Update on Equal­ity Out­comes – 2019

Intro­duc­tion

This report aims to demon­strate what the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (CNPA) has been doing to ensure that the deliv­ery of equal­ity is part of our daily work. It shows that the aims of the gen­er­al duty of the Equal­ity Act (2010) are being met as part of the nat­ur­al think­ing, plan­ning, and deliv­ery cycle. This report high­lights where main­stream­ing is well embed­ded, and where it is begin­ning to emerge.

[Image of a group of people walk­ing on a path.]

We have focused this sec­tion around Engage­ment and Par­ti­cip­a­tion; Cor­por­ate Func­tions and Pro­cesses; Ser­vice Pro­vi­sion; Lead­er­ship and Staff Aware­ness; and Recruitment.

Engage­ment and Participation

Board Mem­ber recruitment

In the last 2 years, there have been 3 rounds of board appointments: -

a) In 2017, there were 5 appoint­ments of elec­ted Coun­cil­lors appoin­ted by the rel­ev­ant loc­al author­it­ies; b) in 2018, there were 5 min­is­teri­al appoint­ments fol­low­ing a form­al recruit­ment pro­cess; c) in 2019, there were 5 dir­ectly elec­ted mem­bers fol­low­ing loc­al elections.

The CNPA developed a skills mat­rix, which iden­ti­fied key skills strengths of the exist­ing board mem­bers, and thereby iden­ti­fied skills that were under rep­res­en­ted. This was shared with the loc­al author­it­ies to help inform their decisions around appoint­ment of Coun­cil­lors to the board.

pg. I

The skills mat­rix was shared with the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Appoint­ments Com­mit­tee, respons­ible for recruit­ing and appoint­ing the min­is­teri­al appoint­ments. In addi­tion, we developed a video in which sev­er­al mem­bers, across a diversity of equal­it­ies char­ac­ter­ist­ics presen­ted their exper­i­ence of being a Board Mem­ber. This was a new engage­ment ini­ti­at­ive, and the res­ult was a marked increase in the num­ber of applicants.

For the loc­al elec­tions, the author­ity arranged a num­ber of pub­lic meet­ings in set­tle­ments across the Park. These were drop-in ses­sions, where mem­bers of the pub­lic could meet staff, and ask ques­tions and find out more about the Author­ity and the role of the board. In addi­tion, a video was developed and presen­ted by the Con­ven­or. The 2019 loc­al elec­tions saw more can­did­ates stand­ing for elec­tion than ever before in the his­tory of the Author­ity, with one ward being con­tested by 9 people. This year also saw more votes than ever before, indic­at­ing a not­able increase in res­id­ent engagement.

A high­light of this peri­od of report­ing on embed­ding the Cairngorms NPA’s equal­ity duties is that, as of March 2019, our Board and there­fore our stra­tegic lead­er­ship group, has achieved the ​“50:50 by 2020” gender equal­ity tar­get. The CNPA Board com­prises 19 mem­bers. The cur­rent gender break­down is 10 female mem­bers and 9 male mem­bers. The full board has a male con­ven­or, aged 25 years old, and a female vice-convenor.

There are 4 Board committees: -

a) Plan­ning com­mit­tee with a female chair and a male vice-chair; b) Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee with a male chair and a male vice-chair c) Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee with a female chair. The vice-chair role is vacant. d) Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee, with a female chair and a male vice-chair.

Inclus­ive Cairngorms

Key to main­stream­ing at CNPA has been the Inclus­ive Cairngorms For­um, which is an advis­ory group that pro­motes equal­ity and inclu­sion to help cre­ate a Park for All.

Mem­ber­ship of the group is open to a wide range of interests cov­er­ing the equal­ity strands and the wider social inclu­sion agenda of the CNPA. Most equal­ity and inclu­sion interests are rep­res­en­ted, and there are cur­rently over 70 mem­bers from a wide range of vol­un­tary, pub­lic and private and char­it­able organ­isa­tions with­in and out­with the Park.

The pur­pose of Inclus­ive Cairngorms is:

a) To pro­mote social inclu­sion in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park to help cre­ate a Park for All; b) To ensure the involve­ment of all groups in the pro­mo­tion of the four aims of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.

This is achieved by:

a) Provid­ing a voice and an ear for socially excluded people from both with­in and out­with the Cairngorms Nation­al Park; b) Provid­ing inform­a­tion and advice to the CNPA and oth­er organ­isa­tions on social inclu­sion and equal­it­ies issues and policy devel­op­ment through the CNPA’s Equal­ity Duties and Equal­ity Impact Assess­ments; c) Ensur­ing inclu­sion and equal­it­ies issues are kept alive, and on the act­ive agen­das of the CNPA and oth­er organ­isa­tions, and lob­by­ing where neces­sary; and d) Shar­ing inform­a­tion and spread­ing best prac­tice on ways to pro­mote equal­ity and inclusion.

pg. 2

Schools and Young People

CNPA act­ively works with schools and young people both with­in and out­with the Nation­al Park. Our engage­ment with young people has included the following:

[Image of a group of people look­ing at items dis­played on a table.]

a) In ²⁰¹⁷⁄₁₈ CNPA awar­ded Out­door Learn­ing Travel Grants to 29 schools and 17 under-rep­res­en­ted groups, bene­fit­ting 903 people. In ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉, 49 grants were awar­ded to schools and 6 to under-rep­res­en­ted groups bene­fit­ting 873 people. This grant is a sub­sidy to sup­port people both with­in and out­with the Nation­al Park. Over half of applic­ants would not have been able to vis­it without the grant.

