Resources Committee - Draft minutes

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Draft Resources Com­mit­tee Minutes 24 Janu­ary 2025

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Draft Resource Com­mit­tee Meet­ing Minutes

Held hybrid

24 Janu­ary 2025 at 09.00am

Present in per­son Rus­sell Jones (Chair) Sandy Bremner

Lauren McCal­lum (Deputy Chair) Dr Han­nah Grist

Present vir­tu­ally Jack­ie Brier­ton Michael Williamson

Apo­lo­gies None

In Attend­ance Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions Brenna Jessie, Digit­al Con­tent Man­ager Mari­aan Pita, Exec­ut­ive Sup­port Man­ager Kar­en John­stone, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies None

Minutes from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing for approval

1. The minutes from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing on the 04 Octo­ber 2024 were approved with no amendments.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Draft Resources Com­mit­tee Minutes 24 Janu­ary 2025

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Mat­ters arising not covered from pre­vi­ous meeting

1. None Actions from pre­vi­ous meetings

17 May 2024

Paper 2 i. The com­mit­tee would like updates about the Peat­land res­tor­a­tion grants and more inform­a­tion of the dif­fer­ent types of res­tor­a­tion undertaken.

Com­pleted Update will be giv­en to Per­form­ance Committee

Paper 5 i. Board mem­bers would like to see Eólas to read through the policies avail­able or have a hand­book avail­able for Board Mem­bers to read. Completed

09 August 2024

Paper 1 i. Update com­mit­tee on ²⁵⁄₂₆ and ²⁶⁄₂₇ budget when an update from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment becomes available.

Com­plete: board in Decem­ber and cur­rent agenda

Paper 3 i. Men­tion­ing the board mem­bers in the paper to make it clear these val­ues and prin­ciples refer to both staff and board mem­bers. Cir­cu­late with board mem­ber once finalised.

Com­pleted

ii. Add the word ​“actions” to the last para­graph our next phase of work through our organ­isa­tion­al devel­op­ment and people strategy will be to seek appro­pri­ate ways to devel­op the cul­ture through appro­pri­ate beha­viours, policies and actions. Completed

04 Octo­ber 2024

Paper 1 i. Update com­mit­tee on ²⁵⁄₂₆ and ²⁶⁄₂₇ budget when an update from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment becomes available.

Com­pleted ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ budget devel­op­ment presen­ted to Board in Decem­ber 2024

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Draft Resources Com­mit­tee Minutes 24 Janu­ary 2025

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Paper 4 i. Bring back more Inform­a­tion to the com­mit­tee on the lone work­ing and acci­dent and Incid­ent pro­ced­ure once all staff mem­bers are trained in the new sys­tem. Com­pleted Com­mit­tee con­tent with inform­a­tion shared in Health and Safety Com­mit­tee minutes.

Declar­a­tions of interest

1. No declar­a­tions of interest were made.

Per­son­al use of social media policy (Paper 3)

1. Brenna Jessie, Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Man­ager presen­ted the paper which sets out expect­a­tions for the per­son­al use of social media by staff and board mem­bers at the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity as mem­bers of a pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tion in Scot­land. It seeks to provide clar­ity and sup­port social media users to help bal­ance their online pres­ence with their role as an employ­ee / board mem­ber of the organisation.

2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) Board mem­bers com­men­ded the policy not­ing it nav­ig­ates dif­fi­cult areas which are con­stantly devel­op­ing and chan­ging, giv­ing good frame­work to deal with chal­lenges being faced. b) Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices noted the stand­ards com­mis­sion has been review­ing Board Mem­bers’ digit­al pro­files along with the code of con­duct and social media inter­ac­tions, high­light­ing the aspir­a­tion to cre­ate a doc­u­ment that applied to Board Mem­bers and staff and ques­tioned if a sep­ar­ate policy would work bet­ter. Board Mem­bers agreed that there should be a uni­ver­sal policy across both Board Mem­bers and staff. c) Dis­cus­sions were had around mis­use, shar­ing and copy­rights of web­casts as this has been dis­cussed with­in the Moray Coun­cil. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices asked for the mon­it­or­ing officer from Moray Coun­cil to share their guid­ance on this to allow it to be reviewed from a stand­ards per­spect­ive by the Park Author­ity. d) A Board Mem­ber ques­tioned staff’s views on the policy not­ing there are leg­al chal­lenges of wheth­er employ­ers can imple­ment these restric­tions. Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Man­ager noted this will go to the next Staff Con­sultat­ive Forum

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Draft Resources Com­mit­tee Minutes 24 Janu­ary 2025

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(SCF) meet­ing to dis­cuss and get fur­ther feed­back. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment noted if they were chal­lenged, they would seek leg­al advice as this is a new policy. e) Board Mem­bers asked if there was scope or value for train­ing avail­able for staff and Board mem­bers alike. Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Man­ager and Head of Organ­isa­tion Devel­op­ment agreed that this would be crit­ic­al train­ing as this is a very import­ant area sup­port­ing a wide demo­graph­ic of staff and Board Mem­bers. It was also raised that Board mem­bers have mul­tiple jobs ​“wear­ing many hats” and struggle on how to tackle social media while main­tain­ing good rela­tion­ships, there­fore spe­cif­ic train­ing in this area would be arranged. The Board Con­vener endorsed the train­ing and officers agreed. The Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices cau­tioned that while mem­bers may have a num­ber of dif­fer­ent roles, they should always be aware that they can­not con­trol which role they are per­ceived to have by someone look­ing at any activ­ity on social media. As a board mem­ber of the Park Author­ity, they may per­ceive to be act­ing as such irre­spect­ive of their inten­tion. f) Dis­cus­sions were had around cre­at­ing more relat­able con­tent on social media to explain what Park Author­ity employ­ees do each day. Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Man­ager agreed and noted that there will be a social media post going out this week shar­ing what Rangers do and more con­tent like this will fol­low. g) Ques­tions were raised if there were oth­er sim­il­ar sized organ­isa­tions who have sim­il­ar policies in place. Digit­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Man­ager noted there had been a review car­ried out across the sec­tor and found the Park Author­ity seem to be ahead in review­ing and mod­ern­ising their policy res­ult­ing in oth­er organ­isa­tions reach­ing out to bring their policies in line with the Park Author­ity. h) A Board Mem­ber raised the ques­tion relat­ing to private What­s­App groups dis­cuss­ing Park Author­ity related issues or busi­ness and if this policy would be related. The CEO noted that this policy does not apply to this how­ever there is a Free­dom of Inform­a­tion (FOI) policy in place which relates to inform­a­tion on What­s­App. This will be pro­moted to Board Mem­bers to high­light what work is being done around this area.

1. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

2. Action point arising i. Staff and Board Mem­ber train­ing on nav­ig­at­ing social media while adher­ing to the policy.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Draft Resources Com­mit­tee Minutes 24 Janu­ary 2025

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ii. Mon­it­or­ing officer from Moray Coun­cil to share their guid­ance on mis­use, shar­ing and copy rights of web­casts with Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices. iii. Share FOI policy with Board mem­bers to high­light the work being done in this area.

Budget Mon­it­or­ing (Paper 1)

1. Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions presen­ted the paper which set out an over­view of the Park Authority’s budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion at the end of Decem­ber — month 9 of the ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ fin­an­cial year.

2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) A board mem­ber ques­tioned if the sav­ings from staff vacan­cies and recruit­ment delays could be used to reward cur­rent staff. CEO noted that the Park Author­ity is still under budget restric­tions until the end of March, how­ever, is hope­ful to reor­gan­ise the staff and board gath­er­ing in the sum­mer, fol­low­ing the pre­vi­ous can­cel­la­tion. It was high­lighted that owing to the pay policy, there was no scope to reward staff in a fin­an­cial way. b) Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate ser­vices com­men­ted that the HR team are cur­rently work­ing on a pro­ject relat­ing to staff reward and recog­ni­tion and once fur­ther along in the pro­cess, this will be brought to the Resources Committee.

3. The Resources Com­mit­tee agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions to: a) Con­sider the budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅.

4. Action point arising i. Return to com­mit­tee the new policy on staff recog­ni­tion and reward once available.

Devel­op­ment of ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ budget (Paper 2)

1. Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions presen­ted the paper which sets out the cur­rent pos­i­tion of the Park Authority’s ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ fin­an­cial year budget devel­op­ment. It provides the Com­mit­tee with the oppor­tun­ity to con­sider the over­all budget pos­i­tion togeth­er with the impact of any key assump­tions made in estab­lish­ing budget estim­ates at this point in the ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ budget devel­op­ment process.

2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing comments:

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Draft Resources Com­mit­tee Minutes 24 Janu­ary 2025

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a) CEO high­lighted that the budget has changed pos­it­ively for the Park Author­ity, not­ing the budget from Trans­port Scot­land has been reapproved mean­ing the design fund­ing for Act­ive Travel will be able to pro­ceed. This leads to assess­ing the budget to con­sider in what areas funds could poten­tially be real­loc­ated. Cur­rently con­sid­er­ing the Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund, Peat­land resources and Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture Improve­ment. An update on the Nature Res­tor­a­tion fund will be avail­able at the end of Feb­ru­ary and will be brought to the Board in March. b) Dis­cus­sions were had around the poten­tial fund­ing from Nation­al Insur­ance Con­tri­bu­tions; how­ever, it was noted these are ongo­ing dis­cus­sions with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and UK Gov­ern­ment and if funds were to come from this area, it would not greatly impact the Park Author­ity. c) A Board Mem­ber ques­tioned if there was act­ive engage­ment with Loc­al Author­it­ies in rela­tion to the tour­ism levy. CEO con­firmed there was lots of con­sulta­tion with High­land Coun­cil as they are cur­rently the most advanced, not­ing this will come to the Form­al Board in March. d) A Board Mem­ber reques­ted an inform­al ses­sion for Board mem­bers to under­stand the budget pro­cess and risk mod­el­ling more fully. Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions agreed to hold­ing a train­ing ses­sion for board members.

