Performance Paper 2 - Cairngorms 2030 Delivery Update

Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 23 March 2026

For dis­cus­sion

Title: Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme update: quarter four 2025 (Octo­ber – December)

Pre­pared by: Dav­id Clyne, Head of Cairngorms 2030

Pur­pose This paper presents the status of the Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) pro­gramme and risk man­age­ment, based on inform­a­tion in pro­ject reports for the peri­od from Octo­ber to Decem­ber 2025, and updated where appro­pri­ate to reflect cur­rent pos­i­tion as at the time of writ­ing, and the planned work to end March 2026.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Note pro­gress to date and future for C2030 deliv­ery. b) Note spe­cif­ic points of C2030 deliv­ery risk. c) High­light any issues arising that mem­bers may feel need spe­cif­ic con­sid­er­a­tion by staff from a stra­tegic and board perspective.

Stra­tegic context

1. C2030 will inspire people and com­munit­ies in the Nation­al Park to act and tackle the nature and cli­mate crisis. Bring­ing togeth­er 20 long-term pro­jects on trans­form­ing land­scapes, empower­ing com­munit­ies, rethink­ing how we travel and cham­pi­on­ing wellbeing.
2. The Park Author­ity was awar­ded £12.5 mil­lion by The Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF) to devel­op and deliv­er C2030 and become the UK’s first net zero nation­al park. The five-year deliv­ery phase com­menced in Janu­ary 2024.

Stra­tegic risk management

1. Per­form­ance dash­board: Pro­gramme level Quarter (Q)4 2025 (see Annex 1 for com­pon­ent pro­ject Red Amber Green (RAG) status).

Per­form­ance Meas­ure	Red-Amber-Green (RAG) status	Issue / mit­ig­a­tion status
	Q4 2025 (cur­rent)	Q3 trend	Q1 2026 (expec­ted)
Pro­gramme risk profile	Green	=>	Green	• Pro­gramme level risk remains Green.
Deliv­ery of Trans­port Scot­land fun­ded projects	Amber	=>	Amber	• Act­ive Com­munit­ies pro­ject level risk remains at Amber. • Amber RAG status reflects annu­al budget­ing con­straints and the tim­ing chal­lenge of deliv­er­ing the cur­rent design phase of the Act­ive Com­munit­ies pro­jects by end of fin­an­cial year 2025⁄26. • Pro­ject scope change has been agreed in Aviemore (no segreg­ated cycle path on Grampi­an Road) due to tech­nic­al and com­munity feed­back. • Pro­ject spe­cif­ic steer­ing and risk man­age­ment group prov­ing effect­ive in assess­ing and escal­at­ing issues for res­ol­u­tion. • Trans­port theme pos­i­tion state­ment sub­mit­ted (see Annex 2) to NLHF seek­ing approv­al for pro­ject changes to accom­mod­ate tech­nic­al and com­munity feedback.
Future fund­ing profile	Green	=>	Green	• Future fund­ing risk remains green.
Fin­ance: Impact on Park Author­ity budget management	Green	=>	Green	• No sig­ni­fic­ant impact cur­rent or pro­jec­ted in Park Author­ity budget iden­ti­fied. • The poten­tial fin­an­cial implic­a­tions for C2030 pro­gramme deliv­ery are an integ­ral ele­ment of approved 2025⁄26 budget plans and built into 2026⁄27 budget pro­pos­als. • Over­all budget man­age­ment impacts remain with­in the total agreed budget.
Pro­cure­ment	Green	=>	Green	• Pro­cure­ment sched­ule for 2026 in place.
Staff­ing	Green	=>	Green	• No staff resource issues.

1. Note: a) Q4 2025 risks present the assessed risk status as at end of the quarter. b) Q4 2025 trend presents the dir­ec­tion of risk drivers and influ­en­cers impact­ing risk assess­ment over the quarter. c) Q1 2026 expec­ted risk levels give a sense of where we cur­rently expect risks to land in final assess­ment at the end of March 2026 should cur­rent man­age­ment and risk mit­ig­a­tion actions impact on risk as planned.