b) In Octo­ber 2018, CNPA hos­ted ​“Women in Wel­lies”, which was a one-day event to inspire young women to choose rur­al careers. The event was a huge suc­cess with 170 attendees. Chil­dren from 5 loc­al high schools atten­ded, and the event was also pro­moted to stu­dents through the Uni­ver­sity of the High­lands and Islands (UHI). The event was free and CNPA covered trans­port costs for the school groups. Social media engage­ment around the event reached an estim­ated 53,730 online users. The event included female speak­ers from across the land based sec­tor, includ­ing farm­ers, game­keep­ers, moun­tain­eers, and for­est­ers. Fol­low­ing the form­al morn­ing present­a­tions, stu­dents had the oppor­tun­ity in the after­noon to get involved in inter­act­ive work­shops focus­sing on farm­ing and croft­ing; forestry, con­ser­va­tion and field eco­logy; veter­in­ary, equine and aca­demia; game keep­ing, stalk­ing and fish­er­ies; guid­ing, recre­ation and rangers. The event was eval­u­ated via an online feed­back form (sur­vey­mon­key). Of the 10% who com­pleted it, 56% were aged 13 – 16; 6% aged 20- 26; 11% aged 26 – 30; 11% aged 31 – 45; 17% aged 46+.

c) CNPA is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing young people into employ­ment, and to this end form­ally adop­ted a Youth Employ­ment Strategy in Octo­ber 2017. Through this strategy, the Author­ity has sup­por­ted the following:

a. A young person was employed in 2018 on a 2-year Apprenticeship contract. During this time, the young person will gain an SVQ in IT whilst training and working "on-the-job" at the Authority.
b. In 2018, we hosted 2 short-term internships, to support work on the Gaelic Language Plan; and work within the digital media team. We've also supported another young graduate on a 12-month internship, supporting the finance team. We have recruited another intern in 2019, to complete a short-term project mapping hill-tracks.

pg. 3

C. Over the last 2 years we have sup­por­ted sev­er­al uni­ver­sity stu­dents with work shad­ow­ing oppor­tun­it­ies. The aim of these oppor­tun­it­ies is two-fold firstly to give them a feel for the type of work the Author­ity car­ries out, and appro­pri­ate career paths for this work; and secondly to sup­port man­dat­ory work exper­i­ence required to gain their qual­i­fic­a­tions. For 2019, CNPA has developed a part­ner­ship with UHI and has com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing two stu­dents with work shad­ow­ing oppor­tun­it­ies this year. We have also com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing UHI’s ment­or­ship pro­gramme, with sev­er­al seni­or man­agers provid­ing their ser­vices as ment­ors. d. CNPA HR Staff have engaged in Employ­ab­il­ity events with sev­er­al of the loc­al sec­ond­ary schools annu­ally, deliv­er­ing work­shops on job applications/CV’s, inter­view skills and ​“the career jour­ney” e. CNPA has sup­por­ted 3 young people through Pro­ject Scot­land, which is a 13 week volun­teer place­ment aimed at young people aged 16 – 30 who for a vari­ety of reas­ons may exper­i­ence bar­ri­ers to employ­ment due for example to dis­ad­vant­aged back­grounds, men­tal or phys­ic­al health issues etc. The pro­ject provides them with exper­i­ence in the work­place, and helps devel­op con­fid­ence, social net­works, new skills, routine/​structure etc.

d) Fol­low­ing a joint, LEAD­ER fun­ded, part­ner­ship pro­ject between Cairngorms LEAD­ER Loc­al Action Group (LAG), CNPA, Finnish LAGs and the EURO­PARC Fed­er­a­tion, the ​“EURO­PARC Youth Mani­festo” was launched at the EURO­PARC 2018 Con­fer­ence in Aviemore where some 600 intern­al del­eg­ates heard a call to action for young people in and around pro­tec­ted areas. The EURO­PARC Youth Mani­festo Pro­ject has been very suc­cess­ful in enga­ging young people and inspir­ing the interest of pro­tec­ted area man­agers. The involve­ment of young people at the EURO­PARC 2018 Con­fer­ence con­sid­er­ably raised the aware­ness of the need to include young people in the future plan­ning and decision mak­ing of pro­tec­ted areas and rur­al com­munit­ies. This EURO­PARC Con­fer­ence, hos­ted by CNPA, tar­geted young del­eg­ates for the first time in the his­tory of the con­fer­ence through offer­ing sig­ni­fic­antly dis­coun­ted con­fer­ence rates for people up to 30 years of age and tar­geted con­fer­ence content.

e) Fol­low­ing the Euro­parc Con­fer­ence we are sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of a Youth Coun­cil, which is a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion of the Youth Mani­festo Pro­ject being the CNPA’s response to the call for action. The main aims of the pro­ject are to

a. Develop procedures and protocols for recruitment and management of a youth council.
b. Establish what areas of work the youth council will be involved with, for example; consultations, grant management for youth projects, and providing a youth voice and presence for CNPA.
c. Develop an appropriate model for interaction with the CNPA Board, its procedures and business.

