Form­al Board Paper 1 27 March 2026 Page 1 of 13

For inform­a­tion

Title: Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer Report and Con­vener update Pre­pared by: Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer

Pur­pose

To high­light to Board Mem­bers the main stra­tegic areas of work that are being dir­ec­ted by Man­age­ment Team. These are areas where sig­ni­fic­ant staff resources are being dir­ec­ted to deliv­er with part­ners the aspir­a­tions of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP).

Nature and Cli­mate Change

1. In ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ the Peat­land team worked on 15 pro­jects across the Park. The grant require­ment for these pro­jects is £3.37 mil­lion (estim­ated on 31 Janu­ary). 1,614 hec­tares (ha) of peat­land were brought under res­tor­a­tion between 01 April 2025 and 31 Janu­ary 2026. A fur­ther 256ha could be achieved by end March but are sub­ject to snow melt in dif­fer­ent locations.
2. Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund­ing is enabling sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gress towards deliv­ery of the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan; a com­ing togeth­er of 27 part­ners includ­ing land man­agers across 20 land­hold­ings, led by the Park Author­ity. Over 12,000 metres of deer fen­cing has been removed; wood­land graz­ing has expan­ded across more than 4,000ha of caper­cail­lie hab­it­at; robo-cut­ting of dense heath­er over 150ha, and diver­sion­ary feed­ing expan­ded to 90% of land­hold­ings cur­rently sup­port­ing female capercaillie.
3. The Nation­al Park per­eg­rine report was pub­lished in Novem­ber 2025. The study shows that the estim­ated num­ber of per­eg­rine pairs in the breed­ing sea­son with­in the Nation­al Park has declined by 56% since 2002, with less than half of ter­rit­ori­al pairs suc­cess­fully fledging young in 2024. Con­trib­ut­ing factors are likely to include upland land man­age­ment prac­tices, decreased prey avail­ab­il­ity for per­eg­rines, wild­life crime and, more recently, out­breaks of Avi­an Flu.
4. Dr Rachel Helli­well star­ted as the River Dee Catch­ment Pro­ject Officer in Novem­ber 2025. This 18-month post is part of the Pub­lic Sec­tor Reform (PSR) pioneer

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catch­ment pro­gramme, which the Park Author­ity leads in the Dee catch­ment. The post will also sup­port the Dee Resi­li­ence Group, a part­ner­ship of agen­cies, river bod­ies and com­munity rep­res­ent­at­ives. The PSR pro­gramme aims to coordin­ate the work of pub­lic agen­cies to be more effi­cient and effect­ive in deliv­er­ing Envir­on­ment Strategy outcomes.

1. Five beavers were released on Wild­land in mid-Decem­ber, bring­ing the num­ber of beavers released to 37, as part of the Park Authority’s five-year license to release up to 50 indi­vidu­als or 15 pairs and fam­il­ies. The total num­ber of beavers in in the Upper Spey catch­ment is 57, includ­ing kits born in the Park.

Plan­ning and Place

1. Cairngorms Trust Chair, Rodger Clegg has now stepped down for the Loc­al Action Group (LAG). The new Chair is Kar­en Der­rick. A huge thank you to Rodger for all his work as a volun­teer over the years.
2. Work on a num­ber of path improve­ments have been pro­gress­ing well includ­ing improve­ments to a sec­tion of the Spey­side Way between Insh and Inver­uglas and on the ​“Cinder path” at Bal­later where the Park Author­ity has part fun­ded a com­munity led pro­ject. Fur­ther improve­ments to the paths round Loch an Eilean com­menced in February.
3. The first three access­ible paths that were sur­veyed by the dis­ab­il­ity access intern are now fea­tured on the web­site under the path col­lec­tion of ​“Access­ible paths”, with more to fol­low. A first draft of an ​‘Access­ible paths toolkit’ for land man­agers has been pro­duced and fund­ing ear­marked for a small grant scheme for path improve­ments to make exist­ing paths more access­ible. Staff from the access, ranger, green health and volun­teer­ing teams atten­ded an Out­door Access­ib­il­ity train­ing day with Able2Adventure on 12 March.
4. A fur­ther 11 volun­teer rangers have been recruited sup­ple­ment­ing the 24 recruited earli­er in 2025 with them fin­ish­ing train­ing in in late Feb­ru­ary. Two of our exist­ing volun­teers have reached the mile­stone of hav­ing con­trib­uted 1,000 hours each of volun­teer­ing in the Cairngorms since they started.

