DRAFT MINUTES OF THE PER­FORM­ANCE COMMITTEE

MEET­ING of

THE CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

held via Lifes­ize on 11 Feb­ru­ary 2022 at 3.10pm

PRESENT

Wil­lie Mun­ro (Chair) Xan­der McDade until 4.40pm Douglas McAdam (Vice-Chair) Wil­lie McK­enna Peter Argyle Janet Hunter

In Attend­ance: Grant Moir, CEO Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Steph­en Corcor­an, Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Man­ager Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature & Cli­mate Change Dav­id Clyne, Head of Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme Helen Mason, Minute-Taker

Apo­lo­gies: Vicky Walk­er, Gov­ernance and Report­ing Man­ager Anne Rae Macdonald

Wel­come and Apologies

1. The Chair wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing of Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee. He informed the Com­mit­tee that the meet­ing was being recor­ded and would be avail­able on the website.

Declar­a­tion of Interests — None

1. Doug McAdam declared a Non-Fin­an­cial interest in: a) Paper I — HH pro­ject — Inde­pend­ent Chair of the South Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group. b) Paper 8 — sits on the Caper­cail­lie Board as CNPA Board Representative

Minutes of Last Meet­ings held – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 29^th Octo­ber 2021 were agreed.

Mat­ters Arising

1. Action points arising from pre­vi­ous meeting:

a) At Para 6) Closed – Per­form­ance Dash­board tool as a stand­ard tool to be dis­cussed at the next meet­ing. On today’s Agenda as Paper 5. b) At Para 12i) Closed — Head of Con­ser­va­tion to dis­cuss Com­mu­nic­a­tions Plan with Doug McAdam. c) At Para 12ii) Closed — Head of Con­ser­va­tion to share Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment on this with Wil­lie McK­enna to help inform them of the implic­a­tions of the pro­ject. d) At Para 29i) Closed — Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning and Place passed on Com­mit­tee thanks to Liz Hende­r­son for all the work she had done on the Badenoch Great Place pro­ject. e) At Para 34i) In Hand– Staff to get con­tract­ors in place as soon as pos­sible. f) At Para 41i) In Hand CEO to look again at the HH Advis­ory Pan­el mem­ber­ship – Grant fol­lowed up – in place for next meet­ing g) At Para 41ii) In Hand – Any changes to the HH Advis­ory Pan­el to be taken for­ward after their first meet­ing. h) At Para 48i) In Hand — CEO to look into bet­ter com­mu­nic­a­tion with Board and wider community.

Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­ject Update (Paper 1)

1. Dav­id Clyne, Head of Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme, intro­duced the paper which updated the Com­mit­tee on deliv­ery of the Her­it­age Hori­zons (HH) Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme and the planned devel­op­ment work to end April 2022. The next meet­ing with the NLHF (Nation­al Her­it­age Lot­tery Fund) will be the end of April as will be the next Pro­gramme Board Meeting.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Mem­bers noted the com­pre­hens­ive report and good achieve­ment espe­cially in the time scale. b) Chair asked if intern­al appoint­ments caus­ing a pres­sure else­where. CEO explained that 3 out of 10 are intern­al which does cause a back­fill issue but there are often changes in staff­ing to be man­aged any­way. This was a tem­por­ary situ­ation. c) Dis­cus­sion of the page for Her­it­age Hori­zons on the web­site as it was not easy to find. Head of Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme repor­ted that he had a meet­ing next week to dis­cuss com­mu­nic­a­tion includ­ing the web­site. CEO con­firmed there was more hap­pen­ing regard­ing the engage­ment strategy more widely, and dis­cus­sion was in hand about this kind of issue. d) A mem­ber asked for clar­ity on the deer sec­tion: had West Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group been dropped? CEO advised that for the devel­op­ment stage this group was not with­in HH ini­tial pro­ject. But they have sim­il­ar pro­cesses and will come togeth­er and should be com­pat­ible and tie in with the HH deliv­ery phase.

3. The Chair thanked staff involved for the update.

4. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee approved the recom­mend­a­tions in the paper.

