Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Form­al Board Paper 6 Annex 1 27 March 2026

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	Action Detail	Status
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) | Action Detail | Status | | — -| — -| | 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 prac­tise. | Closed and issued. |

Action points from 29 August 2025 At para 15 g | Action Detail | Status | | — -| — -| | 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 Point Sum­mary (from Page 7)

Actions from 24 Janu­ary 2025 meeting: Inform­a­tion set out in Paper-6-FOISA_Complaints.pdf

Paper	Action Detail	Status
Paper 1	ii. Return to com­mit­tee the new policy on staff recog­ni­tion ad reward once available.	Open. Policy still in development
Paper 5	iii. 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 At para 15 g | Action Detail | Status | | — -| — -| | iii. 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 At para 12 | Action Detail | | — -| | i. Dry runs of new pro­ced­ures inten­tion­ally trig­ger­ing health and safety tri­als to be con­sidered by the Health and Safety Committee. |

At para 16 | Action Detail | | — -| | 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

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Minutes of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee meeting

Held at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity office, Grant­own-on-Spey Hybrid 14 Novem­ber 2025 at 9.00am

Present Paul Gibb Ian McLar­en Duncan Miller Bill Lobban

Vir­tu­al Fiona McLean (Chair) Geva Blackett

In attend­ance Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy CEO Tom Reid, Maz­ars Paul Dav­is­on, Inform­a­tion Man­ager Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions Mari­aan Pita, Exec­ut­ive Sup­port Man­ager Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies Peter Clark, wbg Gra­ham Gillespie, wbg

Wel­come and apologies

1. Fiona McLean, Chair of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee, wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing. Apo­lo­gies were noted.
2. The Chair wel­comed Ian McLar­en on board the Audit and Risk Committee.

Approv­al of minutes of pre­vi­ous meetings

1. The draft minutes of the pre­vi­ous Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee meet­ing held on 12 Septem­ber 2025 were approved with no amendments.

Mat­ters arising not covered elsewhere

1. In fol­low­ing up the action to estab­lish the time taken in hand­ling Free­dom of Inform­a­tion (FOISA) requests, Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive, explained that the Park Author­ity does not require staff to log time spent on spe­cif­ic tasks. As such, FOISA hand­ling does not record indi­vidu­al staff time, or which teams handle FOISA requests. As any estim­ate of time spent is likely to vary widely, a cost estim­ate has nev­er been cal­cu­lated, and track­ing this would be too com­plex so data for cost of hand­ling FOISA requests is not avail­able. Dav­id con­firmed that the Park Author­ity had nev­er sought to make a charge for FOISA hand­ling, where the costs of respond­ing to a com­plaint may be con­sidered high. Com­mit­tee mem­bers were con­tent that no fur­ther action was required on this matter.

Ref	Action Detail	Who	When	Status
27/09/24	At para 20i iv. Update on intern­al audit view on fin­an­cial scen­ario plan­ning to be provided to the Audit and Risk Committee	Dav­id and Stephanie	At the end of the 24⁄25 fin­an­cial year.	Ongo­ing Man­age­ment to report back to Com­mit­tee to give assurance
	Update: Grant and Dav­id have been work­ing on it over the sum­mer; more work to be done before can be brought to the Committee.
20/06/25	At Para 29	Paul	For the next update to Committee	Closed — staff time taken not recorded
	v. Estim­ated time spent by staff on each inform­a­tion request to be cap­tured and included in the next report.		Novem­ber meeting	as it goes out to teams. Nev­er reached a point where had to charge because of time/​scale. Com­mit­tee con­tent with this explan­a­tion and agreed to close this action.
	vi. Each request to include a little bit of detail to help identi­fy emer­ging themes.			Closed — included in today’s agenda (Paper 2)

Declar­a­tions of interest

1. There were no declar­a­tions of interest.

Elec­tion of Deputy Chair of Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee (Oral)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy CEO, intro­duced the item, invit­ing nom­in­a­tions for Deputy Chair of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee to come for­ward from com­mit­tee members.
2. The Chair nom­in­ated Ian McLar­en as Deputy Chair. Paul Gibb and Geva Black­ett seconded the nomination.
3. The Com­mit­tee voted Ian McLar­en as Deputy Chair of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee to start imme­di­ately for a peri­od of three years.
4. Action Points Arising: None.

Stra­tegic Risk Registers (Paper 1)

1. Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions presen­ted the Park Authority’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment position.
2. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the report and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) A mem­ber com­men­ted on an instance of repu­ta­tion­al risk arising from a pro­ject to real­loc­ate a bus stop in Bal­later. To secure Sus­trans fund­ing, the pro­ject must be presen­ted as devel­op­ment of a trans­port hub and include addi­tion­al fea­tures. This is caus­ing the com­munity frus­tra­tion and cre­at­ing poten­tial repu­ta­tion­al con­cerns for the Park Author­ity. The CEO advised that he would gath­er more inform­a­tion on this mat­ter and get back to the Mem­ber. The Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive also noted that the stra­tegic risk register included a stra­tegic risk around repu­ta­tion­al dam­age arising from pro­ject and part­ner actions, with mit­ig­a­tion in place. b) With regards to the cor­por­ate risk register, the item describ­ing the need for devel­op­ment of a busi­ness con­tinu­ity plan remained stat­ic at red. The com­mit­tee asked what pro­gress was being made and wheth­er con­sult­ants will be used. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy CEO repor­ted that work had not yet star­ted; the plan is to ini­ti­ate the pro­cess over the winter by con­tract­ing con­sult­ants to carry out a busi­ness con­tinu­ity review and cre­ate a busi­ness con­tinu­ity plan tem­plate. c) On the C2030 risk register com­ment was made that it was good to see mit­ig­a­tion for the act­ive travel strand and that coun­cil staff are sit­ting on the pro­ject board.
3. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Con­sidered the cov­er­age and adequacy of the Park Authority’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment pos­i­tion and advise on any gaps or amend­ments required to the cur­rent stra­tegic risk register. b) Con­sidered the cov­er­age and adequacy of the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme risk man­age­ment pos­i­tion and advise on any gaps or amend­ments required to the cur­rent pro­gramme risk register.

