Reacting to the Scottish Government’s budget announcement on Tuesday 17 November, David Green, Convener of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) said: “The Cairngorms National Park Authority is already an extremely lean organisation having already implemented many efficiency savings – many of them in partnership with Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority in areas such as procurement, human resources and some IT services.

“We have in place a control framework to manage levels of forward financial commitments, and have set out a voluntary severance scheme with the aim of increasing forward flexibility in staffing budgets.

“It is difficult to comment fully until we know the exact detail of how the reduction in funds will be implemented across the two Park Authorities. However, with the expansion of the Cairngorms National Park in September to include Highland Perthshire and Glenshee – taking the Park from 3,800 sq km to 4,528 sq km – we are faced with looking after a National Park that is one fifth bigger but doing so on reduced budget.