Key risks

1. Pro­gramme risk level remains at green.
2. The key deliv­ery risk: Trans­port Scot­land fun­ded Act­ive Com­munit­ies pro­jects. a) Amber RAG status reflects the tim­ing chal­lenge of deliv­er­ing the Act­ive Com­munit­ies Pro­jects by end of the fin­an­cial year. b) Amber RAG status will likely be retained for the next fin­an­cial year. c) Risk mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures have been intro­duced includ­ing new pro­ject gov­ernance struc­tures and risk escal­a­tion pro­ced­ures which are prov­ing effect­ive. d) Review of the Aviemore concept design against the topo­graph­ic­al sur­vey shows unequi­voc­ally that there is not enough space for a bid­irec­tion­al cycle path without sub­stan­tial land take, mature tree remov­al, and car­riage­way realign­ment. Such sig­ni­fic­ant con­sid­er­a­tions will not be achiev­able with­in the life of the pro­gramme, but the find­ings will inform future road cor­ridor improve­ment plans and will be passed to the High­land Coun­cil for future cap­it­al invest­ment con­sid­er­a­tion. e) Aviemore and Vicin­ity Com­munity Coun­cil (AVCC) do not sup­port designs which include a segreg­ated cycle path on Grampi­an Road and favour pub­lic realm and ped­es­tri­an access improve­ments. f) The Act­ive com­munit­ies steer­ing group has there­fore agreed to remove the cycle path from the Aviemore concept design, and pro­ceed with a pro­ject which instead focuses on walk­ing and wheel­chair pro­vi­sion by: i. Widen­ing and improv­ing the exist­ing pave­ment. ii. Focus­ing on pub­lic realm enhance­ment. iii. Focus­ing on bus stop integ­ra­tion. iv. North of Dal­faber Drive only: provid­ing a shared use path adja­cent to Grampi­an Road to enhance a short stretch of Spey­side Way which plugs a gap between fur­ther built-up area route devel­op­ments and the start point of the Aviemore to Car­rbridge non-motor­ised user route that Trans­port Scot­land will deliv­er via the A9 dualling pro­gramme. v. Intro­du­cing addi­tion­al traffic calm­ing meas­ures on the main car­riage­way. vi. Devel­op­ing an altern­at­ive cycle friendly route on Dal­faber Road. g) A pro­ject change request paper (Annex 2) out­lining these risks and mit­ig­a­tions has been approved by NLHF.