This work is being developed by young people in 2019 with sup­port from part­ners in Fin­land and Euro­parc and will be presen­ted to CNPA Board in Septem­ber 2019.

f) The out­door learn­ing pro­ject has com­pleted with some edu­ca­tion author­it­ies now util­ising out­door learn­ing with­in their main­stream cur­riculum. The focus now is on devel­op­ing capa­city with­in schools and to this end, CNPA has dir­ectly sup­por­ted three teach­ers at three loc­al schools to com­plete a GTC (Gen­er­al Teach­ing Council)

pg. 4

accred­ited Teach­ing in Nature course to encour­age them to deliv­er more out­door learn­ing. The annu­al Cairngorms Nature Schools Art Com­pet­i­tion and Young Presenter com­pet­i­tion encour­ages chil­dren to get involved in nature. Both ini­ti­at­ives have been act­ively sup­por­ted by a large num­ber of young people, based both loc­ally and nationally.

g) The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Juni­or Ranger Pro­ject is a scheme open to 11 – 18 year olds. Its pur­pose is to cre­ate young ambas­sad­ors for the nation­al park through a mixed pro­gramme of con­ser­va­tion, adven­ture and learn­ing activ­it­ies delivered by the Cairngorms Ranger Ser­vices. In 2017, 70 Juni­or Rangers gradu­ated and in 2018 there were 66. This builds on the 361 young people sup­por­ted since the pro­ject began in 2009.

h) The John Muir Award is a nation­al envir­on­ment­al aware­ness scheme focussed on wild places that is open to all regard­less of abil­ity, back­ground or cir­cum­stances. The award is used pre­dom­in­antly by primary and sec­ond­ary schools and youth groups, but we have also engaged with adult groups, inclu­sion groups includ­ing men­tal health, drink and drug rehab­il­it­a­tion and Black and Minor­ity Eth­nic (BME) groups. In 2017, there were 3,581 awards, 612 (17%) of which were to people from socially excluded back­grounds. In 2018 awards totalled 3,257 with 800 from socially excluded back­grounds (25%).

Com­munity Lead­er­ship Project

CNPA co-funds Backbone’s 3 year Com­munity Lead­er­ship Pro­ject (2105−18) which has involved:

a) Train­ing 14 group lead­ers from BME and mar­gin­al­ised com­munit­ies in out­doors and lead­er­ship qual­i­fic­a­tions; b) The train­ees devel­op­ing 20 self-sus­tain­ing envir­on­ment­al pro­jects in their own com­munit­ies; c) Wider com­munity engage­ment (over 2,500 people) in activ­it­ies, volun­teer­ing and vis­its to Nation­al Parks and NNRs; and d) Plan­ning an Out­door Fest­iv­al for All in CNP in Sept 2017.

Com­munity Engagement

[Image of a group of people look­ing at a display.]

pg. 5

a) Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject: — The Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject is explor­ing ways to enable more people to get involved in caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion. The pro­ject is there­fore keen to listen to as many people as pos­sible who live, work and play in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park; cur­rent listen­ing activ­it­ies include drop-in ses­sions with the Com­munity Ranger, vis­it­ing people at home and pub­lic events. Based on the thoughts and ideas received through these activ­it­ies the pro­ject is begin­ning to devel­op and pilot prac­tic­al ideas for involving more people and a wider range of people in caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion. Cur­rently this includes deliv­er­ing a pro­gramme of volun­teer­ing activ­it­ies in Car­rbridge. All volun­teers com­plete a regis­tra­tion form in advance enabling the pro­ject to assess diversity and this inform­a­tion is then being used to inform pro­ject plan­ning. In the future people attend­ing pub­lic engage­ment events related to the pro­ject will be asked to com­plete a LEAD­ER Par­ti­cipant Form which will also enable us to assess audi­ence diversity; again this will inform pro­ject plan­ning. Interest in the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject via social media has grown over the last 3 months using #Cairngorm­s­Ca­per­cail­lie. At this time we can­not say for cer­tain wheth­er this is attract­ing new audi­ences to con­ver­sa­tions about caper­cail­lie and the pro­ject, but we’re mon­it­or­ing social media activ­ity with this out­come in mind.

b) Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (LDP) 2020: — In Janu­ary this year, we com­menced the pro­cess of engage­ment towards con­sult­ing and devel­op­ing the next LDP 2020, which is one of our stat­utory duties. One of our aims with this year’s engage­ment was to engage with a much wider and more diverse audi­ence, and to this end, we launched a pro­act­ive social media cam­paign. This cam­paign ran from Janu­ary to March 2019, and involved Twit­ter, Ins­tagram and Face­book posts. We pos­ted 30 dif­fer­ent and inter­act­ive videos dur­ing this time, as well as 3D maps and info-grams. Whilst the form­al ana­lys­is of this cam­paign is cur­rently under­way, we are aware that the videos have been viewed over 30,000 times, and our ini­tial assess­ment is that the cam­paign has made thou­sands more people aware of the LDP, and has attrac­ted aware­ness from a com­pletely dif­fer­ent demo­graph­ic of people than pre­vi­ously. In addi­tion to the social media cam­paign, we ran 7 pub­lic meet­ings in set­tle­ments across the Nation­al Park. Approx­im­ately 250 atten­ded these events. Aware­ness of the con­sulta­tion and the call for responses were also made through more tra­di­tion­al media, like advert­ise­ments in the loc­al press, posters and through the com­munity coun­cils. All respond­ents were asked to com­plete an equal­it­ies sur­vey, cov­er­ing all the equal­it­ies char­ac­ter­ist­ics. This sur­vey is cur­rently being ana­lysed, but we expect the res­ults to show a slightly more diverse demo­graph­ic of respond­ents than previously.

c) We act­ively use the Nation­al Stand­ards for Com­munity Engage­ment and pro­mote best practice.

d) CNPA sup­ports the Asso­ci­ation of Cairngorms Com­munit­ies, sev­er­al com­munity devel­op­ment organ­isa­tions (includ­ing Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey and the Marr Area Part­ner­ship) and facil­it­ate a net­work of com­munity devel­op­ment officers.

e) We par­ti­cip­ate in the rel­ev­ant Com­munity Part­ner­ships as part of the Com­munity Plan­ning process.

pg. 6

f) We encour­age each com­munity to pre­pare a Com­munity Action Plan in order to pro­act­ively plan what their pri­or­it­ies are over a five year peri­od, and we work with them to improve their capa­city, so that CNPA and oth­er organ­isa­tions can assist in delivery.

