Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Draft Per­form­ance Paper 4 11 Septem­ber 2026

For dis­cus­sion

Title:

Col­lab­or­a­tion with The Scot­tish Food Com­mis­sion and Pub­lic Ser­vices Reform

Pre­pared by:

Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services

Pur­pose

This paper updates the Com­mit­tee on col­lab­or­a­tion between the Park Author­ity and the Scot­tish Food Com­mis­sion (SFC), a new Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Body (NDPB) estab­lished by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG) with­in the Good Food Nation (Scot­land) Act 2022.

The paper out­lines the col­lab­or­at­ive and shared ser­vices work being under­taken; presents the ini­tial Memor­andum of agree­ment estab­lished between the Park Author­ity and the SFC; and provides inform­a­tion on wider work being delivered by the Park Author­ity with­in the SG’s Pub­lic Ser­vices Reform (PSR) agenda.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to: a. Con­sider the Park Authority’s responses to the Scot­tish Government’s Pub­lic Ser­vices Reform agenda. b. Con­sider the Park Authority’s pos­i­tion in sup­port of the devel­op­ment and oper­a­tions of the Scot­tish Food Com­mis­sion and high­light any stra­tegic con­sid­er­a­tions from a board perspective.

Stra­tegic context

1. The SFC has been set up as an NDPB by SG under the Good Food Nation (Scot­land) Act 2022. The Com­mis­sion aims to ensure that Scotland’s food sys­tem sup­ports social, envir­on­ment­al, and eco­nom­ic well­being, pub­lic health, and sus­tain­able food pro­duc­tion. Its primary role is to provide over­sight, scru­tiny, and recom­mend­a­tions regard­ing the imple­ment­a­tion of Good Food Nation Plans developed by Scot­tish Min­is­ters, loc­al author­it­ies, and health boards.

2. The Park Author­ity was approached by SFC early in 2026 with a request that we con­sider provid­ing cor­por­ate sup­port ser­vices. This con­tact was on the basis of pri­or suc­cess­ful sup­port pro­vi­sion to the Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion (SLC). The ori­gin­al request was for sup­port with organ­isa­tion­al set up, recruit­ment, Human Resource Man­age­ment sup­port and payroll. This request has now been exten­ded to cov­er pen­sions admin­is­tra­tion, account­ancy and fin­an­cial report­ing, inform­a­tion man­age­ment and gov­ernance support.

3. The Memor­andum of Agree­ment ini­ti­at­ing this rela­tion­ship between the Park Author­ity and the SFC is set out at Annex 1 to this paper.

Stra­tegic policy consideration

1. The col­lab­or­a­tion demon­strates a rel­at­ively nov­el approach to the SG’s PSR agenda, through which pub­lic bod­ies are charged with seek­ing great­er effi­cien­cies, includ­ing ration­al­ising cor­por­ate functions.

2. Our ini­tial estim­ate is for 0.55 Full Time Equi­val­ent (FTE) staff deploy­ment over the course of ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ in sup­port of SFC dur­ing the ini­tial set up phase, at a ser­vice charge of around £46,000. This bal­ance of staff and costs will adapt as SFC moves from set up phase into deliv­ery phase. This rep­res­ents a sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion toward the Park Authority’s adapt­a­tion of our cor­por­ate func­tions with­in the wider PSR expect­a­tions of gov­ern­ment. It is likely the full quantum of sav­ings made to pub­lic fin­ances is much high­er than the quoted ser­vice charge, giv­en the sig­ni­fic­ant one-off and oth­er fixed costs which the SFC would have to incur were its own ser­vices pro­vi­sions set up with­in the organisation.

3. The SFC will adopt in full the Park Authority’s HR policy suite and our job eval­u­ation and payroll struc­tures. We are also rep­lic­at­ing our payroll, pen­sions and fin­an­cial pro­cessing arrange­ments for the Com­mis­sion, and will provide appro­pri­ate inform­a­tion man­age­ment and gov­ernance struc­tures. As far as we are aware, this rep­res­ents an innov­at­ive approach to shared ser­vices pro­vi­sion: an exist­ing NDPB tak­ing up the cor­por­ate sup­port in set­ting up and oper­at­ing a new organ­isa­tion, leav­ing that organ­isa­tion focused on recruit­ment of deliv­ery and ser­vice focused staff.

4. The Park Author­ity is also involved in deliv­er­ing wider PSR demon­stra­tions via a pro­ject tri­al­ling new approaches to place-based solu­tions in the con­text of a single, over­arch­ing policy object­ive of cli­mate resi­li­ence. The pro­ject pro­poses a three-year tri­al, in two pion­eer catch­ments, which rad­ic­ally sim­pli­fies the envir­on­ment­al pub­lic ser­vice deliv­ery sys­tem and structures.

5. The tri­al, if approved by Min­is­ters, would build on work in the two catch­ments and devel­op an integ­rated rela­tion­al approach that will require organ­isa­tions to adapt exist­ing oper­a­tion­al approaches with­in the catch­ments. It aims to retain the strength in top-down lead­er­ship in policy intent and pub­lic resource alloc­a­tion aligned behind the lead policy object­ive and shared drivers of cli­mate resi­li­ence; and adopt a place-based deliv­ery mod­el to co-ordin­ate fund­ing, reg­u­la­tion, gov­ernance and com­munity involve­ment, ensur­ing efforts are groun­ded in loc­al needs and contexts.

6. Two catch­ments have been selec­ted to be part of the pro­ject, the Dee and the South Esk. The Park Author­ity provides over­all pro­ject spon­sor­ship in Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and is the stra­tegic lead for the Dee catch­ment, incor­por­at­ing pre­vi­ous work with the Dee Resi­li­ence Group into PSR gov­ernance and objectives.

Stra­tegic risk management

1. The fol­low­ing stra­tegic risks are in part mit­ig­ated through this work. a. Avail­ab­il­ity of suf­fi­cient fin­ance to deliv­er our cor­por­ate plan object­ives (Risk 1). b. Man­age­ment of repu­ta­tion and pre­vent­ing repu­ta­tion­al dam­age (Risk 11). c. That the Park Author­ity does not adequately respond or adapt to changes in fund­ing or policy envir­on­ment at Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment policy levels (Risk 13).

2. There are no new stra­tegic risks sug­ges­ted by the cur­rent status of the work covered here.

Implic­a­tions

1. Seni­or man­agers are mind­ful that the Park Authority’s cor­por­ate teams were designed on the basis of exist­ing work­loads. The imple­ment­a­tion of these shared ser­vices arrange­ments will ulti­mately add around 10% to the levels of staff­ing sup­por­ted by our teams in HR and payroll. Oth­er con­sequences in terms of fin­an­cial sup­port, inform­a­tion man­age­ment and gov­ernance remain to be assessed. Where pos­sible, work will be absorbed with­in exist­ing team struc­tures. Pres­sures on these teams and the poten­tial need for inter­im addi­tion­al sup­port will con­tin­ue to be mon­itored as the arrange­ments evolve.

Suc­cess measures

1. Suc­cess meas­ures of these arrange­ments will link to the extent to which suc­cess­ful sup­port is delivered, as assessed through reg­u­lar feed­back between the SFC and the Park Author­ity. The extent to which addi­tion­al work­flows can be absorbed with­in our cur­rent staff­ing levels will also rep­res­ent a per­form­ance meas­ure on the shared ser­vice relationships.

Dav­id Camer­on 26 August 2026 Davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk