SEA post adoption report for NPPP 2022 to 2027

NPPP

Cairngorms NATION­AL PARK Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2022 — 2027 Stra­tegic Envir­on­ment­al Assessment Post-adop­tion Report August 2022

Intro­duc­tion This doc­u­ment is the Stra­tegic Envir­on­ment­al Assess­ment (SEA) post-adop­tion report for the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) 2022 — 2027, which was form­ally approved by Scot­tish Min­is­ters on 23 August 2022. Pri­or to this, the draft­ing and con­sulta­tion pro­cess for the NPPP occurred dur­ing 2020, 2021 and 2022. The envir­on­ment­al assess­ment pro­cess ran along­side and informed the pre­par­a­tion of the NPPP, with the Envir­on­ment­al Report pub­lished in June 2022.

Con­text — post-adop­tion report require­ments The Envir­on­ment­al Assess­ment (Scot­land) Act 2005 sets out six require­ments for SEAs post- adop­tion of plans at sec­tion 18(3). These can be sum­mar­ised and com­bined. This res­ults in a set of four mat­ters that this post-adop­tion report requires to address:

1. Tak­ing account of the envir­on­ment­al assess­ment: how the envir­on­ment­al con­sid­er­a­tions and find­ings of the assess­ment presen­ted in the Envir­on­ment­al Report have been taken into account in the plan or pro­gramme (in this case, the plan is the NPPP).

2. Tak­ing account of con­sulta­tion responses: how the opin­ions and res­ults of rel­ev­ant con­sulta­tions have been taken into account (in this case, the responses to the con­sulta­tions on the draft NPPP).

3. Con­sid­er­a­tion of altern­at­ives: the reas­ons for choos­ing the plan or pro­gramme as adop­ted, in the light of the oth­er reas­on­able altern­at­ives considered.

4. Mon­it­or­ing of envir­on­ment­al effects: the meas­ures that are to be taken to mon­it­or the sig­ni­fic­ant envir­on­ment­al effects of the imple­ment­a­tion of the plan or programme.

This report seeks to address these four questions.

Tak­ing account of the envir­on­ment­al assess­ment Envir­on­ment­al issues were con­sidered from the out­set and through­out the pre­par­a­tion of the NPPP, being an integ­ral part of the pre­par­a­tion pro­cess. The Envir­on­ment­al Assess­ment (and Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tions Apprais­al) have been used to inform the con­tents of the NPPP. Policies to tackle the effects of cli­mate change, safe­guard the land­scapes, nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age of the Nation­al Park, sup­port eco­nom­ic oppor­tun­it­ies and improve health and well­being of people are included with­in the NPPP.

Tak­ing account of con­sulta­tion responses Appendix VII of the Envir­on­ment­al Report sets out how the con­sulta­tion responses have been addressed in the Envir­on­ment­al Report.

Con­sid­er­a­tion of altern­at­ives Sec­tion Ib of the Envir­on­ment­al Report (page 3) sets out an assess­ment of the altern­at­ive of hav­ing an out of date NPPP.

In sum­mary, Hav­ing a NPPP is a leg­al require­ment under sec­tion 11 of the Nation­al Parks (Scot­land) Act 2000. This lim­its the options avail­able for con­sid­er­a­tion of altern­at­ives, as hav­ing no NPPP is not per­mit­ted. The altern­at­ive is not to update it and rely on the 2017 ver­sion. How­ever, this would not take account of envir­on­ment­al issues that may have changed in the inter­ven­ing 5 years. The draft NPPP was refined in early 2022 as a res­ult of con­sulta­tion feed­back. Unfeas­ible altern­at­ive solu­tions were ruled out dur­ing the draft­ing and refin­ing pro­cess, mean­ing that the solu­tions felt by part­ners to be most viable were put for­ward into the NPPP. It is there­fore neces­sary and prefer­able to update the NPPP, as has been done.

Mon­it­or­ing of envir­on­ment­al effects None of the policies or object­ives in the NPPP were pre­dicted to have neg­at­ive effects as a res­ult of imple­ment­a­tion of the NPPP. Two short term actions (relat­ing to peat­land res­tor­a­tion and caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion) and four long term tar­gets (relat­ing to rap­tor con­ser­va­tion, increased hab­it­at and spe­cies diversity on grouse moor­lands, peat­land and fresh­wa­ter res­tor­a­tion) were assessed as hav­ing the poten­tial to have pos­it­ive or uncer­tain envir­on­ment­al effects. The Envir­on­ment­al Report sets out mon­it­or­ing meas­ures in Annex V. Dir­ect and indir­ect mon­it­or­ing is pro­posed. This will be used to mon­it­or the state of the wider envir­on­ment, emer­ging or unex­pec­ted envir­on­ment­al issues. Rel­ev­ant meas­ures will imple­men­ted to address unex­pec­ted sig­ni­fic­ant envir­on­ment­al effects or issues where required.