Notes of Cairngorms Tourism Emergency Response Group Meeting

Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group Monday 27^th April 2020 Note of meeting

1. Wel­come and intro­duc­tions. Attend­ing: Janet, Grant, Mur­ray, Heath­er, Pete, Rhona, Alistair, Colin, Chris T, Chris F. Apo­lo­gies: Laurie, Belinda, Geva.

2. Sta­bil­ize

SG Frame­work for Decision-mak­ing. Grant has a meet­ing on Thursday of the gov­ern­ment policy officers and coun­tryside / envir­on­ment agency CEOs to dis­cuss a range of Cov­id-19 issues includ­ing land man­age­ment guid­ance (there has been a bit of con­fu­sion between Eng­lish / UK-wide advice); sec­tor­al guid­ance as coun­tryside access restric­tions ease on eg. phys­ic­al dis­tan­cing, staff safety, PPE require­ments; and a ​‘green recov­ery’ plan. He will report back at next Monday’s meeting.

Pete has a meet­ing on Monday after­noon with the ENFOR access group to dis­cuss appro­pri­ate respons­ible access mes­sages. As access author­ity, CNPA have received a few enquir­ies about both irre­spons­ible access and also inap­pro­pri­ate sig­nage from land man­agers. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment have made clear that they do not expect to change the SOAC legis­la­tion. CNPA will draft a vis­it­or man­age­ment plan for the first few week­ends after lock­down (con­sid­er­ing key sites, sig­nage, PPE etc)and will sup­port ranger ser­vices with grants as soon as fur­lough is ended.

Travel to the coun­tryside and com­munity sup­port. Mark has draf­ted a joint let­ter from CBP, CNPA and pos­sibly loc­al com­munit­ies set­ting out pos­it­ive mes­sages thank­ing people for respons­ible beha­viour so far, guid­ance on respons­ible access going for­ward and cla­ri­fic­a­tion that where there are people stay­ing in hol­i­day accom­mod­a­tion, they are very likely to be key work­ers. CNPA to com­ment on draft, agree sig­nat­or­ies and release in the next few days.

Dis­cus­sions with loc­al police inspect­or Vince Tough con­firmed that there have been very few access or tour­ism issues, and where there were con­cerns about occu­pied hol­i­day accom­mod­a­tion, it was in most cases by key work­ers. Mur­ray will be attend­ing meet­ings of the High­land Coun­cil Emer­gency Response Group meet­ings from now on, which will also be an oppor­tun­ity to liaise with the police on ongo­ing issues.

Busi­ness Sup­port Scheme roll-out. By Fri 24^th April, High­land Coun­cil had paid over 2,300 grants and had largely worked through the back­log of early applic­a­tions. There are still a few ongo­ing issues with non-sub­mis­sion of sup­port­ing evid­ence, and some more com­plic­ated issues eg. change of own­er­ship. There had been nearly 650 applic­a­tions to the new self-cater­ing scheme of which 87% had been pro­cessed straight away. A few applic­a­tions need extra assess­ment where there are spe­cial cir­cum­stances around the occu­pancy level require­ment. New upcom­ing schemes will help fill gaps in pro­vi­sion, includ­ing for the newly self-employed and for busi­nesses with mul­tiple premises. There are also a hand­ful of scam applic­a­tions com­ing through.

By Fri­day, Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil had paid around £25 mil­lion pounds to almost 2,200 busi­nesses and had also cleared the early back­log. Around 200 applic­a­tions are on hold for fur­ther cla­ri­fic­a­tion. There is a bit of con­cern around per­ceived incon­sist­en­cies between loc­al author­it­ies’ levels of flexibility.

HIE, and oth­er enter­prise agen­cies, are work­ing with SG on a scheme to sup­port SMEs and micro­busi­nesses who fall between the gaps of oth­er schemes, but con­firmed details are not yet avail­able. HIE have also giv­en a com­munity sup­port grant of over £123k to VABS for Covid19 com­munity support.

Mark flagged up a few areas of busi­ness sup­port that remain con­cern­ing. The ​‘cliff-edge’ nature of the grant scheme is an issue, with busi­nesses whose rate­able value is over £50k receiv­ing no sup­port, and a sharp rise from £10k-£25k grant at a rate­able value of £18k. He would prefer to see more of a taper in both instances, but it may be too late to change as grants have been paid. Ini­tial res­ults for the busi­ness oper­a­tion­al capa­city sur­vey high­light cash flow and staff­ing as being bar­ri­ers to speedy re-open­ing. The fur­lough scheme is cur­rently open until end June, but hos­pit­al­ity busi­nesses in par­tic­u­lar are likely to require longer-term sup­port if redund­an­cies are to be avoided. There also remain issues around lack of sup­port from banks and insur­ance companies.

