CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 27^th March 2020

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ BUDGET AND OPER­A­TION­AL PLAN

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SERVICES

Pur­pose

This paper sets out the Authority’s fin­an­cial pos­i­tion for the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ fin­an­cial year. The paper presents the pro­posed fin­an­cial alloc­a­tions for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ for core income and expendit­ure, togeth­er with inten­ded oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ment. The paper seeks Board endorse­ment of the budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ as an appro­pri­ate deploy­ment of resources to work towards deliv­ery of the Authority’s adop­ted Cor­por­ate Plan objectives.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is reques­ted to:

a) Review the pro­posed budget and resource alloc­a­tions for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁; b) Con­sider wheth­er the pro­posed deploy­ment of resources poses any per­ceived risks to the achieve­ment of the Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives by 2022 and agree any risks posed for sub­sequent action by the Chief Exec­ut­ive and Man­age­ment Team; c) Sub­ject to actions that may be required to address any iden­ti­fied risks, endorse the budget and oper­a­tion­al plan pro­pos­als for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁; and d) Agree that the Man­age­ment Team shall keep the budget and resource alloc­a­tions under review in light of Cov­id-19 impacts on both the organ­isa­tion and the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, and report to Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee and Board to seek approvals for any sig­ni­fic­ant changes required to budget alloc­a­tions and deliv­ery profile.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 27^th March 2020

²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ BUDGET AND OPER­A­TION­AL PLAN – FOR DECISION

Stra­tegic Context

1. The Author­ity, as a Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Body (NDPB) oper­ates with­in the con­text of a Man­age­ment State­ment estab­lished by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. The Man­age­ment State­ment sets out the respect­ive respons­ib­il­it­ies of Scot­tish Min­is­ters, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Port­fo­lio Account­able Officer, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Spon­sor Team, the Con­vener and Depute Con­vener of the Board, the Board as a whole and the Chief Exec­ut­ive as Account­able Officer as they relate to the stra­tegic dir­ec­tion, oper­a­tion and fin­an­cial account­ab­il­ity of the Authority.

2. The Board is respons­ible with­in the terms of the Man­age­ment State­ment for estab­lish­ing the over­all stra­tegic dir­ec­tion of the NDPB with­in the policy, plan­ning and resources frame­work determ­ined by the Scot­tish Min­is­ters. The Board achieves this aim through determ­in­ing the dir­ec­tion and con­tent of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) and there­after the Authority’s own Cor­por­ate Plan which sets out the CNPA’s dir­ect con­tri­bu­tions to deliv­ery of NPPP object­ives. The Authority’s cur­rent Cor­por­ate Plan was approved by the Board and Scot­tish Min­is­ters in March 2018: https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​a​u​t​h​o​r​i​t​y​/​c​o​r​p​o​r​a​t​e​-​p​l​a​n​s​/​c​o​r​p​o​r​a​t​e​-​plan/

3. Deliv­ery against the Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives is repor­ted on twice each year, high­light­ing achieve­ments and excep­tions, per­form­ance against tar­gets and key per­form­ance indic­at­ors and wider stra­tegic risk man­age­ment. The third such deliv­ery report on the cur­rent 2018 to 2022 Cor­por­ate Plan was presen­ted to the Board at its meet­ing in Decem­ber 2019: https://cairngorms.co.uk/resource/docs/boardpapers/06122019/191206CNPABdPaper5AACorporatePlanUpdateCover%20V.2.pdf

4. In terms of annu­al budget­ing, the Man­age­ment State­ment sets out the role for the Board as hav­ing cor­por­ate respons­ib­il­ity for pro­mot­ing the effi­cient and effect­ive use of staff and oth­er resources by the NDPB, and ensur­ing that any stat­utory or admin­is­trat­ive require­ments for the funds fall­ing with­in the stew­ard­ship of the NDPB are com­plied with.

5. The Chief Exec­ut­ive, as Account­able Officer, is per­son­ally respons­ible for estab­lish­ing the Authority’s Cor­por­ate and Oper­a­tion­al Plans in the light of Scot­tish Minister’s wider stra­tegic aims. The Chief Exec­ut­ive is also respons­ible under the terms of the Man­age­ment State­ment for estab­lish­ing a robust per­form­ance man­age­ment frame­work which sup­ports the achieve­ment of the NDPB’s aims and object­ives as set out in the cor­por­ate and oper­a­tion­al plans; and which enables full per­form­ance report­ing to the Board, the spon­sor Dir­ect­or­ate and the wider pub­lic. This lat­ter respons­ib­il­ity is giv­en effect by the twice yearly Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance report referred to above, com­ple­men­ted by reports on NPPP deliv­ery and reg­u­lar updates on deliv­ery mat­ters to the Board.

6. Over­all, the budget developed must of course be cap­able of hav­ing pro­posed expendit­ure fin­anced by avail­able income in the year with a bal­anced year-end out­turn targeted.