Sup­port­ing inform­a­tion; theme lead highlights

Restor­ing and enhan­cing landscapes

1. All pro­jects at RAG status green.
2. Wood­land expan­sion: a) Deliv­ery of the wood­land expan­sion pro­ject will be com­pleted in full, with all planned hec­tares suc­cess­fully planted. The total cost of deliv­ery has how­ever been sig­ni­fic­antly lower than anti­cip­ated, around 50 per­cent below the ori­gin­al budget estim­ate. This vari­ance reflects both effi­cient deliv­ery and the fact that ini­tial plant­ing cost assump­tions were high­er than ulti­mately required. While this rep­res­ents good value for money, it has also res­ul­ted in an under­spend that affects the wider programme’s planned match fund­ing pro­file (see page 20 para­graph 55: Sig­ni­fic­ant Budget Adjust­ments for more details). b) Alba Explorers Angus Glens Tree Nurs­ery grant award issued.
3. Peat­land res­tor­a­tion: a) Over 1,600 hec­tares (ha) of Peat­land will be restored in ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆, exceed­ing the 1,300ha tar­get for C2030 and we are on track to deliv­er 1,700ha by March 2026. b) Recruit­ment for a Pro­ject Officer is under­way, tak­ing the num­ber of Pro­ject Officers up to five. c) There has been sig­ni­fic­ant pipeline devel­op­ment work com­pleted to secure the pro­gramme for 2026.
4. Nature recov­ery: a) Pro­ject pro­pos­als focused with­in the West Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group (DMG) area have been approved in prin­ciple by NLHF. These include: i. Com­munity deer lar­der strategy (approved). ii. Three pro­pos­als for new com­munity deer lar­ders pro­posed in Glen Clova (approved), Atholl (approved) and poten­tially Mar Area (in devel­op­ment). iii. A future rur­al skills pro­gramme is in devel­op­ment, focus­ing on co-design with land man­agers of a train­ing pro­gramme that will sup­port land man­age­ment busi­nesses trans­ition toward future busi­ness plans address­ing cli­mate change and retain­ing rur­al employ­ment. Fol­low­ing codesign, the pro­ject will coordin­ate deliv­ery of the agreed train­ing pro­gramme. iv. Wood­land expan­sion tar­geted at stra­tegic cor­ridors to devel­op key wood­land hab­it­at net­work con­nec­tions between the Tay, Dee and Spey River catch­ments. v. Upland graz­ing for con­ser­va­tion will be tri­alled at Dalnacardoch.
5. Future farm­ing: a) Sub­stan­tial pro­gress has been made this quarter on devel­op­ing ways of work­ing with more farm­ers in the Nation­al Park. b) Detailed plans have been made around the con­sult­ant pro­cure­ment and farm­er recruit­ment pro­cesses for two Sup­port Pack­ages (scen­ario mod­el­ling and regen­er­at­ive trans­ition) which will be advert­ised in Q1 2026. c) Work with the pilot farms con­tin­ues with Atholl put­ting in water infra­struc­ture to allow regen­er­at­ive graz­ing across a large swathe of land to lower inputs, improve field eco­logy and soil qual­ity. d) Tul­lochgor­um is also in the pro­cess of improv­ing water infra­struc­ture for a sim­il­ar aim and hos­ted a very well atten­ded and suc­cess­ful know­ledge exchange event in Novem­ber. e) Rhindu has done fur­ther work on herd health this quarter with an aim to improve calv­ing effic­acy to reduce car­bon emis­sions and is look­ing into vir­tu­al fen­cing col­lars to improve graz­ing. f) Plan­ning with Clury for year three is ongo­ing, with vir­tu­al fen­cing col­lars under con­sid­er­a­tion for improv­ing the con­di­tion of a raised bog by sens­it­ive graz­ing. g) Pro­gress this quarter has set the pro­ject up well for the start of 2026 with fur­ther pro­gress expec­ted on the exist­ing pilot farms and the Sup­port Pack­ages announced and open to applic­a­tion from farm­ers across the Nation­al Park.
6. Cli­mate resi­li­ent catch­ments: a) Key activ­it­ies and mile­stones have been achieved across all three sub-pro­jects this quarter. b) The Upper Dee ground­works con­tract was advert­ised under open com­pet­i­tion with bids received and eval­u­ated by a team of pro­ject staff and exper­i­enced part­ners. Form­al award expec­ted Feb­ru­ary 2026. c) The detailed design is nearly com­plete for the Slu­gain Burn pro­ject, with most tech­nic­al design draw­ings and related doc­u­ments (e.g. flood risk assess­ments and plan­ning draw­ings) received, with the final few due early Janu­ary for review and sign off by the pro­ject team. The pro­ject officer has also liaised in detail with Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency (SEPA) about the pro­ject this quarter to min­im­ise any issues grant­ing con­sents. The build costs will be reviewed once all design doc­u­ments are received to determ­ine wheth­er it is still in budget. d) The Bal­later flood resi­li­ence pro­ject has been form­al­ised with a signed Memor­andum of Under­stand­ing (MoU), and a grant has been awar­ded to sup­port the high-level mod­el­ling of flood resi­li­ence options around Bal­later. Addi­tion­ally, the pro­ject lead and com­munity part­ners worked with the com­mu­nic­a­tions team to devel­op a short film around the project.
7. Com­munity bene­fits from nature invest­ment: a) This has been a pos­it­ive devel­op­ing story; Anna­bel Dav­id­son-Knight, Com­munity Bene­fits from Nature Adviser, has engaged well with all three com­munit­ies and is now devel­op­ing events to dis­cuss the core issues around bene­fits with them and the estates. b) So far, the pro­ject has shown that this facil­it­a­tion role is time con­sum­ing though very pro­duct­ive, with all three cases show­ing pro­gress. The adapt­a­tion in approach being tested for addi­tion­al estates is sig­ni­fic­ant as it should show how to under­take this role with more lim­ited time and people resource. c) Feed­back from Dal­nac­ar­doch Estate high­lights how much this pro­ject is val­ued by them and how much it is sup­port­ing their dir­ect engage­ment with their com­munit­ies. They said that they would not be any­where near as advanced in their plans without it.
8. Land­scape and com­munit­ies: a) The Land­scape and com­munit­ies pro­ject pro­gressed well in Q4, par­tic­u­larly in col­lab­or­at­ive plan­ning of com­munity engage­ment meth­ods and activ­it­ies, and with the launch of the C2030 land­scape sur­vey in Novem­ber 2025. This sur­vey will con­tin­ue to be rolled out gradu­ally dur­ing 2026 (to reduce con­sulta­tion fatigue and enable tail­or­ing to engage with under­rep­res­en­ted com­munit­ies) and has been developed to be used in dif­fer­ent ways to suit dif­fer­ent people, for example online or in-per­son, and using text, map mark­ing and / or upload­ing of images. b) Com­munity engage­ment for the land­scape and com­munit­ies pro­ject occurred at sev­er­al events, tak­ing oppor­tun­it­ies to com­bine with oth­ers, such as at a road­show in Aviemore, winter fest­iv­al in Bal­later and a health walk in Tomin­toul. c) Col­lab­or­a­tion has taken place with sev­er­al oth­er C2030 pro­jects dur­ing the quarter, for example explor­ing how to Input the nature pre­scrip­tions wel­come pack with the Green Health team and hold­ing a dis­cus­sion with prac­ti­tion­ers on the Cairngorms Cre­at­ive Dir­ect­ory with the Arts and Cul­ture team and pro­cure­ment staff. d) Cross team col­lab­or­a­tion has also included work­ing with the volun­teer­ing and ranger teams to strengthen exist­ing links with com­munit­ies and share ​‘on the ground’ experience.

