190614CNPABdPaper3AACorpPlanPerformanceReview

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper 3 14^th June 2019

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: STRA­TEGIC RISK MAN­AGE­MENT AND

MONITORING CORPORATE PERFORMANCE

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF CORPORATE

SERVICES

Pur­pose

This paper presents an update on the Authority’s per­form­ance to date in work­ing towards deliv­ery of stra­tegic object­ives estab­lished in the 2018 to 2022 Cor­por­ate Plan.

The paper focuses on deliv­ery against the Key Per­form­ance Indic­at­ors adop­ted as meas­ures of per­form­ance in deliv­ery of our Cor­por­ate Plan, while high­light­ing by excep­tion any sig­ni­fic­ant con­straints, risks or short­com­ings on planned delivery.

The paper also presents the latest ver­sion of the Stra­tegic Risk Register, fol­low­ing ongo­ing review and mit­ig­a­tion action by the Man­age­ment Team and review by the Audit and Risk Committee.

Inform­a­tion is presen­ted on deliv­ery against the Cor­por­ate Plan only in this paper. Updates on deliv­ery of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan for 2017 to 2022 are presen­ted sep­ar­ately at dif­fer­ent points of the year.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is asked to: i. Review the update on cor­por­ate per­form­ance and stra­tegic risk man­age­ment set out in this paper. ii. High­light any achieve­ments or excep­tions which, from a stra­tegic lead­er­ship per­spect­ive, Board mem­bers believe are of par­tic­u­lar sig­ni­fic­ance to the deliv­ery of the Authority’s stra­tegic object­ives. iii. Review and com­ment on the risk register for com­plete­ness in cov­er­age of cur­rent stra­tegic risks and adequacy of mit­ig­a­tion actions.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper 3 14^th June 2019

STRA­TEGIC RISK MAN­AGE­MENT AND MON­IT­OR­ING COR­POR­ATE PER­FORM­ANCE – FOR DISCUSSION

Stra­tegic Context

1. The Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan, http://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​w​p​-​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​2​0​1​8​/​0​7​/​C​N​P​A​C​o​r​p​o​r​a​t​e​P​l​a​n​2018- 2022.pdf describes how we will con­trib­ute to the deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP).

2. The Cor­por­ate Plan also sets out how the CNPA will sup­port the Government’s cent­ral pur­pose: to focus the Gov­ern­ment and pub­lic ser­vices on cre­at­ing a more suc­cess­ful coun­try, with oppor­tun­it­ies for all of Scot­land to flour­ish, through increased well­being and sus­tain­able and inclus­ive eco­nom­ic growth and deliv­ery of the Pro­gramme for Gov­ern­ment. To this end, the plan high­lights (page 13) that the work of the Author­ity makes a con­tri­bu­tion to 6 of the Scot­tish Government’s II Nation­al Out­comes agreed with­in the Nation­al Per­form­ance Framework.

3. A cor­por­ate per­form­ance frame­work is required to meas­ure the extent to which we suc­ceed in deliv­er­ing the pri­or­it­ies agreed in the cor­por­ate plan and make the desired con­tri­bu­tions to wider nation­al gov­ern­ment strategies. The Board agreed the Authority’s cor­por­ate per­form­ance frame­work as an integ­ral part of the Cor­por­ate Plan. The inform­a­tion presen­ted with this paper fol­lows those agreed Key Per­form­ance Indic­at­ors (KPIs).

Stra­tegic Policy Considerations

1. The Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan makes ref­er­ence to our con­tri­bu­tion to Nation­al Out­comes. In most cases the cor­por­ate per­form­ance indic­at­ors do not present a dir­ect meas­ure of con­tri­bu­tion to the spe­cif­ic out­comes. Rather, they are agreed to rep­res­ent an appro­pri­ate ​“proxy” indic­at­or, whereby our demon­stra­tion of achieve­ment in a spe­cif­ic area of the Authority’s oper­a­tions is accep­ted as a reas­on­able meas­ure of our con­tri­bu­tion to wider nation­al or port­fo­lio objectives.