5. Action Points Arising: i. Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­ject con­tinu­ing to dis­cuss and amend com­mu­nic­a­tions sys­tems online and offline.

Cairngorms Peat­land Action Pro­gramme Deliv­ery (Paper 2)

1. Steph­en Corcor­an, Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Man­ager, intro­duced the paper which presents the latest deliv­ery update for the Cairngorms Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme. Noted the following

   • Staff resources were stretched in seek­ing to secure pro­ject delivery.
   • Estates are becom­ing involved. Tulchan and Atholl Estates in particular.
   • Con­tract­or capa­city an issue so re-pro­fil­ing expendit­ure — doing cheap­er ditch block­ing work – less com­plex work to start with.
   • There was an Intern­al audit review­ing the pro­cesses and con­trols at present.
   • Map­ping pro­ject nearly fin­ished which will be help­ful to identi­fy priorities.

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) It was con­firmed that £400,000 had to go back to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, redu­cing cap­it­al budget from £1.7m to £1.3m on the basis of the team’s assess­ment of poten­tial deliv­ery and likely fin­an­cial out­turn pos­i­tion for the cur­rent year. The reduced level of expendit­ure reflec­ted an ini­tial short­age of con­tract­ors and redesign of works to more straight­for­ward, less expens­ive works. b) A mem­ber asked about the use of Sheep Wool. Officers repor­ted a tri­al on Marr Lodge estate: in its early days and this would be looked into fur­ther over the com­ing year. c) Dis­cussed when we are select­ing Estates are we look­ing at their car­bon foot­print? It was con­firmed that this was not being looked at nor was it by Peat­land Action across Scot­land. Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change explained Intern­al Audit was cur­rently look­ing at what cri­ter­ia we are using to select Estates. d) Noted Atholl Estate video was very help­ful par­tic­u­larly at show­ing peat ​‘zip­ping’ res­tor­a­tion. e) Dis­cussed the lack of resources; people and con­tract­ors — how can this be tackled? It was repor­ted that the Intern­al Audit review was help­ing sup­port management’s review of work­loads, object­ives, and team capa­city; while fund­ing had been secured to recruit anoth­er mem­ber of staff which would help to scale up deliv­ery espe­cially for more com­plic­ated erosion work. CEO respon­ded that one of the key issues was con­tract­or capa­city and Estates’ interest. In the next few weeks paper show­ing peat­land degrad­a­tion across the NP and Scot­land. Through dis­cus­sion with NatureScot there was now a Nation­al Peat­land Board. Money was not the issue but the people and con­tract­ors to do the work. NatureScot just com­ing to the end of a review which includes some poten­tial fund­ing. f) Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that the returned fund­ing this year had been alloc­ated to our pro­jec­ted expendit­ure pro­files over the next years. He hopes to ​‘repro­file’ this money from Scot­tish Govt to next year rather than give

g) it back. Noted we are work­ing on a five-year pro­gramme. He expec­ted to be more know­ledge­able about the fund­ing when we come to the budget in March. Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Man­ager added we have a great many poten­tial pro­jects but might not get the con­tract­ors. We will how­ever exceed our tar­gets for hec­tares of peat­land restored in the year. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that the intern­al audit look­ing at this and look­ing at resources. Max­im­ise deliv­ery against the pro­gramme. h) Mem­ber spoke about the Just Trans­ition Fund: £500m over 10 years split over three loc­al author­it­ies. Paul Macari (Head of Plan­ning, Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil) is lead­ing on this in Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil. CEO will drop him a line about this regard­ing future years.

1. The Chair thanked Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Man­ager for his work and sum­mar­ised the points below:

2. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee noted the deliv­ery update and con­sidered: a) the pro­ject risks and mit­ig­a­tion; b) the scope and scale of the Peat­land Pro­gramme and the resource implic­a­tions for the Author­ity; c) wheth­er any mater­i­al impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures arise from assess­ment of pro­gramme delivery.

3. Action Points arising: i. CEO to talk to Paul Macari Head of Plan­ning Aber­deen­shire. ii. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices work­ing on resources and budget. iii. Use of Wool by the Marr Lodge Estate – look at it over the com­ing year.

