200306FinanceCtteePaper3AABudgetPaper

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper 3 06/03/20

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY FIN­ANCE AND DELIV­ERY COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ BUDGET DEVELOPMENT

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SERVICES

Pur­pose

This paper presents the cur­rent pos­i­tion on devel­op­ment of the Authority’s budget for the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ fin­an­cial year.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Con­sider the update on the estim­ated budget pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁; b) Con­sider wheth­er any aspects of the budget mer­it fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion in the devel­op­ment of final pro­pos­als to be presen­ted to the Board in March.

Back­ground

1. As mem­bers are aware, the Authority’s budget set­ting timetable has been revised for the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ fin­an­cial year to take account of changes in the timetable for the UK Gov­ern­ment budget which has had con­sequen­tial impacts on the pub­lic­a­tion of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment budget. This paper presents the cur­rent pos­i­tion on the Authority’s budget devel­op­ment since pub­lic­a­tion of the Scot­tish budget on 6 Feb­ru­ary and high­lights any key impacts on resources.

2. The Board’s Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee will also con­sider the detail of the Authority’s planned approach to staff pay awards at its meet­ing pri­or to the Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee on 6 March 2020. The Committee’s agreed approach to pay for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ with­in the wider para­met­ers of the Scot­tish Government’s Pub­lic Sec­tor Pay Policy for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ will be repor­ted to the meet­ing. In the mean­time, estim­ated fin­an­cial con­sequences of the Authority’s pos­sible approach to pay are incor­por­ated into the budget estim­ates for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ presen­ted with this paper.

Over­view of Budget Pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁

1. A sum­mary of the present budget pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ is presen­ted in Annex 1. Over­all, the budget pos­i­tion is close to the break-even tar­get for the year, with a net

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper 3 06/03/20

1. expendit­ure pos­i­tion of only just over £9,000. This pos­i­tion is on the basis of total expendit­ure of £5.063 mil­lion fun­ded by rev­en­ue and cap­it­al grant in aid of £4.929 mil­lion and estim­ated oth­er income of £0.125 million.

Annex I presents the budget estim­ates for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ com­pared with the budget base the under­ly­ing budget pos­i­tion estab­lished for devel­op­ment of the ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ budget.

Staff Pay Considerations

1. As always, the staff pay award rep­res­ents a sig­ni­fic­ant budget con­sid­er­a­tion for the com­ing year. The Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Committee’s paper set­ting out the con­sid­er­a­tions on the staff pay award for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ is cir­cu­lated sep­ar­ately to Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee mem­bers for inform­a­tion. An update on the Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee decisions on this paper will be presen­ted to the Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee meet­ing in its con­sid­er­a­tion of this paper.

2. The gross costs of the mod­elled 3% pay award to all staff for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ is £72,000 of which an estim­ated 7.5% is expec­ted to be recovered by extern­al fund­ing of posts giv­ing a net cost of £66,000.

3. The impact of pro­posed pro­gres­sion awards for staff trav­el­ling through their salary bands is estim­ated at £39,000, again with ele­ments of those costs being covered by extern­al fund­ing of pro­jects with a res­ult­ant cost fall­ing on the Authority’s resources of £36,000.

4. Over­all, the gross impact of pay pro­pos­als for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ is £111,000. The impact of the mod­elled and pro­posed staff pay award for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ is fully absorbed through man­age­ment changes made to the Authority’s staff­ing com­ple­ment over the course of ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀. A num­ber of vacan­cies over the course of the cur­rent year have been con­sidered by man­age­ment and not replaced, with these posts removed from the estab­lish­ment. Con­sequently, as set out in Annex I, gross staff salar­ies are estim­ated at £0.102 mil­lion lower than the plan­ning base for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀.

5. Total estim­ated staff recov­er­ies to be made from extern­ally fun­ded pro­grammes has been reduced from cur­rent year level. The year ahead brings the com­ple­tion in year of the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme and the end of the LEAD­ER Pro­gramme and will res­ult in reduced levels of recov­er­ies. It is pos­sible that, as extern­al fund­ing pos­i­tions and part­ners’ budgets final­ise, addi­tion­al staff salar­ies will be iden­ti­fied as fund­able from oth­er sources. The pos­i­tion adop­ted at this stage is again a rel­at­ively prudent estim­ate to give con­fid­ence around set­ting and com­mit­ting oth­er budget expendit­ure allocations.

