope for wider recog­ni­tion of work staff are deliv­er­ing. g) The Chair con­grat­u­lated every­one for the award.
3. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the minutes from the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um meeting.
4. Action Points Arising: i. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy CEO to have a chat off­line with Michael Wil­li­am­son about the hybrid car scheme. ii. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment to share with the Com­mit­tee the doc­u­ment which details the bene­fits staff get.

Resources Com­mit­tee annu­al report (Paper 4)

1. Mari­aan Pita, Exec­ut­ive Sup­port Man­ager presen­ted the paper which sets out the draft Resources Com­mit­tee work over the last year from Novem­ber 2024 to Octo­ber 2025.
2. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the paper agree­ing to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Con­sider the draft annu­al report of the Resources Com­mit­tee. b) Agree any amend­ments to the draft pri­or to cir­cu­la­tion to the Board.
3. Action Points Arising: None.

AOCB

1. The Chair gave spe­cial wel­come to Ian McLar­en, who had joined the Resources Committee.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The date of the next meet­ing is 13 Feb­ru­ary 2026.
2. The meet­ing con­cluded at 01.50pm

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Action points from 24 Janu­ary 2025 meeting:

Doc­u­ment	Action Point	Status
Inform­a­tion set out in Paper-6-FOISA_Complaints.pdf
Paper 1
iii. Return to com­mit­tee the new policy on staff recog­ni­tion and reward once available.	Open. Policy still in development
Paper 5
iv. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Jack­ie Brier­ton to invest­ig­ate the pos­sib­il­ity of Cred­it Uni­ons for staff and park wide.	Open

Action points from 29 August 2025

Ref­er­ence	Action Point	Status
At para 15 g
ii. Cap­ture if staff are mov­ing on to more seni­or roles out with the Park Author­ity in future reports.	In hand.

Action points from 7 Novem­ber 2025

Ref­er­ence	Action Point	Status
At para 12
i. Dry runs of new pro­ced­ures inten­tion­ally trig­ger­ing health and safety tri­als to be con­sidered by the Health and Safety Committee.
At para 16
i. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy CEO to have a chat off­line with Michael Wil­li­am­son about the hybrid car scheme.
ii. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment to share with the Com­mit­tee the doc­u­ment which details the bene­fits staff get and how this com­pares to oth­er com­par­able companies.

Motion to take next Item In con­fid­en­tial session