CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper | 22^nd Janu­ary 2021

FOR DECISION

Title: ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ BUDGET: RANGER SERVICES

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SERVICES

Pur­pose

This paper seeks the Board approv­al to estab­lish a Sea­son­al Ranger Ser­vice for the 2021 cal­en­dar year. This is a stage point decision with­in the wider ser­vice devel­op­ment and ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ budget pro­cess, required at this point in time to facil­it­ate devel­op­ment of a core ser­vice capa­city in time for the anti­cip­ated com­mence­ment of the vis­it­or man­age­ment sea­son at end March / early April 2020.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is reques­ted to:

a) Approve a com­mit­ment of £236,000 to fin­ance a sea­son­al ranger ser­vice to start by 22 March 2021 and oper­ate until 31 Octo­ber 2021. b) Approve a fur­ther com­mit­ment of £3,000 to aug­ment the Sea­son­al Ranger Ser­vice with five ​‘Kick­start’ Youth Place­ment oppor­tun­it­ies for young people seek­ing a start in this employ­ment sec­tor. c) Agree that should the budget set­tle­ment com­mu­nic­ated on 28 Janu­ary show a sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion in the Authority’s fund­ing for the com­ing year – a reduc­tion in grant in aid in excess of 5% — the man­age­ment team will post­pone the devel­op­ment of these ser­vices and bring the ser­vice ini­ti­at­ive back as part of the full budget pro­pos­als for con­sid­er­a­tion in March. d) Note the Kick­start com­mit­ment min­im­um of £3,000 may rise to £30,000: that increase if required to be con­firmed as part of the main budget con­sid­er­a­tion by the Board in March.

Back­ground

1. The Board con­sidered a Cairngorms Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Review at its meet­ing in Novem­ber 2020. [200911CNPABdPaper3AAVisitorManagementPaperV1.0.pdf (cairngorms.co.uk)](200911CNPABdPaper3AAVisitorManagementPaperV1.0.pdf (cairngorms​.co​.uk))
2. In con­sid­er­a­tion of this paper, the Board noted: a) A sea­son­al ranger ser­vice con­sist­ing of nine sea­son­al rangers plus man­age­ment was estab­lished for the first time in 2020. b) Highly pos­it­ive feed­back on the value added by this ser­vice to the Nation­al Park. c) The Author­ity would pro­gress devel­op­ment for a ranger ser­vice to com­ple­ment exist­ing ranger ser­vices in the Cairngorms for com­mence­ment in 2021. d) The final shape of a Cairngorms NPA Ranger Ser­vice would be drawn togeth­er fol­low­ing con­firm­a­tion of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment budget and aware­ness from that of the grant-in-aid alloc­a­tion to the Author­ity for the com­ing fin­an­cial year.
3. This paper seeks a decision by the Board on estab­lish­ing a sea­son­al ranger ser­vice for 2021. This is a stage point in the over­all devel­op­ment of a per­man­ent CNPA Ranger ser­vice. This first stage decision is required at this time in order to have a core ele­ment of ser­vice in place for the com­mence­ment of the vis­it­or man­age­ment season.

Estab­lish­ing a 2021 Ranger Service

1. East­er week­end falls in 2021 on the week­end of 2 April. Des­pite the ongo­ing and cur­rently tightened COV­ID restric­tions, we con­tin­ue to expect the East­er week­end to present the start point of a busy Vis­it­or Man­age­ment sea­son in 2021.
2. The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment budget pro­cess has been delayed from Decem­ber 2020 until 28 Janu­ary 2021. The Board will con­sider the Authority’s full budget for the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ Fin­an­cial Year as planned at its meet­ing sched­uled for 12 March.
3. In light of these vari­ous cir­cum­stances, we pro­pose to devel­op and imple­ment a Ranger Ser­vice, sub­ject to Board approv­al, over two phases: a) Phase 1: secure a sea­son­al ranger ser­vice to oper­ate from mid-March until end Octo­ber 2021. The decision point set out in this cur­rent paper. b) Phase 2: determ­ine the full per­man­ent and sea­son­al ranger com­ple­ment which is afford­able when con­sidered with­in the resource envel­ope estab­lished by the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ budget and grant in aid levels. This decision will be scoped and sought from the Board as part of the budget decisions in March 2021.