6. We have also reduced the estim­ated level of vacancy sav­ings to be achieved in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁. As extern­al pro­grammes come to a con­clu­sion, there will be some require­ment for staff redeploy­ment in addi­tion to the end of some fixed term con­tracts which will res­ult in posts being taken out of the estab­lish­ment. With the expect­a­tion of redeploy­ment and also some indic­a­tion of a reduc­tion in turnover levels, we believe it is prudent to reduce estim­ated sav­ings to be achieved through vacancy man­age­ment actions.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper 3 06/03/20

1. Tak­ing all these staff con­sid­er­a­tions into account, total staff budget for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ is £3.256 mil­lion, some £0.133 mil­lion high­er than the ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ plan­ning base.

Non-Staff Budget Considerations

1. Key budget con­sid­er­a­tions oth­er than around the staff pay award and staff salary recov­er­ies in devel­op­ment of the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ budget estim­ates are: a) Oth­er income: estim­ated income has been reduced for the com­ing year by £0.050 mil­lion. This income cov­ers plan­ning fees and oth­er mis­cel­laneous con­tri­bu­tions received in the year which are not dir­ectly linked to oper­a­tion­al plan activ­it­ies and / or extern­ally fun­ded pro­jects: for example, con­tri­bu­tions received from spon­sor­ship activ­ity by Nation­al Park Part­ner­ships Lim­ited. Income from these sources is rel­at­ively uncer­tain and has been declin­ing over recent years and there­fore a prudent pos­i­tion has been estab­lished for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ in our budget mod­el­ling. b) Board fees: estim­ated total fees for the year have been increased to allow for both the ces­sa­tion of the pre­vi­ous attend­ance policy for fee pay­ments and also to cov­er the anti­cip­ated increase in daily fee rates from applic­a­tion of the rel­ev­ant policy for appoin­ted mem­bers’ fees. Oth­er Board and Staff Costs have been held at ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ levels with the expect­a­tion that infla­tion­ary cost increases in this area of expendit­ure will be off­set by sav­ings from the revised Board meet­ing sched­ule. c) Facil­it­ies, IT and Oth­er Sup­port Costs: have been increased to allow for infla­tion­ary increases in expendit­ure. d) Vis­it­or Ser­vices: guideline Oper­a­tion­al Plan invest­ment in this area has been reduced in recog­ni­tion that the Author­ity has now com­pleted its approved con­tri­bu­tions into The Moun­tains and The People pro­gramme led by the Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land. e) Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Plan­ning: guideline Oper­a­tion­al Plan invest­ment in this area has been reduced in recog­ni­tion that the Author­ity has now com­pleted its approved con­tri­bu­tions into the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship programme.

2. The Authority’s cur­rent Oper­a­tion­al Plan pro­vi­sions retain a planned invest­ment of £1.116 mil­lion into pro­ject work in the Nation­al Park and toward deliv­ery of Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan pri­or­it­ies. This level of planned invest­ment at the com­mence­ment of the year com­pares well with the Cor­por­ate Plan pro­jec­tions of Oper­a­tion­al Plan invest­ment of £1.032m for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁.

3. Spe­cif­ic invest­ment pro­pos­als planned to be delivered through the oper­a­tion­al plan devel­op­ment are still in devel­op­ment by Heads of Ser­vice and will be presen­ted as part of the final budget pro­pos­als to be con­sidered by the Board at its meet­ing on 27 March.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper 3 06/03/20

Next Steps

1. The Man­age­ment Team and Oper­a­tion­al Man­age­ment Group will con­tin­ue to review and devel­op budget estim­ates as neces­sary for sub­mis­sion to the Board at its meet­ing on 27 March. This devel­op­ment work will also include estim­a­tions of staff and oth­er resource costs to be alloc­ated against the Oper­a­tion­al Plan activ­ity lines in order to give sight of the total resource invest­ment into each activity.

2. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Fin­ance Team will also con­tin­ue to closely mon­it­or the budget pos­i­tion for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ and explore any oppor­tun­it­ies arising to accel­er­ate planned invest­ment from ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ into the cur­rent year should resources and invest­ment plans allow. This will allow for fur­ther invest­ment plans to be brought into the com­ing fin­an­cial year.

Dav­id Camer­on 19 Feb­ru­ary 2020 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk