Paper 4 - Draft SCF Minutes

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 4 13 Feb­ru­ary 2026

For inform­a­tion

Draft Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive Forum

Held in Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Hybrid Wed­nes­day 03 Decem­ber at 02.00pm

Present

• Adam Streeter-Smith
• Dav­id Camer­on (Chair)
• James Lee
• Kate Christie
• Mari­aan Pita
• Nas­im Mehrabi
• Pip Mack­ie

Apo­lo­gies

• Char­lotte Milburn
• Derek Ross (Board Member)
• Mike Woolv­in
• Richard Hardy (Pro­spect)
• Rus­sell Jones (Board Member)

Item 1: Wel­come and Apologies

1. Dav­id Camer­on (DC) wel­comed every­one and advised that Richard Hardy is no longer the Park Author­ity Pro­spect con­tact, and a new per­son had been appoin­ted. The new per­son would be con­tac­ted in due course for them to attend the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um (SCF).
2. Apo­lo­gies were received from the above.

Item 2: Minutes and Mat­ters Arising

1. The draft minutes were approved.
2. A point was raised regard­ing the new Per­son­al Pro­tect­ive Equip­ment (PPE) pro­cess whereby the mem­ber of staff was hav­ing to advise the admin team of the items to be pur­chased des­pite links being provided in the requis­i­tion form. Kate Christie (KC) respon­ded this could be due to the imple­ment­a­tion of the new fin­ance sys­tem, whereby any PPE requests need to include the link to the item of PPE in the pur­chase request as well as the requis­i­tion form. It could be that this had been missed being done by the mem­ber of staff.
3. DC advised that both he and KC had been look­ing at the pay pos­i­tion. Approv­al had been giv­en for them to con­tact the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG) Remu­ner­a­tion Group (RG) to put for­ward a case seek­ing to revis­it the approved pay pos­i­tion (the pay awards hav­ing pre­vi­ously been agreed for a three-year peri­od from ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ to ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇). This was in recog­ni­tion that infla­tion has remained above 3% in the last few months and the com­mit­ment that the organ­isa­tion would keep watch on infla­tion­ary move­ment dur­ing the agreed three-year pay award peri­od. DC advised that a meet­ing with RG had been sched­uled for 17 Decem­ber and dis­cus­sions were cur­rently tak­ing place with the Park Author­ity SG spon­sor team and the SG pay policy team about the busi­ness case. The Park Author­ity are look­ing for con­sid­er­a­tion to apply a sup­ple­ment to the exist­ing pay pos­i­tion. It was hoped to be able to issue an update to staff update by 19 Decem­ber regard­ing the dir­ec­tion of travel. How­ever, if RG required longer to con­sider the request an update would be provided in the New Year.

Item 3: Papers 1: Flexi­time Policy

1. KC intro­duced the paper. KC advised that the policy had been reviewed fol­low­ing on from the recent line man­ager train­ing, where it became appar­ent that there was con­fu­sion from staff regard­ing what was con­sidered time off in lieu (TOIL) and what was flexi. Also, with the move to hybrid work­ing and staff hav­ing the oppor­tun­ity with­in the hybrid policy to be able to work their con­trac­tu­al hrs over a sev­en-day week accord­ing to their per­son­al cir­cum­stances / needs (with line man­ager agree­ment) it was appro­pri­ate to look at this policy and see if TOIL was still rel­ev­ant. It was cla­ri­fied that time and half / double time for week­end work­ing was not being removed but needed to be for a clear busi­ness reas­on as to why the hours were being worked and have pri­or line man­ager agree­ment eg to attend an event etc and not just car­ry­ing out stand­ard work­ing eg work­ing hours to suit your cir­cum­stances. It was cla­ri­fied that some roles were expec­ted to work even­ing / week­end hours and these did not qual­i­fy for incur­ring the addi­tion­al time (these roles usu­ally have a ​‘1’ after salary band, as they receive addi­tion­al remu­ner­a­tion for this require­ment). It was advised that a cap on hours that can be car­ried for­ward was required to meet our com­mit­ment to staff well­being and work life bal­ance, as well as the Work­ing Time Dir­ect­ive and it’s import­ant that staff man­age their work­ing time with­in that cap. It is recog­nised that there may be times when some staff may accrue more than policy pos­i­tion allows due to spe­cif­ic pres­sures or demands, and in these cir­cum­stances, staff are encour­aged to speak to the HR team, togeth­er with their line man­agers as short term excep­tions to the cap can, and have been agreed by HR. It was recog­nised that TOIL had less pre­scrip­tion on amount of time that could be car­ried for­ward and the time peri­od. There­fore, the policy looked to increase the level of flexi staff can carry for­ward (17.5 hours) per flexi peri­od. Feed­back was requested.
2. The fol­low­ing points were raised: a. It being a grey area when work­ing a sev­en-day flexi con­tract, whereby some staff if they had already worked 35 hours were then asked to under­take more work and log this as TOIL. KC advised that if staff were work­ing their hours over sev­en days to meet per­son­al cir­cum­stances this would not qual­i­fy for enhanced accrued time, as it is not to spe­cific­ally ful­fil a piece of work that could only take place on a Sat­urday / Sunday eg attend an event. b. The enhanced flexi carry for­ward fig­ure of 17.5 hrs (pro rata) being quite low. It was cla­ri­fied that staff could request to modi­fy their hours eg com­pressed hours etc through a flex­ible work­ing request (FWR), if the flexi ceil­ing lim­it were too high it could poten­tially start look­ing like a FWR. The organ­isa­tion was already being accom­mod­at­ing by allow­ing staff to be flex­ible with their work­ing hours. c. TOIL being an advant­age as it could be car­ried for three months, the pos­sib­il­ity of the flexi lim­it being high­er and there­fore could be car­ried for a longer peri­od of time. It was advised that this could also stray into FWR ter­rit­ory with staff poten­tially then being able to take up to one day per week as flexi – this would be covered by a FWR. d. Some staff hav­ing no view on TOIL being removed, as they felt it was up to the staff mem­ber and line man­ager to plan ahead. They would know when they were going to work on a week­end and then take the flexi time dur­ing that fol­low­ing week. Staff could still carry for­ward a flexi bal­ance (with­in the lim­its) to use at fur­ther date. e. A request for train­ing for line man­agers and staff on this includ­ing how to record inform­a­tion on flexi sheets. It was agreed this could