Empower­ment

1. All pro­jects at RAG status green.
2. Well­being eco­nomy: a) Activ­it­ies related to well­being eco­nomy indic­at­ors were delivered by pro­ject and part­ner staff across the pro­gramme. b) Sys­tems for cap­tur­ing this activ­ity and trans­lat­ing it into C2030’s con­tri­bu­tions to a well­being eco­nomy have developed and are sum­mar­ised to date in the C2030 Well­being eco­nomy review for 2025.
3. Effect­ive com­munity engage­ment: a) The Bal­later Winter Fest­iv­al has become a winter staple and once again our pres­ence was appre­ci­ated by the loc­al com­munity. b) The Aviemore road­show com­bined the learn­ings and tested approaches of the pre­vi­ous two years and came togeth­er into a great event, with a range of inform­a­tion styles, cre­at­ive activ­ity, options for chil­dren, demo­graph­ic data gath­er­ing and of course key con­sulta­tions for the pub­lic to con­nect with. c) We also had our final pro­ject wrap up meet­ing with Agnessa Span­el­lis, of the Uni­ver­sity of Edin­burgh, regard­ing the gami­fic­a­tion work which is now com­plete. d) The team have been research­ing oth­er ideas for innov­at­ive engage­ment meth­ods that would be valu­able to test through C2030 over the last quarter and presen­ted these ideas at the end of the year. Next quarter, we plan to inter­rog­ate these options and estab­lish the next meth­od for test­ing. e) The team have also been devel­op­ing and improv­ing mon­it­or­ing sys­tems to avoid over-con­sult­ing com­munit­ies and to stream­line com­mu­nic­a­tions across the organ­isa­tion. f) We have been map­ping engage­ment plans for 2026 across the organ­isa­tion and plan­ning next year’s engage­ment needs to com­ple­ment these.
4. Cli­mate learn­ing and edu­ca­tion: a) New­ton­more Primary School: Delivered two Ranger-led ses­sions on Nation­al Park spe­cial qual­it­ies and River Spey hab­it­ats, which marked the first dir­ect engage­ment with the school in sev­er­al years. Activ­ity partly inspired by two pupils who suc­cess­fully cam­paigned for ​“Duck Cross­ing” signs on the high street. b) Spey­side High School: Pro­ject lead presen­ted a whole-school update to encour­age broad­er staff involve­ment and integ­ra­tion of C2030 activ­it­ies across more depart­ments. c) Kin­gussie High School: School ini­ti­ated an 18-month pro­ject to build a tra­di­tion­al Cana­dian kit canoe to explore the River Spey’s cul­tur­al and his­tor­ic­al sig­ni­fic­ance. The pro­ject involves tech­nic­al staff, loc­al craftspeople, his­tor­i­ans, and com­munity groups. Launch planned for spring 2027, with con­sid­er­a­tion of how the pro­ject will be doc­u­mented. d) Aboyne and Alford Schools: Ongo­ing meet­ings this quarter to final­ise and form­al­ise their C2030 activ­ity plans for spring 2026, the key deliv­ery phase.
5. Cli­mate con­scious com­munit­ies: a) Event deliv­ery so far is steady, and future work scop­ing addi­tion­al deliv­ery along­side the more loc­al­ised cli­mate action groups in col­lab­or­a­tion with the region­al cli­mate hubs.
6. Com­munity arts and cul­ture: a) Volun­teer inter­im board estab­lished: i. Four volun­teers appoin­ted as inter­im board mem­bers. ii. Held first meet­ing and alloc­ated tasks focused on research­ing gov­ernance mod­els, required policy doc­u­ments, insur­ance, and bank­ing arrange­ments. iii. Work sup­por­ted by Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey (VABS). b) Pledge, Pro­cess, Plan­et tour­ing exhib­i­tion delivered: i. Hos­ted at Iona Gal­lery (Kin­gussie) and St Margaret’s (Brae­mar) with two work­shops at each ven­ue. ii. Activ­ity enabled through £5,000 grant fund­ing from the Cairngorms Trust. iii. 223 vis­it­ors atten­ded across both ven­ues; 29 par­ti­cipants took part in work­shops led by Nation­al Park based cre­at­ives paid at Scot­tish Artist Uni­on (SAU) rates. c) Cre­at­ive work­shops delivered: i. Top­ics included unmapped place names, art and Dùthchas, and nat­ur­al-ink tree-based work­shops. ii. Strong pos­it­ive writ­ten feed­back recor­ded at both ven­ues. iii. An e‑zine cata­logue has been pro­duced as a leg­acy resource. d) Pro­cure­ment Work­shop with Land­scape Val­ues pro­ject: i. Nine cre­at­ives atten­ded a ses­sion explor­ing how to encour­age wider par­ti­cip­a­tion in cre­at­ive ten­der­ing. ii. Dis­cus­sion covered pro­cure­ment pro­cesses, altern­at­ive mod­els, com­mu­nic­a­tions, and lan­guage. iii. Insights will inform future Park Author­ity tender doc­u­ments and com­mis­sion­ing approaches. e) The estab­lish­ment of the volun­teer inter­im board is a major step for­ward in the over­all pro­cess, exem­pli­fy­ing the shift in power from being Park Author­ity led to being much more com­munity led. This pro­ject is an excel­lent example of a pro­ject mov­ing across the co-design spectrum.
7. Com­munity man­aged cli­mate grants: a) A busy quarter devel­op­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions mater­i­als and plan­ning part­ner engage­ment fund­ing codesign pan­el. b) Recruit­ment for the fund’s co-design pan­el was launched on 07 Janu­ary and over 150 applic­a­tions have been received to date. Tar­get is 250 – 300. c) Next quarter will include recruit­ment and selec­tion of the codesign pan­el, with the pan­el formed by end of March / early April 2026 and begin­ning their train­ing and deliv­ery of their work­plan on codesign of the fund between April and June 2026.