Cairngorms LEAD­ER and Cairngorms Trust Deliv­ery (Paper 3)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced the paper which presents the latest deliv­ery updates on the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme and vol­un­tary and char­it­able giv­ing activ­it­ies as man­aged by the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Loc­al Action Group Trust (Cairngorms Trust). He high­lighted the fol­low­ing points: a) We didn’t man­age to get the sup­ply of the elec­tric minibus under TICK pro­ject pri­or to clos­ure of LEAD­ER pro­gramme. b) What might come to replace LEAD­ER: pos­it­ive work under­way through a num­ber of Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment led work­ing groups which appear to con­firm the recog­nised import­ance of some form of Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) at cent­ral gov­ern­ment level. c) Test­ing Change fund — youth loc­al action group, fund­ing pro­jects for young people now under­way. d) Green Change fund: CLLD ini­ti­at­ive to test approach to com­munity led action on cli­mate and envir­on­ment. e) Slow Pro­gress regard­ing any fund­ing from the UK Gov­ern­ment Lev­el­ling up Fund.

f) Work from the Cairngorm Trust on vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme was being invig­or­ated this year after Cov­id. Noted Cairngorms Trust Annu­al Accounts for Year End­ing March 2021

1. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the deliv­ery updates and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Dis­cus­sion about Vis­it­or Giv­ing Fun­drais­ing: has there been any pro­gress by the Cairngorms Trust? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised some match fund­ing to Trust is under con­sid­er­a­tion to sup­port the devel­op­ment of the vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme, to enable Trust to build its oper­a­tions to a point where the scheme gives a nett pos­it­ive con­tri­bu­tion and can more sig­ni­fic­antly sup­port foot­path main­ten­ance and con­ser­va­tion pro­jects. As repor­ted earli­er, he con­firmed there will be work to re-invig­or­ate the devel­op­ment and roll-out of the vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme in year ahead, fol­low­ing pre­vi­ous Cov­id restric­tions pre­vent­ing this work mov­ing for­ward. b) State­ment made that the Vol­un­tary Giv­ing Scheme was set up ori­gin­ally to pay for the main­ten­ance of the NP. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that the object­ives were to fund infra­struc­ture main­ten­ance and con­ser­va­tion. The scheme began just before Cov­id, and the resources had not been as much as had hoped giv­en the cur­tail­ment of activ­ity dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Some funds gone into path main­ten­ance via com­munity pro­jects. Work to do to secure suf­fi­cient funds to make this a worth­while long-term pro­cess. Was it worth get­ting people get­ting out there to look at what needs doing? An audit of path net­works? Yes, this was the over­all eth­os, Access teams were look­ing at this. CEO repor­ted about the poten­tial of Vis­itScot­land sup­port with fund­ing details expec­ted in June this year. He advised that this report would come before the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee as a spe­cif­ic agenda item. c) Dis­cus­sion on UK Gov­ern­ment Lev­el­ling Up Fund dis­cussed an under­stand­ing that there may be some fixed level of fund­ing per UK par­lia­ment­ary con­stitu­ency. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices cla­ri­fied; we won’t have a spe­cif­ic amount alloc­ated to us as a Nation­al Park area or Author­ity. We will be at the end of a con­sulta­tion on use of funds to be alloc­ated, or not in the con­ver­sa­tion on deploy­ment of lev­el­ling up funds at all. Scot­tish Government’s CLLD approach was from domest­ic funds relat­ing to Com­munity Lead Devel­op­ment fol­low­ing on from LEAD­ER which was a pos­it­ive move­ment on this area of activ­ity. d) Dis­cus­sion around Green Fund­ing & Com­munity bene­fit share was this poten­tial fund­ing. CEO advised that it would be fund­ing from the car­bon cred­its secured in part from fund­ing used with­in the Nation­al Park. Dir­ect­or of Nature & Cli­mate Change noted that through HH, Green Invest­ment was being looked at. e) Chair com­men­ted on the Cairngorms Trust report there were impress­ive num­bers also around liv­ing wage, while not­ing it appeared that some jobs had been cre­ated below this wage level. The Chair asked if the liv­ing wage level should be a require­ment? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed that they would have to look at this aspect of the report, as he under­stood the Liv­ing Wage was a basic require­ment of jobs cre­ated under the pro­gramme. He added that there would be some sub­con­tract­ing in the Lead­er pro­jects where we would not have con­trol of wages and this may be reflec­ted here. He advised he would look into it get back to the Com­mit­tee on this.

