Agenda item

The Chief Executive delivered the following updates to his report:

·       The Investment In People award has been confirmed and the CEO will be informing staff at the All Staff Briefing which is on the 21^st May.

·       The brochure for new Members has now been produced, and following the recent Council elections, we will have some new Members from our local authorities.  The brochure will help the new Members see what’s involved in being on the Authority.

·       Sustainable Hayfield have held a series of talks and the CEO presented at one of these with over 70 attendees, with a chance to talk about nature and climate and the work that the Authority does.

·       Awaiting the consultants report on the Youth Voice and Youth Impact Collective, and on how we take that forward.

·       Paul Hamblin Award was presented to Sue Smith for her access work. 

Paul was fundamental in creating National Parks England, who tragically died very young, so his family created an award in his name.  There is a video clip by Tony Gates, CEO of Northumberland National Park talking about Paul, and  it shows David Butterworth from the Yorkshire Dales National Park who nominated Sue for the award, presenting it to her, so all Members are encouraged to watch it.

·       Visited Horseshoe Quarry to look at a FiPL funded access project.  The former quarry, owned by the British Mountaineering Council, is popular with climbers, so the path has been smoothed and accessible gates have been installed.  The work was done by the CMPT, with funding from FiPL.

Members thanked both the Chair and the CEO for their reports, and asked whether the Authority was getting traction with DEFRA and the MP’s, and were they listening and understanding?

It was reported that it was useful having the recent DEFRA visit, which provided an opportunity to talk informally to people who did have positions of influence, and to reiterate what the impacts of decision making were having on the National Parks. 

It was important to keep on engaging with them and making our case for funding allocation.   National Parks need to be more creative and extra capital funding has been made available to help with nature recovery or income generation.

Members noted that the Authority was seen as a trusted partner, so we could be confident that the endeavours we were putting into trying to get traction worked, as we are successful in getting FiPL funding as well as the Landscape Observatory Funding, so it showed we did have a good track record in the monies that we did receive.

RESOLVED:

To note the report.