Performance Paper 3 - Communications and Engagement update

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 12 June 2026 Page 1 of 14

For dis­cus­sion

Title: Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment update Pre­pared by: Oliv­er Dav­ies, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engagement

Pur­pose

This paper presents an update of cur­rent com­mu­nic­a­tions and engage­ment activ­ity, plus out­lines a num­ber of key pri­or­it­ies for the next quarter. It also includes a stra­tegic risk register and accom­pa­ny­ing mit­ig­a­tion measures.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Review activ­ity across a range of com­mu­nic­a­tions and engage­ment chan­nels in the past three months and dis­cuss the iden­ti­fied pri­or­it­ies for quarter three of 2026. b) Review the accom­pa­ny­ing risk register to ensure key risks are cap­tured and that mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures are appropriate.

Key com­mu­nic­a­tion and engage­ment deliv­er­able / achievements

Web­site and social media

1. Unsur­pris­ingly, the peri­od was dom­in­ated by the fire byelaws com­mu­nic­a­tions cam­paign; how­ever, des­pite this we have shared a breadth of con­tent to sup­port pro­jects ran­ging from the Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) Com­munit­ies Fund to cul­tur­al her­it­age and river res­tor­a­tion (see links below).
2. The total digit­al reach of the fire byelaws cam­paign now stands at just shy of 1.5 mil­lion unique indi­vidu­als, or 4.3 mil­lion impres­sions. Our video adverts have been viewed 352,086 times and there have been 4,649 link clicks. Our digit­al agency Bright Sig­nals have high­lighted that they usu­ally see click-through rates of around 0.1% for cam­paigns of this type, so our click-through rate of 0.35% is par­tic­u­larly note­worthy. Increas­ing the rel­ev­ancy of mes­saging and tar­get­ing users based on their prox­im­ity to the Nation­al Park is prov­ing effective.
3. Whilst it has only been run­ning for a few weeks, 24,632 people have already heard our radio advert, and it has been shared on 462 dif­fer­ent pod­casts. We are able to

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1. select spe­cif­ic themes for these pod­casts to ensure we reach a less ​‘bought-in’ audi­ence, ensur­ing our spend goes fur­ther. Mean­while, our organ­ic fire byelaws con­tent with our own ranger and part­ner ranger teams helped get the mes­sage out to vis­it­ors and res­id­ents alike.
2. We have nar­rowed down a short­l­ist of social media influ­en­cers to help spread the word about fire byelaws ahead of the busy sum­mer sea­son. The short­l­ist includes a mix of bush­craft, out­doors or ​‘van life’ con­tent cre­at­ors, with the major­ity reach­ing a much young­er audi­ence than our own chan­nels. Invit­a­tions went out to poten­tial part­ners a few weeks ago, with con­tent due to be delivered in the run up to and dur­ing the sum­mer holidays.
3. Social media impres­sions have been par­tic­u­larly high over the past few months, rising 365% to 7,408,458. How­ever, engage­ments have only ris­en 24% (to 94,815), sug­gest­ing that the paid-for fire byelaw advert­ising cam­paign may be hav­ing an impact on our organ­ic fig­ures. We are invest­ig­at­ing this with our digit­al agency Bright Sig­nals to estab­lish how the cam­paign is likely to be affect­ing our day-to-day activity.
4. Our total audi­ence across Face­book, Ins­tagram, Linked­In and Bluesky rose by 3,406 (or 3.8%) to 93,032. Video views were up 113% to 524,742, likely driv­en by a redoubled focus on short, share­able con­tent such as the fire byelaw, Com­munit­ies Fund and Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund (NRF) short inter­views to camera.
5. On our web­site we had 28,804 act­ive users (no com­par­able fig­ures for 2024). Large-scale devel­op­ments included the cre­ation of a spe­cif­ic Gael­ic site in line with our Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan com­mit­ments. The copy for this has been trans­lated and the build is in pro­gress, likely to be com­pleted by the end of sum­mer. We are also mak­ing improve­ments to the news and views sec­tion of the site, aimed at encour­aging more repeat visits.
6. Con­tent high­lights over the peri­od include a photo story from two young people who helped release beavers into the wild; a longer video piece about river res­tor­a­tion fea­tur­ing the Bal­later Flood Issues Group; a post cel­eb­rat­ing High­land games with­in the region; and vis­it­or posts focused on ground-nest­ing birds.
7. A suc­cess­ful cit­izen sci­ence cal­lout – ask­ing for aspen sight­ings to be input­ted on our new inter­act­ive map – had a dir­ect impact on the work of the Nature team, enabling them to track down flower­ing aspen to col­lect genet­ic­ally robust seeds. This sug­gests our audi­ence is much more act­ively engaged than they were in the past, some­thing we hope to build on with future campaigns.