Stra­tegic Risk Management

1. The Board con­sidered and approved the new stra­tegic risk register sup­port­ing deliv­ery of the 2018 to 2022 Cor­por­ate Plan at its meet­ing in June 2018. The Board also endorsed the Authority’s Stra­tegic Risk Man­age­ment Strategy at the same meeting.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper 3 14^th June 2019

1. The stra­tegic risk register is reg­u­larly reviewed and updated by both the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee and the Man­age­ment Team with the Board con­sid­er­ing the pos­i­tion on stra­tegic risk man­age­ment at the same time as it con­siders these Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance reports. The Stra­tegic Risk Register is a dynam­ic doc­u­ment. Risks will be removed when their like­li­hood of occur­rence and / or their poten­tial impact is assessed to have declined suf­fi­ciently through man­age­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of mit­ig­a­tion or cir­cum­stances change in the Authority’s wider oper­at­ing envir­on­ment. The cur­rent ver­sion of the stra­tegic risk register is set out for con­sid­er­a­tion as an Annex to this paper.

2. The Board are invited at this point to review the cur­rent ver­sion of the Stra­tegic Risk Register; identi­fy any poten­tial stra­tegic risks not cur­rently included; com­ment on the draft assess­ment of sig­ni­fic­ance of risks iden­ti­fied and adequacy of pro­posed mitigation.

Implic­a­tions

1. Both the Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance Mon­it­or­ing Frame­work and Stra­tegic Risk Register have been developed with a view to man­aging and lim­it­ing the staff time resource required to sup­port the admin­is­tra­tion of these pro­cesses, while ensur­ing that the pro­cesses them­selves are fit for pur­pose in man­aging risk to which the Author­ity is exposed and meas­ur­ing our suc­cess in achiev­ing agreed cor­por­ate pri­or­it­ies. We are aim­ing to make best use of data already col­lec­ted by ourselves and our part­ners and hence tap into exist­ing work rather than cre­ate new, often costly, data col­lec­tion pro­cesses. Some indic­at­ors have data col­lec­ted annu­ally or over longer peri­ods. There­fore not all indic­at­ors will change over the peri­od since these mon­it­or­ing reports were last presen­ted to the Board.

2. Our stra­tegic risk man­age­ment pro­cess and prac­tices build on exist­ing meth­ods already reviewed and approved by Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee and eval­u­ated by intern­al and extern­al audit. Our stra­tegic plan­ning and cor­por­ate per­form­ance mon­it­or­ing report­ing was also sub­ject to intern­al audit review as part of the ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ intern­al audit pro­gramme and received a ​“clear” intern­al audit report. The intern­al aud­it­ors, BDO, gave a ​“sub­stan­tial” (highest) rat­ing to both the design and oper­a­tion­al effect­ive­ness of these per­form­ance mon­it­or­ing processes.

3. Our risk man­age­ment pro­cesses require staff to ref­er­ence the agreed stra­tegic risks in devel­op­ing spe­cif­ic strategies and policies and tail­or their plans accord­ingly, to both ensure these policies and strategies are not impacted by the recog­nised risks and also help man­age these risks.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper 3 14^th June 2019

1. In tak­ing for­ward actions and pro­jects to help deliv­er Cor­por­ate Plan pri­or­it­ies, Dir­ect­ors and their Heads of Ser­vice are expec­ted to ensure that oper­a­tion­al plans and / or pro­ject plans where required are covered by more spe­cif­ic risk registers and risk man­age­ment practices.

Suc­cess Measures

1. Imple­ment­a­tion of an effect­ive Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance Mon­it­or­ing Sys­tem is an essen­tial com­pon­ent of enabling iden­ti­fic­a­tion of suc­cess in deliv­ery of the Board’s agreed Cor­por­ate Plan.

2. Effect­ive risk man­age­ment pro­cesses ensure that risks that may impact on suc­cess are iden­ti­fied, man­aged and / or mon­itored appro­pri­ately to sup­port deliv­ery of Cor­por­ate object­ives. Risk man­age­ment pro­cesses also assist in eval­u­at­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for action and in determ­in­ing the Authority’s approaches to most effect­ively real­ising those opportunities.

3. The work in bring­ing these pro­cesses togeth­er there­fore forms a key aspect of the Authority’s stra­tegic man­age­ment processes.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper 3 14^th June 2019

Sup­port­ing Information:

Update on Cor­por­ate Plan Monitoring

1. A sum­mary of the Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan mon­it­or­ing inform­a­tion is presen­ted in Annex I. Cor­por­ate KPIs com­ple­ment­ing the qual­it­at­ive updates on per­form­ance are set out in Annex 2 presen­ted with this paper. A com­ment­ary on the cur­rent status of these KPIs is also presen­ted. More inform­a­tion on the high­lights and issues arising over the course of Cor­por­ate Plan deliv­ery to date is presen­ted in the fol­low­ing sec­tions of this paper.