Trans­port

1. Act­ive com­munit­ies: a) Pro­ject remains at RAG amber status b) Pro­gress­ing developed design and com­munity engage­ment for Aviemore and Boat of Garten. c) Aviemore scope change agreed by steer­ing group: remov­al of segreg­ated cycle path on Grampi­an Road. Topo­graph­ic­al sur­vey high­lighted there was insuf­fi­cient road space and com­munity coun­cil feed­back was not sup­port­ive. Focus will now be on act­ive travel improve­ments for walk­ing and improved pub­lic realm designs. d) Work to shape scope of work for Nethy Bridge and New­ton­more con­tin­ues. e) Pre­par­a­tions for mak­ing fund­ing requests for detailed design deliv­er­ables in 2026.
2. Chan­ging travel beha­viours: a) Agree­ment to con­tin­ue bike buses to primary schools, fam­ily rides and cycle con­fid­ence-build­ing rides in Badenoch and Strath­spey is a sig­ni­fic­ant achieve­ment for the pro­gramme, reflect­ing strong com­munity and media sup­port. b) Final­ising the con­tract exten­sion with The Strath­spey Ped­al Ini­ti­at­ive (SPIN) Pro­ject provides a pos­it­ive and secure start to deliv­ery into 2026. c) The programme’s leg­acy is already tak­ing shape through the train­ing of an addi­tion­al eight bike bus volun­teers as Cycle Ride Lead­ers. This ongo­ing capa­city-build­ing of com­munity-led ride lead­ers is essen­tial to sus­tain­ing long-term suc­cess. d) The 2026 Work­place Cyc­ling Pro­ject shows strong poten­tial and is expec­ted to deliv­er pos­it­ive out­comes for every­day jour­neys to work. e) Effect­ive part­ner­ships with organ­isa­tions includ­ing Cairngorms Con­nect, The SPIN Pro­ject and The High­land Coun­cil remain a key strength. f) Com­mu­nic­a­tions have been par­tic­u­larly suc­cess­ful, with the launch of a film show­cas­ing The SPIN Project’s work with C2030 and HITRANS, along­side pos­it­ive loc­al media cov­er­age high­light­ing the suc­cess of the Badenoch and Strath­spey bike bus.
3. Cycle friendly Cairngorms: a) Deliv­ery has pro­gressed on the pro­jects sup­por­ted by the 2025 Cyc­ling Friendly Infra­struc­ture grant awards in Bal­later and Blair Atholl. These invest­ments form key com­pon­ents of the longer-term devel­op­ment of the Park’s cycle hub net­work. b) Pro­cure­ment plans to select pre­ferred sup­pli­ers for e‑bike char­ging and cycle park­ing is in pro­gress and will be pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2026.
4. Sus­tain­able trans­port a) The project’s focus will primar­ily focus on design and con­struc­tion of Bal­later mobil­ity hub and Aviemore / Glen­more sus­tain­able trans­port improve­ments to add value to the Act­ive Com­munit­ies and Cycle Friendly Com­munit­ies pro­jects b) These more focussed deliv­er­ables release uncom­mit­ted funds for invest­ment in an on-street Hitrans Hi-Bikes e‑bike fleet in Aviemore as part of the Cyc­ling Friendly Cairngorms project.

Health and Wellbeing

1. All pro­jects at RAG status green.
2. Pub­lic health and the out­doors: a) A very suc­cess­ful and fruit­ful quarter to end the year on. Sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gress has been made in rais­ing aware­ness of the pro­ject through com­mu­nic­a­tions and increased face to face con­tact with health­care pro­fes­sion­als lead­ing to an increase in refer­rals. b) The team have also done some great work in devel­op­ing new ini­ti­at­ives par­tic­u­larly the Fest­iv­al for All that looked at innov­at­ive ways of help­ing people with mobil­ity and access issues con­nect more mean­ing­fully with nature.
3. Out­door demen­tia resource centre: a) Con­tinu­ing inspir­a­tion­al work from the team has con­tin­ued this quarter. b) The move into the wider field of brain health is an excit­ing and innov­at­ive addi­tion to the activ­ity pro­gramme and an oppor­tun­ity to work with a wider audi­ence across Badenoch and Strathspey.