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Press and media

1. Over 250 sep­ar­ate pieces of media cov­er­age were pub­lished / aired in the week lead­ing up to the launch of a new recre­ation­al fire byelaw, with a com­bined audi­ence estim­ated at 800 mil­lion (albeit all media mon­it­or­ing fig­ures should be taken with a pinch of salt!). This included spe­cial reports on Chan­nel 4, Chan­nel 5, STV News and BBC Report­ing Scot­land, as well as Grant Moir being inter­viewed on BBC Break­fast News about our plans. The story appeared in print / online with Sky News, the Press and Journ­al, Her­ald, Scots­man, Sun, Daily Mail and the BBC, as well as in spe­cial­ist pub­lic­a­tions such as The Scot­tish Farm­er, Forestry Journ­al, Land Busi­ness and Scot­tish Mountaineer.
2. The byelaw was the focus for a spe­cial epis­ode of Land­ward in May, with Dou­gie Vipond vis­it­ing the Nation­al Park to speak to land man­agers affected by last year’s wild­fires, as well as the Park Authority’s Agri­cul­tur­al Adviser, Mal­colm Smith. Fur­ther press and media activ­ity is planned around the byelaw, includ­ing our use of thermal drones to detect fires on the ground, plus a Press and Journ­al fea­ture includ­ing inter­views with Mike Dear­man from the Aviemore and Glen­more Com­munity Trust and Ranger, Polly Freeman.
3. The team were on hand to cap­ture the first meet­ing of the new C2030 Com­munit­ies Pan­el, and have sub­sequently inter­viewed a num­ber of the pan­el mem­bers to hear more about their exper­i­ences so far (see also a short video here). There was some push­back from loc­al media about our decision to only reveal first names of pro­ject par­ti­cipants whilst the pro­cess was ongo­ing. We worked with our part­ners at Involve to explain clearly the reas­ons for this and the fact that it was stand­ard prac­tice for pro­cesses of this kind.
4. Oth­er activ­ity with­in the peri­od includes: a) Pro­mo­tion of the latest com­munity road­show event in Lag­gan / Dal­whin­nie. b) An update on recent plan­ning decisions, includ­ing a hydro-elec­tric scheme at Spit­tal of Glen­shee. c) A piece about Sandy Bremner’s re-elec­tion as Con­vener of the board. d) An update on the golden eagle tag­ging pro­ject. e) Encour­aging news from the latest caper­cail­lie lek counts.

Pub­lic and stake­hold­er engagement

1. Over 100 busi­nesses and com­munity groups have got involved in the fire byelaw cam­paign so far, tak­ing advant­age of a suite of online and phys­ic­al resources, from win­dow stick­ers to pin badges and bespoke sig­nage. This includes the team at Cairngorm Brew­ery, who have kindly agreed to dis­trib­ute our ​‘no flame, no spark’ beer­mats to bars and pubs across the region. We have organ­ised a series of online

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busi­ness drop-in events with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship (CBP) to pro­mote the byelaw, explain how busi­nesses can get involved and answer any ques­tions. We are also work­ing with Scot­tish Land and Estates (SLE) to get the mes­sage out to part­ner estates, and our offer of bespoke sig­nage has been picked up by Aviemore and Glen­more Trust (AGCT) at Glen­more Vis­it­or Centre, amongst others.