Con­ser­va­tion and Land Man­age­ment — Highlights

1. At this rel­at­ively early stage of the Cor­por­ate Plan deliv­ery, work is pro­gress­ing rel­at­ively well across all pri­or­it­ies with­in the Con­ser­va­tion and Land Man­age­ment ele­ments of the Plan.

2. Peat­land Action awar­ded £1.3 mil­lion cov­er­ing 10 pro­jects in ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ work­ing on peat­land res­tor­a­tion cov­er­ing 1,052 hectares.

3. Cairngorms Uplands Advis­ory group met for the first time in March 2019. It was an ini­tial set up meet­ing to set out remit and ​‘ground rules’. It was well atten­ded and already has stim­u­lated some use­ful sug­ges­tions for CNPA play­ing a lead role in devel­op­ing policies of Nation­al interest.

Con­ser­va­tion and Land Man­age­ment – Excep­tion Reporting

1. The incid­ence of wild­life crime incid­ents con­tinu­ing in the Cairngorms is high­lighted as an excep­tion in this round of per­form­ance report­ing, with sev­er­al incid­ences of rap­tor and pearl mus­sel crime being noti­fied in ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉. Spe­cial con­stables have now been deployed in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The rap­tor track­ers developed jointly with a com­mer­cial part­ner are now close to being rolled out.

Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence — Highlights

1. Fund­ing and plan­ning con­sents have now been secured to com­plete con­struc­tion of the Spey­side Way exten­sion in Autumn 2019.

2. The Moun­tains and The People Pro­ject, led by the Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land, have now com­pleted around 67% of planned path upgrades in the Cairngorms part of the project.

3. The Volun­teer Ranger pro­ject con­tin­ues to be suc­cess­ful, meet­ing all of its LEAD­ER fund­ing tar­gets hav­ing trained 14 volun­teers to date with 12 more volunteers

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper 3 14^th June 2019 sched­uled for train­ing in May and June 2019 as com­pared with an annu­al tar­get of 8 trained volun­teer rangers.

Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence – Excep­tion Reporting

1. The cur­rent inter­rup­tion to ser­vice at Cairngorm Moun­tain remains a key issue for the Cairngorms vis­it­or infra­struc­ture and tour­ism eco­nomy. We are work­ing as closely as pos­sible with High­lands and Island Enter­prise (HIE) and oth­er stake­hold­ers on this mat­ter, and review­ing the wider impacts of this on the Cairngorm and Glen­more Strategy, while recog­nising that HIE are very much in the lead in plan­ning for the future of Cairngorm Mountain.

Rur­al Devel­op­ment — Highlights

1. Con­sulta­tion on the pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan was com­pleted in April 2019 and response are now being com­piled into the ​‘Sched­ule 4’ doc­u­ments for exam­in­a­tion. Work is on tar­get with the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme and will be form­ally repor­ted to the Board in August 2019, pri­or to sub­mis­sion to the DPEAs.

2. The Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme has now achieved full com­mit­ment of its pro­gramme funds alloc­a­tion, and includes fund­ing of almost £1.5 mil­lion of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and farm diver­si­fic­a­tion pro­ject value sup­port­ing pro­jects tar­get­ing eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment actions with­in the Cairngorms. The LEAD­ER pro­gramme has also delivered one of the Authority’s cor­por­ate KPIs of num­bers of people enter­ing com­munity devel­op­ment activ­it­ies for the first time, with mon­it­or­ing stat­ist­ics show­ing 157 people get­ting involved in such vol­un­tary com­munity activ­it­ies for the first time.

3. Objec­tions have now been resolved with Trans­port Scot­land on the Kil­liecranke sec­tion A9 upgrade and con­tact will be main­tained with Trans­port Scot­land and stake­hold­ers in mon­it­or­ing pro­gress with the remain­ing objec­tion about non- motor­ised trans­port between Aviemore and Carrbridge.

