CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 4 27 Novem­ber 2020

FOR DECISION

Title: ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ BUDGET AND OPER­A­TION­AL PLAN REVIEW

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SERVICES

Pur­pose

This paper presents a second review of the Authority’s fin­an­cial pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ in light of the impacts of COV­ID-19 affect­ing the Author­ity since the com­mence­ment of the fin­an­cial year, fol­low­ing the first such review con­sidered by the Board at its meet­ing of 12 June. The paper fol­lows con­sid­er­a­tion of these mat­ters by the Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee at its meet­ing of 13 Novem­ber 2020.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is reques­ted to:

a) Con­sider the fin­an­cial pos­i­tion of the Author­ity presen­ted; b) Agree alloc­a­tion of avail­able £40,000 to sup­port vis­it­or man­age­ment and inform­a­tion infra­struc­ture invest­ment in sup­port of the 2021 vis­it­or man­age­ment sea­son; c) Agree that no fur­ther fin­an­cial real­loc­a­tions are appro­pri­ate at this point based on the fin­an­cial mon­it­or­ing pos­i­tion; d) Agree the prin­ciple of util­ising funds which may become avail­able near­er the end of the fin­an­cial year to sup­port a fur­ther round of Green Recov­ery Grants work­ing with the Cairngorms Trust.

Sum­mary of Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Considerations

1. The Authority’s fin­an­cial pos­i­tion at the end of the sev­en-month peri­od to 31 Octo­ber was presen­ted to the Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee at its meet­ing on 13 Novem­ber 2020.

https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​r​e​s​o​u​r​c​e​/​d​o​c​s​/​b​o​a​r​d​p​a​p​e​r​s​/​1​3​1​1​2​0​2​0​/​2​0​1​1​1​3​F​i​n​C​t​t​e​e​P​a​p​e​r​_​I​AAFin…

https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​r​e​s​o​u​r​c​e​/​d​o​c​s​/​b​o​a​r​d​p​a​p​e​r​s​/​1​3​1​1​2​0​2​0​/​2​0​1​1​1​3​F​i​n​C​t​t​e​e​P​a​p​e​r​_Anne…

1. The sum­mary pos­i­tion con­sidered by the Com­mit­tee at that meet­ing was:

a) Total income remains broadly on budget. b) There are no excep­tion­al net costs or liab­il­it­ies posed at present by the Authority’s lead­ing or account­able body role for sig­ni­fic­ant extern­ally fun­ded pro­jects. All pro­ject expendit­ure is covered by received or anti­cip­ated pro­ject income. c) Salar­ies and Board fees are on budget: a small over­spend of £8,000 on a total budget for the peri­od of £2,056,000 (less than 0.4% vari­ation) indic­at­ing that vacancy sav­ings and wider action in staff man­age­ment by the man­age­ment team con­tin­ue to achieve the levels of vacancy sav­ings achieved when the budget was ori­gin­ally approved by the Board in March 2020. d) Hav­ing made some reduc­tions to core run­ning costs budgets in June reflect­ing down­turns in activ­ity as a con­sequence of COV­ID-19 restric­tions, the over­all pos­i­tion is a rel­at­ively bal­anced pos­i­tion with a cur­rent net under­spend of £38,000 on core run­ning cost budgets. How­ever, an ele­ment of this pos­i­tion relates to phas­ing rather than budget sav­ings, with activ­it­ies such as the intern­al audit pro­gramme get­ting under­way later in the year than anti­cip­ated. e) The oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ment pro­gramme high­lighted a fin­an­cial pos­i­tion with a con­sid­er­able pro­por­tion of planned invest­ments com­mit­ted but yet to be made. This is a fairly typ­ic­al phas­ing of fin­an­cial activ­ity across the Authority’s annu­al oper­a­tion­al plans, with the major­ity of expendit­ure typ­ic­ally fall­ing in the last third of the year.

²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ Oper­a­tion­al Plan Review

1. The Man­age­ment Team has com­pleted a review of the Authority’s Oper­a­tion­al Plan activ­it­ies for ²⁰⁄₂₁ since the Com­mit­tee meet­ing. The out­come of this review, show­ing the total level of poten­tial budget vari­ation across each of the Authority’s deliv­ery areas, is sum­mar­ised in Table One.

Table One: Poten­tial Vari­ations in ²⁰⁄₂₁ Oper­a­tion­al Plan Budgets

	Over/(under) ori­gin­al budget £000
Con­ser­va­tion	(5)
Land Man­age­ment	(4)
Vis­it­or Services	(19)
Plan­ning and Rur­al Development	(16)
Cor­por­ate Services	+30
Com­mu­nic­a­tions	0
Over­all positions	(14)

1. Over­all, there­fore, the pro­jec­ted out­turn pos­i­tion presents little oppor­tun­ity for fur­ther sub­stan­tial real­loc­a­tion of fund­ing to oth­er pro­jects at this stage in the year with a net amount of £14,000 cur­rently poten­tially avail­able. Ele­ments of the under­spend sum­mar­ised here also relate to ​“demand-led” activ­ity such as leg­al sup­port which is depend­ent on the scale of advice required from plan­ning activ­it­ies and oth­er, typ­ic­ally extern­ally led activ­it­ies. As such the cur­rent levels of under­spend may be reduced as the year proceeds.

2. Cor­por­ate ser­vices increases high­lighted relate primar­ily to one-off soft­ware upgrade cost increases which have been slightly high­er than ori­gin­ally anti­cip­ated for some sys­tems and also brought for­ward into the cur­rent fin­an­cial year by suppliers.

Green Recov­ery Plan

1. Fin­an­cial real­loc­a­tions agreed by the Board in June to pro­gress the Authority’s Green Recov­ery Plan have pro­gressed as inten­ded, with the excep­tion of the £40,000 alloc­a­tion to sup­port the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Dark Skies Obser­vat­ory Pro­ject, which is not now expec­ted to pro­ceed. This £40,000 there­fore remains open for fur­ther reallocation.

2. Sea­son­al ranger ser­vices have pro­gressed as planned, with sev­en sea­son­al rangers in place from the end of June to the end of Octo­ber. Two sea­son­al rangers are in place between Novem­ber and March to con­tin­ue ser­vice pro­vi­sion and assist in plan­ning for the start of the 2021 peak vis­it­or season.

3. Full use was made of the £100,000 real­loc­ated to the deliv­ery of a Green Recov­ery Fund, with the Cairngorms Trust com­mit­ting a fur­ther £30,000 to sup­port approved pro­jects. One pro­ject was con­sidered by the eval­u­ation pan­el to mer­it sup­port should oth­er funds become avail­able. At the time of writ­ing this paper, we under­stand that NatureScot are plan­ning to provide fin­ance for this pro­ject. Inform­a­tion on suc­cess­ful pro­jects was made avail­able through the Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Committee’s papers:

https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​r​e​s​o​u​r​c​e​/​d​o​c​s​/​b​o​a​r​d​p​a​p​e​r​s​/​1​3​1​1​2​0​2​0​/​2​0​1​1​1​3​F​i​n​C​t​t​e​e​P​a​p​e​r​2​_​A​n​n​e​x​1​G​r​e​e​n​R​e​c​o​v​e​r​y​F​u​n​d.pdf

Pro­posed Fin­an­cial Man­age­ment Approach

1. Giv­en the rel­at­ively small scale of poten­tial under­spend in the Oper­a­tion­al Plan and remain­ing risk of expendit­ure increases, no fur­ther real­loc­a­tion from the Oper­a­tion­al Plan budgets is pro­posed at this time.

2. As such, the £40,000 released from alloc­a­tion to the Obser­vat­ory Pro­ject rep­res­ents the only free resource avail­able to real­loc­ate at this point in the year.

3. The Exec­ut­ive Man­age­ment Team’s pri­or­ity for use of these avail­able funds is to sup­port vis­it­or man­age­ment activ­it­ies and facil­it­ate pre­par­a­tions for the 2021 vis­it­or sea­son. Such sup­port may include assist­ing imple­ment­a­tion of enhanced traffic man­age­ment and vis­it­or inform­a­tion infrastructures.

4. As is stand­ard prac­tice, we will con­tin­ue to closely mon­it­or the evol­u­tion of the over­all fin­an­cial pos­i­tion over the final third of the year. Should fur­ther avail­able resources firm up toward the end of the year, the Exec­ut­ive Team’s pri­or­ity is to facil­it­ate a fur­ther round of green recov­ery fund grants through the Cairngorms Trust, allow­ing a degree of fin­an­cial flex­ib­il­ity with funds cap­able of being deployed across fin­an­cial years by the char­ity trustees.

Dav­id Camer­on, davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk 17 Novem­ber 2020