7. As such, the exer­cise of annu­al budget and oper­a­tion­al plan estab­lish­ment in the Author­ity as an NDPB is one of:

a) The Chief Exec­ut­ive, sup­por­ted by the Man­age­ment Team and wider staff group, estab­lish­ing the most appro­pri­ate deploy­ment of resources to sup­port deliv­ery over the course of the year toward achiev­ing the stra­tegic object­ives set by the Board in the Cor­por­ate Plan; b) Review by the Board to ensure that the pro­posed deploy­ment of resources appears appro­pri­ate as a means of achiev­ing stra­tegic objectives.

Stra­tegic Policy Considerations

1. The ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ budget is set with­in wider pub­lic sec­tor fin­an­cial policy in Scot­land, which con­tin­ues to estab­lish a fin­an­cial envir­on­ment in which pub­lic fin­ances are rel­at­ively restric­ted. As such, there are clear dir­ec­tions to the Author­ity to main­tain expendit­ure with­in avail­able resource levels and deliv­er a bal­anced out-turn position.

2. The Author­ity also con­tin­ues to adopt the Scot­tish Government’s ​“No Com­puls­ory Redund­ancy Policy” which is an ele­ment of the wider Pubic Sec­tor Pay Policy for NDPBs. While the Author­ity would not wish to use redund­an­cies as a budget man­age­ment tool, and has pos­it­ively taken for­ward the No Com­puls­ory Redund­ancy (NCR) Policy, this does mean that a long term view must be taken around staff employ­ment levels. The poten­tial impact of recruit­ment must be con­sidered not only in the year of recruit­ment, but also over sub­sequent years’ fin­an­cial com­mit­ment levels and in the con­text of budget and staff deploy­ment flexibilities.

3. Staff are of course a key ele­ment in our resource mix. Almost all staff and pro­jects oper­ate across the three areas of our Cor­por­ate Plan: Con­ser­va­tion, Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence and Rur­al Devel­op­ment. Staff in turn work across each of the Park aims. This is also the case for all cor­por­ate and com­mu­nic­a­tions staff, who sup­port deliv­ery and achieve­ment of cor­por­ate pri­or­it­ies across the breadth of our Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives. There­fore, while we cat­egor­ise our pro­ject activ­it­ies against on one of the top level pri­or­ity areas of our Cor­por­ate Plan for plan­ning, account­ing and pro­ject man­age­ment pur­poses, almost all such pro­ject activ­it­ies have mul­tiple impacts across mul­tiple or all of our stra­tegic objectives.

4. Sig­ni­fic­ant increases to the rates of employ­ers’ con­tri­bu­tions to the Civil Ser­vice Pen­sion Scheme (CSPS) for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ exacer­bated the fin­an­cial impact of recruit­ment of staff as opposed to oth­er means of deliv­er­ing stra­tegic object­ives. These addi­tion­al costs of employ­ment have been addressed in part over the course of ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment through addi­tion­al grant alloc­a­tion to cov­er a pro­por­tion of pen­sion cost increases, with an added award to the Author­ity as part of the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ set­tle­ment to fur­ther cov­er the cost increase. There are no added pen­sion costs increases in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ CSPS pen­sion con­tri­bu­tion rates.

5. The Author­ity has sought over recent years to max­im­ise the impact of our avail­able resources through invest­ing funds to secure lever­age of extern­al fund­ing into the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Par­tic­u­larly suc­cesses have been secured with EU LEAD­ER fin­ance and Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Funds for The Moun­tains and The People Pro­ject, the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship, Badenoch Great Place Scheme and more recently the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject. Our ana­lys­is in July 2018, and presen­ted with budget papers to the Board in March 2019, indic­ated that invest­ment of just over £1 mil­lion in Cairngorms NPA fund­ing had secured almost £12 mil­lion of inward invest­ment to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The pri­or­ity to ensure ongo­ing flex­ib­il­ity in resource deploy­ment to allow fin­an­cial invest­ment to lever­age sig­ni­fic­ant addi­tion­al inward invest­ment remains a key ele­ment of the Man­age­ment Team’s budget and resource plan­ning strategy.

Stra­tegic Risk Management

1. The Board con­sidered the most recently pub­lished ver­sion of the stra­tegic risk register at its meet­ing in Decem­ber 2019. https://cairngorms.co.uk/resource/docs/boardpapers/06122019/191206CNPABdPaper5Annex3Corporate%20Plan%20UpdateRisk%20Register%20v3.2.pdf There are a num­ber of stra­tegic risks linked to the devel­op­ment of the budget for the forth­com­ing year. The primary risks of rel­ev­ance are con­sidered briefly here.

2. Risk A1 — Resources: pub­lic sec­tor fin­ances con­strain capa­city to alloc­ate suf­fi­cient resources to deliv­er cor­por­ate plan is again seen to be mit­ig­ated over ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ on the basis of the pro­pos­als set out in this paper.