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1. A restruc­ture of the Park Author­ity Ranger Ser­vice has been com­pleted in anti­cip­a­tion of the dif­fer­ent demands and respons­ib­il­it­ies that will come with the fire byelaw. The Ranger Man­ager is now sup­por­ted by two Seni­or Rangers one cov­er­ing Deeside and Angus and one cov­er­ing the west of the Nation­al Park who will take on line man­age­ment respons­ib­il­ity for Sea­son­al Rangers. A new per­man­ent Ranger star­ted on 01 March which now gives an all-year-round ranger pres­ence in the Angus and North Perth­shire area.
2. The Park Author­ity Ranger Ser­vice piloted a pro­ject last sum­mer to ​“bring nature inside” through a range of activ­it­ies with Praes­mohr House Care Home in Deeside. Each vis­it las­ted 45-minutes to an hour and was designed to make the activ­it­ies access­ible to people with a range of abil­it­ies. The bene­fits to the res­id­ents were recog­nised by the care home man­ager and we were invited back to run monthly ses­sions this year, con­cen­trat­ing on recon­nect­ing with Nature and focus­sing on the wild­life in the garden and the wood­lands around Praes­mohr House. Two indoor ses­sions have been delivered so far this year and in future we plan to use the garden when the weath­er improves and the days are warmer.
3. In advance of the fire byelaw com­ing into force in April, pro­duct­ive meet­ings have con­tin­ued with the Crown Office and Pro­cur­at­or Fisc­al Ser­vice as the Park Author­ity moves towards becom­ing a Spe­cial­ist Report­ing Agency which will allow the Park Author­ity to take enforce­ment cases dir­ect to the Fisc­als ser­vice for con­sid­er­a­tion. Par­al­lel dis­cus­sions with Police Scot­land have taken place to ensure a robust pro­cess around evid­ence gath­er­ing and this is to be fol­lowed up with ded­ic­ated train­ing by Police Scot­land for Coun­tryside Rangers.
4. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (LDP): The Evid­ence Report for our next LDP was presen­ted to Board for approv­al at a spe­cial meet­ing on 13 March. This was approved by the Board and it will now be sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Government’s (SG) Divi­sion for Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment­al Appeals (DPEA) for a ​‘gat­echeck’ review to ensure the evid­ence is suf­fi­cient. The gat­echeck review is expec­ted to take around three months to com­plete. A Call for Sites and ideas to help inform the new LDP will also be launched in late March. This will provide an oppor­tun­ity for people to sug­gest ideas that could help shape future plan­ning policies and devel­op­ment pri­or­it­ies across the Nation­al Park. It will also enable landown­ers and developers to

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pro­pose sites that they believe may be suit­able for devel­op­ment and poten­tial alloc­a­tion in the new LDP.

1. Plan­ning case­work: Since the last Form­al Board meet­ing in Novem­ber 2025, the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee has gran­ted plan­ning per­mis­sion for a small hous­ing scheme at Boat of Garten (com­pris­ing two afford­able homes for rent and two open mar­ket homes to cross-sub­sid­ise the afford­able units), and an exten­sion to the Brae­mar Cara­van site. The Com­mit­tee has also approved updates to the Park Authority’s plan­ning call-in cri­ter­ia and enforce­ment charter, as well as agree­ing the Park Authority’s con­sulta­tion response to the Kyl­lachy Wind Farm pro­pos­al just out­side the Park bound­ary. The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee will meet on 13 March to con­sider plan­ning applic­a­tions for a flood defence bund at Dal­whin­nie, a series of wild­life ponds near Bal­later, minor vari­ations to house plots at ongo­ing devel­op­ment sites in Aviemore and New­ton­more, and the Park Authority’s con­sulta­tion response to the pro­posed Dorenell Wind­farm Exten­sion just out­side the Park boundary.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engagement

1. Fire byelaw: We have been work­ing with cre­at­ive agency Bright Sig­nals to devel­op a coordin­ated com­mu­nic­a­tions cam­paign for fire byelaws, under the umbrella title of ​‘Pro­tect our Nation­al Park. No flame. No spark’. The cam­paign, which com­mences week com­men­cing 16 March, will fea­ture res­id­ents / work­ers from across the Nation­al Park, call­ing on vis­it­ors and res­id­ents alike to join them in help­ing reduce the threat of wild­fires. Pro­mo­tion will include everything from road signs to social media videos and adverts, ranger con­ver­sa­tions, part­ner sig­nage, beer mats, win­dow stick­ers and leaf­lets (see below visu­als). Video and radio adverts were also shot in loc­a­tions across the Nation­al Park in mid-March, fea­tur­ing four res­id­ents and a Park Author­ity ranger.

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(Image descrip­tion: A visu­al rep­res­ent­a­tion of cam­paign mater­i­als for ​“NO FLAME, NO SPARK” with ele­ments like ​“NO FIRES OR BAR­BE­CUES”, ​“I DON’T START FIRES” and ​“PRO­TECT OUR NATION­AL PARK”)

1. We are also explor­ing part­ner­ships with key social media influ­en­cers, with a spe­cif­ic focus on teen­agers / men in their early twen­ties and ​‘van life’ adven­tur­ers to ensure we get the mes­sage across to key tar­get audi­ences. Our paid online / social media activ­ity will help us reach far bey­ond our own chan­nels, tar­get­ing those plan­ning a trip to the Cairngorms, as well as spe­cif­ic vis­it­or types and geo­graph­ic­al areas.
2. The press team is work­ing on a range of pro­act­ive media oppor­tun­it­ies, with film­ing already planned with Chan­nel 4 News, STV News and BBC Report­ing Scot­land. Spe­cial­ist pub­lic­a­tions are also being tar­geted to max­im­ise cov­er­age and aware­ness of the byelaw as we approach launch date.
3. The suc­cess of the cam­paign will be tracked via a spe­cif­ic pre-and-post-cam­paign sur­vey with a ran­dom sample of 100 res­id­ents and 400 vis­it­ors, as well as through the next tranche of our vis­it­or and res­id­ent sur­veys and dir­ect feed­back from partners.
4. Com­munit­ies Fund: Recruit­ment for the C2030 Com­munit­ies Fund pan­el opened on 07 Janu­ary for six weeks. The paid oppor­tun­ity was pro­moted extens­ively (includ­ing via loc­al and nation­al press, a door-drop to 30,000 house­holds, social media videos, part­ner com­mu­nic­a­tions and posters in com­munit­ies across the

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Nation­al Park) and we were delighted that over 250 people expressed an interest in being involved. We received applic­a­tions from every major town and vil­lage in the Nation­al Park and from every age group, with applic­ants ran­ging from 16 to 85 years old. All sev­en of our Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) tar­get audi­ences were well rep­res­en­ted and we had strong engage­ment from a range of under-rep­res­en­ted groups, includ­ing eth­nic minor­it­ies and dis­abled people. Anoth­er pos­it­ive sign was that just under half of applic­ants repor­ted hav­ing ​‘min­im­al’ or ​‘no pre­vi­ous con­tact’ with the Park Author­ity. A final short­l­ist of 18 people is cur­rently being pulled togeth­er, ahead of their first ses­sion on 25 March (led by our part­ners Involve UK).

