Summary - Session 7 - Survey responses

Cairngorms 2030 Com­munit­ies Fund Pan­el Post Ses­sion 7 — Sur­vey Responses

Pan­el mem­bers were invited to share feed­back on the draft fund pro­cess blue­print via a short sur­vey. The sur­vey asked three ques­tions: what is work­ing well in the blue­print, what could be improved, and what we still need to get right to ensure com­munit­ies are genu­inely in con­trol of the fund.

This feed­back will inform the shape of Ses­sion 8, the final blue­print doc­u­ment, and the oper­a­tion­al plan to be cre­ated by the Park Authority.

The sur­vey and doc­u­ment were open to com­ment from 10 to 16 June.

7 out of 17 mem­bers of the pan­el respon­ded and oth­ers com­men­ted dir­ectly on the draft pro­cess blue­print doc­u­ment. This sum­mary draws on both.

Uned­ited and anonymised sur­vey responses are avail­able to view.

Sum­mary of your responses

Sur­vey What’s work­ing well What would you change Ensur­ing com­munit­ies are genu­inely in con­trol Com­ments on draft pro­cess blue­print Struc­ture and grant ranges Com­munity Equity, diversity and inclu­sion Assess­ment and eli­gib­il­ity Com­munity decision-mak­ing Report­ing Aware­ness and outreach

2 2 2 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 6 6

1

Sur­vey What’s work­ing well There is broad con­fid­ence in the over­all dir­ec­tion of the blue­print. Respond­ents poin­ted to the sim­pli­city and access­ib­il­ity of the applic­a­tion pro­cess as a par­tic­u­lar strength — the tiered approach, with ques­tions pro­por­tion­ate to grant size, was felt to work well for both exper­i­enced applic­ants and those new to fund­ing. The expli­cit sup­port avail­able to applic­ants was also high­lighted positively.

Sev­er­al respond­ents expressed con­fid­ence in the EDI approach, with one not­ing that keep­ing the 10% in reserve is the right mech­an­ism and that in prac­tice EDI applic­a­tions are likely to exceed the min­im­um threshold. The scor­ing sys­tem for pro­jects was noted as a strength by one respondent.

One respond­ent reflec­ted that the blue­print broadly reflects the major­ity view of the pan­el and that the fund has strong poten­tial as a case study in par­ti­cip­at­ory poli­cy­mak­ing. On the oth­er hand, one oth­er expressed con­cern that the blue­print feels like a col­lec­tion of ideas and called for a point-by-point vote.

What would you change Com­munity decision-mak­ing is the area where most respond­ents feel more work is needed. Sev­er­al noted that the logist­ics of the com­munity pan­el for medi­um and large grants remain vague and need to be fleshed out fur­ther before the Park Author­ity has enough to oper­a­tion­al­ise. There is no con­sensus yet on who should sit on the pan­el. One respond­ent sug­ges­ted that the cur­rent ses­sion group would make a fair and informed pan­el; oth­ers disagreed.

Scor­ing and weight­ing was flagged as unclear by more than one respond­ent. The mech­an­ics of how the points sys­tem works in prac­tice needs to be more explicit.

Grant ranges attrac­ted dif­fer­ing views. One respond­ent sug­ges­ted sig­ni­fic­antly high­er amounts (small up to £200k, medi­um £350k, large £450k). Anoth­er felt the pot sizes needed more thought about the prac­tic­al impact of dif­fer­ent amounts. The cur­rent ranges were not uni­ver­sally endorsed.

EDI was raised by two respond­ents. One felt 10% is suf­fi­cient and should not be revis­ited. Anoth­er would want a high­er min­im­um (15 – 20%) and felt EDI needs fur­ther discussion.

2

Match fund­ing and the profit ques­tion were not dir­ectly raised in sur­vey responses but are reflec­ted in dir­ect com­ments made on the doc­u­ment by one respondent.

Ensur­ing com­munit­ies are genu­inely in con­trol Respond­ents flagged a few things that we still need to get right.

Trans­par­ency. The fund’s decisions need to be vis­ible to the whole com­munity, not just those involved in the pro­cess. An inter­act­ive map show­ing where fund­ing is going was sug­ges­ted as one way to achieve this. Sev­er­al respond­ents emphas­ised that people need to be able to see that decisions are fair and not dir­ec­ted towards those with exist­ing rela­tion­ships with the Park Authority.