3. Risk A11.2 high­lights the poten­tial resource require­ment estab­lished by the leg­acy of large scale fun­ded pro­jects after they com­plete their deliv­ery phases. For example, there is a spe­cif­ic leg­acy phase with­in the terms of the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship pro­ject which will need resourced by the Author­ity as lead applic­ant; the close of the LEAD­ER Pro­gramme in Novem­ber / Decem­ber 2020 will require ongo­ing admin­is­tra­tion to close the pro­gramme and remain exposed to extern­al audit for sev­er­al years; and the end of the cap­it­al build phase of the Moun­tains and the People pro­ject will move these paths, like oth­er infra­struc­ture invest­ment, into con­sid­er­a­tion of cov­er for ongo­ing main­ten­ance. This risk there­fore begins to poten­tially impact the Authority’s resource deploy­ment, although impacts are min­im­al for the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ fin­an­cial year itself.

4. Risk A19 that ​“fail­ure to effect­ively man­age staff­ing num­bers in the long term will reduce the capa­city for the Author­ity to deploy adequate fin­an­cial invest­ment toward pri­or­ity pro­jects in the Nation­al Park” has been man­aged through the course of ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ in line with the approved Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy. The Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee con­sidered an update on the pos­i­tion at its meet­ing in March 2020 high­light­ing a low risk of impacts arising from man­age­ment of fixed term con­tracts. Fig­ures set out in this budget paper also high­light that staff num­bers and the asso­ci­ated pro­por­tion of resource required to cov­er staff­ing invest­ment remains rel­at­ively con­stant, indic­at­ing that the risk is under effect­ive management.

5. The Man­age­ment Team will review the risk register in light of Cov­id-19 and will report to the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee in due course. The risk of the responses to the Cov­id-19 out­break requir­ing sig­ni­fic­ant review of the cur­rent budget pro­pos­als and alloc­a­tions through the year is recog­nised and a recom­mend­a­tion made high­light­ing the Man­age­ment Team’s ongo­ing review of the situ­ation and report­ing arrange­ments to Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee and Board for any changes that may be required.

Implic­a­tions

1. The core budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan pro­pos­als set out in this paper present a broadly bal­anced budget deliv­er­ing across all three areas of the Cor­por­ate Plan, and address­ing all stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies. The budget presents a broadly bal­anced pos­i­tion of planned expendit­ure covered in full by avail­able resources from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment grant in aid and oth­er income, in line with our fin­an­cial tar­get of achiev­ing a fin­an­cial break-even pos­i­tion at the end of each fin­an­cial year.

2. There are no excep­tions to high­light – there are no risks anti­cip­ated by Man­age­ment Team that the resource deploy­ment pro­posed will give rise to short­com­ings in achieve­ment of Cor­por­ate Plan targets.

3. The budget pos­i­tion is in line with the anti­cip­ated resource deploy­ment set out in the Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan 2018 ‑2022 (page 12), with planned invest­ment through our annu­al oper­a­tion­al plan some­what high­er than the ori­gin­al pro­jec­tions estab­lished in the Cor­por­ate Plan. This budget estab­lishes the fin­an­cial pos­i­tion at the start of the third year of the cur­rent four year Cor­por­ate Plan.

Deliv­ery of Outcomes

1. The Author­ity for cor­por­ate plan­ning and oper­a­tion­al plan­ning reas­ons divides its work into Con­ser­va­tion, Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence and Rur­al Devel­op­ment. This allows us to have a sys­tem to man­age both staff and resources and give people a clear indic­a­tion of what the organ­isa­tion does.

2. How­ever, it is also clear that people some­times mis­in­ter­pret this to fur­ther cer­tain points of view. Almost all staff and pro­jects oper­ate across these three areas and in turn deliv­er against all of the Park aims. This also goes for all cor­por­ate and com­mu­nic­a­tions staff who sup­port across all three.

3. To illus­trate this there are 4 examples below linked to lines in the oper­a­tion­al plan that show the com­plex­ity and deliv­ery across all the out­comes by the work of the CNPA.

a) Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship – The staff and the fund­ing for this is under Con­ser­va­tion. How­ever, this includes fund­ing and staff time on the upgrade of the Spey­side Way exten­sion. That is a vis­it­or exper­i­ence area of work that also trans­lates into tour­ism and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. The dark skies work is con­ser­va­tion (redu­cing light pol­lu­tion), vis­it­or exper­i­ence (being done mainly by volun­teers) and rur­al devel­op­ment (attract­ing more people to spend more time in the area with loc­al busi­nesses while broad­en­ing com­munity capa­city to deliv­er loc­ally against pri­or­it­ies iden­ti­fied by the loc­al community).

b) Forest Man­age­ment – Wood­land expan­sion is a pri­or­ity for the CNPA and we have a tar­get of 5000ha over 5 years. This is obvi­ously a sig­ni­fic­ant con­ser­va­tion area of work for CNPA staff being flagged up in Cairngorms Nature. How­ever, a 200ha nat­ive wood­land in our tar­get area would mean the landown­er would receive £720,000 in grant pay­ments and oth­er grants are avail­able for deer fen­cing etc. Wood­land, as well as deliv­er­ing our con­ser­va­tion out­comes, is also deliv­er­ing vis­it­or exper­i­ence (amen­ity and recre­ation) and rur­al devel­op­ment (wood products, tim­ber etc.).

c) Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan — The LDP is our main tool for rur­al devel­op­ment in the Nation­al Park. This guides where devel­op­ment goes and sets our hous­ing land sup­ply tar­gets etc. It is also a tool to pro­tect and enhance nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age with polices cov­er­ing all these areas. The pre­sump­tion against hill­tracks in open moor­land is a way to pro­tect land­scapes and wild land which are both con­ser­va­tion pri­or­it­ies. Again, there­fore, a pro­ject activ­ity alloc­ated size­able fin­an­cial and staff resource and ​“iden­ti­fied” with­in Rur­al Devel­op­ment is sup­port­ing across all aspects of con­ser­va­tion and vis­it­or exper­i­ence, and requires staff input from across all areas of the organ­isa­tion in order to effect­ively achieve the inten­ded results.

d) Volun­teer Rangers – The Volun­teer Rangers pro­gramme is part of the vis­it­or exper­i­ence team. Volun­teer rangers deliv­er con­ser­va­tion pro­jects, access pro­jects, provide great oppor­tun­it­ies for people to upskill and help deliv­er across com­munit­ies in the Park.

1. The above examples could be provided for all the lines in the oper­a­tion­al plan. Some pro­jects we lead, some we sup­port and some are part­ner­ships: look­ing simply at the fig­ures and com­par­ing spend and staff alloc­a­tion between Con­ser­va­tion, Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence & Rur­al Devel­op­ment does not give the full pic­ture of what is being delivered for con­ser­va­tion, vis­it­or exper­i­ence and rur­al devel­op­ment by Park staff and fund­ing. The breadth and depth of what we do can be found in our cor­por­ate plan report­ing, the CEO Report and the annu­al NPPP review.

Suc­cess Measures

1. The suc­cess of ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan pro­pos­als in deliv­er­ing against stra­tegic Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives will con­tin­ue to be repor­ted through the twice-yearly Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance reports to the Board, which include ana­lyses of achieve­ment against Key Per­form­ance Indicators.

2. Mon­it­or­ing against the deliv­ery of the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ budget itself will be under­taken on a reg­u­lar basis by the Board’s Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee and also on an ongo­ing basis by the Man­age­ment Team.

Dav­id Camer­on, 9 March 2020

davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 27^th March 2020

Sup­port­ing Information

Back­ground

1. The forth­com­ing year, ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ rep­res­ents the third year of the Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan for 2018 to 2022. Con­sequently, there is a degree of con­tinu­ation of resource alloc­a­tion and invest­ment across activ­it­ies in the Oper­a­tion­al Plan as we con­tin­ue to pro­gress exist­ing stra­tegic object­ives estab­lished by the Cor­por­ate Plan.

2. We also con­tin­ue to work with oth­er organ­isa­tions to estab­lish align­ment of our resource invest­ment against the Scot­tish Government’s wider port­fo­lio outcomes.

3. At the time of writ­ing this paper, we have received a clear indic­a­tion on grant-in-aid alloc­a­tion for the com­ing year from our Spon­sor Team at Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. All grant fig­ures are there­fore based on fig­ures included in the budget sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Par­lia­ment. We remain aware that there may be impacts on the Scot­tish Government’s budget from the UK Budget once that has been approved in March and impacts will be mon­itored in con­junc­tion with our spon­sor team at Scot­tish Government.

4. The fol­low­ing sec­tions of the paper go on to dis­cuss the spe­cif­ic issues around income, ​“core” run­ning costs and Oper­a­tion­al Plan invest­ment alloc­a­tions. The high level budget estim­ates have pre­vi­ously been con­sidered by the Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee at its meet­ing on 6 March 2020. Aspects of the budget pro­vi­sions as they relate to staff pay and poten­tial awards with­in the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Pub­lic Sec­tor Pay Policy for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ have been con­sidered by the Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee meet­ing on 6 March 2020. Under­pin­ning strands of deliv­ery work being under­taken by the Author­ity and con­tinu­ing into the com­ing fin­an­cial year have been set out in both the Chief Executive’s updates to each Board meet­ing and also in the Cor­por­ate and Nation­al Park Plan Update reports presen­ted to Board.

²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ Budget: Income

1. The Authority’s expec­ted cash-based income for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ com­prises primar­ily a rev­en­ue grant of £4.779m (pri­or year £4.565m) and cap­it­al grant of £0.240m (pri­or year £0.240m), giv­ing a total resource alloc­a­tion totalling £5.019m from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (pri­or year £4.805m).

2. We are also budget­ing for a fur­ther £0.125 mil­lion income from oth­er sources includ­ing plan­ning fees, pro­ject con­tri­bu­tions and oth­er gen­er­ated income (pri­or year £0.175m).

