Formal board meeting - paper 6 - public sector reform - 26 September 2025

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 6 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 1 of 5

For dis­cus­sion

Title: Pub­lic Sec­tor Reform Pre­pared by: Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer

Pur­pose This paper provides an over­view of the Pub­lic Sec­tor Reform (PSR) agenda with­in Scot­land and the role the Park Author­ity will play in deliv­er­ing this.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Board is invited to:

α) Note the stra­tegic dir­ec­tion from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. b) Note the place pro­to­type work in the Dee and South Esk catch­ments as part of the devel­op­ing PSR work.

Stra­tegic context

1. The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment pub­lished its PSR in June 2025 — Scotland’s Pub­lic Ser­vice Reform Strategy Deliv­er­ing for Scot­land. This sets out the high level approach in Scot­land and builds on work already under­way across the pub­lic sector.

2. The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment intends that pub­lic ser­vices sys­tem will:

α) Be effi­cient and effect­ive with the right-size deliv­ery land­scape. b) Bet­ter join up ser­vices and focus on help­ing people. c) Pri­or­it­ise pre­ven­tion. d) Empower people and com­munit­ies to shape the ser­vices that mat­ter to them. e) Be fisc­ally sustainable.

1. One of the key com­mit­ments in the strategy is over the next five years the annu­al­ised Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and pub­lic body cor­por­ate costs will be reduced by £1 bil­lion, rep­res­ent­ing around 20% of the iden­ti­fied pub­lic body cor­por­ate and core gov­ern­ment oper­at­ing costs.

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 6 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 2 of 5

1. At a nation­al level there are four work­streams tasked with tak­ing this work for­ward. These are:

α) Work­stream 1: Lead­er­ship and Cul­tur­al Change b) Work­stream 2: Account­ab­il­ity and Incent­ives c) Work­stream 3: Empower­ing People, Places and Com­munit­ies d) Work­stream 4: Ensur­ing the Right Deliv­ery Landscape

1. All of these work­streams are rel­ev­ant for the Park Author­ity but Work­stream four may have the most sig­ni­fic­ant impact. This includes a com­mit­ment to review the cur­rent pub­lic ser­vice deliv­ery land­scape (131 pub­lic bod­ies and 50 gov­ern­ment dir­ect­or­ates) to:

a) Identi­fy duplic­a­tion across pub­lic bod­ies and work with those bod­ies to share pro­cesses / ser­vices. b) Expand and deep­en the ​‘clusters’ pro­gramme with pub­lic bod­ies to facil­it­ate great­er effi­ciency and integ­ra­tion. c) Con­sider the appro­pri­ate inter­face between pub­lic bod­ies and Gov­ern­ment in terms of policy / deliv­ery split and remove duplic­a­tion where it exists. d) Where neces­sary, identi­fy and imple­ment changes to the status of pub­lic bod­ies where this pre­vents them deliv­er­ing to best effect. e) Use the Min­is­teri­al Con­trol Frame­work to con­tin­ue the pre­sump­tion against the cre­ation of new pub­lic bod­ies by assess­ing and chal­len­ging any new pro­pos­als. f) Sup­port and encour­age an entre­pren­eur­i­al mind­set with­in pub­lic bod­ies. g) Remove, amal­gam­ate or change the num­ber of pub­lic bod­ies where doing so will increase effi­ciency, remove duplic­a­tion and improve ser­vice delivery.

Envir­on­ment Cluster

1. The Envir­on­ment and Eco­nomy Lead­ers Group (EELG) is the cluster under which the Park Author­ity sits. This includes NatureScot, Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency, Loch Lomond and The Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity, Roy­al Botan­ic Garden Edin­burgh, Zero Waste Scot­land, Croft­ing Com­mis­sion, Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion, Crown Estate Scot­land, Scot­tish Forestry, Forestry and Land Scot­land and Scot­tish Water along­side rel­ev­ant Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Dir­ect­or­ates and Cosla representation.

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 6 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 3 of 5

1. There are a num­ber of work­streams that have been taken for­ward through the cluster includ­ing digit­al, estates, people / HR. There is also an Envir­on­ment Futures Group look­ing spe­cific­ally at the medi­um to longer term aspects of pub­lic sec­tor reform with­in the envir­on­ment sec­tor. The Envir­on­ment Futures Group have estab­lished two work­streams to take this work forward.

2. The first is the Place Pro­to­type work that I am the spon­sor for with­in EELG. This is look­ing at two catch­ments — Dee and South Esk. The Dee work is being led by the Park Author­ity, the South Esk work is being led by Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency (SEPA). In each catch­ment the lead part­ners will coordin­ate work with com­munit­ies, land man­agers, agen­cies and organ­isa­tions to estab­lish an integ­rated pro­gramme of action to secure the long-term catch­ment resi­li­ence and wider benefits.

3. Place-based work­ing takes a sys­tems approach to align­ing and pri­or­it­ising the reg­u­lat­ory, policy, and pub­lic invest­ment mech­an­isms, towards the most effi­cient and effect­ive way of deliv­er­ing the com­mon gov­ern­ment, private and com­munity interests and out­comes. The learn­ings from the two ​‘pion­eer catch­ments’ will then be applied to oth­er catch­ments through­out Scotland.

4. In the Dee catch­ment this work will build on the Dee Resi­li­ence Part­ner­ship we have already pulled togeth­er. The Dee Resi­li­ence Group com­prises rep­res­ent­at­ives from com­munit­ies in the upper catch­ment, Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil, the Dee Dis­trict Sal­mon Fish­ery Board, River Dee Trust, pub­lic agen­cies and James Hut­ton Insti­tute (JHI). There is now a ded­ic­ated resource to take for­ward the work, sup­por­ted by part­ners organ­isa­tions. The Resi­li­ence Group has been dis­cuss­ing and col­lab­or­at­ing on a joined-up approach to land­scape scale res­tor­a­tion, resi­li­ence and ​‘slow­ing the flow’. The group will form­ally take on a role in the PSR work as the region­al gov­ernance, advis­ory and deliv­ery group.

5. The second work­stream is look­ing at longer-term approaches to envir­on­ment­al delivery.

Oth­er PSR work with­in the Park Authority

1. The Park Author­ity has a num­ber of shared ser­vices with Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity and the Park Author­ity also provides HR

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 6 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 4 of 5

sup­port to the Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion. The Park Author­ity will con­tin­ue to focus on oppor­tun­it­ies to work with oth­er organ­isa­tions where it makes sense to do so.

1. The Park Author­ity is cur­rently devel­op­ing its Work­force Man­age­ment Plan which is look­ing at how to achieve PSR require­ments along­side the chan­ging work­force the Park Author­ity will need post the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme. This work is informed by the stra­tegic intent set out in para­graph three and the cur­rent head­count restric­tions from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment along­side the no com­puls­ory redund­ancy policy from Scot­tish Government.

2. The Park Author­ity has also been increas­ing the digit­isa­tion of Park Author­ity ser­vices. This includes the new fin­ance sys­tem and the new web­site map­ping tool which has allowed us to save expendit­ure on the com­mon place plat­form. Examples of the new digit­al applic­a­tions are lis­ted below:

Acci­dent and incid­ent report­ing	Mobile app
Lone work­ing / buddy system	Mobile app
Fleet vehicle use logging	Mobile app
Fleet cycle use log­ging and booking	Mobile app
Dis­play screen equip­ment (DSE) home assessment	Desktop app
Pro­cure­ment Register / pipeline	PowerBI dash­board
Grants Register	PowerBI dash­board
Con­tract Register	PowerBI dash­board
Legion­ella tem­per­at­ure checks	Mobile app
Staff first aid info	Mobile app
Ranger log­ging and weekly reporting	PowerBI dash­board

Risks

1. Key risks for the Park Author­ity are around:

α) The need to deliv­er the change that deliv­ers PSR object­ives rather than wait for change to hap­pen to the organ­isa­tion. b) Ensur­ing we still have a high-qual­ity work­force with the right skills to deliv­er the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan in 2030.

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 6 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 5 of 5

c) Wheth­er we can get part­ner buy-in to deliv­er the place pro­to­type pilots and that these show they deliv­er effi­ciency and effectiveness.

1. These risks will be picked up through the Stra­tegic Risk Register.

Next steps

1. It is pro­posed that a reg­u­lar update is taken to the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee on the place pro­type work and that the annu­al cor­por­ate per­form­ance report to the Board con­tains a sec­tion on PSR.

Grant Moir Grantmoir@​cairngorms.​co.​uk 10 Septem­ber 2025