The nation­al STERG group is also look­ing to get bet­ter insights into the labour mar­ket issues and Chris T will ask that any such research can be sub­divided to the CNP bound­ary if possible.

Oth­er key cur­rent issues from DMOs. Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire are work­ing with with just their seni­or team, hav­ing fur­loughed some staff. The budget will going to board for sign-off on Monday after­noon, but is expec­ted to change. Comms con­tin­ue to focus on stay home mes­sages and vir­tu­al exper­i­ences, includ­ing shar­ing CBP content.

Mur­ray will catch-up with Laurie sep­ar­ately on Moray Spey­side issues, but in the park, the Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship has reques­ted an exten­sion to the pro­ject and the devel­op­ment trust should be the key com­munity sup­port body. Update: Moray Spey­side con­tin­ue to work on set­ting up a Board and IT sys­tems for the organ­isa­tion, and have some con­cerns that Moray Coun­cil are not pro­cessing grant pay­ments as speedily as High­land / Aberdeenshire.

Vis­itScot­land over­view. VS con­tin­ue to devel­op an action place based around the 4 stages of Respond, Reset, Restart and Recov­er. It will include indic­at­ive best-case times­cales, but these are very likely to change and may need to accept a cyc­lic­al rather than lin­ear change in restric­tions. A vir­tu­al plat­form to pro­mote to inter­na­tion­al trade has now been set-up to allow busi­nesses and des­tin­a­tions to give an online pitch to Expo buy­ers. Inform­a­tion will be cir­cu­lated to those who had planned to attend Expo. The STERG will meet tomor­row and will be dis­cuss­ing how best to involve des­tin­a­tions in recov­ery planning.

1. Com­mu­nic­ate and Inspire

Last week’s CNPA comms focused largely on wild­fire risk in the dry weath­er. The Cairngorms Nature Big Week­end has been expan­ded to 10 days of vir­tu­al activ­ity in May and Pete will cir­cu­late the draft pro­gramme when it is available.

1. Pre­pare for Return

CBP mem­ber dis­cus­sions. Data from the busi­ness capa­city sur­vey will be ana­lysed this week, and a sur­vey of vis­it­ors who had planned to vis­it the CNP is planned. CBP are run­ning inde­pend­ently- facil­it­ated work­shops with around 30 busi­nesses to tease out issues around recov­ery and re- open­ing. Res­ults should be avail­able late next week, and will feed into dis­cus­sion with gov­ern­ment about the need to avoid a ​‘one size fits all’ approach to restric­tion eas­ing. Where busi­nesses can demon­strate safe oper­a­tion they should be allowed to open.

Recov­ery Plan. The draft CNP recov­ery plan will be dis­cussed inform­ally by CNPA board on 8^th May and form­ally on June 12^th, but will obvi­ously not be a stat­ic document.

1. Updates from each organ­isa­tion rel­ev­ant to Cairngorms Nation­al Park

HIE / CML update. Themes from the latest stage of con­sulta­tion are being shared with the HIE board, and the next stage of online con­sulta­tion will be tak­ing place in May. The Audit Scot­land review is ongo­ing, and on options apprais­al for CML is under­way. There has been some neg­at­ive press about the funicu­lar re-instate­ment and HIE has released a state­ment in response.

CNP Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group. The group met for a planned meet­ing last week and issues raised about the wider eco­nomy will be picked up in the recov­ery plan.

1. Date of next meeting.

Meet­ings will con­tin­ue to be sched­uled for Monday morn­ings, at the usu­al time of Ilam. An invit­a­tion will be sent for the next few weeks, and they can be can­celled if the group feel there is not enough new inform­a­tion to make a dis­cus­sion worthwhile.

Remit of Group: The group has been set up to provide con­sist­ent and com­pre­hens­ive ana­lys­is of the implic­a­tions of Cov­id-19 for tour­ism, to coordin­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions with the tour­ism industry, ensure close work­ing between key agen­cies and the private sec­tor, to gath­er, share, facil­it­ate, inter­pret and dis­sem­in­ate inform­a­tion and agree rel­ev­ant actions and deliv­ery plans.

Mem­ber­ship: The Group con­sists of rep­res­ent­at­ives from Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire, MoraySpey­side, Vis­itScot­land, Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil, The High­land Coun­cil, High­lands and Islands Enter­prise and CNPA (Chair).