3. Total budgeted, cash-based income for the com­ing year, ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁, is there­fore £5.144m (pri­or year £4.980m). This rep­res­ents fund­ing avail­able to the Author­ity to sup­port its on-going activ­it­ies and Oper­a­tion­al Plan spend­ing plans. Of this total, £0.090 mil­lion (pri­or year £0.060 mil­lion) of cap­it­al grant has been alloc­ated to sup­port fin­ance of cap­it­al asset replace­ment and renew­al for ICT equip­ment and works to the offices, with the remain­ing cap­it­al grants avail­able to sup­port oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ments of a cap­it­al nature.

4. Many of the activ­it­ies led by the Author­ity gen­er­ate fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tions from a wide range of part­ners. There­fore, the Authority’s total income and turnover by the end of the com­ing year is likely to be high­er than this estim­ate. As these fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tions are typ­ic­ally tied to spe­cif­ic pro­jects, the Park Authority’s dis­cre­tion­ary income for budget alloc­a­tion to core and oper­a­tion­al plan activ­it­ies in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁, remains as £5.054m after alloc­a­tion of cap­it­al for asset replace­ment and renewal.

Wider Fund­ing Con­text with­in Cairngorms Nation­al Park

1. As we repor­ted to Board in present­ing pre­vi­ous years’ budget pro­pos­als, the work of staff and organ­isa­tion­al sup­port from the Author­ity over the course of the last years has res­ul­ted in some sig­ni­fic­ant suc­cesses for the Author­ity and its part­ners in secur­ing size­able levels of third party invest­ment into the Nation­al Park. The year ahead brings the com­ple­tion phase for may of these sig­ni­fic­ant inward invest­ment pro­grammes to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.

2. The com­ing year will involve the Author­ity in the com­ple­tion of the deliv­ery phase and plan­ning for leg­acy man­age­ment of the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship Pro­ject. The Moun­tains and the People Pro­ject (Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land (OATS) as lead deliv­ery organ­isa­tion) is also now near the com­ple­tion of its deliv­ery phase. Cairngorms LEAD­ER (Cairngorms Trust as lead deliv­ery organ­isa­tion) has com­pleted its fund­ing decisions, fully alloc­ated the pro­gramme alloc­a­tion, secured an addi­tion­al £0.08 mil­lion in added fund­ing from unal­loc­ated cent­ral resources and is now focused on com­plet­ing all act­ive pro­jects and mak­ing final claims by Decem­ber 2020. Col­lect­ively, across key pro­jects, we have estim­ated that these part­ner­ship ini­ti­at­ives will secure total invest­ment in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park from these pro­grammes of activ­ity of £12 mil­lion over the 5 years from ²⁰¹⁵⁄₁₆ from an invest­ment of £1 mil­lion of the Authority’s resources.

3. The Man­age­ment Team also remains focused on deliv­ery of effi­ciency sav­ings on expendit­ure, in line with Scot­tish Government’s budget tar­gets of 3% annu­al sav­ings. Our ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ budget mon­it­or­ing presen­ted in March 2020 to the Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee high­lights that the Man­age­ment Team’s approach to staff and vacancy man­age­ment over the year to date has secured £0.146 mil­lion in sav­ings against the staff budget – in addi­tion to the planned vacancy sav­ings and off­set of staff costs against extern­al income (4.9% sav­ing against final year budget of £2.965 mil­lion). We are also in pos­i­tion to secure small sav­ings against run­ning costs budgets for offices and oth­er con­trac­ted ser­vices, although fur­ther effi­cien­cies in these areas are likely to be small and dif­fi­cult to achieve after a num­ber of years of imple­ment­ing effi­ciency sav­ings in these areas of operation.

²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ Expendit­ure Budget: Core Budget Summary

1. A sum­mary of core budget estim­ates for the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ fin­an­cial year is set out in Table One. This table also presents the pro­por­tion of income avail­able to sup­port activ­it­ies accoun­ted for by each aspect of our core expenditure.

Table One: ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ Core Budget Summary

	2020⁄21 Budget Pro­pos­als £000	2019⁄20 Budget Pro­pos­als £000	Change £000
Board Fees	173	158	15
Staff Salar­ies	2,978	2,965	13
Oth­er Board and Staff Costs	175	175	0
Office Run­ning Costs	361	354	7
IT and Pro­fes­sion­al Support	156	153	3
Total ​“cash” based expenditure	3,843	3,805	38
Depre­ci­ation of fixed assets	320	110
Total expendit­ure	4,063	3,915

²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ Budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan — Staffing

1. The Authority’s staff­ing levels rep­res­ents one of the key fin­an­cial man­age­ment tasks in bal­an­cing fin­an­cial invest­ment between core areas of expendit­ure, and pro­ject invest­ment through the Oper­a­tion­al Plan.

Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy

1. Man­age­ment Team has con­tin­ued to main­tain scru­tiny of staff­ing levels over the course of the last year, and par­tic­u­larly over vacancy man­age­ment and any pro­posed recruit­ment. As noted in para­graph 11, our cur­rent fin­an­cial mon­it­or­ing pos­i­tion presen­ted to Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee in March 2020 indic­ates that the final out­turn pos­i­tion for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ will be around £146,000 lower on staff­ing than budgeted as a res­ult of vacancy man­age­ment in the year. This rep­res­ents a fourth con­sec­ut­ive year in which a man­aged reduc­tion in core staff­ing pay bill against budget over the course of the year has been achieved.

2. The staff budget fig­ure included in Table One includes an estim­ate of vacancy sav­ings to be achieved again in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁. Organ­isa­tion­al struc­tures con­tin­ue to be reviewed whenev­er vacan­cies arise to determ­ine wheth­er there are oppor­tun­it­ies to recruit to lower graded posts than pre­vi­ously. The Man­age­ment Team is also con­scious that there may be impacts on staff and budgets as extern­ally fun­ded pro­grammes of activ­ity come to a con­clu­sion and as we then estab­lish appro­pri­ate approaches for staff deployed on these pro­grammes of activ­ity. Over the course of ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀, the Board’s Staff­ing and Recruit­ment has con­sidered our Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy and received updates on the staff man­age­ment pos­i­tion against that Strategy to give assur­ance over our man­age­ment aware­ness of staff con­tract man­age­ment and estab­lish­ing appro­pri­ate long term approaches to staff con­tracts and organ­isa­tion­al struc­ture. Recog­nising the poten­tial added pres­sures cre­ated by the end of a num­ber of fun­ded pro­grammes over ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁, the estim­ated vacancy sav­ings allowed for in the budget at this stage has been reduced to £0.078 mil­lion (pri­or year £0.099 million).

3. Table One illus­trates that man­age­ment of staff levels over the course of the year has res­ul­ted in a small decrease in the pro­por­tion of resource covered by staff com­mit­ments of 0.6% of avail­able income for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ com­pared with the same point at the pre­vi­ous year.

Scot­tish Government’s Pub­lic Sec­tor Pay Policy ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁

1. The budget estim­ates provide for the impact of poten­tial pay awards under the para­met­ers of the Scot­tish Government’s Pub­lic Sec­tor Pay Policy ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁. The Board’s Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee con­sidered the Man­age­ment Team’s pro­posed pay pro­pos­als for the com­ing year at its meet­ing in March 2020. Pay pro­pos­als seek to imple­ment Scot­tish Government’s pub­lic sec­tor pay policy in full, of a 3% increase for all staff earn­ing less than £80,000 (i.e. all staff with­in the main staff group employed by the Author­ity). Addi­tion­ally, a 3% pro­gres­sion award for the approx­im­ately half of staff still pro­gress­ing through their pay bands is provided for. The pro­gres­sion value for staff mov­ing through pay bands also seeks to con­tin­ue the Authority’s com­mit­ment to achieve tar­get jour­ney times to the top of pay bands for staff, after a num­ber of years of pay awards to ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ fin­an­cial year where pro­gres­sion rates have been restric­ted and achieve­ment of jour­ney times put at some risk.

2. The Author­ity also plans to extend its No Com­puls­ory Redund­ancy (NCR) policy for a fur­ther year through ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁, again in line with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment guidance.

3. The Human Resources and Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment team con­tin­ues to con­sider policy devel­op­ment sup­port­ing effect­ive organ­isa­tion­al oper­a­tions while afford­ing enhanced work / life bal­ance oppor­tun­it­ies for our staff group. The Author­ity being selec­ted as a final­ist in the ​“Scot­land Fam­ily Friendly Work­ing” for the second con­sec­ut­ive year, togeth­er with gen­er­ally pos­it­ive feed­back in the recent staff sur­vey on salary, terms and con­di­tions, evid­ences our suc­cess in devel­op­ing the non-pay ele­ments of our staff employ­ment terms and con­di­tions. Our man­age­ment of the staff resource, in the con­text of the NCR Policy, does cre­ate a com­plex struc­ture of per­man­ent and fixed term con­tracts, with some per­man­ent staff seconded into oth­er roles and tem­por­ary staff back-filling their per­man­ent roles.

4. The sig­ni­fic­ant increase in employ­ers’ con­tri­bu­tions to the Civil Ser­vice Pen­sion Scheme for the ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ fin­an­cial year has been covered through the award of addi­tion­al grant in aid in ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀, plus fur­ther increase in grant in aid with the expli­cit recog­ni­tion of the expec­ted increase in staff costs from this pen­sions change and pay policy.

5. Our staff group con­tin­ues to provide a sig­ni­fic­ant resource invest­ment into deliv­ery of both Cor­por­ate and Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) pri­or­it­ies. The Oper­a­tion­al Plan set out in Annex I to this paper and con­sidered in more detail in a sub­sequent sec­tion of this paper high­lights the amount of staff resource inves­ted in each aspect of our planned activ­it­ies for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁.