Stake­hold­er engagement

Com­mu­nic­a­tions

1. Press releases a) There was one pro­act­ive press release dur­ing this peri­od, pro­mot­ing the launch of the Act­ive com­munit­ies Aviemore con­sulta­tion. b) Help shape safer travel around Aviemore. c) There was one part­ner press release dur­ing this peri­od from Bothy Pro­ject, launch­ing the new artist res­id­ency oppor­tun­ity (Com­munity arts and cul­ture). d) Applic­a­tions open for C2030 arts residency.
2. Cairn magazine art­icles (note three issues per year, dis­trib­uted to over 12,000 house­holds and all 18,000 res­id­ents in the Nation­al Park). Cairn hit door­steps in the first week of Decem­ber, fea­tur­ing an update on the deer lar­der (Nature recov­ery), school mur­als (Cli­mate learn­ing and edu­ca­tion) and the Aviemore act­ive travel devel­op­ment con­sulta­tion (Act­ive com­munit­ies). The magazine also fea­tured the YMCA cli­mate fest­iv­al (Cli­mate con­scious com­munit­ies) and work on the Dee River res­tor­a­tion (Cli­mate resi­li­ent catch­ments). You can read the latest edi­tion here.
3. Cairngorms Voices (online blog / photo stor­ies) a) There were four online blogs pos­ted this quarter fea­tur­ing Cairngorms 2030 pro­jects: i. Find­ing ​‘win-win-wins’ in farm­ing – a fea­ture on the C2030 future farm­ing pro­ject, what has been learned so far and the oppor­tun­it­ies ahead (Cairngorms future farm­ing). ii. The Cairngorms artist­ic move­ment inspir­ing change – an inter­view with artist Clare Waddle on the power of art to inspire con­ver­sa­tion and com­munity action (Com­munity arts and cul­ture). iii. In con­ver­sa­tion with Dr Anna­bel Ever­ard an inter­view with Anna­bel Ever­ard about her role in peat­land res­tor­a­tion (Peat­land res­tor­a­tion). iv. The sci­ence of peat­lands – a blog shar­ing more about peat­land res­tor­a­tion work is like on that ground (Peat­land restoration).
4. Social media: a) Social media activ­ity in this peri­od con­tin­ued with a total of 16 posts that kept C2030 present on our social media chan­nels. b) Total engage­ments — that is people who have liked, shared, watched and inter­ac­ted with mater­i­als — of all C2030 activ­ity across social media: 9,991. c) Engage­ments are down 77% due to the spike last quarter from views of the Glen­k­il­rie lar­der film (Nature recovery).
5. Oth­er online / off­line activ­ity: a) Bothy Pro­ject res­id­ency announce­ment (Com­munity arts and cul­ture). b) Aviemore and Boat of Garten act­ive travel con­sulta­tions (Act­ive com­munit­ies). c) Farm­ing events and work­shops (Cairngorms future farm­ing). d) Inter­views with mem­bers of the Cairngorms cre­at­ives net­work (Com­munity arts and cul­ture). e) Pro­mo­tion of a film cov­er­ing the SPIN Pro­jects work with loc­al young people (Cycle friendly Cairngorms). f) Work­ing with video­graph­ers Cairn Media on the pro­duc­tion of sev­er­al films fol­low­ing C2030 pro­jects. Spe­cific­ally coordin­at­ing the pro­duc­tion of a storm cov­er­ing river res­tor­a­tion and Storm Frank (Cli­mate resi­li­ent catch­ments). g) Assist­ing with posters, dis­plays and pro­mo­tion­al mater­i­als for engage­ment and pro­ject pro­mo­tion­al activ­ity, includ­ing the Aviemore winter road­show and Bal­later winter fest­iv­al (Effect­ive com­munity engage­ment). h) Col­lab­or­at­ing with the Trans­port Team, Alan Jones Asso­ci­ates and Mott Mac­Don­ald on com­mu­nic­a­tions and engage­ment on the Act­ive Aviemore pro­ject (Act­ive Com­munit­ies). i) Col­lab­or­a­tion on the C2030 2025 sum­mary leaf­let – includ­ing stat­ist­ics and pro­cure­ment efforts. j) Com­mis­sion of peat­land pho­to­graphy, fol­low­ing the team and res­tor­a­tion with pho­to­graph­er Clare Jones.
6. Com­mu­nic­a­tions actions in next quarter: a) Pub­lic­a­tion of film focus­ing on the Cairngorms future farm­ing pro­ject (Cairngorms future farm­ing). b) Pub­lic­a­tion of film cov­er­ing the after­math of Storm Frank and River Dee res­tor­a­tion (Cli­mate resi­li­ent catch­ments). c) Launch of the C2030 com­munit­ies fund (C2030 Com­munit­ies Fund). d) Con­tin­ued sup­port and pro­mo­tion of com­munity engage­ment events (Effect­ive com­munity engage­ment). e) Social media reel fol­low­ing Fèis Spè and their work with Edin­burgh Uni­ver­sity research­ers. f) Work­ing with social media influ­en­cers to pro­mote travel by pub­lic trans­port (Sus­tain­able trans­port). g) Pub­lic­a­tion and print­ing of the C2030 2025 sum­mary leaf­let. h) Pro­duc­tion of leaf­lets for nature pre­scrip­tions pro­ject (Pub­lic health and the outdoors).