1. The peri­od from March to June held a lot of activ­ity for the C2030 Com­munit­ies Fund pan­el, with the first sev­en ses­sions (a mix of online and face-to-face) tak­ing place. So far, the group have dis­cussed everything from the num­ber and size of pots avail­able to eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia, equal­it­ies, diversity and inclu­sion con­sid­er­a­tions and how the applic­a­tion pro­cess should func­tion. Work­ing closely with par­ti­cip­a­tion char­ity Involve, the pan­el will look to final­ise the fund design over the com­ing weeks, ahead of a launch date later this summer.
2. The C2030 Engage­ment team have been final­ising details of this year’s road­show and com­munity events. Com­munity drop-ins are planned for Dal­whin­nie / Lag­gan on Thursday 04 June, Blair Atholl on Sat­urday 20 June and Angus Glens in Octo­ber, with the Park Author­ity hav­ing a pres­ence at events includ­ing the Lon­ach Gath­er­ing, High­land Pride, Grant­own Show, Tomin­toul High­land Games and Bal­later Winter Fest­iv­al. This latest set of events will mean that the team has vis­ited every major set­tle­ment in the Nation­al Park with­in the last two years.
3. A core part of the C2030 engage­ment approach is to tri­al new and innov­at­ive meth­ods. In addi­tion to explor­ing the pos­sib­il­ity and value of vir­tu­al real­ity exper­i­ences, the team are also look­ing to build on last year’s suc­cess­ful tri­al of ​‘gami­fic­a­tion’ (ie break­ing down com­plex top­ics through the medi­um of a board game), cre­at­ing a format that will work for more drop-in style events.
4. The team are also seek­ing out more oppor­tun­it­ies to ​‘meet people where they are’, attend­ing pre-exist­ing com­munity group ses­sions and offer­ing engage­ment in a set­ting attendees are more com­fort­able with. The first ses­sions have been very pos­it­ive. One attendee at a recent Aviemore event said: ​“I just wanted to let you know that the ladies at Cof­fee and Chat appre­ci­ated you com­ing to talk to them and to listen to what they had to say. They are not eas­ily impressed and would be happy to help you in the future.”
5. Besides event deliv­ery and sup­port, the team have achieved a huge mile­stone in rolling out a new Com­munity Con­tacts List and Engage­ment List for the organ­isa­tion. The cul­min­a­tion of nearly two years’ work, these sys­tems ensure all engage­ment activ­ity delivered by the Park Author­ity is recor­ded and tracked in the same way, cap­tur­ing learn­ings and feed­back as we go. Train­ing has taken place

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with all staff, and we intend to review the pro­cess after six months to ensure it is work­ing as anticipated.

1. The next Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Net­work event has been organ­ised for Tues­day 13 Octo­ber at Boat Hall. This ses­sion will build on a pre­vi­ous gath­er­ing of over 20 cul­tur­al her­it­age prac­ti­tion­ers back in March, agree­ing and tak­ing for­ward key pri­or­it­ies for the net­work, includ­ing a con­nec­ted archiv­ing project.

Pub­lic­a­tions and branding

1. The sum­mer edi­tion of Cairn magazine is cur­rently in pro­duc­tion and is due to hit door­steps towards the end of July. In addi­tion to the usu­al mix of nature and com­munity stor­ies, this issue will fea­ture an update on the fire byelaw, an in-depth guide to our peat­land res­tor­a­tion work, an inter­view with Angus Glens Ranger, George Pat­ter­son, and the latest from our future farm­ing project.
2. Our two pock­et-sized leaf­lets on fires and bar­be­cues and ​‘tread lightly’ in the Nation­al Park have proved hugely pop­u­lar dur­ing the fire byelaw rol­lout, to the extent that we are doing a reprint of 10,000 cop­ies each. The tread lightly ver­sion is also being trans­lated into 10 lan­guages fol­low­ing a request from Police Scot­land. Work is also ongo­ing to replace the old camp­ing and camper­vans leaf­let, pre­vi­ously pro­duced by CBP. We aim to have this in place ahead of the sum­mer season.
3. A new Tomin­toul paths leaf­let has been developed, in col­lab­or­a­tion with the loc­al com­munity and Crown Estate Scot­land. The leaf­let fea­tures a new map and updated inform­a­tion. Next in line are Nethy Bridge and Boat of Garten.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions and engage­ment activ­ity over the next three months