6. The Author­ity also con­tin­ues to deliv­er a key sup­port and facil­it­a­tion role in major pro­jects, through its will­ing­ness to take on the role of lead employ­er for staff deliv­er­ing major pro­jects. Hence we act as the employ­er and Account­able Body for LEAD­ER staff under­tak­ing sup­port to the Cairngorms LAG; we have employed extern­ally fun­ded Peat­lands Pro­ject Officer posts; and act as the employ­er for a num­ber of posts engaged in the deliv­ery of the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship Pro­ject. The breadth of our sup­port for NPPP deliv­ery and range of our inter­ac­tions through dir­ect staff employ­ment, host­ing staff on behalf of pro­ject part­ner­ships and sup­port­ing deploy­ment of resource through third parties is illus­trated in Table Two.

Table Two: Range of Deliv­ery Sup­port at March 2020

CNPA Cor­por­ate Plan area	No of core CNPA staff (FTE)	No of CNPA pro­ject staff	Posts sup­por­ted by Op Plan
Con­ser­va­tion and Land Management	17.5	TG&LP — 2.8 FTE	Catch­ment Partnerships
		Caper­cail­lie — 1.0 FTE	Cairngorms Nature Projects
		Peat­land — 1.7 FTE
		East Cairngorms Moor­land Pro­ject — 0.6 FTE
		Wader Pro­ject – 0.6 FTE
Vis­it­or Experience	10.2	Sea­son­al Ranger — 0.7 FTE	Rangers
Rur­al Development	17.0	LEAD­ER — 3.2 FTE	Com­munity Devel­op­ment Officers; LEAD­ER Pro­gramme Roles Estab­lished (20.2 FTE)
Com­mu­nic­a­tions	5.2
Cor­por­ate Services	15.0

1. It should be noted with regard to work­force man­age­ment that the oper­a­tion of the Authority’s (and Scot­tish Government’s) no com­puls­ory redund­ancy policy cre­ates lim­it­a­tions on man­age­ment of staff num­bers, and a depend­ency on nat­ur­al turnover to cre­ate oppor­tun­it­ies to review staff invest­ment. The pos­it­ive aspects of this policy are of course around enhance­ments to staff mor­ale through job secur­ity over a peri­od of dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic circumstances.

Oth­er Core Costs

1. As illus­trated in Table One, oth­er core costs have been held at close to ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ levels in the com­ing year’s budget. Infla­tion­ary cost pro­vi­sions of around 2% have been applied to office run­ning costs and costs of IT and oth­er pro­fes­sion­al sup­port as we believe effi­ciency sav­ings gen­er­ated in these areas over pri­or years have now brought budget levels at close to fixed cost min­im­ums with no room to absorb cost increases. Oth­er Board and staff costs include more dis­cre­tion­ary ele­ments such as train­ing and travel and have there­fore been held at ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ levels with any cost increases to be absorbed through oper­a­tion­al management.

²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ Expendit­ure Budget: Oper­a­tion­al Plan

1. The Oper­a­tion­al Plan for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ sets out the Authority’s anti­cip­ated con­tri­bu­tions to a range of activ­it­ies over the course of the year. The Oper­a­tion­al Plan also details the major lines of activ­ity that are planned for the year which will require invest­ment of staff resources alone. Pro­posed areas of invest­ment of both fin­an­cial and staff resources are set out in Annex 1 to this paper.

2. Total fin­an­cial invest­ment in Oper­a­tion­al Plan activ­it­ies cur­rently cov­ers £1.235m in invest­ment pro­pos­als (pri­or year £1.213m at this point in the year). This value of invest­ment is well above the planned level of invest­ment set out in the Cor­por­ate Plan for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ of £1.032m as a res­ult of effect­ive cost con­trol and an increase in Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment invest­ment in the work of the Author­ity through high grant in aid.

3. Updates on deliv­ery inten­tions and on the res­ults of activ­it­ies will con­tin­ue to be presen­ted to the Board in vari­ous policy papers and updates.

4. A sum­mary of the Oper­a­tion­al Plan total invest­ment pro­pos­als across ser­vice areas is set out in Table Three.

Table Three: Oper­a­tion­al Plan Alloc­a­tions ²⁰¹⁶⁄₁₇ to ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ against Cor­por­ate Plan

Oper­a­tion­al Plan	20⁄21 £000	19⁄20 £000	18⁄19 £000	17⁄18 £000
Con­ser­va­tion and Land Management	325	203	210	160
Vis­it­or Experience	457	549	548	400
Rur­al Development	290	298	314	301
Cor­por­ate Services	102	102	105	70
Com­mu­nic­a­tions	61	61	66	63
Total Oper­a­tion­al Plan Provisions	1,235	1,213	1,243	994
(Over) under Pro­gramme Level	(24)	(32)	(15)	(4)

Oper­a­tion­al Plan Com­mit­ments and Sig­ni­fic­ant Variations

1. As set out in the intro­duc­tion to this paper, the budget and oper­a­tion­al plan fol­lows on from many strands of activ­ity ini­ti­ated over the last years.

