200522FinanceCtteePaper1AADraftOutturnExAudit

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper | 22/05/20

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY FIN­ANCE & DELIV­ERY COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: FINAL ACCOUNTS ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ DRAFT OUT­TURN POS­I­TION TO EXTERN­AL AUDIT

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SER­VICES DANIEL RAL­PH, FIN­ANCE MANAGER

Pur­pose This paper presents a sum­mary over­view of the draft fin­an­cial out­turn pos­i­tion for the fin­an­cial year ended 31 March 2020 as presen­ted to the extern­al aud­it­ors. The paper presents the head­line pos­i­tion on the Authority’s util­isa­tion of grant in aid made avail­able by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment for the ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ fin­an­cial year. The pos­i­tion repor­ted in this paper remains sub­ject to extern­al audit review and may there­fore be amended pri­or to final­isa­tion and sig­na­ture of the accounts.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee is reques­ted to: a) Note the pro­vi­sion­al out­turn pos­i­tion for expendit­ure against Grant in Aid alloc­a­tions presen­ted in this paper; b) Con­sider wheth­er any fin­an­cial or gov­ernance issues arise from inform­a­tion presen­ted in this paper.

²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ Draft Out­turn Position

1. The Author­ity pre­pares it budgets with a focus on our util­isa­tion of grant in aid made avail­able for each fin­an­cial year by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment through Grant in Aid (GIA) cov­er­ing rev­en­ue and cap­it­al expendit­ure. Budgets agreed by the Board and mon­itored by the Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee through each year focus on the deploy­ment of the Authority’s resources. Addi­tion­al income received from third parties in sup­port of spe­cif­ic pro­ject activ­it­ies is accoun­ted for sep­ar­ately, as oth­er income, and added to gross pro­ject income and expendit­ure in the Authority’s man­age­ment accounts.

2. There­fore, a key focus of our final accounts report­ing is on our util­isa­tion of Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment GIA each year. The Fin­ance Team have now closed the ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ accounts and pre­pared a full set of draft final accounts for extern­al audit. Extern­al audit com­menced at the end of April.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper | 22/05/20

1. The sum­mary of our util­isa­tion of GIA avail­able to the Author­ity in ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀, which is included as part of our final accounts report, is set out in Table One.

Table One: Draft ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ Grant In Aid Use Com­pared with Final Allocations

Resource	Cash Cap­it­al	Total	Non-Cash	Total
£,000	£,000	£,000	£,000	£,000
Budget
Ori­gin­al allocation	4,565	240	4,805	150	4,955
Sup­ple­ment­al allocation	162		162		162
	4,727	240	4,967	150	5,117
Expendit­ure
Net resource expenditure	4,722	-	4,722	-	4,722
Cap­it­al grants		175	175	-	175
Non-cur­rent assets bought	-	65	65	-	65
Depre­ci­ation				149	149
	4,722	240	4,962	149	5,711

Out­turn [under­spend] [5] | 0 | [5] | [1] | [6]

1. As illus­trated in Table One, our draft final accounts show a small under­spend in the year of £5k rev­en­ue (resource GIA) and a full util­isa­tion of cap­it­al GIA. This rep­res­ents an under­spend of around 0.1% of allocation.

2. For con­sol­id­ated whole gov­ern­ment account­ing pur­poses, the Author­ity also has to oper­ate with­in an alloc­ated lim­it of non-cash account­ing charges, such as those for depre­ci­ation of non-cur­rent assets and pro­vi­sions. Our draft accounts show an under-util­isa­tion of these pro­vi­sions of £1k of the £150k allocation.

3. In gen­er­al terms, the Authority’s draft final accounts for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ there­fore come very close to full util­isa­tion of the GIA alloc­a­tions made avail­able for the year, and well with­in the key per­form­ance indic­at­or tar­get of expendit­ure for the year with­in +1% and ‑2% of break even.

Next Steps

1. The Authority’s Fin­ance Man­ager and fin­ance team con­tin­ue to liaise with Grant Thornton, our extern­al aud­it­ors, on the audit of the accounts. A more detailed update of the ana­lys­is of total income and expendit­ure pos­i­tion for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ will be presen­ted to the Com­mit­tee as this pro­cess becomes more final­ised, with any sig­ni­fic­ant vari­ation from the sum­mary pos­i­tion presen­ted here repor­ted in the inter­im to the Committee.

2. We will also con­tin­ue to work with the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee on the spe­cif­ic sub­ject of the pro­gress of the audit work and final­isa­tion of the annu­al accounts. The ori­gin­al plan for accounts and audit sign off by mid June will slip as a res­ult of

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper | 22/05/20

COVID19 oper­at­ing restric­tions. We are work­ing closely with aud­it­ors to ensure any delay in the final accounts pro­cess is minimised.

Dav­id Camer­on 14 May 2020 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk