DRAFT MINUTES OF THE FIN­ANCE AND DELIV­ERY COM­MIT­TEE MEET­ING of

THE CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

held at the Cairngorm Hotel, Aviemore on 22^nd Feb­ru­ary 2019 at 8.30 am

PRESENT

Rebecca Badger Elean­or Mack­in­tosh Xan­der McDade

Ian McLar­en (Vice-Chair) Wil­li­am Mun­ro (Chair) Anne Rae Macdonald

In Attend­ance:

Grant Moir, CEO Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Rur­al Devel­op­ment & Plan­ning Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Man­ager Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies: None.

Wel­come and Apologies

1. Every­one was wel­comed to the meet­ing and there were no apologies.

Minutes of Last Meet­ing – Approval

1. The draft Minutes of the meet­ings on 12^th Octo­ber 2018 and 25^th Janu­ary 2019 were approved with no amendments.

Mat­ters Arising

1. The Con­vener provided an update on the Action Points from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing: a) Action Point at Para. 4i): Closed – Wil­li­am Mun­ro has taken the pos­i­tion of Chair of the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee to last 3 years. b) Action Point at Para. 7i): Closed – lan McLar­en has taken the pos­i­tion of Vice-Chair of the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee to last 3 years.

2. The Chair invited mem­bers of the Com­mit­tee to raise any­thing around think­ing con­tained in pre­vi­ous minutes that may have implic­a­tions going for­ward. The fol­low­ing point was raised: a) Had land own­ers argued that the cre­ation of paths on their land could res­ult in an increase in liab­il­ity? Dav­id Camer­on advised that this had not happened often as the paths often being cre­ated or upgraded were core paths where pre­vi­ous court cases have set out access routes for core paths and where the liab­il­ity lies.

3. There were no oth­er mat­ters arising which would not be covered else­where on the agenda.

Declar­a­tion of Interests

1. No interests were declared.

Board Com­mit­tees Terms of Ref­er­ence (Paper I)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced the paper which sets out the pur­pose and respons­ib­il­it­ies of the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee and to give mem­bers an oppor­tun­ity to dis­cuss the role the Com­mit­tee and any future train­ing requirements.

2. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Com­ment made that the mem­ber­ship quor­um and the annu­al mem­ber­ship change in Annex I of the paper was now out of date fol­low­ing the Board meet­ing on 7^th Decem­ber 2018. Dav­id Camer­on agreed but advised that these amend­ments to the Terms of Ref­er­ence could only be made by the Board and a paper would be taken to the next Board meet­ing on 29^th March 2019. b) A mem­ber quer­ied why the CEO appeared to be non-vot­ing for the oth­er two Committee’s but not for the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee. Dav­id Camer­on advised that this was most likely a typo as the CEO had always been a non-vot­ing mem­ber of the Com­mit­tee. c) With ref­er­ence to point e) of the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Terms of Ref­er­ence (Annex I, page 3), at what point to pro­ject become key pro­jects? Dav­id Camer­on explained that key pro­jects often had risk attached, were of scale or had local/​repu­ta­tion­al issues and this was the sub­ject­ive risk man­age­ment approach taken by Man­age­ment Team and the Organ­isa­tion Man­age­ment Group. d) A mem­ber quer­ied what makes pro­jects come for­ward to the Com­mit­tee and why had there did not appear to have been many in recent months? Grant Moir advised that it was often the scale of pro­jects that made them come before the Com­mit­tee. He added that it may seem that not many have come to the Com­mit­tee recently as many key pro­jects would have been brought at the begin­ning of the pro­ject which had been look­ing for com­mit­ment for 3 years. Dav­id Camer­on added that it was a com­pli­ment­ary part of the Authority’s report­ing, where the Board sees cor­por­ate deliv­ery per­form­ance every 6 months and uses that feed­back from the Board dis­cus­sions to feed­back into work of the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee and the Audit & Risk Committee.

3. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee noted the paper.

4. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Chair invited Mem­bers to have a think of any train­ing require­ments and to email him dir­ectly with any suggestions.

