Performance Paper 3 - Restoring Landscapes theme update

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 23 March 2026 Page 1 of 4

For inform­a­tion

Title: Cairngorms 2030 restor­ing and enhan­cing landscape’s theme update Feb­ru­ary 2026

Pre­pared by: Mat­thew Hawkins, Nature-based Solu­tions Manager

Pur­pose

This paper describes recent activ­ity and pro­gress on the sev­en pro­jects with­in the Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) Restor­ing and Enhan­cing Land­scapes theme.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Note the paper.

Over­all Progress

1. As we start the third year of the deliv­ery phase, all sev­en pro­jects are pro­gress­ing in line with their pro­ject schedules.

2. The last six months have seen the scope of the pro­jects final­ised, Wood­land Expan­sion and Nature Recov­ery pro­jects now have fully defined pro­ject out­puts, though some are await­ing approv­al from Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF).

3. For details on each pro­ject see Annex 1.

Upcom­ing decisions

1. There are sev­er­al key decisions to be made in the next quarter: a) NLHF approv­al for the new Nature Recov­ery pro­jects. b) Nature Recov­ery: The feas­ib­il­ity study for new wood­land in Glen Tilt will high­light wheth­er we sup­port this and / or sim­il­ar plant­ing at Dal­nac­ar­doch and Glen Shee. c) Nature Recov­ery: Future Skills pro­ject will be scoped with estates in the West Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group (DMG) before a train­ing pro­vider is procured.

d) Cli­mate Resi­li­ent Catch­ments: Slu­gain burn — we shall soon have a detailed cost estim­ate for the con­struc­tion of the bridge, and it is pos­sible that it will be sig­ni­fic­antly above early estim­ates. We shall make a cost bene­fit assess­ment on how or wheth­er to pro­ceed with the pro­ject based upon this.

Com­mon themes across projects

1. There have been sev­er­al com­mon themes arising from the suite of pro­jects in the last 12 months. These reflect the diverse nature of the pro­jects with­in the theme but also across the whole programme.

2. The engage­ment ​‘land­scape’: Engage­ment has become more com­plic­ated than ori­gin­ally anti­cip­ated with a rise in ​‘con­sulta­tion fatigue’ in com­munit­ies of place and interest. The engage­ment team has become more skilled at design­ing approaches to min­im­ise this and have worked well with the pro­ject leads. They have, in turn, become more adept at man­aging the pro­cess and are now enga­ging more with com­munit­ies than ori­gin­ally anti­cip­ated. This is espe­cially true in the wood­land, catch­ment and nature recov­ery projects.

3. Delays linked to extern­al approvals: Pro­ject deliv­ery has been delayed in sev­er­al places by the slower than anti­cip­ated approv­al pro­cesses, for example plan­ning and Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency (SEPA) con­sents. We have learned to adapt sched­ules and where pos­sible to use the delayed start to our advant­age by giv­ing more time for ten­der­ing and pre­par­a­tion of site works which will allow more flex­ib­il­ity for contractors.

4. Adjust­ments to pro­ject pro­pos­als: All pro­jects have had to make some changes to the applic­a­tion pro­pos­als, some more sig­ni­fic­ant than oth­ers. The team is adapt­ing well to this and devel­op­ing new approaches as neces­sary. For example, the land­scape and com­munity pro­ject has remod­elled its engage­ment approach in light of feed­back on the best meth­ods to engage dif­fer­ent com­munit­ies which has evolved in the last two years, and changes in the engage­ment team membership.

Change man­age­ment

1. There have been quite a few new pro­cesses in areas like pro­ject man­age­ment, budget con­trol, report­ing and com­mu­nic­a­tions. These are often tri­alled with the C2030 team before being rolled out across the author­ity. This has required new learn­ing and patience as staff work through them. How­ever, they have engaged well with them, offered con­struct­ive feed­back, and sug­ges­ted ways to make the learn­ing easier.

Team per­form­ance

1. The team have developed new skills and apply these to their work. There are a few small areas where indi­vidu­als need to devel­op fur­ther but this is being man­aged through the pro­gramme team and theme leads. The team is grow­ing in con­fid­ence about their roles and have increas­ing enthu­si­asm to get com­munit­ies involved and deliv­er com­munity benefits.

2. There are no changes in pro­ject leads for the theme but some of the peat­land staff have changed in the last two years.

Budgets

1. Wood­land expan­sion match fund­ing: a) The C2030 pro­gramme included £4 mil­lion of match fund­ing from Scot­tish Forestry (SF) for two wood­land cre­ation schemes at Glen Fend­er and Dal­namein. b) Actu­al deliv­ery costs were sig­ni­fic­antly lower due to reduced fen­cing require­ments and eco­nom­ies of scale. c) Although the planted wood­land area remains unchanged at 990 hec­tares (ha), the reduced grant value cre­ates a match fund­ing short­fall of approx­im­ately £2.3 mil­lion against the ori­gin­al cost plan. d) To address this short­fall, the NLHF is happy for the Park Author­ity to pro­pose oth­er SF fun­ded wood­land cre­ation schemes delivered in the Nation­al Park area dur­ing the pro­gramme time­frame. The busi­ness case for inclu­sion and how they deliv­er for C2030 out­comes will be sub­mit­ted to NLHF for approval.

2. The peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­ject con­tin­ues to secure fund­ing from the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG). This year’s budget will be £3.5 million.

3. There are no oth­er major changes to pro­ject budgets though some redis­tri­bu­tion with­in pro­jects has been required — eg catch­ments, farm­ing, wood­land, and nature recovery.

Mat­thew Hawkins 24 Feb­ru­ary 2026 matthewhawkins@​cairngorms.​co.​uk