210226 DraftFinanceCtteeMinutesV10

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE FIN­ANCE AND DELIV­ERY COM­MIT­TEE MEET­ING of THE CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY held via Lifes­ize Video Con­fer­en­cing, on 26 Feb­ru­ary 2021 at 2pm

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

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

Apo­lo­gies: None

Wel­come and Apologies

1. Every­one was wel­comed to the meeting.

Declar­a­tions of Interest

1. There were no declar­a­tions of interest.

Minutes of Last Meet­ing – Approval

1. The draft Minutes of the meet­ings on 13 Novem­ber 2020 were approved with no amendments.

2. The minute of the con­fid­en­tial meet­ing of 13 Novem­ber 2020 relat­ing to the devel­op­ment of the Cairngorms Peat­land Pro­gramme was approved with no amendments.

Mat­ters Arising

1. The Chair provided an update on the Action Points from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing including:

From Novem­ber 2020 a) At Para 5i) – Closed – Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vice had cir­cu­lated pay struc­ture inform­a­tion. b) At Para 14i) – Closed — CEO cir­cu­lated inform­a­tion after the Crown Estate meet­ing. c) At Para 17i) – Open — Les­sons learned from TGLP pro­ject when avail­able, to be brought to the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee in a con­fid­en­tial ses­sion. d) At Para 6a) – Closed — large scale multi fun­ded pro­jects were brought to the Board at their inform­al ses­sion on 22^nd Janu­ary 2021. e) Board Mem­bers Induc­tion on ongo­ing pro­jects – Open – being considered.

From Feb­ru­ary 2021 f) Fin­ance train­ing – Open – To be imple­men­ted fol­low­ing com­ple­tion of work on Board devel­op­ment conversations.

1. Action: As noted in updates.

Declar­a­tion of Interests

1. There were no interests declared.

Fin­ance Mon­it­or­ing: 10 Months to 31 Janu­ary 2021 (Paper 1)

1. Daniel Ral­ph, Fin­ance Man­ager, intro­duced Paperl which presents a sum­mary over­view of income and expendit­ure for the 10 months to 31 Janu­ary, 2021. The key budget fig­ure for staff­ing remains broadly in line with budget expect­a­tions, while there was some ongo­ing lag of expendit­ure against budget for oper­a­tion­al plan and pro­ject invest­ments. This pos­i­tion is rel­at­ively nor­mal at this stage of the fin­an­cial year, although some­what exacer­bated in the cur­rent year as a con­sequence of COVID19 deliv­ery delays. Over­all, the pro­jec­ted out­turn remained very much on tar­get, with cur­rent pro­jec­tions show­ing a small excess of income over expendit­ure of £22,000, equi­val­ent to 0.32% of total income under man­age­ment in the year.

2. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and observations:

a) Mem­bers wel­comed the fore­cast out­turn pos­i­tion and con­grat­u­lated man­age­ment for their over­sight of the fin­an­cial and resource deploy­ment over an extremely chal­len­ging year. b) Mem­bers ref­er­enced the pro­ject costs high­lighted in the Annex to the paper and the impact of these costs on the over­all pos­i­tion. Officers explained that off­set­ting income for these pro­ject costs is set out in the income sec­tion of the paper, with that present­a­tion allow­ing a more trans­par­ent sum­mary com­par­is­on of the over­all fin­an­cial impact of sig­ni­fic­ant pro­jects and pro­grammes on the Authority’s fin­an­cial position.

1. Fol­low­ing a detailed dis­cus­sion of the cur­rent mon­it­or­ing pos­i­tion and out­turn estim­ates, the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee noted the out­turn for the 10 months to 31 Janu­ary, 2021.

2. Action: None.

²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ Budget Devel­op­ment (Paper 2)

1. The Chair in intro­du­cing this agenda item high­lighted in par­tic­u­lar the ele­ment of the paper headed Stra­tegic Con­sid­er­a­tions which set out the role of the Com­mit­tee at this stage of the budget devel­op­ment pro­cess around devel­op­ment of Board strategy, scru­tiny of plan­ning and assur­ance. The Chair high­lighted to mem­bers he felt this set out very suc­cinctly the areas around which mem­bers should seek to focus their con­sid­er­a­tion of the budget devel­op­ment pri­or to con­sid­er­a­tion of the fuller budget pro­pos­als at the full Board meet­ing in March.

2. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced Paper 2 which set out the devel­op­ment of the Authority’s budget for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, in fol­low­ing up the Chair’s com­ments on the focus for mem­bers, drew mem­bers’ atten­tion to two key assump­tions on vacancy sav­ings estim­ates and the poten­tial for over-pro­gram­ming in devel­op­ing the budget for the year ahead which had been drawn out in the paper. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices high­lighted that mem­bers views on these key assump­tions would be wel­come in guid­ing the fur­ther devel­op­ment of budget estim­ates pri­or to sub­mis­sion to the Board.

3. The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and observations:

a) Mem­bers agreed the struc­ture of the paper was clear and help­ful in sup­port­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of the budget devel­op­ment and also high­light­ing key areas for mem­bers’ scru­tiny and stra­tegic fin­an­cial planning.

b) Mem­bers agreed the pro­posed approach to incor­por­at­ing estim­ated vacancy sav­ings with­in the budget estim­ates was appro­pri­ate. While the value of vacancy sav­ings was increased over pre­vi­ous budget levels, the increase in the total staff­ing num­bers and poten­tial for delay in recruit­ment and some turnover impact­ing budget require­ment in the year was agreed as jus­ti­fy­ing the approach pro­posed. c) Mem­bers agreed that the budget pro­posed to the Board should not incor­por­ate a sig­ni­fic­ant level of over-pro­gram­ming. Mem­bers agreed that recent years had high­lighted the bene­fit of close mon­it­or­ing of budget com­mit­ment levels and the capa­city for the Board and man­age­ment team to work on identi­fy­ing appro­pri­ate areas of budget real­loc­a­tion in year was a more effect­ive approach to resource man­age­ment than to intro­duce over-pro­gram­ming at the out­set of the year. d) Mem­bers asked wheth­er the fig­ures show­ing sig­ni­fic­ant changes in oper­a­tion­al deliv­ery were inclus­ive of all staff and oth­er asso­ci­ated costs. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed that these were estim­ated total costs of all expendit­ure for each pro­gramme of activity.

1. Fol­low­ing detailed con­sid­er­a­tion of the budget pro­pos­als and estim­ates, the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee: a) Agreed the budget approach to include vacancy sav­ings as set out in the paper and not include an over-pro­gram­ming value. b) Agreed there were no fur­ther spe­cif­ic actions iden­ti­fied from a Board per­spect­ive which required to be incor­por­ated into the budget estimates.

2. Action: i. Budget estim­ates to be developed in line with dis­cus­sions for present­a­tion to Board meet­ing in March.

AOCB

1. There were no oth­er items of business.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The next sched­uled Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee meet­ing will take place on Fri­day 14 May 2021.