Com­munity involve­ment in decision-mak­ing. One respond­ent sug­ges­ted a con­sultat­ive com­munity voice — not a pub­lic vote, but a mech­an­ism for the wider com­munity to share views on applic­a­tions that the pan­el then takes into account. The prin­ciple that com­munit­ies should be rep­res­en­ted through­out, from design to decision-mak­ing, was echoed by more than one respondent.

Resolv­ing out­stand­ing issues. One respond­ent was clear that the group needs to work through every unre­solved point, reach a decision, and com­mit to it. Sev­er­al oth­ers noted that con­sensus still needs to be reached on key ele­ments, par­tic­u­larly pan­el com­pos­i­tion and com­munity decision-making.

Leg­acy and scale. One respond­ent noted the import­ance of think­ing bey­ond the two-year fund peri­od and the £1m budget, ask­ing what leg­acy this pro­cess leaves and wheth­er it could attract future donors or rep­lic­a­tion elsewhere.

3

Com­ments on draft pro­cess blue­print Struc­ture and grant ranges

• Broad sup­port for set­ting the medi­um grant upper lim­it at £50,000
• Con­cern that the doc­u­ment implies pre-alloc­ated pots per grant size. Some respond­ents recall agree­ing to keep alloc­a­tion flu­id, except for the EDI ring­fence (note: this is the inten­tion so we’ll address in next draft)
• Match fund­ing remains divided: one respond­ent insists on it for large grants; oth­ers sup­port it only where it unlocks a pro­ject that couldn’t oth­er­wise pro­ceed; one sug­gests a Cairngorms 2030 grant could itself act as match fund­ing for anoth­er grant
• Con­cern that one applic­ant could apply across all three grant sizes sim­ul­tan­eously, poten­tially access­ing 15.5% of the total fund
• A small grant could itself act as the match fund­ing that unlocks anoth­er grant, provided it clearly meets at least one Cairngorms 2030 goal and deliv­ers bene­fit to the Cairngorms community.

Com­munity

• The com­munity defin­i­tion word­ing needs tight­en­ing. One respond­ent sug­gests ​“as long as those groups reg­u­larly engage with the park” rather than ​“includ­ing those who reg­u­larly engage with the park”
• A ques­tion about wheth­er applic­ants need to meet all three bul­let points in the com­munity defin­i­tion, or just one
• “It” in the bene­fi­cial con­nec­tion word­ing should read ​“the Nation­al Park Com­munity” to avoid ambiguity.

Equity, diversity and inclusion

• Two respond­ents want to raise the min­im­um EDI threshold above 10%. Sug­ges­tions of 15% and 15 – 20% giv­en the expan­ded defin­i­tion used in the Cairngorms con­text (note: this view was sup­por­ted by a group of pan­el mem­bers that gathered to dis­cuss EDI at the end of Ses­sion 7)
• A con­cern that mon­it­or­ing EDI out­comes could be oner­ous, par­tic­u­larly for grants awar­ded late in the fund peri­od, where the PA may need to mon­it­or for up to 18 months after the fund closes
• A sug­ges­tion that EDI should have its own sep­ar­ate scor­ing track: with­in the ring­fence it is a must-do over­ride; out­side it, over­all com­munity bene­fit should take precedence
• EDI out­side the ring­fence should not be weighted more heav­ily than any oth­er criterion

4

• Prac­tic­al con­cern that almost every pro­ject could claim some EDI bene­fit, mak­ing mon­it­or­ing heavy-handed
• A ques­tion about wheth­er the 10% com­mit­ment refers to num­ber of grants or total money spent (note: it will be the total money spent, so a min­im­um of £100,000)

