191011DraftFinanceCtteeMinutes

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE FIN­ANCE AND DELIV­ERY COM­MIT­TEE MEET­ING of

THE CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

held at the Art & Com­mit­tee room of Com­munity Hall, Boat of Garten on || Octo­ber 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 Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Man­ager Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies: None.

Wel­come and Apologies

1. Every­one was wel­comed to the meeting.

Minutes of Last Meet­ing – Approval

1. The draft Minutes of the meet­ings on 7 June 2019 were approved with no amendments.

Mat­ters Arising

1. The Chair provided an update on the Action Points from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing includ­ing: a) At Para 11i) – Closed – Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee train­ing date set for 14^th Novem­ber 2019 with details sur­round­ing the day being cir­cu­lated as soon as pos­sible. Bespoke Fin­ance train­ing will be con­sidered fol­low­ing deliv­ery of that session.

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 which presents an update to the draft out­turn paper for the year to 31 March 2019 which had been presen­ted to the Com­mit­tee at their last meet­ing on 7^th June 2019. He repor­ted that the accounts presen­ted had been accep­ted by the aud­it­ors and signed accounts this week and it had been a long drawn out pro­cess. The out­turn was as expec­ted and he was now work­ing towards cur­rent year end.
2. Dav­id Camer­on Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices added that des­pite the exten­ded audit pro­cess at the end of the audit pro­cess there had been no impact to the bot­tom line. He repor­ted that they had been £2k away from break even with a turnover close to £7.5million. He thanked the Fin­ance Man­ager and his team for all their hard work reach­ing that position.
3. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Con­grat­u­la­tions to the team on the final pos­i­tion. b) Could any­thing be done dif­fer­ently the next time to ensure the audit pro­cess is not delayed in the future? Fin­ance Man­ager advised that the learn­ing point was to be more pro­act­ive in man­aging the aud­it­ors. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that plans would also be con­sidered in con­junc­tion with the extern­al aud­it­ors and Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee on bring­ing the audit pro­cess for­ward slightly and seek­ing the auditor’s com­mit­ment to resolve the audit fully with­in a short­er, spe­cified peri­od of time.

4. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee noted the final audited res­ults off the year to 31 March 2019.

5. Action: None.

Fin­ance Mon­it­or­ing: 5 Months to 31 August 2019 (Paper 2)

1. Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Man­ager intro­duced Paper 2 which presents a sum­mary review of income and expendit­ure for the 5 months to 31 August 2019. He high­lighted the fol­low­ing points:

   a) Year on year becom­ing tight­er on how we report on budget phas­ing and our pro­jec­tions. b) 5 months into new fin­an­cial year and in the core budgets there are very few vari­ances. c) Main mon­it­or­ing focus is on whole year rather than month by month. d) Aware­ness that budgets will have to be slightly adjus­ted to allow for unfore­seen costs such as mobile phone con­tracts, con­tract­ing addi­tion­al staff and office clean­ing costs. e) Depre­ci­ation was slightly under­spent. f) Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment have awar­ded the Author­ity with anoth­er £45k for peat­land work which will be spent by the end of the fin­an­cial year. g) Cap­it­al spend is mod­est with two new serv­ers for bet­ter IT cap­ab­il­it­ies and intern­al remod­el­ling of the exist­ing office build­ing. h) With ref­er­ence to Annex I the pic­ture has slightly changed going for­ward, plan to link the accounts into excel to make it easi­er for aud­it­ors to trace through. i) With ref­er­ence to Annex 2, the pos­i­tion is ahead of pri­or years in terms of com­mit­ments and spend. Plan­ning budget still to final­ise phased pos­i­tion as it is rely­ing on Report­ers Unit and their tim­ing of Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan Review. Indic­at­ive costs should be con­firmed at end of the Octo­ber. j) Look­ing like an easi­er year end to manage.

2. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) Clar­ity sought on the increase in office clean­ing costs. Fin­ance Man­ager explained that the con­tract­ors had under-billed for year one as a res­ult of the increase in the Scot­tish Liv­ing wage last year and had absorbed the cost them­selves. He went on to explain that this year they had cor­rec­ted the error and were now invoicing for the right amount. b) Could it be explained why the Author­ity con­tracts the clean­ing out as opposed to dir­ectly employ­ing loc­ally? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that it used to take a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of time to recruit and man­age the clean­ing ser­vice and also put addi­tion­al ​“out of hours” work­ing respons­ib­il­it­ies on staff with asso­ci­ated cost and man­age­ment con­sequences. All clean­ing staff provided by the Fort Wil­li­am based con­tract­or are loc­al to Grant­own on Spey. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed his view that this was an appro­pri­ate ser­vice to con­tract out. c) Com­ment made that it was bet­ter to con­tract the clean­ing extern­ally as should any issues with their staff arise the con­tract­or can deal with it. d) Con­cern was raised that the Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship (TGLP) Pro­ject Board had not been party to any dis­cus­sions on fin­ance and that this was con­cern­ing at this stage and going for­ward into the most cru­cial few

   e) months. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed to take this con­cern from the Com­mit­tee to Peter May­hew and Will Boyd Wal­lis. The CEO explained the TGLP had 23 live pro­jects and while they were in a rel­at­ively com­fort­able pos­i­tion des­pite there being issues around cer­tain pro­jects. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices reit­er­ated the import­ance of the TGLP Pro­ject Board hav­ing an over­view of where the fin­ance sits on the last 12 months of the pro­ject and the Author­ity as Account­able Body for the pro­ject and sug­ges­ted pre­par­ing a paper to bring before the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee at their next meet­ing. f) Was there scope for hold­ing train­ing for pro­ject boards? Staff agreed that train­ing could be provided if required. In this case, how­ever, there was an impres­sion that this was a com­plex pro­gramme of work for man­age­ment to deal with, includ­ing vari­ous part­ner and fun­der rela­tion­ships, while it was recog­nised that the Pro­gramme Man­ager has a dif­fi­cult role to bal­ance the over­all man­age­ment and gov­ernance of the pro­gramme with oper­a­tion­al deliv­ery. As such, there was not a per­ceived weak­ness in the Pro­gramme Board although train­ing could be delivered as required to fur­ther strengthen this. g) On what date was the TGLP pro­ject due to come to an end? The CEO con­firmed it was sched­uled to end in Septem­ber 2020 how­ever the £100k leg­acy fund would con­tin­ue after. Agree­ment that the TGLP Pro­ject Board needs to be provided with a fin­an­cial over­view. h) Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices high­lighted that if any risks were iden­ti­fied as part of the review of the TGLP pro­ject, anoth­er meet­ing of the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee could be sched­uled in advance of the next pro­grammed meet­ing on 21^st Feb­ru­ary 2020. i) With ref­er­ence to annex 2 of the paper and the per­cent­ages show­ing a huge spread of remain­ing expendit­ure from 18% to 77%, mem­bers ques­tioned how nor­mal was that? The Fin­ance Man­ager con­firmed that it was all nor­mal, in Vis­it­or Ser­vices for example that was asso­ci­ated with grant fund­ing for Rangers Ser­vices. The CEO advised that the expendit­ure in regards to Plan­ning budget was spe­cific­ally around the draft Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and depended on if the Report­ers decided if the exam­in­a­tion would be oral or writ­ten. He advised that the costs involved should be known by the end of Novem­ber and that last time it had cost in the region of £45k. The Fin­ance Man­ager added that 5 months into the cur­rent fin­an­cial year, the cur­rent pos­i­tion on level of fin­an­cial com­mit­ment and expen­ded against budget was healthy com­pared to pre­vi­ous years when only 35% was com­mit­ted. j) Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices high­lighted that there was capa­city for budget move­ment giv­en that an addi­tion­al Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment grant of £117k was expec­ted to com­pensate for some of the employ­ers pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions earli­er in the year.