1. A range of com­mu­nic­a­tions and engage­ment activ­it­ies are planned over the next three months; these are sum­mar­ised below. These pro­jects will take place along­side a reg­u­lar pro­gramme of activ­ity, coordin­ated through our cent­ral­ised Con­tent Work­ing Group, Engage­ment cross-cut­ting board and C2030 Engage­ment strand: a) Work with the C2030 Com­munit­ies Fund pan­el to final­ise the shape / func­tion of the £1 mil­lion fund, ready for launch in sum­mer 2026. Ensure as wide a range of poten­tial applic­ants are engaged in the pro­cess as pos­sible. b) Devel­op a suite of mater­i­als – includ­ing web­site resources, pro­gramme, video­graphy tender and on-site sig­nage – to sup­port the deliv­ery of the UK Nation­al Parks Con­fer­ence in Aviemore this Septem­ber. c) Con­tin­ue to deliv­er the fire byelaw com­mu­nic­a­tions and engage­ment cam­paign, includ­ing final­ising road­side sig­nage with Trans­port Scotland,

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d) devel­op­ing part­ner­ships with key social media influ­en­cers, and sup­port­ing part­ners (from loc­al busi­nesses to estates and com­munity groups) to share the mes­sage through tar­geted comms mater­i­als. e) Final­ise and deliv­er comms mater­i­als / com­munity engage­ment activ­ity to sup­port the inform­al and form­al Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) con­sulta­tions. This will in turn inform our approach to the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (LDP) con­sulta­tion next year. f) Deliv­er a fol­low-up cul­tur­al her­it­age event on 13 Octo­ber, tak­ing for­ward recom­mend­a­tions from pre­vi­ous gath­er­ings and sup­port­ing prac­ti­tion­ers across the Nation­al Park to estab­lish a Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Net­work. This includes work on a col­lect­ive archiv­ing pro­ject. g) Pro­gress the second phase of Your Future Here activ­ity, encour­aging young people to explore careers in the Nation­al Park. Build­ing on the learn­ings from our inaug­ur­al event in Septem­ber 2024, we will explore events in the east and west of the Nation­al Park, tying in with careers fairs held at schools includ­ing Alford, Aboyne, Kin­gussie and Grant­own. h) Con­tin­ue devel­op­ments with the new Nation­al Park web­site, includ­ing the cre­ation of micros­ites for the Cairngorms Nature Index (CNI), a C2030 data portal and the reviv­al of the Cairngorms Photo Posts pro­ject. i) Con­tin­ue deliv­ery of a pro­gramme of pro­act­ive com­mu­nic­a­tions around farm­ing and land man­age­ment in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, high­light­ing ongo­ing sup­port offered to the sec­tor and encour­aging two-way dia­logue. This includes the P&J / Cour­i­er column with Agri­cul­tur­al Adviser, Mal­colm Smith. j) Explore the devel­op­ment of an Aviemore / Glen­more pilot vis­it­or app with Aviemore and Glen­more Com­munity Trust, pav­ing the way for a future Nation­al Park-wide app (to be developed with Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity) in the near future.

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Risk register for com­mu­nic­a­tions and engagement

1. Fol­low­ing on from dis­cus­sions at a Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee meet­ing in 2024, we have developed a spe­cif­ic risk register to cap­ture the main risks facing the Park Author­ity from a repu­ta­tion stand­point, plus rel­ev­ant mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures. This will be updated on a quarterly basis, with addi­tions high­lighted in blue. Unless oth­er­wise stated, the risk own­er is the Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment. Assess­ment of like­li­hood and impact from last quarter’s report are shown in brackets.