5. Action: i. Mem­bers to have a think of any train­ing require­ments and to email the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Chair with any suggestions.

Vis­it­or Giv­ing Scheme: Memo of Agree­ment with Cairngorms Trust (Paper 2)

1. Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Plan­ning intro­duced Paper 2 which presents a draft of the memo of Agree­ment that is pro­posed with the Cairngorms Trust and which will under­pin the Authority’s part­ner­ship approach to the man­age­ment of the scheme.

2. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Had some­thing like this been done before and how much was expec­ted to be raised? Mur­ray Fer­guson advised that is was dif­fi­cult to estim­ate but they thought in the region of £10-£20k with­in a few years. b) Could people make dona­tions via gift aid? Dav­id Camer­on con­firmed that the Cairngorms Trust were now registered to receive Gift Aid. c) Dav­id Camer­on repor­ted that the Cairngorm Trust were eager to take this for­ward and they would tweak the word­ing of the memo of agree­ment to say that the busi­ness plan would not be developed for the vis­it­or scheme alone but the vis­it­or scheme would be an ele­ment of a big­ger busi­ness plan. He added that the Cairngorms Trust Trust­ees had agreed that to launch the Vis­it­or Giv­ing scheme at this year’s Cairngorms Nature Week­end. There was cur­rently £20k sit­ting in the bank and the plan was to make an award of £5k to one com­munity-led pro­ject to re-emphas­ise the bene­fits of the vis­it­or giv­ing scheme and to open a small grants scheme. d) The Board Con­vener repor­ted that he and the CEO had met with Angus McNich­ol, Chair of the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship and they had had a robust dis­cus­sion about how they per­ceive the issue, although it would be nice to see them involved, they got the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship to agree not to go out and activ­ate against the vis­it­or giv­ing scheme. e) Was there an oppor­tun­ity to attract more leg­acy money? Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Man­ager advised that this had been researched and many big­ger char­it­ies employ teams to chase leg­acy money and then get the returns. Dav­id Camer­on advised that it had been in a suite of ideas presen­ted to the Trust by the Trust Man­ager recently and that the Cairngorms Trust web­site would be under­go­ing redevel­op­ment shortly as it had been focussed on the LEAD­ER ele­ment until now. Mur­ray Fer­guson reminded the Com­mit­tee that it was import­ant that the CNPA do not over­step on gov­ernance and that the Vis­it­or Giv­ing would be led by the Cairngorms Trust. f) What was the pur­pose of Annex I in rela­tion to the Memo of Agree­ment (Annex 2)? Mur­ray Fer­guson advised that it was just a recap of what had gone to the Board before. g) Who were going to be the mem­bers of the vis­it­or giv­ing part­ner­ship group? Mur­ray Fer­guson repor­ted that it had not yet been decided but the cur­rent think­ing was 2 from the CNPA, the Chair of the Tour­ism Part­ner­ship and a mem­ber of staff plus 3 Cairngorms Trust Trust­ees. h) A Mem­ber quer­ied the use of the word ​‘vis­it­ors’ and wondered if this was restrict­ing the dona­tions. Mur­ray Fer­guson advised that the term vis­it­ors included day vis­it­ors. Dav­id Camer­on repor­ted that the Cairngorms Trust had had the same dis­cus­sion at their meet­ing last week. He explained that the Busi­ness Plan had to con­sider how the Trust­ees would con­tin­ue as a viable char­ity should LEAD­ER fund­ing cease through Brexit. Oth­er mech­an­isms would be looked into to take and redis­trib­ute dona­tions from res­id­ents. i) What cri­ter­ia would the Trust­ees be using to select which pro­jects are awar­ded fund­ing? And would the CNPA have an oppor­tun­ity to see the cri­ter­ia? Mur­ray Fer­guson advised that the cri­ter­ia would be set out in their busi­ness plan how­ever he high­lighted that the main bulk of money would be spent on nature and paths. He added that it would be up to the Trust to agree the fund­ing for pro­jects but with two CNPA rep­res­ent­at­ives on the Steer­ing group this would ensure some influ­ence on the decision mak­ing. He warned that it was import­ant that the Trust were seen as sep­ar­ate from the CNPA. j) Some nervous­ness was raised as pre­vi­ously with the set­ting up of the Cairngorms Out­door Access For­um (COAT) which then decided to go glob­al, how could the Author­ity stop this from hap­pen­ing again? Dav­id Camer­on explained that this was a dif­fer­ent mod­el, the Upper Deeside Path Group had exhausted all work so then went Cairngorm wide and then after 8 years their nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion was to expand the geo­graphy. For the Cairngorms Trust the whole focus is around invest­ing in geo­graphy and com­munit­ies of the Nation­al Park con­tinu­ing a com­munity led devel­op­ment pro­gram. k) A Mem­ber warned about the need to exer­cise cau­tion when pro­mot­ing the scheme to res­id­ents as the Trust will be heav­ily seen as the Author­ity. l) Could the nom­in­ee on the Steer­ing group be of the Board rather than Chair of tour­ism part­ner­ship? This was agreed as it was noted that the Chair of the Tour­ism group would not always be a CNPA Board mem­ber. m) A mem­ber advised that this was slightly dif­fer­ent from LEAD­ER as this would be very per­son­al high pro­file money that would need to be audit proof and what hap­pens to pro­jects in the longer term will be in the pub­lic eye. Grant Moir agreed that the com­mu­nic­a­tions were a key part of this. n) A mem­ber sug­ges­ted that it was import­ant to provide people who did not want to donate elec­tron­ic­ally with an oppor­tun­ity to donate. Mur­ray Fer­guson agreed and advised that a whole range of options had been explored and would be accom­mod­ated. o) Request was made to update Annex I tak­ing out the ref­er­ence to the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship and explain­ing that the scheme would not be exclus­ively digit­al. It was agreed to update this and bring it before the Board as an inform­a­tion paper to the 29^th March 2019 meeting.

3. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee noted and dis­cussed the Memo of Agree­ment which will be sub­ject to fur­ther dis­cus­sion with the Trust and signed off by the CNPA CEO.

4. Actions: i. The CNPA Board mem­ber on the Tour­ism Part­ner­ship Group to sit on the Vis­it­or Giv­ing Part­ner­ship Group. ii. An inform­a­tion paper on the cur­rent think­ing on vis­it­or giv­ing to be pre­pared and brought before the Board at their next meet­ing on 29^th March 2019.

Fin­ance Mon­it­or­ing: 10 months to 31 Janu­ary 2019 (Paper 3)

1. Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Man­ager intro­duced Paper 3 which presents a sum­mary review of income and expendit­ure for the 10months to 31 Janu­ary 2019. He then provided an over­view on how the accounts are pulled together.

2. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) A Mem­ber asked if any­thing was of con­cern that needed high­light­ing. Danie Ral­ph con­firmed that there was not. b) Dav­id Camer­on repor­ted that they were fur­ther down the road in com­mit­ments and spend­ing this year than on past years. LEAD­ER have caught up with pay­ments and are there­fore not in same place as last year, expendit­ure was brought for­ward where pos­sible. c) Dav­id Camer­on provided an update on LEAD­ER pay­ments. He advised that LEAD­ER in Edin­burgh were clear­ing pay­ments with­in 2 days after we sub­mit a claim to them. He added that the Author­ity were proved right all along with regards to the past dis­agree­ments around eli­gib­il­ity. d) Com­ment made that Annex 2 was dif­fi­cult to inter­pret, should it be viewed in con­junc­tion with some­thing else? Danie Ral­ph repor­ted that from next year it will be easi­er, he added that every year a step change is made in how the inform­a­tion is presen­ted to make the inform­a­tion clear­er. Dav­id Camer­on sug­ges­ted that this could be a future train­ing topic.

3. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee noted the res­ults of the 10 months to 31 Janu­ary 2019 and the pos­i­tion on pro­jects in the same period.

4. Action: None.

²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ Budget Devel­op­ment (Paper 4)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced Paper 4 which presents the cur­rent pos­i­tion on devel­op­ment of the Authority’s budget for the 2019/2020 fin­an­cial year.

2. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) The Chair sought reas­sur­ance that the net expendit­ure pos­i­tion of £32,000 was nor­mal. Grant Moir and Dav­id Camer­on con­firmed that it was. b) The Chair noted that the increase in employ­ers con­tri­bu­tion had a huge impact on the budget and asked wheth­er this posed a risk on being able to deliv­er the out­comes for which fund­ing had been secured mean­ing it would not go ahead?, c) With regards to the 2 vacant posts, what were they and what would the impact be? Dav­id Camer­on explained that one was a learn­ing devel­op­ment post which was being looked at to be brought under the com­munity devel­op­ment side of things. The Learn­ing Devel­op­ment post hold­er was cur­rently on second­ment and will be budgeted in a years’ time any­way. At the same time there is the LEAD­ER team who are per­man­ent mem­bers of staff who will in 18months come back into the organ­isa­tion. This was a way of hold­ing the budget down. The oth­er post was that of the Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment man­ager. Dav­id Camer­on advised that he would flag up any risks in the Cor­por­ate Plan updates twice annu­ally and if there were any risks around staff­ing and resource invest­ment wasn’t going to allow for deliv­ery of pro­jects then this was the time when it would be high­lighted to the Board. d) What was the ratio of staff to costs against the income? Dav­id Camer­on advised that it would be 62% staff against costs. e) A request was made that column titles be included on Annex 2. This was agreed. f) Con­cern that com­munity pri­or­it­ies were most vis­ible to com­munit­ies and the repu­ta­tion risk asso­ci­ated with that if there was under­staff­ing. Grant Moir reas­sured the Com­mit­tee that there is enough capa­city in the con­tracts with Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey (VABS) and Marr Area Part­ner­ship (MAP). He went onto advise that they were look­ing at how the For­ward Plan­ning Team would work bet­ter with the Com­munit­ies Man­ager with the view that the LEAD­ER staff would start to return to the organ­isa­tion in a years’ time. Dav­id Camer­on high­lighted that there was con­sid­er­able invest­ment planned of £144k, look­ing at invest­ing into com­munity engage­ment sup­port, not all on staff but on pro­jects. g) With regards to the shift of work of the For­ward Plan­ning staff how did the indi­vidu­als feel about it? Grant Moir advised that they were already linked togeth­er. Mur­ray Fer­guson added that the staff feel pos­it­ive about it and reminded the Com­mit­tee that the For­ward Plan­ning team were also the key team who pre­pare the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. h) Com­ment made that the 62% ratio would have to be kept an eye on going for­ward. i) What was the rule of thumb regard­ing the ratio of staff costs against budget? A Com­mit­tee mem­ber advised that at the incep­tion of the Nation­al Park Author­ity the rule of thumb was 50%. Grant Moir repor­ted that a sub­stan­tial num­ber of posts were fixed term con­tracts and that they are looked at on a case by case basis.

3. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Committee: a) Con­sidered the update on the estim­ated budget pos­i­tion for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ and; b) Con­sidered wheth­er any aspects of the budget mer­it fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion in the devel­op­ment of final pro­pos­als to be presen­ted to the Board in March.

4. Action: None.

AOCB

1. There were no oth­er items of busi­ness raised.

2. Dav­id Camer­on advised that the Author­ity as a found­ing mem­ber of the Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land (OATS), OATS were ask­ing if they can invite Paths For All and Sus­trans to become mem­bers of OATS. The Com­mit­tee agreed to this.

3. Danie Ral­ph reminded mem­bers to sub­mit expenses claims before the year end or by the end of April 2019 for expenses incurred in March 2019.

4. The Chair high­lighted that this was Rebecca’s Badger last Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee meet­ing. He thanked her for her val­ued con­tri­bu­tion on the Com­mit­tee and wished her all the best for the future.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The next Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee meet­ing will take place on Fri­day 7^th June 2019 in the Bax­ter room of Brae­mar High­land Games Centre, Braemar.

2. The pub­lic part of this meet­ing fin­ished at 10.10hours.