Staff Engage­ment

The equal­ity con­sid­er­a­tions of staff are iden­ti­fied and delivered through a num­ber of means:

a) Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um, which com­prises 5 staff rep­res­ent­at­ives (includ­ing a rep­res­ent­at­ive from the Pro­spect Uni­on, with which CNPA has a vol­un­tary recog­ni­tion agree­ment), ​“man­age­ment” rep­res­ent­at­ives, and 2 Board Mem­ber ​“employ­er” rep­res­ent­at­ives. The terms of ref­er­ence also require that there is a gender bal­ance of mem­ber­ship. The SCF meets quarterly to under­take pro­vi­sion of inform­a­tion, con­sulta­tion and nego­ti­ation. Equal­ity is a stand­ing item on meet­ing agen­das, and staff can use this as one of sev­er­al routes to form­ally raise via their staff rep­res­ent­at­ives any equal­it­ies issues.

b) Staff apprais­als, which involve monthly ​“Per­form­ance Devel­op­ment Con­ver­sa­tions”, and provide staff with the oppor­tun­ity to raise equal­it­ies issues with their line managers.

c) CNPA invites staff to par­ti­cip­ate in an annu­al Equal­ity Mon­it­or­ing sur­vey, which is an anonym­ous sur­vey, and attracts a very good response rate (89.4% in 2017; 81% in 2018 and 77% in 2019). Ana­lys­is of this data led to the devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of a Carer’s Policy, in recog­ni­tion of the num­ber of staff who iden­ti­fied as carers. Full res­ults of this sur­vey are con­tained in Appendix 2.

d) CNPA con­ducts a Best Com­pan­ies staff engage­ment sur­vey every two years, most recently com­pleted by staff in Septem­ber 2017, which assesses staff engage­ment across 8 factors – My Man­ager, Lead­er­ship, My Com­pany, Per­son­al Growth, My Team, Fair Deal, Well Being, Giv­ing Some­thing Back. The ana­lys­is of sur­vey res­ults informs the emer­ging and evolving Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy for the next 18 months. Well Being has con­sist­ently been iden­ti­fied as a ​“shad­ow” area and as a res­ult a num­ber of inter­ven­tions have been imple­men­ted to address staff well-being, includ­ing NHS Health Checks; a Wall of Well-being which focuses on monthly themes (like stress aware­ness, bene­fits of exer­cise; healthy recipes); sup­port and pro­mo­tion of stand­ing meet­ings; access to fit­ness and yoga classes etc. The sur­vey res­ults also high­lighted lim­ited oppor­tun­it­ies for pro­mo­tion and per­son­al growth. As a res­ult, we revised our Learn­ing and Devel­op­ment Policy to sup­port staff get­ting time away from the office to engage in volun­teer­ing oppor­tun­it­ies in the Park. To date, this ini­ti­at­ive has res­ul­ted in staff enga­ging in activ­it­ies to help com­munit­ies affected by flood­ing; envir­on­ment­al activ­it­ies like plant­ing trees and clear­ing drains; involve­ment as board mem­bers on com­munity enter­prises and char­it­able trusts

e) CNPA has developed a Men­o­pause Sup­port Group, recog­nising that a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of the work­force are women in the 45+ age group. This has been an extremely effect­ive net­work­ing for­um, where staff affected by men­o­pause can share exper­i­ences, rem­ed­ies, med­ic­al advice etc. Fol­low­ing the suc­cess of this for­um, we developed and have just adop­ted a ​“Sup­port­ing Staff through Men­o­pause” Policy.

pg. 7

f) We recently (Janu­ary 2019) developed a young employ­ees sup­port group – the ​“Youth Gang”. The idea behind get­ting young people (18 – 34) togeth­er is that staff from dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions work in dif­fer­ent ways and we are keen that the skills and input that young employ­ees have is made the most of through­out the organ­isa­tion. It’s to give them a col­lect­ive voice to be able to address par­tic­u­lar areas where they think the organ­isa­tion could be chan­ging and devel­op­ing where the young people might not have the con­fid­ence or abil­ity to speak up individually.

Non Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Body (NDPB) Equal­ity Forum

We have been par­ti­cip­at­ing in the NDPB Equal­ity For­um since 2009. This spe­cial­ist group, which meets quarterly, enables the trans­fer of best prac­tice and know­ledge across the pub­lic sec­tor. In addi­tion, it has been engaged with a wide range of stake­hold­ers (e.g. Enable Scot­land; RNIB; Scot­tish Dis­ab­il­ity For­um), and has provided inform­a­tion and sup­port to mem­ber organ­isa­tions across a vari­ety of top­ics, includ­ing approaches to engagement/​consultation of ser­vice users and employ­ees; gen­er­al and spe­cif­ic duties; chal­lenges and bene­fits of main­stream­ing; gender pay gaps etc.

First Min­is­ters Advis­ory Coun­cil on Women and Girls

CNPA has been a Circle Mem­ber of the First Minister’s Advis­ory Coun­cil on Women and Girls since its incep­tion in 2018. The agenda of this Coun­cil is to ensure that ​“Gender Inequal­ity becomes a His­tor­ic­al Curi­os­ity”. CNPA has pub­licly pledged its com­mit­ment to this agenda.