2. Con­sequently, the level of Oper­a­tion­al Plan com­mit­ments cur­rently stands at a rel­at­ively high pro­por­tion of the total planned invest­ment, at £0.718m, equi­val­ent to 59.2% of the Oper­a­tion­al Plan total (pri­or year, £0.604 mil­lion or 49.8% of total). The lines of activ­ity as asso­ci­ated invest­ment com­mit­ted through pre­vi­ous Board and man­age­ment action are high­lighted in Annex 1.

3. As part of the Authority’s stand­ard year-end fin­an­cial man­age­ment pro­cesses to max­im­ise util­isa­tion of avail­able fin­an­cial resources, we may make some pay­ments against pro­ject com­mit­ments in the cur­rent rather than the com­ing fin­an­cial year. Such pay­ments are only made when war­ran­ted by exist­ing con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments and / or in sup­port of vol­un­tary or char­it­able bod­ies, when the receipt of fin­ances due from the Author­ity provide them with cru­cial work­ing cap­it­al in addi­tion to sup­port­ing deliv­ery of out­comes. The prac­tice ensures we fully util­ise our avail­able resources in each fin­an­cial year, and can res­ult in flex­ib­il­it­ies being cre­ated in future year’s fin­an­cial pos­i­tions. Where such flex­ib­il­it­ies arise, man­age­ment team will review budgets for the year and report appro­pri­ately to the Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee on pro­posed budget amend­ments. Budget impacts can only be finally con­firmed fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the annu­al extern­al audit: recog­nising the poten­tial vari­ation in treat­ment between pay­ments in ​‘cash’ terms and the required treat­ment of expendit­ure on an ​‘accru­als’ basis as required treat­ment of income and expendit­ure in our fin­an­cial accounts. While cash pay­ments may be made pri­or to the end of the fin­an­cial year, there is a require­ment to ensure that they are accoun­ted for appro­pri­ately in the cor­rect fin­an­cial year. In line with our stand­ard budget prac­tices, the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ fig­ures presen­ted retain pro­vi­sion for all planned expenditure.

4. As noted in the sec­tion deal­ing with the wider con­text of the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ budget (see para­graphs 9 to 11), the year ahead brings the ces­sa­tion of a num­ber of sig­ni­fic­ant annu­al con­tri­bu­tions to long term activ­ity pro­grammes. The Moun­tains and The People pro­ject (£0.055m annu­al con­tri­bu­tion) and Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship (£0.050m annu­al con­tri­bu­tion) have each come to the con­clu­sion of their peri­od of fund­ing from the Author­ity. Our man­age­ment of LEAD­ER fin­ances also allows the Author­ity to cov­er all anti­cip­ated admin­is­tra­tion costs to Decem­ber 2020 from with­in the LEAD­ER grant alloc­a­tion, where­as ele­ments of these costs were fun­ded from our own resources in pri­or years.

5. Equally, the year ahead requires some new areas of expendit­ure as the Author­ity pre­pares for the next cycle of stra­tegic plan­ning in devel­op­ment of the inform­a­tion base sup­port­ing the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan for 2022 to 2027 and our com­ple­ment­ary Cor­por­ate Plan for the peri­od. To this end, we have incor­por­ate expendit­ure pro­pos­als in the Oper­a­tion­al Plan for com­mis­sion­ing of a ​‘State of Nature’ report and a deer count sur­vey which will provide key inform­a­tion for our devel­op­ment of these stra­tegic plans.

6. The Man­age­ment Team has also developed plans for the recruit­ment of an addi­tion­al fixed term Rur­al Devel­op­ment Officer to fur­ther enhance our work around the imple­ment­a­tion of the Eco­nom­ic Action Plan over the peri­od to Septem­ber 2021. Should recruit­ment pro­gress, this timetable gives a small over­lap with the poten­tial for staff to return to ​‘main­stream’ activ­it­ies from extern­ally fun­ded pro­ject deliv­ery dur­ing 2020 and 2021 and may cre­ate a small increase in total CNPA staff­ing in this period.

7. Man­age­ment team are also con­sid­er­ing the recruit­ment of a Pro­ject Coordin­at­or to sup­port work on devel­op­ment of major fund­ing bids under­way over the course of ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁, with par­tic­u­lar focus on the Her­it­age Hori­zons bid.

8. Sig­ni­fic­ant vari­ations in resource deploy­ment are set out in Annex I and reflec­ted in the sum­mary alloc­a­tion fig­ures presen­ted in Table Three.

²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ Budget Summary

1. The sum­mary budget pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ is set out in Table Four.

Table Four: ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ Budget Summary

	2020⁄21 Budget Fore­cast (£m)	2019⁄20 Budget Fore­cast (£m)
Total Income	5.144	4.980
Less cap­it­al alloc­a­tions for