Assess­ment and eligibility

• Broad sup­port for the hard yes/​no cri­ter­ia as a gate­way before weighted scoring
• Sev­er­al ques­tions about how the points sys­tem works in prac­tice. The mech­an­ics need to be made expli­cit before the fund launches
• Sug­ges­tions for the scor­ing sys­tem include: a bin­ary score for EDI (0 or 1); extra points for pro­jects cov­er­ing mul­tiple themes; geo­graphy scored on a scale from 1 (lar­ger com­munit­ies) to 5 (highly dis­persed or very small communities)
• One respond­ent is nervous about minus scores and asks what basis would jus­ti­fy them
• A ques­tion about wheth­er the rolling small grants mod­el assumes a fixed num­ber of slots per pan­el meeting
• Con­cern that indi­vidu­als and inform­al groups apply­ing for large grants present risks that may be too high for the PA to man­age at the £50,000 to £100,000 level
• A ques­tion about wheth­er the com­munity defin­i­tion word­ing could admit groups with no mean­ing­ful con­nec­tion to the park, and wheth­er eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia are clear enough to pre­vent this
• The scor­ing sys­tem is iden­ti­fied as a pri­or­ity remain­ing task before the fund launches.

Com­munity decision-making

• Clear emer­ging con­sensus that the PA should make decisions on small grants using the panel’s agreed cri­ter­ia. This should be simple and time effi­cient, without requir­ing a com­munity pan­el for every round
• One respond­ent pro­poses a paired mod­el for small grants: one PA rep and one com­munity mem­ber review­ing applic­a­tions on a rolling basis
• One con­cern that PA staff decid­ing small grants would rep­lic­ate exist­ing prac­tice unless the cri­ter­ia and pro­cess are clearly community-designed
• One respond­ent noted that the cur­rent pan­el feels about right in size — much smal­ler and it could not reflect the park’s geo­graphy and EDI; much lar­ger and it would become unwieldy.

5

• Con­flict of interest needs to be addressed. How will the CNPA and pan­el handle situ­ations where pan­el mem­bers have a con­nec­tion to an applicant?
• On pan­el refresh: views dif­fer. Some sup­port keep­ing the same people for con­tinu­ity; oth­ers sug­gest the option to resign after one year; a par­tial refresh is pre­ferred over a full one to retain accu­mu­lated know­ledge. At least one cur­rent pan­el mem­ber should be retained to help any new pan­el under­stand the ori­gin­al intent
  • A sug­ges­tion that people who applied for the cur­rent pan­el but weren’t selec­ted could be a start­ing point for recruit­ing the next panel
  • One respond­ent sug­gests 50% new mem­bers as a tar­get for any pan­el refresh
  • Out­reach for pan­el recruit­ment should not act­ively tar­get exist­ing com­munity bod­ies, but if someone from a com­munity body is selec­ted through the open pro­cess, that is acceptable.
• On vot­ing: two respond­ents favour two-thirds major­ity in the absence of con­sensus; one sug­gests con­sensus as the ideal with two-thirds as the fallback
• Strong oppos­i­tion to a pub­lic vote. Con­cerns include pop­ular­ity con­test risk, geo­graph­ic­al bias, applic­ants mobil­ising sup­port­ers, and lack of suf­fi­cient pub­lic inform­a­tion to vote meaningfully
• Ques­tions about the pub­lic show­case format. Could applic­ants sub­mit video rather than attend in per­son, and if so how would pan­el ques­tions work?

Report­ing

• A con­cern about wheth­er the PA has the resource to mon­it­or large grant out­comes for up to 18 months after the fund peri­od closes
• A portal to sim­pli­fy record-keep­ing and report­ing for applic­ants and recip­i­ents is sug­ges­ted (note: also sup­por­ted in Ses­sion 7)
• One respond­ent notes that once a grant is awar­ded, fun­ded pro­jects should not be required to be pub­licly pro­moted or dis­trib­uted. The fund sets the guidelines and lets pro­jects progress.

Aware­ness and outreach

• Out­reach flagged as crit­ic­al to the suc­cess of both the fund and pan­el recruitment
• One respond­ent notes that many com­munit­ies with­in the Nation­al Park are poorly served by exist­ing com­munity bod­ies due to low dens­ity and

6

remote loc­a­tions. This has implic­a­tions for how the fund reaches people and how the pan­el is recruited

• One respond­ent notes they only heard about this pan­el through a com­munity con­tact, not dir­ect com­mu­nic­a­tion. That raises con­cern about who else in remote and rur­al com­munit­ies may have been missed.

7