High­lands and Islands Equal­ity and Diversity Partnership

We are part of the inform­al part­ner­ship com­pris­ing the Equal­ity Leads for pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tion in the High­lands and Islands. This act­ive part­ner­ship shares good prac­tice, and pro­motes equal­it­ies events and oppor­tun­it­ies for engage­ment with equal­it­ies groups.

Cor­por­ate Func­tions and Processes

Equal­ity Impact Assessments

a) Using Equal­ity impact assess­ment (EqIA) remains our prin­ciple way in identi­fy­ing any poten­tial for impact or det­ri­ment to minor­ity groups. EQI­As are under­taken on new pro­jects and activ­it­ies. Some recent assess­ments are avail­able on our web­site at www​.cairngorms​.co​.uk.

b) All line man­agers and pro­ject staff were trained on Equal­ity Impacts Assess­ments (April 2017) – which included the role and bene­fits of EQI­As in an effi­cient and inclus­ive organ­isa­tion, how to go about doing them, case studies.

Pro­ject Plan­ning and Development

We have recently revised our Pro­ject Man­age­ment pro­cesses, and have brought the vari­ous doc­u­ments and pro­ced­ures into one, over­arch­ing excel doc­u­ment, which includes a num­ber of tabs to focus think­ing and nar­rat­ive. This pro­cess requires pro­ject man­agers to cap­ture equal­it­ies in pro­ject plan­ning and devel­op­ment processes.

Grant Fund­ing

We pro­mote equal­it­ies through our grants pro­gramme and part­ner­ship fund­ing to third parties:

pg. 8

a) CNPA provides grant fund­ing to 9 out of 12 ranger ser­vices oper­at­ing across the Park. A require­ment of their fund­ing is to pre­pare and review an Equal­ity and Diversity state­ment, set­ting out how they are pro­mot­ing equal­ity through their service.

b) Fund­ing is also gran­ted to third parties for pro­jects where CNPA is not neces­sar­ily the lead part­ner. We have incor­por­ated equal­ity con­sid­er­a­tions into the stand­ard terms and con­di­tions of let­ters of offer.

c) The LEAD­ER 2014 – 2020 grant fund­ing pro­gramme, delivered through the Cairngorms Loc­al Action Group, (CLAG) launched in Septem­ber 2015. The devel­op­ment stage deliv­ery actions included a full Equal­it­ies Impact Assess­ment of the LEAD­ER Loc­al Devel­op­ment Strategy, the devel­op­ment of an Equal­it­ies State­ment for the CLAG, and equal­it­ies train­ing for CLAG members.

d) The CLAG have an iden­ti­fied equal­it­ies ​“cham­pi­on”, whose role is to keep the Loc­al Action Group up to date on equal­it­ies mat­ters, and also to have over­sight of equal­it­ies mat­ters with regards the scor­ing of applications.

e) Equal­ity is embed­ded in LEAD­ER fund­ing awards as a cross-cut­ting theme used in assess­ing the mer­its of all pro­ject pro­pos­als for LEAD­ER grant fund­ing. All pro­jects must demon­strate con­sid­er­a­tion and deliv­ery of equal­it­ies out­comes and are scored using the fol­low­ing cri­ter­ia: Extent to which the pro­ject has con­sidered and can demon­strate a pos­it­ive impact for groups iden­ti­fied as vul­ner­able to exclu­sion or hard to reach in the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Strategy (and its Equal­ity Impact Assess­ment) — (e.g. young people, eld­erly and dis­abled, busi­ness com­munity, carers often women, com­munit­ies which have had little engage­ment with Com­munity led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD), people on low wages, eth­nic minor­ity groups).

f) The CLAG have iden­ti­fied a num­ber of ​“hard to reach” groups (see above scor­ing cri­ter­ia) and pro­act­ively tar­gets these groups through deliv­ery of LEAD­ER fund­ing. Mon­it­or­ing and Eval­u­ation cri­ter­ia advises the CLAG if any tar­get groups are not being engaged, which in turn informs any fur­ther CLAG com­mis­sioned activ­ity to tar­get these groups.

g) The CLAG has form­ally incor­por­ated as a registered char­ity, with a range of pub­lic bene­fits set out in its constitution.

Cor­por­ate Communications

Com­mu­nic­a­tions pro­cesses are key to ensur­ing CNPA’s ser­vices are access­ible to the pub­lic. Pro­mot­ing equal­ity is achieved through:

a) Pub­lic­a­tions – using and pro­mot­ing best prac­tice in access­ible design; provid­ing altern­at­ive formats on request. All cor­por­ate pub­lic­a­tions are avail­able in large print and fol­low plain Eng­lish principles.

b) A new web­site was launched in 2015, which was designed to make inform­a­tion on the site view­able on as many plat­forms and by as many people as possible.

c) All CNPA pub­lic­a­tions have been made more search­able on the website.

pg. 9

d) All pub­lic meet­ings are held in access­ible loc­a­tions and meet­ing notices offer sup­port for spe­cial needs such as hear­ing loops on request.

e) Our com­mu­nic­a­tions cam­paign events such as the Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end in May and the Wee Walks Week in Septem­ber have spe­cial­ist inclu­sion events. We also host Parks for All which invites eth­nic minor­ity groups to enjoy the Park.

Pro­cure­ment and Expenditure

We have sought to pro­mote equal­it­ies through pro­cure­ment by includ­ing a require­ment for poten­tial con­tract­ors and ser­vice pro­viders to evid­ence their own approach to embed­ding equal­it­ies as an ele­ment of assessed qual­ity of pro­vi­sion in tender assess­ment. Clear evid­ence of appro­pri­ate approaches by extern­al organ­isa­tions to equal­it­ies mat­ters will there­fore give an advant­age to con­tract­ors in bid­ding for busi­ness with the Authority.

