CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper 2 07/06/19

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FIN­ANCE & DELIV­ERY COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: FIN­ANCE MON­IT­OR­ING: 1 MONTH TO 30 APRIL 2019

Pre­pared by: DANIEL RAL­PH, FIN­ANCE MANAGER

Pur­pose To present a sum­mary review of income and expendit­ure for the months to 30 April, 2019.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee is reques­ted to: a) Note the out­turn for the month to 30 April 2019

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. The main report to the Com­mit­tee is con­tained in Annex 1. This report cov­ers the 5 main com­pon­ents f the Authority’s oper­a­tions — Core and Oper­a­tion­al Plan and pro­jects: LEAD­ER, the Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship (T&GLP), Great Place Badenoch (GPB) and the Caper Frame­work (CF).

2. Annex 2 is the ana­lys­is of the Oper­a­tion­al Plan by Theme, show­ing both expendit­ure (actu­al and com­mit­ted) and any attrib­ut­able income.

3. Any adverse vari­ances year to date are high­lighted under CORE activ­it­ies. Vari­ances on CORE expendit­ure and Oper­a­tion­al Plan are mon­itored on an ongo­ing basis and vari­ances of great­er than 15% or £5,000 from budget, whichever is the high­er, will be brought to the Committee’s atten­tion. Most of the repor­ted vari­ances will self- cor­rect dur­ing the fin­an­cial year due to the tim­ing of spend and recog­ni­tion of pre­pay­ments or accruals.

4. Pos­it­ive vari­ances in future reports will be repor­ted as + £x,xxx and neg­at­ive as — £x,xxx.

Over­view

Oth­er Income

1. Oth­er income recog­nised in April includes the fol­low­ing: a) recov­ery £191 b) Plan­ning fees £13,851

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper 2 07/06/19

CORE Activ­it­ies

Board and Staff Costs

1. Board fees are ahead of budget after I month and this is expec­ted to be back on track by the end of June. Core and pro­ject staff costs are broadly in line with pro­jec­tions for April. Some vari­ation is expec­ted dur­ing the year due to the tim­ing of recov­ery of staff costs from partners.

2. Staff costs recovered recog­nised in April include pay­ments from staff for enhanced leave, Paths for All for I post, and the full year’s con­tri­bu­tions from the East Cairngorm Moor­land Partnership.

Oth­er Board and Staff Costs

1. Oth­er board and staff costs have been min­im­al in the month with the largest spend being on Board training.

Facil­it­ies Costs / IT and Pro­fes­sion­al Costs

1. The should be borne in mind for the month: a) Rates have been paid in full for the whole year in April. Full pro­vi­sion for the addi­tion­al rates for the new build was taken into the ¹⁸⁄₁₉ as an accru­al. b) Rent for the new build is now com­ing through as expec­ted and at agreed rates. c) Motor vehicle insur­ance has been recog­nised for the full year d) Pre­pay­ments recog­nised in ¹⁸⁄₁₉ for ¹⁹⁄₂₀ were released in full over all accounts in April this includes rent, the motor vehicle fleet and IT main­ten­ance and ser­vices plans. Oth­er than this there are no adverse vari­ances to report.

Oper­a­tion­al Plan

1. Annex 2 shows the amounts paid and com­mit­ted com­pared to the agreed budget for the year.

2. Income attrib­ut­able to the Oper­a­tion­al Plan received in April was con­tri­bu­tions to the Writer in Res­id­ence pro­ject from Cre­at­ive Scot­land and the Wood­land Trust.

3. In March £100,000 was received from NHS High­land as Developer con­tri­bu­tion which is being held until plan­ning per­mis­sion is gran­ted for the Aviemore Com­munity Hospital.

4. Com­mit­ted spend at 30 April is approx­im­ately 39% of the adjus­ted Oper­a­tion­al Plan for the year.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper 2 07/06/19

Non-Cash

1. Non-cash budget pro­vi­sion from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment provides for depre­ci­ation of assets and oth­er account­ing pro­vi­sions made neces­sary by the Authority’s oper­a­tions. The draft out­turn for the year to 31 March 2019 shows an over­spend on depre­ci­ation, com­pared to alloc­a­tion allowed by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment of £2,892.

2. An ini­tial look through for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀, based in assets in use at the begin­ning of the fin­an­cial year, pro­posed cap­it­al spend and no abnor­mal charges or write downs for diminu­tion in value, indic­ates that cur­rent year’s non-cash budget will be underspent.

Grant-in-Aid

1. Resource (R DEL): resource grant-in-aid has been drawn down in line with the planned draw­down (£600,000 to date of £4,565,000). The inten­tion is to draw down as profiled.

2. Cap­it­al (C DEL): no cap­it­al grant-in-aid has been yet been drawn down (budget of £200,000). The C Del alloc­a­tion is to cov­er assets bought to be used in the Park Authority’s oper­a­tions or to be spent as cap­it­al contributions/​grants.