2. The Chair con­cluded that though not all tar­gets were met it had proved impress­ive out­comes for mon­it­or­ing of this funding.

3. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee reviewed the deliv­ery updates presen­ted in the paper and con­sidered: a) wheth­er the pro­grammes of activ­ity are mak­ing the expec­ted con­tri­bu­tion to the Cairngorms NPA’s agreed stra­tegic out­comes; b) wheth­er the deliv­ery updates sug­gest any stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s agreed per­form­ance object­ives; c) wheth­er any mater­i­al impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures arise from assess­ment of pro­gramme delivery.

4. Action Points Arising: i. Audit of Foot­path Main­ten­ance to come back to com­mit­tee at some point. ii. Report to come to Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee relat­ing to Vis­it Scot­land Fund­ing. iii. Look at Green Fund­ing par­tic­u­larly via Her­it­age Hori­zons. iv. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices to look fur­ther into the liv­ing wage a require­ment for the future and bring back to Committee.

Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject (Paper 4)

1. Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature & Cli­mate Change intro­duced the paper which presents the latest deliv­ery updates on the Cairngorms Caper­cal­lie pro­ject. He high­lighted the fol­low­ing areas: a) Car­rbridge Caper­cail­lie Group would be sub­mit­ting a revised pro­gramme soon. b) ​“Red” action high­lighted in report on hab­it­at improve­ment plans around Glen­more. Re-advert­ised via hab­it­ats res­tor­a­tion pro­ject – Hab­it­at Grant Scheme, already had some interest. It was expec­ted this pro­ject ele­ment would make up lost ground. c) DNA ana­lys­is of Caper­cail­lie feath­ers – work will be done but there are time delays. Not dir­ectly affect­ing loc­al Caper­cail­lie pro­ject which will be done with­in sched­ule of pro­ject. d) Budget on track regard­ing del­eg­ated fund and man­aging effect­ive fin­an­cial man­age­ment rela­tion­ships with NHLF as some under­spend but likely to be trans­ferred to hab­it­at res­tor­a­tion. e) Work in Deeside under­way. f) Research res­ults from Glenmore/​Abernethy cor­ridor, vis­it­ors will go where they are dir­ec­ted. Res­id­ents want to go where they want to go usu­ally quiet areas away from vis­it­ors. Res­id­ents are a tar­get group. g) NatureScot advis­ory com­mit­tee sub­group. Report due 24^th Feb­ru­ary. Implic­a­tion for Caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion in wider con­text. Risks Iden­ti­fied: i. Car­rbridge Group: tight­er over­sight and sup­port to help Group con­trol progress.

ii. Deeside, Scope of pro­ject: dis­turb­ance issues & how it links to work in the wider area.

1. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Con­cern about amount of wood­land dam­age caused by recent storms and poten­tial dam­age to Caper­cail­lie hab­it­at. b) Prob­lems clear­ing trees, danger to obli­vi­ous res­id­ents walk­ing, such as climb­ing over trees while being cut. In many areas work­ing with loc­al com­munit­ies had worked well. It’s the way we work with them which was crit­ic­al for suc­cess. c) Dis­cussed pos­sib­il­ity of trans­fer­ring money from Caper to fix­ing the paths so people don’t dam­age the Caper­cail­lie hab­it­at. It was noted this was tried in Car­rbridge without suc­cess but there might be oppor­tun­it­ies else­where. Dir­ect­or of Nature & Cli­mate Change explained the Car­rbridge pos­i­tion regard­ing path improve­ments. Path improve­ments to be arranged by Com­munity Coun­cil will not come from pro­ject money. d) Mem­ber noted the amount of interest from Deeside and that the num­ber of Caper­cail­lie was one of the KPI and not much could be done at this stage. Dir­ect­or of Nature & Cli­mate Change advised that the 5‑year sur­vey tran­septs will be what will count. e) Dis­cus­sion about Car­rbridge com­munity and the Park Author­ity, could it be con­firmed that the com­mu­nic­a­tion had been sat­is­fact­or­ily resolved? CEO advised that the Park Author­ity has tried to resolve this how­ever there was con­tinu­ing cor­res­pond­ence. Com­pre­hens­ive inform­a­tion about the Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject on web­site, but some people don’t agree with what was hap­pen­ing, so it was prov­ing dif­fi­cult to resolve. Some parts are going extremely well. Chair noted the poten­tial issue around repu­ta­tion but not of the pro­ject in deliv­er­ing its agreed out­comes. He added that the Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject has got a lot of good actions in their plan going for­ward. Dir­ect­or of Nature & Cli­mate Change to make sure on the writ­ten report there was included a repu­ta­tion­al risk relat­ing to the Car­rbridge project.

2. The Chair con­cluded that though there are some areas of con­cern the pro­ject was work­ing well and that we would not want to lose sight of the ori­gin­al Pro­ject object­ives which were gen­er­ally being delivered.

3. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee reviewed deliv­ery updates and con­sidered: a) pro­gress towards the project’s agreed pur­poses; b) any stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant impacts on deliv­ery of the CNPA’s Cor­por­ate Plan and Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan; c) any mater­i­al impacts on the CNPA’s stra­tegic risk management.

4. Action Point Arising: i. Dir­ect­or of Nature & Cli­mate Change to make sure on the writ­ten report there would be cov­er­age included of repu­ta­tion­al risk assess­ment relat­ing to the Car­rbridge project.

Per­form­ance Dash­board (Paper 5)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced the paper about the evol­u­tion of some form of ​‘dash­board’ for the Com­mit­tee. Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Meet­ing — since paper writ­ten — sug­ges­ted a more stand­ard­ised approach to the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee report­ing look­ing at key out­comes. This would involve a stand­ard­ised table of key out­comes and KPIs of each pro­ject, with notes of explan­a­tion in a cov­er paper for the Com­mit­tee. Plus pro­duce an over­view sheet. Feed­back on best form of present­a­tion to what remains a rel­at­ively new com­mit­tee is reques­ted today.

2. Chair sug­ges­ted con­tin­ued dis­cus­sion (him­self, Vice-Chair and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices), then bring it back to meeting.

3. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee agreed with the Chair’s sug­ges­tion and that the present­a­tion in tables would be good. It would be use­ful for this to apply to the Com­mit­tee plus Staff and the whole organisation.

4. The Chair con­cluded his sug­ges­ted meet­ing would be arranged. Exper­i­ment with the new format at the next meet­ing if appropriate.

5. The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee con­sidered the struc­ture and con­tent of report­ing to date, in the con­text of the wider per­form­ance frame­work report­ing to the Board and agreed to provide feed­back to officers for future evol­u­tion of Com­mit­tee papers to meet the gov­ernance needs of its members.

6. Action Point Arising: i. Chair, Vice-Chair and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices will dis­cuss the report­ing of the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tees and then bring it back to the Committee.

AOCB

1. The Chair explained that the Vice-Chair had raised a query on the minutes of the last meet­ing Item 41 Her­it­age Hori­zons Advis­ory Pan­el and asked the CEO to give an update. CEO explained that people had been appoin­ted to cov­er a wide range of exper­i­ence; and that they were ready to appoint to cov­er exper­i­ence of farm­ing. He added this would be a com­mer­cial farm­er from with­in the Nation­al Park.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The next meet­ing of the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee 13 May 2022 via Lifes­ize (all Com­mit­tees to be held on the same day so will remain via Lifesize).

2. The meet­ing con­cluded at 16:53 hours.