The Author­ity has adop­ted a new Sus­tain­able Pro­cure­ment Strategy dur­ing this report­ing peri­od. This adopts key equal­it­ies out­comes around embed­ding the con­sid­er­a­tion of equal­it­ies as a qual­ity score in pro­cure­ment assess­ments. The Strategy also pos­it­ively encour­ages the use of sup­por­ted busi­nesses where pos­sible, hence sus­tain­ing a key eco­nom­ic sec­tor for the employ­ment of people with dis­ab­il­it­ies. This is aug­men­ted by sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of pack­ages of pro­cure­ment more suited to bid­ding by Small and Medi­um sized enter­prises (SMEs), in turn seek­ing to devel­op more busi­ness start-up and growth loc­ally, with the poten­tial for a wider demo­graph­ic of busi­ness own­ers and sup­pli­ers to the Author­ity as a pub­lic body and key eco­nom­ic entity in our rur­al region.

Expendit­ure com­mit­ment pro­cesses also require budget hold­ers to eval­u­ate equal­it­ies impacts and con­sid­er­a­tions as a second ele­ment of embed­ding equal­ity out­comes con­sid­er­a­tions in our eco­nom­ic activ­it­ies. Con­sid­er­a­tion of equal­it­ies out­comes has there­fore become fully embed­ded in all of our eco­nom­ic processes.

Ser­vice Provision

The Stat­utory func­tions we deliv­er are Plan­ning and Out­door Access.

Plan­ning Service

We take a pro­act­ive approach to improv­ing our Plan­ning Ser­vice, bench­mark­ing against oth­er plan­ning author­it­ies, pre­par­ing an annu­al report for our Plan­ning Com­mit­tee and Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and set­ting annu­al improve­ment pri­or­it­ies. As part of that pro­cess we put in place meas­ures to ensure the sys­tem is easy to use and equit­able, for example:

a) A Plan­ning Ser­vice Charter has been pre­pared, set­ting out cus­tom­er ser­vice stand­ards includ­ing com­mit­ments to be open and enga­ging. b) We have plan­ning policies in place to guide devel­op­ment and land use in a way that addresses iden­ti­fied equal­it­ies issues, for example access to afford­able hous­ing. c) A pro­tocol has been estab­lished where Inclus­ive Cairngorms are con­sul­ted on sig­ni­fic­ant plan­ning applic­a­tions, e.g. pub­lic facil­it­ies, green space, large scale devel­op­ments. d) An online ​“E‑planning” pro­cess for plan­ning applic­a­tions has been imple­men­ted to encour­age wider par­ti­cip­a­tion in planning.

pg. 10

e) We have estab­lished the Com­munity Plan­ning Rep­res­ent­at­ives Net­work which brings togeth­er Com­munity Coun­cils and Asso­ci­ations to improve how they can feed into the pro­cess bet­ter and learn from each other.

Out­door Access

[Image of two cyc­lists on a path through a field.]

As the des­ig­nated Access Author­ity under the Land Reform Scot­land Act (2003), CNPA man­ages and pro­motes respons­ible out­door access in the Park. A key role in access is the devel­op­ment of core paths in the Park. Here equal­ity is pro­moted through:

a) The prin­ciple of paths being as bar­ri­er-free as pos­sible and designed to cur­rent all- abil­ity stand­ards wherever pos­sible; b) Asso­ci­ated paths leaf­lets and sig­nage adhere to best prac­tice in access­ible design; c) Core paths plans are con­sul­ted on widely (using best prac­tice in com­munity engage­ment); d) Loc­al Out­door Access For­um (LOAF) meet­ings are held in access­ible ven­ues; and e) LOAF mem­ber­ship rep­res­ents wider inclusion/​accessibility interests.

In 2016, the Spey­side Way was exten­ded to Ard­geal – west of Kin­craig with fur­ther work to Drumguish com­pleted in March 2019. Plan­ning con­sent and fund­ing is now in place to com­plete the route to New­ton­more by end of 2019. Work is also ongo­ing to upgrade the exist­ing route, most recently with improve­ments to the much used sec­tion between Aviemore and Boat of Garten.

A feas­ib­il­ity study to extend the Deeside Way from Bal­later to Brae­mar has been com­pleted and a plan­ning applic­a­tion approved to con­struct the first sec­tion from Inver­cauld Bridge to Brae­mar. The next stage is to obtain fund­ing for this work.

CNPA, High­land Coun­cil and three Com­munity Coun­cils have objec­ted to A9 Dualling pro­pos­als between Aviemore and Car­rbridge because the upgrade omits a mul­ti­use path link­ing the com­munit­ies. CNPA is now work­ing with Trans­port Scot­land to look at the first stage feas­ib­il­ity for such a route. This sig­ni­fic­ant step by the Author­ity is a staff resource intens­ive invest­ment in seek­ing to secure all abil­it­ies access between com­munit­ies as part of a key trans­port cor­ridor devel­op­ment, and clearly demon­strates the Authority’s full com­mit­ment to achiev­ing the best pos­sible equal­it­ies out­comes through our joint and part­ner­ship work­ing as well as through our own dir­ect delivery.

pg. 11

Dul­nain Bridge and Kin­gussie com­munit­ies have received Sus­trans act­ive travel grants to under­take feas­ib­il­ity stud­ies on improv­ing act­ive travel infra­struc­ture with CNPA sup­port­ing this work.