1. Com­munity engage­ment: An Aviemore road­show event took place on 11 Decem­ber. Aligned to the next stage of con­sulta­tion around C2030 act­ive travel pro­pos­als, the event included inform­a­tion about loc­al health walks, trans­port and land­scape pro­jects, and craft activ­it­ies such as Lego build­ing and screen print­ing. Des­pite its prox­im­ity to Christ­mas, 49 people joined the team over the course of the day, and this has been fur­ther sup­ple­men­ted by a busi­ness drop-in ses­sion and a night­time safety audit with mem­bers of the loc­al access panel.
2. A second road­show took place in Boat of Garten on 15 Janu­ary, linked to the act­ive community’s con­sulta­tion and designs for improv­ing cross­ing points / walk­ing routes with­in the vil­lage. The C2030 Com­munit­ies Fund was also pro­moted, and the beaver team came along with video cam­era foot­age of recent activ­ity in the loc­al area. The Engage­ment team are cur­rently final­ising plans for spring and sum­mer, with road­show events planned in the Angus Glens, Blair Atholl, and Lag­gan / Dal­whin­nie, togeth­er with High­land games in Strath­don and Tomin­toul (via the ranger team).
3. Cul­tur­al her­it­age: Build­ing on the suc­cess of the cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work­ing event in Boat of Garten last year, a fol­low up meet­ing took place in early March. Key top­ics included devel­op­ing a con­nec­ted archive for the Nation­al Park and agree­ing the scope and key pri­or­it­ies for a new Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Net­work. We have also been work­ing with the Cairngorms Trust over the past few months on a ded­ic­ated Com­munit­ies and Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Fund, with a total of £65,000 awar­ded to 11 pro­jects cel­eb­rat­ing loc­al her­it­age, crafts, art and music. Among those gran­ted fund­ing were the Brae­mar Loc­al His­tory Group for digit­ising their archive mater­i­al, a Kin­gussie High School pro­ject to design, build and launch tra­di­tion­al boats

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(includ­ing a canoe, kayak and Spey cor­acle), and the cre­ation of a her­it­age hub in Strath­don, provid­ing a work­space and archive stor­age. We hope to repeat the fund next year.

1. Cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions: C2030 pro­jects have also been a key focus over the past few months, with a range of cov­er­age secured on Com­munit­ies Fund recruit­ment and the cre­at­ive res­id­ency. We also marked the launch of a new fund for farm­ers and crofters in the Nation­al Park, along­side a new cycle hub fund to help loc­al com­munit­ies and part­ners take for­ward act­ive travel pro­jects. Ger­man TV com­pany ZDF filmed with Glen­k­il­rie Lar­der and Grant­own Gram­mar for a piece on the deer lar­der pro­ject (yet to air). Nature stor­ies included a fea­ture on fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sels by BBC Out of Doors, the launch of this year’s Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund and the res­ults of the first sur­vey on per­eg­rine fal­con num­bers for 20 years.
2. Staff have con­trib­uted news­pa­per columns for the Strath­spey and Badenoch Her­ald and Deeside Piper on a range of top­ics includ­ing wood­lands, ranger work and youth pro­jects. We’ve secured a new column with the Press and Journ­al and the Cour­i­er for Mal­colm Smith, our Agri­cul­tur­al Advisor, which has been well received.
3. Web­site and social media: Between Novem­ber 2025 and March 2026, we reached a col­lect­ive social media audi­ence of 89,425 across Face­book, Ins­tagram, Linked­In and BlueSky, up 8,608 (or 32%) on the same peri­od last year. Unfor­tu­nately, with staff capa­city sig­ni­fic­antly impacted by staff sick­ness and the induc­tion of a new staff mem­ber, we were unable to post as fre­quently across all chan­nels. This res­ul­ted in impres­sions fall­ing by 19% to 3,601,436 and engage­ments by 5% to 190,377. How­ever, link clicks rose 45% to 19,974 and the over­all engage­ment rate rose 17% to 5.3%.
4. 35,000 users vis­ited the new Nation­al Park web­site dur­ing the peri­od, with key devel­op­ments rolled out includ­ing a new ​‘map build­er’ func­tion to allow us to cre­ate our own maps (see our new health walks page), a bulk doc­u­ment func­tion to stream­line and stand­ard­ise board / plan­ning paper uploads, and an upcom­ing meet­ings and events sec­tion. We also rolled out ded­ic­ated fund­ing opportunities

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and tender oppor­tun­it­ies pages, giv­ing com­munit­ies and busi­nesses all the inform­a­tion they need in one place.