Action Point Arising: None.

Inform­a­tion requests and com­plaints update (Paper 2)

1. Paul Dav­is­on, Inform­a­tion Man­ager presen­ted the paper which provides an update on the num­ber of inform­a­tion requests, and key per­form­ance meas­ures in meet­ing them, under Free­dom of Inform­a­tion (Scot­land) Act (FOISA)/ Envir­on­ment­al Inform­a­tion (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions (EIR) and data pro­tec­tion arrange­ments, provid­ing an update for the first half of fin­an­cial year ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆. The paper also describes num­bers and out­comes of form­al com­plaints to the Park Authority.
2. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the report and made the fol­low­ing com­ment: a) The Chair advised that she really appre­ci­ated the break­down and had found it very help­ful. b) Mem­bers wel­comed the wealth of inform­a­tion provided and thanked Paul for the pro­vi­sion of the addi­tion­al inform­a­tion on the nature of the request to help under­stand the areas of interest to requesters.
3. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Note activ­ity in this area and Park Author­ity per­form­ance, b) Com­ment on breadth and depth of report­ing for future updates.
4. Action Points Arising: None.

Geo­graph­ic­al dis­tri­bu­tion of con­tracts awar­ded (Paper 3)

1. Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions presen­ted the paper which provides inform­a­tion on pro­cure­ment activ­ity over the year ended 31 Octo­ber 2025, and in par­tic­u­lar the loc­a­tion of sup­pli­ers who were suc­cess­ful in con­tract­ing with the Park Author­ity. The paper was pre­pared in response to a ques­tion raised by a mem­ber of the Committee.
2. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the report and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) The Chair passed her thanks on behalf of the Com­mit­tee to Mikko Saari, Pro­cure­ment Man­ager for pre­par­ing the paper. b) A mem­ber asked if there was a clause in our invit­a­tions to tender that states pref­er­ence will be giv­en to loc­al com­pan­ies. Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions con­firmed that there was not, as it would be deemed as dis­crim­in­at­ory and would put the Park Author­ity in breach of the reg­u­lat­ory require­ments. c) With regards to the lar­ger con­tracts awar­ded, a mem­ber asked why lar­ger firms ten­ded to secure the awards. CEO explained that for cer­tain con­tracts in cer­tain areas loc­al com­pan­ies don’t have the capa­city or right skill­set. d) There was dis­cus­sion around wheth­er it would be pos­sible to stip­u­late that some of the lar­ger nation­al com­pan­ies who are awar­ded con­tracts with­in the Nation­al Park, have to use loc­al people to help boost the impact on the loc­al eco­nomy. The Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions cau­tioned that while the Loc­al Author­ity may use this approach suc­cess­fully, the oppor­tun­it­ies for the Park Author­ity to do this are lim­ited by the rel­at­ively small size of our con­tract awards.
3. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee noted the inform­a­tion provided and com­men­ted on the suit­ab­il­ity of report­ing for their needs.
4. Action Points Arising: None.

Draft Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee annu­al report (Paper 4)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy CEO presen­ted the draft Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee report for con­sid­er­a­tion pri­or to sub­mis­sion to the Board.
2. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the report and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Chair thanked staff for draft­ing the report. b) Chair high­lighted parts of the report that she took com­fort in as it demon­strates the work of the Com­mit­tee the past year. c) Chair said it had been a test­ing year and thanked the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Head of Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions for their hard work and dedication.
3. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee con­sidered the report and agreed it being cir­cu­lated to the Board.
4. Action Points Arising: None.

AOCB

1. A mem­ber com­men­ted with regards to what was hap­pen­ing in Bal­later, the risk is where we are work­ing with part­ners, their cri­ter­ia is hard to achieve, the con­cern was dir­ec­ted to the Board mem­ber as a Park Author­ity part­ner. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy CEO agreed and advised that it encap­su­lates one of the risks on the risk register, of repu­ta­tion­al expos­ure to part­ner­ship activ­ity and our mit­ig­a­tion of focused work to pre­vent pro­jects failing.
2. Motion to take the next items in con­fid­en­tial session.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The date of the next meet­ing is 13 March 2026 in person.
2. The pub­lic part of the meet­ing con­cluded at 9.34 am

Final Action List (from Page ¹⁴⁄₁₅)

Ref	Action Detail	Who	When	Status
27/09/24	At para 20i vii. Update on intern­al audit view on fin­an­cial scen­ario plan­ning to be provided to the Audit and Risk Committee	Dav­id and Stephanie	At the end of the 24⁄25 fin­an­cial year.	Ongo­ing Man­age­ment to report back to Com­mit­tee to give assurance
	Update: Grant and Dav­id have been work­ing on it over the sum­mer; more work to be done before can be brought to the Committee.