Easy read Com­munity path leaf­lets have been developed for all com­munit­ies in the Nation­al Park. Reprints are updated to include the new Scot­tish Path Grad­ing Sys­tem so that users have more and con­sist­ent inform­a­tion about routes. These leaf­lets are free to down­load from the CNPA web­site and can be prin­ted in lar­ger formats. Work in 2019 will make this leaf­lets and maps access­ible on mobile phone.

Our devel­op­ment and deliv­ery of easy to access and free inform­a­tion on access is aimed at pro­mot­ing great­er use and enjoy­ment of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park by minor­ity and eco­nom­ic­ally dis­ad­vant­aged groups, address­ing a long-held CNPA equal­it­ies outcome.

A new ​“paths with easy access” guide has been pro­duced for the Badenoch and Strath­spey area, with sup­port from Inclus­ive Cairngorms and the Badenoch and Strath­spey Access Pan­el. These leaf­lets are primar­ily aimed at less able bod­ied users and those return­ing to walk­ing after peri­ods of inactiv­ity. These leaf­lets are being dis­trib­uted via GP med­ic­al prac­tices and Vis­it­or Inform­a­tion Centres.

[Image of a group of people walk­ing on a path.]

Health walks sup­port has been split so that CNPA sup­port the 16 groups with­in the Nation­al Park and Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil those in their area. Wee Walks Week was held in Septem­ber 2017 & 18, which was developed to cel­eb­rate short loc­al walks and encour­age great­er uptake.

CNPA Access Staff con­tin­ue to advise and pro­mote nation­ally accred­ited design guid­ance to path build­ers and developers.

Gath­er­ing Evidence

Gath­er­ing evid­ence of ser­vice helps us to make our ser­vices more access­ible to ser­vice users. Equal­ity inform­a­tion is gathered through:

a) The LEAD­ER grants pro­gramme. The equal­it­ies data gathered is used to mon­it­or pro­gramme deliv­ery. b) A Vis­it­or sur­vey was con­duc­ted in 2015 which cap­tured data across a range of pro­tec­ted char­ac­ter­ist­ics. The inform­a­tion gathered has informed the Equal­ity Out­comes. The next sur­vey starts in May 2019 with first half data being avail­able in Dec 2019 with full info. availed in sum­mer 2020 to allow out­comes to be revis­ited. c) The Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al, which is run annu­ally. Data helps identi­fy which groups are being missed so that future pro­mo­tion can tar­get those groups, e.g. it was noted that the 2016 Fest­iv­al attrac­ted only 4% eth­nic minor­ity par­ti­cipants. As such,

pg. 12

the 2017 Nature Fest­iv­al was pro­moted via Back­bone to encour­age eth­nic minor­ity groups to attend.

d) Events, such as the Out­door Fest­iv­al for All, held in in Septem­ber 2017, involving over 200 people from dis­ad­vant­aged and minor­ity com­munit­ies across Scot­land. This iden­ti­fied the ori­gin of attendees and what bar­ri­ers and needs they exper­i­ence in access­ing and find­ing out about the Nation­al Park, so that our resources can be more tar­geted in future.

Des­pite hav­ing many pro­cesses for gath­er­ing ser­vice user data, we recog­nise that to date, equal­it­ies is not effect­ively mon­itored dur­ing all engage­ment exer­cises. As such, one of the equal­ity out­comes for 2017 – 2020 is that more equal­ity groups will par­ti­cip­ate in CNPA led con­sulta­tion and engage­ment. The asso­ci­ated action plan includes the need to estab­lish and imple­ment sys­tems for gath­er­ing equal­ity data for form­al con­sulta­tions, engage­ment events, and key CNP Groups and For­ums to estab­lish baseline data for future. The detailed update on the equal­it­ies out­comes can be found in Appendix 6.

Lead­er­ship and Staff Awareness

Main­stream­ing the equal­ity duty is an organ­isa­tion­al respons­ib­il­ity and lead­er­ship and staff and Board aware­ness are cent­ral to success:

a) All new staff are required to com­plete an ACAS on-line Equal­it­ies and Diversity train­ing course, as part of their Induc­tion. In addi­tion, all staff atten­ded an Equal­it­ies sem­in­ar in April 2017, with line man­agers and pro­ject man­agers attend­ing an EQIA sem­in­ar. We have also sub­scribed through The Learn­ing Pool to an on-line e- learn­ing pack­age, which includes an excel­lent and inter­act­ive e‑learning courses, and we are cur­rently explor­ing the intro­duc­tion of an e‑learning course on Equal­it­ies, which we would require staff to com­plete every two years. b) Seni­or man­agers cham­pi­on equal­it­ies in their teams and ensure equal­ity is pro­moted in their deliv­ery pro­grammes. The Oper­a­tion­al Man­age­ment Group (com­pris­ing the Heads of Ser­vice), con­sider the status of the key stra­tegic pro­jects at their monthly meet­ings, which ensures man­age­ment over­sight of and com­mit­ment to adher­ence to equal­it­ies prin­ciples in all pro­jects. c) Seni­or man­agers have been integ­ral to the devel­op­ment of the Equal­ity Out­comes, and the Out­comes and asso­ci­ated Action Plan are signed off by the Board. d) As an organ­isa­tion, we pro­mote best prac­tice in equal­it­ies to our part­ners, e.g. pro­du­cing and pro­mot­ing Park for All access­ib­il­ity check­lists, which are avail­able on our website.

Employ­ment

1. CNPA sub­scribes to the ​‘Dis­ab­il­ity Con­fid­ent” scheme, and have achieved ​“Level 2 Employ­er” status. Job applic­a­tions from any can­did­ate who indic­ates that they have a dis­ab­il­ity will be auto­mat­ic­ally short-lis­ted if they demon­strate that they meet all the essen­tial short-list­ing cri­ter­ia, even if they don’t strongly meet these criteria.