Know­ledge and Research Exchange

1. Ongo­ing mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation: a) Sup­por­ted indi­vidu­al pro­jects with resources to cap­ture inform­a­tion from pro­ject par­ti­cipants, feed­back from events and mon­it­or activ­ity delivered by grant recip­i­ents and deliv­ery part­ners. b) Sup­por­ted pro­ject leads to com­plete end of year reports and mile­stone plan­ning. c) Devel­op­ment work with theme leads and com­mu­nic­a­tions col­leagues for year two sum­mary report.
2. PhD Stu­dent­ship: a) PhD stu­dent is mid­way through his first phase of field­work, focus­sing on how gov­ernance prac­tices and nar­rat­ives of empower­ment emerge through deliv­ery of the pro­gramme. b) Know­ledge Exchange Officer con­tin­ued with super­vi­sion respons­ib­il­it­ies and atten­ded the School of Social and Polit­ic­al Sci­ences super­visor brief­ing and update in December.
3. Team review day: a) A team review day for 2025 was planned and delivered at the end of Novem­ber with input from the pro­gramme team and extern­al eval­u­ation con­sult­ants Urb­an Foresight. Inform­a­tion was col­lec­ted from pro­ject leads and theme leads to inform ongo­ing pro­gramme deliv­ery and evaluation.
4. Con­fer­ence attend­ance: a) Six staff mem­bers atten­ded five conferences.
5. Oth­er work areas: a) Respond­ing to stu­dent / research enquir­ies: respon­ded to 11 enquir­ies in the past quarter, 36 since May. Most of these come for UK / EU stu­dents, mostly post­gradu­ate level research­er enquir­ies or post­gradu­ate place­ment requests (from one – 12 months), which at this stage, we are unable to host. Know­ledge Exchange Officer invest­ig­at­ing wheth­er there is scope to bring in doc­tor­al research­ers on three-month place­ments across dir­ect­or­ates. b) A dis­cus­sion paper fea­tur­ing C2030 as a case study was pub­lished in the Brit­ish Academy’s Place-sens­it­ive under­stand­ings of nature recov­ery pub­lic­a­tions, sup­port­ing know­ledge exchange between the Cairngorms and neigh­bour­ing catch­ment scale work by the Find­horn Water­shed Ini­ti­at­ive. c) Presen­ted sum­mary of Bri­tain Talks Cli­mate and Nature report at pro­gramme deliv­ery team meet­ing. d) Atten­ded the Just Trans­ition sum­mit 2025 in Edin­burgh, show­cas­ing C2030 as one of the pion­eer­ing pro­jects put­ting just trans­ition into action.
6. Volun­teer activ­ity: a) 13 indi­vidu­al Volun­teer Rangers have been dir­ectly involved in C2030 pro­jects this quarter, con­trib­ut­ing a total of 58 volun­teer hours. All hours were delivered through ses­sions at the Out­door Demen­tia Resource Centre. This rep­res­ents a decrease of 17.5 hours com­pared with Q3 2025, but an increase on Q4 2023, which aligns with the expec­ted sea­son­al dip asso­ci­ated with the Christ­mas peri­od. b) 25 mem­bers of the pub­lic cre­ated a CER­VIS volun­teer account dur­ing this time­frame. c) No new Volun­teer Rangers were recruited this quarter; how­ever, recruit­ment and train­ing are ongo­ing. 12 new Volun­teer Rangers are expec­ted to com­plete train­ing in Q1 2026. Of the cur­rent cohort of 88 Volun­teer Rangers, 52 con­trib­uted volun­teer time dur­ing Q4 across the pro­gramme. d) Volun­teer Ranger sup­port at the Out­door Demen­tia Resource Centre con­tin­ues, with C2030-linked volun­teer­ing hours increas­ing com­pared to sim­il­ar activ­ity levels last winter. This improve­ment is likely due to a high­er num­ber of ​‘Demen­tia Friends’ trained Volun­teer Rangers and a broad­er range of volun­teer­ing oppor­tun­it­ies offered by the Centre. e) No addi­tion­al volun­teer­ing activ­ity took place with­in the Cycle Friendly Cairngorms pro­ject this quarter due to the expiry of the SPIN con­tract. Activ­ity is expec­ted to resume in Q1 2026.

Staff­ing and recruitment

1. No staff­ing changes with­in the NLHF fun­ded staff complement.
2. One Park Author­ity employed Peat­land Officer resigned and will be replaced.
3. C2030 staff pro­ject review and eval­u­ation day held on 26 November.

Gov­ernance

1. A review of the C2030 Pro­gramme Board mem­ber­ship was under­taken in Novem­ber 2025.
2. The pur­pose was to ensure the Board remains well-posi­tioned to deliv­er the programme’s ambi­tious aims and out­comes. As the pro­gramme moves to the later stages of pro­ject deliv­ery, it is essen­tial that the right mix of organ­isa­tions and indi­vidu­als are rep­res­en­ted. We invited pro­fes­sion­als with the capa­city and expert­ise to drive pro­gramme deliv­ery, identi­fy oppor­tun­it­ies for col­lab­or­a­tion and ensure long-term impact across the Nation­al Park.
3. The fol­low­ing mem­bers were appoin­ted: a) Neil Mac­rae, Part­ner­ships Man­ager, Hitrans Region­al Trans­port Part­ner­ship b) Dr Clare Devaney, Dir­ect­or, Glas­gow School of Art, Rur­al Hub c) Gil­lian Coun­cill, Dir­ect­or of Brain Health, Alzheimer Scot­land d) Fiona Van Aardt, Head of High­land Region, Scot­tish Land and Estates e) Keith Turn­er, Cairngorms Equal­it­ies Advis­ory Panel
4. The two-year pro­gramme deliv­ery review (2024÷25) has been launched to assess pro­gress against the NLHF approved pur­poses. It will identi­fy any slip­page or changes that have occurred and set out recom­mend­a­tions to strengthen deliv­ery going forward.
5. Meet­ing with NLHF mon­it­or­ing con­sult­ant, Fiona South­ern, on 24 Novem­ber to dis­cuss trans­form­ing land­scape theme deliv­ery. Pro­ject updates and a site vis­it to Dal­nac­ar­doch Estate helped scope Nature Recov­ery pro­ject proposals.