Sea­son­al Ranger Service

1. Officers have developed a Ranger Ser­vice devel­op­ment timetable which seeks to have sea­son­al and man­age­ment staff in post and com­men­cing work in week com­men­cing 22 March. As with the 2020 Sea­son­al Ranger Ser­vice devel­op­ment, this allows for a short peri­od of staff train­ing before full com­mence­ment of ser­vice. This timetable requires intern­al recruit­ment decisions to be made by early in week com­men­cing 25 Janu­ary to enable extern­al recruit­ment to com­mence by the end of that week in order to secure remain­ing staff required by mid-March.
2. We pro­pose a team of 8 sea­son­al rangers plus a ranger man­ager is estab­lished by mid-March. This matches the scale of the team deployed in 2020, and will again be added to by the Ranger employed through the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject under a single Ranger team struc­ture while retain­ing the Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject object­ives for this ranger with­in their deployment.
3. The deploy­ment of a Sea­son­al Ranger Ser­vice requires a budget com­mit­ment of £236,000 as set out in the fol­low­ing table. This is an increase in cost against the pro­vi­sion agreed by the Board in June 2020 for the Sea­son­al Ranger Ser­vice in 2020 as there is an addi­tion­al peri­od of ser­vice cov­er of around 14 weeks, com­men­cing mid-March rather than late June.

Item	£000
Sea­son­al Ranger staff­ing and man­age­ment, includ­ing employ­er costs of Nation­al Insur­ance and Pen­sion contributions	217
Oper­a­tion­al budget provision	10
Vehicles pro­vi­sion	9
Total costs	236

1. A com­mit­ment in advance of the final budget decision to alloc­ate £236k in fin­an­cial pro­vi­sion to a sea­son­al ranger ser­vice is there­fore required at this point if we are to recruit required staff and have them in place pri­or to East­er. Such a com­mit­ment will clearly lim­it oth­er poten­tial flex­ib­il­it­ies when the full budget is con­sidered in March. As ​“new” rather than con­tinu­ing pro­vi­sion, this sum will rep­res­ent a top-slice of resources avail­able to fin­ance the oper­a­tion­al plan for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂.
2. The Man­age­ment Team recom­mend that these resources are approved for com­mit­ment in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ at this time to enable pro­vi­sion of a Ranger Ser­vice that will main­tain and build on the pos­it­ive impacts achieved by the Cairngorms NPA Rangers over the sum­mer and autumn of 2020.

Kick­start Work Place­ments For Young People

1. The Man­age­ment Team are also in the pro­cess of draw­ing up plans for the recruit­ment and deploy­ment of 5 Ranger Ser­vice work place­ments for young people under the ​“Kick­start” scheme, for which fund­ing has been secured through a col­lect­ive UK Nation­al Parks bid. The idea of a col­lect­ive bid for Kick­start fund­ing by UK Nation­al Parks was pro­posed by Cairngorms NPA and agreed by the net­work. North York­shire Moors NPA has taken on the lead role for the applic­a­tion and there are good rela­tion­ships on this pro­ject with them.
2. Should the Board agree the resource com­mit­ment to imple­ment a sea­son­al ranger ser­vice, the Author­ity can also pro­gress with the plans to offer five youth work place­ments to aug­ment the ser­vice and provide five young people with an oppor­tun­ity to gain valu­able work exper­i­ence in this sector.
3. Kick­start grant cov­ers Nation­al Min­im­um Wage of £8.91 per hour for a 25 hour week. As a min­im­um, the Author­ity would employ at the Scot­tish Liv­ing Wage which will cost around £3,000 more than grant cov­er avail­able. Addi­tion­ally, as we devel­op the ser­vice, we will con­sider aug­ment­ing the 25 hour week cre­at­ing roles at the Authority’s stand­ard 37.5 hour work­ing week. The max­im­um cost enhance­ment is estim­ated at around £30,000. How­ever, man­age­ment will tail­or those decisions to afford­ab­il­ity as inform­a­tion on budget emerges over the course of the next few months.
4. The ini­tial com­mit­ment to estab­lish­ing a ​‘Kick­start’ Ranger Youth Employ­ment team is there­fore a min­im­um of £3,000 which may rise to £30,000: that increase if required to be con­firmed as part of the main budget con­sid­er­a­tion by the Board in March.

Risk Man­age­ment

1. Should the budget set­tle­ment com­mu­nic­ated on 28 Janu­ary show a sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion in the Authority’s fund­ing for the com­ing year – a reduc­tion in grant in aid in excess of 5% — the man­age­ment team will post­pone the devel­op­ment of these ser­vices and bring the ser­vice ini­ti­at­ive back as part of the full budget pro­pos­als for con­sid­er­a­tion in March. This will clearly lose the poten­tial to provide ranger cov­er over the March to June peri­od of the year.

Dav­id Camer­on, davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk 12 Janu­ary 2021