1. The Resources Com­mit­tee agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) The Resources Com­mit­tee is invited to review the pos­i­tion achieved in devel­op­ment of the ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ fin­an­cial year budget and provide any feed­back to officers pri­or to the present­a­tion of the budget pro­pos­als to the full board in March 2025.

2. Action point arising i. Arrange for a budget mon­it­or­ing inform­a­tion ses­sion with board members.

Health and Safety Com­mit­tee minutes (Paper 4)

1. Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment presen­ted the paper and noted that this is a stand­ard item that comes to the Com­mit­tee to provide over­sight of the meet­ing and of Health and Safety mat­ters generally.

2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) A ques­tion was raised regard­ing the driv­ing at work train­ing and what was involved, ask­ing if skills such as chan­ging tyres were included. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment noted there was dif­fer­ent types of train­ing for

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Draft Resources Com­mit­tee Minutes 24 Janu­ary 2025

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dif­fer­ent roles. It was explained that chan­ging tyres was not included in train­ing as staff would fol­low pro­tocol and call ser­vices for assist­ance. b) A ques­tion was raised regard­ing the tick inform­a­tion being cir­cu­lated with staff sea­son­ally, not­ing that with chan­ging sea­sons and warm win­ters the tim­ing of cir­cu­la­tion of this guid­ance may need to vary. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment high­lighted that this inform­a­tion is avail­able and access­ible to all staff all year round on the intranet, how­ever a remind­er is shared in March. All new staff com­plete a form relat­ing to their role and if PPE is required and this is updated annu­ally for any addi­tion­al require­ments. c) A Board Mem­ber ques­tioned at what point of the recruit­ment pro­cess is the Driver and Vehicle Licens­ing Agency (DVLA) cer­ti­fic­ate reques­ted from can­did­ates. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment noted that the Park Author­ity do not carry out man­dat­ory health checks. The biggest risk staff under­take is driv­ing, there­fore an annu­al DVLA check is required, if a staff mem­ber had a con­di­tion, they would have to noti­fy the DVLA of this. This pro­cess starts after a can­did­ate has been appoin­ted as part of their onboard­ing pro­cess and will only be allowed to use a car if this has been provided.

1. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

2. Action point arising: None.

Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um minutes (Paper 5)

1. Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment, intro­duced this paper and noted that this is a stand­ard item that comes to the Com­mit­tee to provide over­sight of the meet­ing and of Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um mat­ters generally.

2. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments: a) Board Mem­bers praised the endo­met­ri­os­is policy being in place, not­ing how dif­fi­cult a con­di­tion it is. Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment com­men­ted that the policy was developed from the bot­tom up, com­ing from staff who have lived exper­i­ence with this con­di­tion. b) A ques­tion was raised regard­ing an action point relat­ing to cred­it uni­on, if this was reques­ted from staff and if this is a struc­ture to be looked at as a park-wide facil­ity. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices noted that this action was a staff sug­ges­tion but has not pro­gressed yet. How­ever, work will be car­ried out to identi­fy and engage with cred­it uni­ons to invest­ig­ate if this can be offered to

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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staff and park-wide. Board Mem­ber, Jack­ie Brier­ton offered sup­port to Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices to invest­ig­ate this as an option.

1. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

2. Action point arising ii. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Jack­ie Brier­ton to invest­ig­ate the pos­sib­il­ity of Cred­it Uni­ons for staff and park-wide.

Resources Com­mit­tee annu­al report (Paper 6)

1. Mari­aan Pita presen­ted the paper which presents the annu­al report of the Resources Com­mit­tees to mem­bers for com­ment pri­or to cir­cu­la­tion to the full board.

2. The Resources Com­mit­tee agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: a) Con­sider the draft annu­al report of the Resources Com­mit­tee. b) Agree any amend­ments to the draft pri­or to cir­cu­la­tion to the full board.

3. Action point arising: None.

AOCB

1. None.

Date of next meeting

1. The meet­ing ended at 10.18am

2. The next meet­ing will take place on 16 May 2025

Motion for con­fid­en­tial ses­sion to be set out will be to pro­tect con­fid­en­ti­al­ity of staff pay and con­di­tions pro­pos­als pri­or to forma negotiations.

Resources Com­mit­tee action points: Actions from today’s meet­ing: Paper 3 iii. Staff and Board Mem­ber train­ing on nav­ig­at­ing social media while adher­ing to the policy.

Cairngorms Draft Resources Com­mit­tee Minutes Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 24 Janu­ary 2025

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iv. Mon­it­or­ing officer from Moray Coun­cil to share their guid­ance on mis­use, shar­ing and copy rights of web­casts with Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices. V. Share FOI policy with Board mem­bers to high­light the work being done in this area.

Paper 1 i. Return to com­mit­tee the new policy on staff recog­ni­tion and reward once available.

Paper 2 i. Arrange for a budget mon­it­or­ing inform­a­tion ses­sion with board members.

Ses­sion has been arranged for 08 May. This has been offered to all inter­ested Board Members.

Paper 5 i. Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Jack­ie Brier­ton to Invest­ig­ate the pos­sib­il­ity of Cred­it Uni­ons for staff and park wide.