200828DraftFinanceCtteeMinutes

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE FIN­ANCE AND DELIV­ERY COM­MIT­TEE MEET­ING of

THE CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

held via Lifes­ize Video Con­fer­en­cing, on 28 August 2020 at 9.15am

PRESENT Wil­li­am Mun­ro (Chair) John Kirk Ian McLar­en (Vice-Chair) Anne Rae Mac­don­ald Elean­or Mack­in­tosh Xan­der McDade

In Attend­ance: Grant Moir, CEO Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Manager

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 22 May 2020 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 5i) – In Hand – Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vice to cir­cu­late the staff pay struc­ture to the Com­mit­tee. Noted that struc­ture had been cir­cu­lated. Request made for fur­ther inform­a­tion on the levels of staff at each grade. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed to cir­cu­late that inform­a­tion. b) At Para 14i) – In Hand — Crown Estate sum­mary to be cre­ated and cir­cu­lated. CEO advised that he has a meet­ing with Crown estate and NatureScot the fol­low­ing Tues­day and would cir­cu­late more inform­a­tion after that meeting.

2. c) At Para 14ii) – Closed — Back­ground to the obser­vat­ory pro­ject was pre­pared detail­ing why this should be pri­or­it­ised on this pro­ject rather than alloc­at­ing the funds to other(s). d) At Para 17i) – Open — Les­sons learned from TGLP pro­ject when avail­able, to be brought to the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee in a con­fid­en­tial ses­sion. CEO advised that the Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship ends the begin­ning next year and this action would be picked up in the first half of 2021. The fol­low­ing mat­ters arising was raised: a) Noted a require­ment to con­sider approaches to Board mem­ber induc­tion with regard to under­stand­ing large scale, multi-phase, extern­ally fun­ded pro­jects and the status of such pro­jects. CEO agreed with this sen­ti­ment and agreed to give that some thought. b) Linked to the action on TGLP Pro­ject and les­sons learned, mem­bers sug­ges­ted that the action should be expan­ded to included les­sons learned from the first phase of the Caper­cail­lie pro­ject. The CEO high­lighted the diver­gence in time­frame of both these pro­jects, with Caper­cail­lie pro­ject now mov­ing into the Deliv­ery phase and sug­ges­ted that les­sons learned on this pro­ject and ongo­ing deliv­ery should be fed into reg­u­lar deliv­ery updates through the Com­mit­tee rather than poten­tially over-com­plic­at­ing timelines with the TGLP. The CEO noted we would of course draw on Caper­cail­lie pro­ject know­ledge when also build­ing the les­sons learned inform­a­tion from TGLP. The Board Con­vener noted that this inform­a­tion would also be worth­while reflect­ing in the evol­u­tion of the Her­it­age Hori­zons bid.

Action: i. CEO to give some thought into the pro­cess for bring­ing new Board mem­bers up to speed with the Authority’s large scale projects.

Declar­a­tion of Interests

1. There were no interests declared.

Fin­ance Mon­it­or­ing: 4 Months to 31 July 2020 (Paper 1)

1. Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Man­ager intro­duced Paperl which presents a sum­mary over­view of income and expendit­ure for the 4 months to 31 July, 2020.
2. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and observations:

a) At Para 18, oth­er board and staff costs, mem­bers asked wheth­er steps could have been taken to reduce motor vehicle insur­ance costs and think for­ward to next Spring as next likely deploy­ment of some vehicles? Fin­ance Man­ager repor­ted that sav­ings were being made on vari­able costs such as travel for staff / board, on fixed costs there are £37k sav­ings at the moment and at the end of Septem­ber they will be able to see them. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices added that the pool fleet has been used to sup­port the volun­teer effort as part of the cov­id com­munity response sup­port­ing staff to help with food deliv­er­ies to those that are shield­ing and the build­ing was still being used for core staff. He explained that fixed costs remained irre­spect­ive of activ­ity levels. b) With ref­er­ence to para­graphs 34 mem­bers sought cla­ri­fic­a­tion on the claims pro­cesses to the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF). Fin­ance Man­ager advised that the claim for the Great Place Badenoch pro­ject was small as total spend on that pro­ject was £55k. For the TGLP pro­ject they were put­ting togeth­er a claim on Agri schemes which would be sub­mit­ted the fol­low­ing week. This would increase the claim sub­stan­tially by anoth­er £100k. c) Reas­sur­ance was sought that there was no impend­ing dead­line in NLHF claims res­ult­ing in a risk of miss­ing the dead­line and lost income? Fin­ance Man­ager provided that reas­sur­ance. d) With ref­er­ence to para­graph 39 what did the first claim of the devel­op­ment phase of the caper­cail­lie pro­ject entail? The CEO advised that these were mainly staff costs. e) Were there any plans for the Board cost sav­ings? CEO advised that that money had already been real­loc­ated through the sea­son­al rangers and into the Green Recov­ery Fund. f) With ref­er­ence to para­graphs 13 and 14 the recov­ery of leg­al fees and plan­ning fees, mem­bers sought cla­ri­fic­a­tion on which leg­al fees needed to be recovered? Fin­ance Man­ager explained that the recov­ery of leg­al fees refers to Sec­tion 75’s agreed with applic­ants, where it is the applic­ants’ respons­ib­il­ity to cov­er the Authority’s costs. g) Last Autumn a train­ing ses­sion for Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee mem­bers and open to all Board mem­bers had taken place which was well delivered. Could some­thing like that be organ­ised on the fin­an­cial side espe­cially giv­en as the Author­ity are embark­ing on large pro­jects? It was agreed that a con­ver­sa­tion take place to dis­cuss what the train­ing should look like so that it can be organised.

1. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee noted the out­turn for the 4 months to 31 July, 2020.

2. Action:

i. Dis­cus­sion on Fin­ance Train­ing ses­sion spe­cific­a­tion to take place toward an aim of Spring 2021 for the train­ing ses­sion to be held.

AOCB

1. There were no items presented.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The next sched­uled Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee meet­ing will take place on Fri­day 13 Novem­ber 2020.

2. The meet­ing fin­ished at 9.40 hours.