190607DraftFinanceCtteeMinutesV01

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE FIN­ANCE AND DELIV­ERY COM­MIT­TEE MEET­ING of THE CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY held at the Bax­ter Room, Brae­mar High­land Games Centre on 7 June, 2019 at 9.00 am

PRESENT Wil­li­am Mun­ro (Chair) Ian McLar­en (Vice-Chair) Elean­or Mack­in­tosh John Kirk Xan­der McDade Anne Rae Macdonald

In Attend­ance: Grant Moir, CEO Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Manager

Apo­lo­gies: Dav­id Cameron

Wel­come and Apologies

1. Every­one was wel­comed to the meeting.

Minutes of Last Meet­ing – Approval

1. The draft Minutes of the meet­ings on 22 Feb­ru­ary 2019 were approved with no amendments.

Mat­ters Arising

1. The Chair provided an update on the Action Points from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing includ­ing: a) A mat­ter of clar­ity on Pro­jects, re para 8D in the minutes of 22 Feb­ru­ary meet­ing. Grant Moir, CEO explained that the scale of the pro­jects was not the £value that is con­sidered but the risk and impact on part­ners. Refer­rals back to the Board would be made if there were sig­ni­fic­ant changes or a new pro­ject arising dur­ing the course of the year.

Declar­a­tion of Interests

1. No interests were declared.

Draft Out­turn for year to 31 March 2019 (Paper 1)

1. Danie Ral­ph Fin­ance Man­ager, intro­duced the paper and the accom­pa­ny­ing draft set of accounts which were sub­ject to audit.

2. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) The use of graph­ics was com­men­ted on as appro­pri­ate and a clear aid to under­stand­ing the accounts; b) A mem­ber asked what Tax­pay­ers’ equity was. It was explained that this is sim­il­ar to share­hold­er funds in a lim­ited liab­il­ity com­pany and rep­res­ents the Scot­tish Government’s, and hence the Tax­pay­ers fin­an­cial interest in the Author­ity. The Equity is the cumu­lat­ive annu­al sur­pluses and defi­cits on oper­a­tions. If the Author­ity were, for whatever, reas­on to cease activ­it­ies in the future, the assets and liab­il­it­ies would be realised/​paid off with the res­ult­ing bal­ance, which should broadly equate to Taxpayer’s equity being returned to Scot­tish Government.

Fin­ance Mon­it­or­ing I Month to 30 April 2019 (Paper 2)

1. Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Man­ager intro­duced Paper 2 which presents a sum­mary review of income and expendit­ure for the I month to 30 April 2019.

2. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper, how­ever as only I month in the cur­rent fin­an­cial year was being presen­ted there was little sub­stance as yet to com­ment on as it was still very early in the fin­an­cial cycle. It was stressed that, although the budget approved by the Board was unbal­anced and showed a pro­jec­ted over­spend of approx­im­ately £33,000 it was the inten­tion is to deliv­er a break­even out­turn for the year without impact­ing on the high stand­ards of deliv­ery expec­ted of the Authority.

3. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee noted the paper’s content.

Fin­an­cial Reg­u­la­tion and Train­ing (Paper 3)

1. Grant Moir intro­duced this paper in the absence of Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices. This is to be included in Board train­ing to be organ­ised later in

the year and likely to be provided by BDO, the intern­al aud­it­ors to cov­er such top­ics as sources of income, del­eg­ated author­ity levels. virement, fin­an­cial acronyms and ter­min­o­logy and the role of reserves, and out­turn. Fur­ther inform­a­tion will be cir­cu­lated with pos­sible dates later.

1. Action: i. Note for Com­mit­tee and fur­ther inform­a­tion will be cir­cu­lated to all Board mem­bers with pos­sible dates.

AOCB

1. A ques­tion was asked by a com­mit­tee mem­ber on wheth­er Cairngorm Moun­tain issues had any impact on the Park Authority’s accounts and wheth­er the Author­ity was likely to get involved. GM explained that there is no fin­an­cial expos­ure to the Author­ity and the operation/​ownership of Cairngorm Moun­tain is likely to stay with HIE or Forestry & Land Scot­land for forestry issues. Any Author­ity involve­ment will be restric­ted to staff time only.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The next Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee meet­ing will take place on Fri­day 11 Octo­ber, 2019 at the Com­munity Hall, Boat of Garten.

2. The meet­ing fin­ished at 10.30 hours.