   k) Query regard­ing the addi­tion­al gap of £30k for the employ­ers pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions. The CEO con­firmed that this gap remained. The increased pen­sion costs were not being reim­bursed in full as some ele­ment of pen­sions increase had been noti­fied well in advance of budget set­ting. Reim­burse­ment was in respect of the unex­pec­ted level of increase. l) The CEO repor­ted that there would be fur­ther £44k for peat depth sur­veys pre­par­at­ory work tak­ing place this winter. The Author­ity had been asked to find biod­iversity work and could be awar­ded addi­tion­al fund­ing for that work. m) Would the pen­sion gap decrease year on year? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices admit­ted that he was not sighted on what would hap­pen going for­ward, he advised that pen­sions are set up by the UK Treas­ury and are there­fore out with the Authority’s con­trol. He advised that budget scen­ario work developed had assumed that the reim­bursed grant would be embed­ded into a high­er grant in aid levels going for­ward, while the ​“gap” in cost increases would con­tin­ue to have to be covered by the Author­ity from those resources. n) The Con­vener asked if there was a sav­ing to be taken from Board and Staff costs, while Board costs were fairly on track it appeared that staff costs were high­er than pro­jec­ted. The Fin­ance Man­ager advised that this was nor­mal at this time of year. The CEO added that the Author­ity had seen an increase in Board travel and sub­sist­ence expenses claims and that a closer eye would need to be kept on it, espe­cially as there was pres­sure from gov­ern­ment to reduce car­bon emis­sions. He added the Travel and sub­sist­ence policy would be revised for Board and staff in the com­ing months. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices added that he inten­ded to take a paper on this to the next Staff­ing & Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Decem­ber 2019 as there was a need to review the author­isa­tion pro­ced­ures for Board Mem­bers attend­ing con­fer­ences. o) The Board Con­vener reminded staff that as they had axed the pre-board dis­cus­sion, din­ner and overnight, £5k should be freed up and come back into the budget. He also advised that with the reduc­tion in Board meet­ing days from April 2020 this should also free up anoth­er £2k next fin­an­cial year. He sug­ges­ted that meet­ings are held in more cent­ral and access­ible loc­a­tions so that they pub­lic trans­port can be more widely used by the Board. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices noted this while also high­light­ing that appro­pri­ate meet­ing facil­it­ies includ­ing Wi-Fi were import­ant con­sid­er­a­tions in final­ising ven­ues. p) Cla­ri­fic­a­tion reques­ted on the £5k income from Forest Hol­i­days in the Oper­a­tion­al Plan. The CEO advised that this was part of a NPUK pay­ment for a spe­cif­ic pro­ject. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices added that due dili­gence had been car­ried out on pay­ments such as this to ensure there would be no issues around planning.

3. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee noted the out­turn for the 5 months to 31 August 2019.

4. Actions: i. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed to raise that the TGLP Board needed sight of the fin­an­cial over­view of the pro­ject from the Com­mit­tee to Peter May­hew and Will Boyd Wal­lis. ii. TGLP pro­ject over­view paper to be brought to the next Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee meeting.

AOCB

1. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices repor­ted that the Cairngorms LEAD­ER pro­gramme had slightly over­com­mit­ted £2.968million, with that over-com­mit­ment expec­ted to be resolved through lim­ited pro­ject slip­page, which was an excel­lent pos­i­tion. He explained that there were a num­ber of LEAD­ER groups in Scot­land who had failed to com­mit their mon­ies and there­fore the uncom­mit­ted funds had been put into a cent­ral fund which Cairngorms LEAD­ER have bid into. He advised that they had been suc­cess­ful and had been awar­ded in excess of £66k and as account­able body for the Cairngorms LAG he wanted to ensure this Com­mit­tee were con­tent with the increase in alloc­a­tion. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee recog­nised that the Cairngorms LAG were in a bet­ter pos­i­tion with the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment than two years ago and con­firmed that they were con­tent with the increased allocation.

2. The CEO provided the Com­mit­tee with the fol­low­ing updates: a) The Author­ity had placed an expres­sion of interest to the Hori­zons Her­it­age Lot­tery Fund where only one pro­ject per coun­try was to be fun­ded. He advised that the Cairngorms Cli­mate bid totalled £54.8million. He advised that if the Author­ity were suc­cess­ful in get­ting through this stage they would then have 12- 14 months to draw up a detailed bid. b) Poten­tial fund­ing com­ing through the biod­iversity fund and in dis­cus­sion with the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment on how to apply next year either through Grant and Aid alloc­a­tion or through apply­ing to SNH. c) The CEO had placed a bid for fund­ing from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment for a rangers ser­vice for the Author­ity going for­wards, how­ever the like­li­hood of this would not be known until at least the budget was announced in Decem­ber 2019. d) The Cli­mate Change con­fer­ence would take place on Monday 9^th March 2020 and the Min­is­ter had con­firmed their attendance.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The next Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee meet­ing will take place on Fri­day 21 Feb­ru­ary 2020 in Bal­later, ven­ue to be confirmed.

2. The meet­ing fin­ished at 10.05 hours.