1. Con­tent high­lights from the peri­od include: a ​‘View fae the ploo’ inter­view with loc­al snow plough oper­at­ors; a Cairngorms Voices piece about a mem­ber of the Brae­mar Moun­tain Res­cue team; a photo story about Jean, who lives with demen­tia; a new format exper­i­ment on Ins­tagram to cel­eb­rate Gael­ic place names; and a cam­paign to encour­age Expres­sion of Interests (EOIs) for the C2030 Com­munit­ies Fund.
2. Pub­lic­a­tions and brand­ing: The spring edi­tion of Cairn magazine – a fire byelaw spe­cial – will hit door­steps across the Nation­al Park week com­men­cing 23 March. Along­side fea­tures on the byelaw and short inter­views with res­id­ents and part­ners back­ing the cam­paign, there are a range of oth­er stor­ies includ­ing fund­ing updates, peat­land archae­ology train­ing and a men­tal health course for the farm­ing com­munity. The issue also fea­tures a piece on the over £1 mil­lion of path upgrades taken for­ward in the Nation­al Park over the past three years.
3. Work to install new inter­pret­a­tion pan­els at the Charter Chest Path near Brae­mar, the Cairns Walk on Bal­mor­al Estate, and the Sky Hide star­gaz­ing spot at Tomin­toul is pro­gress­ing well, with deliv­ery expec­ted in time for the busy sum­mer sea­son. Anoth­er key pri­or­ity is refresh­ing sig­nage at Glen­more Vis­it­or Centre and Café, to include byelaw mes­saging at this stra­tegic vis­it­or location.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development

1. Staff­ing update: Since Novem­ber, the fol­low­ing staff changes took place:
2. Staff leav­ing the organ­isa­tion: a) Nancy Cham­bers left as Cairngorms Loc­al Action Group (CLAG) Trust Man­ager after sev­en years. She left to pur­sue per­son­al goals. b) Mark Tuck­er left as Man­age­ment Account­ant after nine years. He left to pur­sue per­son­al goals.
3. Staff join­ing the organ­isa­tion: a) Kerri Mil­ligan joined as Con­ser­va­tion Officer — Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund. This is a new, part­ner-fun­ded post.

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b) Stephanie Walters joined as Finance Assistant replacing Craig Lewis.
c) Heather Boswell joined as Senior Planning Officer - Development Planning, replacing Colin Bryans.
d) George Patterson joined as one of our permanent Countryside rangers. This is a new post, based in the Angus Glens and Perthshire.

1. Ranger update: a) Ranger recruit­ment has been suc­cess­ful with the appoint­ment of nine new Rangers to join six Rangers who were reappoin­ted from the 2025 sea­son. One of the new Rangers was pre­vi­ously a Park Author­ity Train­ee Ranger. This takes the Ranger com­ple­ment to 15 posts, rep­res­ent­ing a mix of full and part time staff. There was a huge amount of interest in these sea­son­al posts, with over 140 applicants.
2. Staff appoint­ments: a) Duncan Mac­Don­ald and Will George were both pro­moted to the Seni­or Ranger posts. These posts are new fol­low­ing the restruc­ture of the Ranger Ser­vice, promp­ted by the Ranger Man­ager pre­vi­ously hav­ing line man­aged all per­man­ent and Sea­son­al Rangers. It was no longer viable for one officer to have so many line reports par­tic­u­larly at a key time for the ranger ser­vice with regards the Imple­ment­a­tion of the new fire bylaws. The new struc­ture bet­ter sup­ports the expec­ted increased demand on the ser­vice over the com­ing months.
3. Roles appoin­ted for future dates: a) We have suc­cess­fully appoin­ted a Peat­land Action Pro­ject Officer, repla­cing Simon Thomas.
4. Live recruit­ment — posts cur­rently being recruited are: a) Man­age­ment Account­ant, to replace Mark Tucker.
5. Youth Devel­op­ment: a) Jod­ie Grif­fiths-Hagan joined on a short-term con­tract as Con­tent Cre­ation Intern. b) HR staff sup­por­ted and atten­ded sev­er­al careers fairs, includ­ing fairs at Grant­own Gram­mar, Kin­gussie High School, and Inverness Roy­al Academy.

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Our sup­port at career fairs is key to enhan­cing under­stand­ing by young people of the roles that the Park Author­ity employs and the career path­ways to these roles. We typ­ic­ally sup­port events aimed at young people who are hav­ing to make sub­ject choices, which is a crit­ic­al time for them with regards career aspirations.

1. Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment: a) The Best Com­pan­ies staff engage­ment sur­vey res­ults have now been pub­lished. The Park Author­ity has achieved ​“One Star” status, and the engage­ment tra­ject­ory shows that our cur­rent staff group are more engaged than ever before. We have run this sur­vey every two years since 2012, and the res­ults are key to inform­ing our Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Activ­ity for the next few years. The sur­vey meas­ures engage­ment across eight factors — Lead­er­ship, My Man­ager, My Com­pany, My Team, Well­being, Per­son­al Growth, Fair Deal and Giv­ing Some­thing Back. b) The res­ults have been dis­cussed with staff both at an organ­isa­tion­al level and also team levels, to identi­fy the key actions to sup­port any high­lights (areas where engage­ment is pos­it­ive and which we would seek to retain) and shad­ows (areas where engage­ment could be bet­ter and actions to enhance engage­ment). The sur­vey will be fully scru­tin­ised by the Resources Com­mit­tee. c) We are in the pro­cess of devel­op­ing our Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment and People Strategy 2026 — 2030. This is informed by the sur­vey res­ults, but also by oth­er organ­isa­tion­al, nation­al and soci­et­al impacts, includ­ing digit­al trans­form­a­tion, budget and resource pres­sures, changes in law etc. The strategy will be dis­cussed with the Resources Com­mit­tee in due course.
2. Well­being, engage­ment and equal­ity: a) The Park Author­ity is host­ing an in-per­son event for the Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el at the end of March. This pan­el com­prises 13 volun­teer mem­bers, who meet vir­tu­ally on a monthly basis. This in-per­son event is an oppor­tun­ity to show­case the work of / with­in the Park Author­ity, and also to thank them for their input over the year. This year, the event is based in Kin­gussie with a vis­it to the High­land Wild­life Park to dis­cuss the work they have done to Improve access­ib­il­ity. It will also include a ses­sion on social media, sup­por­ted by our com­mu­nic­a­tions team.

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b) The Park Authority has recently adopted a Men's Health and Wellbeing Guidance approach, which sits within our overarching Health and Wellbeing Strategy, and complements existing guidance documents supporting menopause, menstrual health and endometriosis, fertility treatment, pregnancy loss.

Pro­cure­ment

1. The Park Author­ity has pub­lished a portal of tender oppor­tun­it­ies designed to sup­port key stra­tegic aims across con­ser­va­tion, sus­tain­able resource use, com­munity devel­op­ment, and vis­it­or exper­i­ence. The updated page now high­lights a range of live con­tracts on Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Scot­land (PCS) from office clean­ing ser­vices to peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­jects, youth action coordin­a­tion, and act­ive travel ini­ti­at­ives, all aligned with our mis­sion to enhance the Park’s nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age while fos­ter­ing sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic and social development.
2. We’ve developed a clear, trans­par­ent pipeline that invites sup­pli­ers, con­sult­ants, and con­tract­ors who share our val­ues to par­ti­cip­ate. We are par­tic­u­larly hop­ing to see strong bids from organ­isa­tions oper­at­ing with­in the Nation­al Park, giv­en their loc­al expert­ise and com­mit­ment to the area, espe­cially those who can demon­strate align­ment with our Fair Work First prin­ciples and con­trib­ute mean­ing­fully to Com­munity Wealth Building.
3. Full details are avail­able here: Tender opportunities

Grant Moir 13 March 2026 grantmoir@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

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Title: Convener’s update

Pre­pared by: Sandy Brem­ner, Board Convener

Pur­pose

To high­light to board mem­bers and Seni­or Man­age­ment Team (SMT) and staff of the meet­ings and events the Board Con­vener has been attend­ing since the last Form­al Board meeting.

1. Busi­ness Rates – Engage­ment with busi­ness own­ers across the Nation­al Park, con­cerned about sig­ni­fic­ant increases in their busi­ness rates and the impact on the viab­il­ity of their enter­prises, fol­lowed up by intern­al rep­res­ent­a­tions to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG).
2. Media – Provided media com­ment on a range of issues includ­ing columns for loc­al news­pa­pers reflect­ing on the suc­cesses and chal­lenges of the past year, and the Park Authority’s com­mit­ment to tackle some of the biggest chal­lenges facing com­munit­ies and nature in the area.
3. River Resi­li­ence – Con­trib­uted to Dee Resi­li­ence Strategy Group meet­ing, chaired by the Park Author­ity, bring­ing togeth­er stake­hold­ers from across the catch­ment to speed up deliv­ery of pro­jects which can bene­fit all river catch­ments and their com­munit­ies facing sim­il­ar challenges.
4. Diversity – Con­trib­uted to the SG’s Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Bod­ies (NDPB) review of pub­lic appoint­ments diversity strategy, dis­cuss­ing the prac­tic­al implic­a­tions of cur­rent approaches and the import­ance of avoid­ing unin­ten­ded consequences.
5. Nation­al Parks UK (NPUK) – Par­ti­cip­ated in NPUK Chairs and CEO’s for­um, dis­cuss­ing the oppor­tun­it­ies for Nation­al Parks to make a dif­fer­ence to the com­munit­ies they serve and their respect­ive aims through col­lect­ive work.
6. Mem­ber of the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment (MSP) – Meet­ing with High­lands and Island MSP and mem­ber of the Scot­tish Parliament’s Rur­al Affairs and Islands Committee

Form­al Board Paper 1 27 March 2026 Page 13 of 13

Tim Eagle, out­lining work being done to deliv­er on the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP).

1. Dee – Addressed the open­ing cere­mony for the River Dee sal­mon sea­son, out­lining the pion­eer­ing work being delivered by the Park Author­ity in con­junc­tion with com­munity groups, pub­lic bod­ies and oth­er stake­hold­ers to reduce the impact of flood­ing and droughts on the catchment.
2. Board Recruit­ment – Fielded approaches from pro­spect­ive Park Author­ity Board mem­ber can­did­ates and par­ti­cip­ated in extens­ive pan­el pro­cess to make recom­mend­a­tions for Min­is­teri­al appointment.
3. Apprais­als – Com­pleted all 18 Board Mem­ber apprais­al pro­cesses includ­ing fol­low-up actions on agreed train­ing and devel­op­ment needs.
4. Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship (NPP) – Meet­ing with NPP’s new Chair, dis­cuss­ing stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies for the organ­isa­tion over the year ahead.
5. Nation­al Park Con­veners – Met reg­u­larly with the Con­vener of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs Nation­al Park Board to dis­cuss issues of mutu­al interest.
6. Park Author­ity Liais­on – Atten­ded weekly liais­on meet­ings with the Park Author­ity Deputy Con­vener, CEO and Deputy CEO.
7. All meet­ings were in addi­tion to indi­vidu­al meet­ings and dis­cus­sions with Board mem­bers, seni­or officers, staff and oth­er stake­hold­er groups on a wide range of subjects.

Sandy Brem­ner, 10 March 2026 Sandybremner@​cairngorms.​co.​uk