Budget and cash flow

1. No sig­ni­fic­ant changes to budgets and cash flow dur­ing the quarter.
2. Trans­port Scot­land fund­ing applic­a­tions sub­mit­ted for the Act­ive Com­munit­ies pro­jects ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇.
3. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG) has giv­en a pro­vi­sion­al cap­it­al budget of £3.5 mil­lion for Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇. In terms of C2030 Pro­gramme fin­ances, the pro­vi­sion­al cap­it­al alloc­a­tion for peat­land res­tor­a­tion more than matches the expec­ted con­tri­bu­tion to the pro­gramme for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇.
4. The £600,000 match fund­ing decision from the High­lands and Islands Enter­prise (HIE) applic­a­tion remains to be con­firmed. Dis­cus­sions have pro­gressed well with a new HIE Pro­ject Man­ager appoin­ted to resolve the delay. Approv­al expec­ted end Feb­ru­ary 2026.
5. One pro­pos­al to real­loc­ate part budget from Sus­tain­able Trans­port to Cycle Friendly pro­ject to be pro­gressed in Q1 2025.

Leg­al agreements

1. Draft MoU in pro­gress: a) Com­munity deer lar­ders: Glen Clova Estate. b) Com­munity deer lar­ders: Atholl Estate. c) Hitrans Region­al Trans­port Part­ner­ships (RTP): Hi-Bikes Aviemore agree­ment as part of Cycle Friendly Cairngorms. d) Glas­gow School of Art: Rur­al Lab Part­ner­ship on four ele­ments of the NEXA mod­el (research, edu­ca­tion, enterprise/​skills and innov­a­tion) and embed­ding PhD schol­ars in Park Author­ity pro­ject deliv­ery. e) Cli­mate Resi­li­ent Catch­ments: Bal­later Flood Group Ini­ti­at­ive. f) Wood­land expan­sion: Mont­ane plant­ing with Nation­al Trust Scot­land (NTS), Marr Lodge Estate.

Pro­gramme deliv­ery actions to end March 2025.

• Hitrans Hi-Bikes MoU signed – Feb 26
• Com­munity deer lar­ders grant awards issued for Glen Clova – Feb 26
• Com­munity deer lar­ders grant awards issued for Atholl – Feb 26
• Nature Recov­ery pro­ject devel­op­ment (deer lar­ders, wood­land plant­ing, rur­al skills and con­ser­va­tion graz­ing approved in prin­ciple by NLHF. – Feb 26
• Pub­lish Cycle Friendly e‑bike char­ging and cycle park­ing ITT – Feb 26
• Con­firm­a­tion of HIE match fund­ing award – Feb 26
• C2030 Com­munity Fund co-design pan­el selec­ted – March 26
• Two-year pro­gramme deliv­ery pro­gress review com­pleted – March 26
• Act­ive Com­munit­ies designs for Aviemore and Boat of Garten pub­lished – March 26

Sig­ni­fic­ant Budget Adjustments

1. Deliv­ery of the wood­land expan­sion pro­ject will be com­pleted in full, with all planned hec­tares suc­cess­fully planted. The total cost of deliv­ery has, how­ever, been sig­ni­fic­antly lower than anti­cip­ated, around 50 per­cent below the ori­gin­al budget estim­ate. a) This vari­ance reflects both effi­cient deliv­ery and the fact that ini­tial plant­ing cost assump­tions were high­er than ulti­mately required. b) While this rep­res­ents good value for money, it has also res­ul­ted in an under­spend that affects the wider programme’s planned match fund­ing pro­file. c) To address this short­fall, the NLHF is happy for the Park Author­ity to pro­pose oth­er Scot­tish Forestry fun­ded wood­land cre­ation schemes delivered in the Nation­al Park area dur­ing the pro­gramme time­frame. The busi­ness case for inclu­sion and how they deliv­er C2030 out­comes will be sub­mit­ted to NLHF for approval.

Con­clu­sions: Per­form­ance Over­view and Mat­ters Mer­it­ing Stra­tegic Review

1. In con­clu­sion, the fol­low­ing key oper­a­tion­al pro­gramme risks under man­age­ment are drawn to the Boards atten­tion: a) Pro­gramme risk level has remained at green b) The Act­ive Com­munit­ies pro­ject risk status has remained at amber. How­ever, sig­ni­fic­ant chal­lenges remain in deliv­er­ing the pro­ject due to the short times­cales res­ult­ing from annu­al fund­ing applic­a­tion and alloc­a­tion timetables. Gov­ernance and risk man­age­ment plans have been instig­ated. c) Set­ting the stra­tegic dir­ec­tion for the Nature Recov­ery pro­ject is a sig­ni­fic­ant step for­ward. We look for­ward work­ing with part­ners and NLHF to agree pro­ject scope and deliv­er­ables. d) NLHF approv­al is required to extend Scot­tish Forestry’s invest­ment in wood­land expan­sion with­in the Park bound­ary to address the C2030 match-fund­ing shortfall.

Dav­id Clyne 05 March 2026 davidclyne@​cairngorms.​co.​uk