2. The equal­ity con­sid­er­a­tions of staff are iden­ti­fied through a num­ber of means.

pg. 13

a) Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um – equal­ity is stand­ing item on meet­ing agen­das. b) Staff apprais­al c) Staff Equal­it­ies Mon­it­or­ing sur­vey (see below) d) Staff Engage­ment Sur­vey every 2 years.

Employ­ee Data (full staff and Board sur­vey res­ults can be found in Appendix 1)

[Image of a group of people in a circle.]

As an employ­er, staff num­bers have var­ied between 65 and 78 over the last 4 years.

The Author­ity con­ducts annu­al Staff Equal­it­ies Mon­it­or­ing sur­veys, invit­ing staff to com­plete a ques­tion­naire that iden­ti­fies them­selves against the pro­tec­ted char­ac­ter­ist­ics. This sur­vey is con­duc­ted anonym­ously. Until 2017, staff and Board mem­bers were included in the one sur­vey and res­ults repor­ted as a col­lect­ive. How­ever, in 2017 we split the sur­vey with one for staff and one for Board, as we felt this would provide more mean­ing­ful data to inform the Board Suc­ces­sion Plan.

80.56% of staff (58 of 72 staff respon­ded) and 52.63% of Board Mem­bers (10 of 19 Mem­bers respon­ded) in the organ­isa­tion respon­ded to the 2018 sur­vey. In Feb­ru­ary 2019, the response rate was 76.90% (i.e. 60 out of 78 staff respon­ded) for staff and 73.68% (14 out of 19 Mem­bers) for Board Mem­bers. The high level of response rates indic­ates good engage­ment with equal­it­ies reporting.

Whilst the inform­a­tion (presen­ted in appendix 1) was very wel­come, the use­ful­ness of the data is con­strained due to the fact it was provided anonym­ously. This year, we asked all staff to provide equal­it­ies details required to report on occu­pa­tion­al segreg­a­tion, such that they would be known to HR staff only. We had a 72% response rate. There is poten­tial for devel­op­ments in the Human Resources department’s data­base upgrades that may present oppor­tun­it­ies to gath­er this inform­a­tion in the future. Cur­rently a full and detailed equal­it­ies mon­it­or­ing form is com­pleted by all job applic­ants, and we retain these details of the appoin­ted officers. As such, we have the full set of equal­it­ies data for a small per­cent­age of staff (i.e. new staff who have joined the organ­isa­tion since 2013), but do not feel it is appro­pri­ate to expect all staff to provide these details, oth­er than through the anonym­ous survey.

Key employ­ee inform­a­tion extrac­ted from this year’s sur­vey is as follows:

a) 30% of our staff are in the 35 – 44 age cat­egory; 37% are in the 45 – 54 cat­egory, whilst only 3% are in the 18 – 24 age cat­egory. The appren­tice­ship scheme has helped to increase the num­ber of young employ­ees, and we intend to con­tin­ue to alloc­ate I x FTE in our staff struc­ture to an appren­tice­ship post.

pg. 14

b) 3% have dis­closed they have a dis­ab­il­ity, and actions going for­ward include review­ing recruit­ment advert­ising routes with a view to seek­ing a wider level of applic­a­tions with dis­ab­il­ity. c) 32% identi­fy them­selves as White Brit­ish and 50% identi­fy them­selves as White Scot­tish. We do not cur­rently have any staff that identi­fy as being from an eth­nic minor­ity, and actions going for­ward include review­ing recruit­ment advert­ising routes with a view to seek­ing a wider level of applic­a­tions from people with eth­nic minor­ity back­grounds. d) About 50% of our staff identi­fy them­selves as hav­ing no reli­gion. This sug­gests that there is highly unlikely to be any under­ly­ing reli­gious bias with­in the staff group, and actions going for­ward include ensur­ing our pre­dom­in­antly non-reli­gious staff group respect the reli­gious prac­tices, beliefs and actions of all reli­gious practitioners.

Recruit­ment

Our recruit­ment and selec­tion pro­cess is designed to be fair, robust and fol­low best prac­tice prin­ciples. Indi­vidu­als are assessed on the com­pet­en­cies that are needed to carry out the role effect­ively. Recruit­ment pan­els com­prise 3 or more indi­vidu­als to max­im­ise fair­ness and trans­par­ency. Recruit­ment pan­els typ­ic­ally com­prise a gender mix, and our recruit­ment policy has recently been revised to make this explicit.

CNPA sub­scribes to the ​‘Dis­ab­il­ity Con­fid­ent” scheme. Job applic­a­tions from any can­did­ate who indic­ates that they have a dis­ab­il­ity will be auto­mat­ic­ally short-lis­ted if they demon­strate that they meet all the essen­tial short-list­ing cri­ter­ia, even if they don’t strongly meet these cri­ter­ia. We use the Dis­ab­il­ity Con­fid­ent logo in advert­ising posts, and ensure that the applic­ants and exist­ing staff are sup­por­ted with any reas­on­able adjust­ments they require.

Equal Oppor­tun­it­ies Mon­it­or­ing in Recruit­ment (full recruit­ment data can be found in Appendix 2)

In terms of mon­it­or­ing equal oppor­tun­it­ies for recruit­ment, data is con­fid­en­tially gathered and held on all extern­al job applic­ants, and repor­ted upon every two years to our Board through the Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee. The data we hold for 2017 and 2018 is presen­ted in Appendix 2.

Our ini­tial obser­va­tions from inter­rog­a­tion of the