Cap­it­al Spend

1. The only pur­chase in the month was for addi­tion­al fur­niture for the new office recep­tion and kitchen.

Pro­jects

Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Land­scape Partnership

1. Amounts due from the Her­it­age Lot­tery Fund (HLF) since last paper to Committee:

Quarter ended	£	Received
31 Decem­ber (claim 7)	93,315	26⁄03
31 March (claim 8)	64,034	o/​s at 27 05

1. The final con­tri­bu­tion to the Pro­ject from Crown Estate (£50,000) is still awaited..

2. Fund­ing for ¹⁸⁄₁₉ of £50,000 from HIE was received in March, a month earli­er than pre­vi­ously reported.

3. Activ­ity so far has been slower than expec­ted so far and is now accel­er­ate on the major pro­jects Blairfindy, Scalan and Access, with mater­i­al pay­ments start­ing in May. pro­jects. This will put pres­sure on cash flow in the 2^nd and 3^rd quarter of ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀.

LEAD­ER

1. All claims for pro­ject advances and admin­is­tra­tion costs con­tin­ue to be made on the ​“LARCS” system.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper 2 07/06/19

1. £79,998.65 (70%) was received in April claims against pro­ject advances made at 31 March of £114,085.33. A fur­ther £25,508.59 (22%) is flagged for pay­ment at the end of May with the remainder flag as ​“due to LAG”. The ​“RAG” status on LARCS remains at ​“amber” and we are hop­ing this will be changed to ​“green” shortly.

25.

	Admin costs claimed £	Pro­ject advances claimed £	Sus­pense £	Claims still to be made £	Total £
As at 01.04.19	-	114,085.33	(277.67)	30,431.85	144,239.51
Trans­fer	-	-	-	-	-
Advances made	-	23,749.60	-	31,587.50	55,337.10
Received	-	(79,998.65)	-	-	(79,998.65)
As at 30.04.19	-	57,836.28	(277.67)	62,019.35	119,577.96

1. £24,110.43 of claims still to be made were made after 30 April. The remainder, £37,908.92 (3 advances), is depend­ent on soft­ware changes being made to the LARCS system.

2. All the pro­ject advances claimed at the end of April are now flagged as due to the LAG.

3. No admin claims are planned for at least the next 6 months when the pos­i­tion for the year will be reviewed.

Great Place Badenoch

1. This is a 3 year (to end by 3 March 2021) HLF pro­ject to con­serve and devel­op­ment the cul­tur­al her­it­age of Badenoch. The per­mis­sion to start was gran­ted in March 2018 and a pro­ject man­ager was in post in April. (The pro­ject man­ager is employed by Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch & Strathspey,)

2. There was min­im­al spend in April, and the Pro­ject has now com­mit­ted 50% of its budget.

3. Amounts due from the Her­it­age Lot­tery Fund (HLF) since last paper to Committee:

Quarter ended	£	Received
31 March (claim 4)	31,373	14 05 19

Caper­cail­lie Framework

1. The Devel­op­ment Phase of the HLF pro­ject to con­serve the remain­ing Caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion in the Cairngorms was giv­en the per­mis­sion to stat by HLF on 28^th June and all dir­ectly employed staff are now in post. HLF will con­trib­ute fund­ing at a rate of 62.5%.

2. Amounts due from the Her­it­age Lot­tery Fund (HLF) since last paper to Committee:

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper 2 07/06/19

CASH FLOW AND CASH MANAGEMENT

Quarter ended	£	Received
31 March (claim 4)	25,733	o/​s at 27 05

1. Although CNPA has been suc­cess­ful in attract­ive fund­ing for high value pro­jects the cash man­age­ment falls on CNPA to ensure that adequate fund­ing is avail­able to meet pro­ject liab­il­it­ies as they arise, in addi­tion to CNPA’s own fund­ing require­ments and to stay with­in guidelines set by the spon­sor­ing Depart­ment and Scot­tish Government.

2. A num­ber of tools are being developed to help man­age and bal­ance cash needs to identi­fy stress points. This mon­it­or­ing will be developed fur­ther and cash flow mod­els will be used for each com­pon­ent of the Authority’s activities.

3. The RAG status of cur­rent pro­jec­ted cash flow, until 31 Decem­ber 2019, with the cash pos­i­tion of each component’s RAG status shown. (Red, warn­ing; amber, neut­ral; green pos­it­ive) is as follows:

Quarter ended…	June	Sept	Dec
CORE activ­it­ies	🟢	🟢	🟢
LEAD­ER	🟢	🟠	🟠
T&GLP	🟢	🟠	🟠
GPB	🟢	🟢	🟢
CF	🟢	🟢	🟢

Out­turn Pos­i­tion ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀

1. All budget lines con­tin­ue to be mon­itored on a weekly basis, while work­ing closely with Heads of Ser­vice to identi­fy pres­sure points or slack as early as pos­sible. Intern­al report­ing of man­age­ment inform­a­tion to the Man­age­ment Team has been enhanced with an on-demand sys­tem which shows key met­rics and analysis.

2. The ¹⁹⁄₂₀ budget presen­ted to the Board in March showed a planned defi­cit of £33,000. While it is still early in the fin­an­cial year the inten­tion is still to man­age spend, without com­prom­ising the deliv­ery of planned object­ives with the inten­tion of com­ing as close as pos­sible to break even on resource and cap­it­al spend.

Daniel Ral­ph 28 May 2019 danielralph@​cairngorms.​co.​uk