Rur­al Devel­op­ment – Excep­tion Reporting

1. There are no excep­tions to report on Rur­al Devel­op­ment at this point.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions

1. Fol­low­ing con­sulta­tion the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2019 – 2024 was launched along­side the Forest Strategy with deliv­ery part­ners and inter­ested parties on I March. The con­sulta­tion on the pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan was com­pleted in early April and a final plan will be sub­mit­ted to Min­is­ters in Septem­ber 2019.

2. Bòrd na Gàidh­lig approved the second iter­a­tion of the CNPA’s Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan which has been pub­lished on our web­site in both Gael­ic and English.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper 3 14^th June 2019 Com­mu­nic­a­tions – Excep­tion Reporting

1. There are no excep­tions to report on Com­mu­nic­a­tions at this point.

Cor­por­ate Ser­vices — Organ­isa­tion­al Development

1. The office exten­sion pro­ject is nom­in­ated for a Roy­al Incor­por­a­tion of Archi­tects in Scot­land design award, one of 19 pro­jects short­l­is­ted from over 80 applic­ants. The Archi­tects lead­ing on design, Mox­on Archi­tects, also com­mis­sioned a car­bon emis­sion assess­ment for the pro­ject devel­op­ment which high­lights that the use of Cross Lam­in­ated Tim­ber in con­struc­tion rather than rein­forced con­crete for a build­ing of sim­il­ar size gives a sav­ing in car­bon emis­sions of 166 tonnes of CO2 equi­val­ent equi­val­ent to a car jour­ney of 20,746km. This car­bon sav­ings also equates to oper­a­tion­al car­bon emis­sions from use of the build­ing for equi­val­ent of 47 years.

2. In work­ing toward our Cor­por­ate Plan aspir­a­tion of becom­ing the best small pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tion in Scot­land, we have achieved an ​“above and bey­ond” award from Fam­ily Friendly Work­ing Scot­land for the great extent we have gone to in devel­op­ing work-life bal­ance and flex­ible work­ing policies.

3. Our Cus­tom­er Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM) sys­tem pro­cure­ment was com­pleted in early 2019 and is now in final design and train­ing stages pri­or to being rolled out.

Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment – Excep­tion Report

1. The imple­ment­a­tion of GIS Strategy and ser­vice pro­vi­sion con­tin­ues to make slower than planned pro­gress dur­ing the cur­rent year, with a num­ber of inter­rup­tions caused by capa­city con­straints with­in the Author­ity while oth­er key pro­jects are pro­gressed, and also some inter­rup­tion in com­mu­nic­a­tions with con­sult­ants. This area of work will be driv­en for­ward in ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀.

2. Staff turnover con­tin­ues to be high­er than the levels estab­lished in our Cor­por­ate KPIs. While this may cre­ate some short-term dis­rup­tion to work plans and ser­vice pro­vi­sion, there is no under­ly­ing evid­ence of the turnover levels caus­ing sig­ni­fic­ant deliv­ery prob­lems oth­er than as noted else­where in this per­form­ance mon­it­or­ing report. It should also be noted that the budget has been estab­lished on the basis of some assumed vacancy man­age­ment savings.

3. The Authority’s HR ser­vice is man­aging two cases of absence with the cause of absence at least in part linked to work factors. Both of these cases are being pro­gressed and neither case pose sig­ni­fic­ant issues or wider con­sequences for the Authority.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Form­al Board Paper 3 14^th June 2019

1. The Author­ity has had a RIDDOR report­able injury dur­ing this report­ing peri­od a case of ten­don­it­is. Again, this case is being man­aged through the HR function.

Cor­por­ate KPIs and Cross-cut­ting Indicators

1. Cor­por­ate KPIs com­ple­ment­ing the qual­it­at­ive updates on per­form­ance are set out in Annex 2 presen­ted with this paper. A com­ment­ary on the cur­rent status of these KPIs is also presented.

2. The update on KPIs has been graded on this occa­sion in risk terms.

Stra­tegic Risk Management

1. The Stra­tegic Risk Register is presen­ted at Annex 3 to this paper. This sets out the most recent apprais­al of the Authority’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment by the Man­age­ment Team in April 2019, and there­after by the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee in May 2019.

Dav­id Camer­on, on behalf of Man­age­ment Team and Oper­a­tion­al Man­age­ment Group 23 May 2019 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk