CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 12/03/2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ BUDGET

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SERVICES

Pur­pose

This paper sets out the Authority’s fin­an­cial pos­i­tion and budget for the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ fin­an­cial year. The paper presents the pro­posed fin­an­cial alloc­a­tions for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ for core income and expendit­ure, togeth­er with inten­ded oper­a­tion­al plan investment.

The paper seeks Board endorse­ment of the budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ as an appro­pri­ate deploy­ment of resources to work towards deliv­ery of the Authority’s adop­ted Cor­por­ate Plan objectives.

Stra­tegic Considerations

The paper cov­ers the fol­low­ing aspects of devel­op­ment of Board strategy, scru­tiny of plan­ning and assurance:

1. Stra­tegic risk man­age­ment and risk appet­ite: do the budget plans, fin­an­cial object­ives set and any risks and judge­ments taken on estim­ates and pro­vi­sions estab­lish an appro­pri­ate plat­form for the Authority’s budget set­ting and fin­an­cial man­age­ment pro­cesses for the com­ing fin­an­cial year?
2. Deliv­er­ing stra­tegic object­ives: do the fin­an­cial plans, at this stage in their evol­u­tion, estab­lish an appro­pri­ate resource alloc­a­tion base from which to deliv­er approved stra­tegic objectives?
3. Assur­ance: are there any aspects of budget alloc­a­tion and deploy­ment that mer­it spe­cif­ic atten­tion by the Board or its Com­mit­tee in con­duct­ing the assur­ance and scru­tiny role dur­ing ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂?

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 12/03/2021

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is reques­ted to:

a) Endorse the planned resource alloc­a­tions as appro­pri­ate budget plans for deploy­ment of avail­able fin­ance to secure cor­por­ate object­ives over ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂;

b) Agree the estab­lish­ment of a Cairngorms NPA per­man­ent ranger ser­vice as set out in this paper, as part of a mixed mod­el of employed and grant sup­por­ted ranger ser­vices for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park;

c) Con­sider wheth­er the pro­posed deploy­ment of resources poses any per­ceived risks to the achieve­ment of the Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives by 2022 and agree any risks posed for sub­sequent mit­ig­a­tion action by the Chief Exec­ut­ive and Man­age­ment Team;

d) Agree any spe­cif­ic aspects of budget alloc­a­tion and deploy­ment that mer­it atten­tion by the Board or its Com­mit­tee in con­duct­ing mem­bers’ assur­ance and scru­tiny role dur­ing ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂.

Stra­tegic Context

1. The Author­ity, as a Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Body (NDPB), oper­ates with­in the con­text of a Man­age­ment State­ment estab­lished by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. The Man­age­ment State­ment sets out the respect­ive respons­ib­il­it­ies of Scot­tish Min­is­ters, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Port­fo­lio Account­able Officer, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Spon­sor Team, the Con­vener and Depute Con­vener of the Board, the Board as a whole and the Chief Exec­ut­ive as Account­able Officer as they relate to the stra­tegic dir­ec­tion, oper­a­tion and fin­an­cial account­ab­il­ity of the Authority.

2. The Board is respons­ible with­in the terms of the Man­age­ment State­ment for estab­lish­ing the over­all stra­tegic dir­ec­tion of the NDPB with­in the policy, plan­ning and resources frame­work determ­ined by the Scot­tish Min­is­ters. The Board achieves this aim through determ­in­ing the dir­ec­tion and con­tent of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) and there­after the Authority’s own Cor­por­ate Plan which sets out the CNPA’s dir­ect con­tri­bu­tions to deliv­ery of NPPP object­ives. The Authority’s cur­rent Cor­por­ate Plan was approved by the Board and Scot­tish Min­is­ters in March 2018: https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​a​u​t​h​o​r​i​t​y​/​c​o​r​p​o​r​a​t​e​-​p​l​a​n​s​/​c​o​r​p​o​r​a​t​e​-​plan/

3. Deliv­ery against the Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives is repor­ted on each year, high­light­ing achieve­ments and excep­tions, per­form­ance against tar­gets and key per­form­ance indic­at­ors and wider stra­tegic risk man­age­ment. The fourth such deliv­ery report on the cur­rent 2018 to 2022 Cor­por­ate Plan was presen­ted to the Board at its meet­ing in Septem­ber 2020:

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 12/03/2021

1. https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​t​o​g​e​t​h​e​r​/​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​s​/​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​/​b​o​a​r​d​-2020 – 09-11/

2. In terms of annu­al budget­ing, the Man­age­ment State­ment sets out the role for the Board as hav­ing cor­por­ate respons­ib­il­ity for pro­mot­ing the effi­cient and effect­ive use of staff and oth­er resources by the NDPB, and ensur­ing that any stat­utory or admin­is­trat­ive require­ments for the funds fall­ing with­in the stew­ard­ship of the NDPB are com­plied with.

3. The Chief Exec­ut­ive, as Account­able Officer, is per­son­ally respons­ible for estab­lish­ing the Authority’s Cor­por­ate and Oper­a­tion­al Plans in the light of Scot­tish Minister’s wider stra­tegic aims. The Chief Exec­ut­ive is also respons­ible under the terms of the Man­age­ment State­ment for estab­lish­ing a robust per­form­ance man­age­ment frame­work which sup­ports the achieve­ment of the NDPB’s aims and object­ives as set out in the cor­por­ate and oper­a­tion­al plans; and which enables full per­form­ance report­ing to the Board, the spon­sor Dir­ect­or­ate and the wider pub­lic. This lat­ter respons­ib­il­ity is giv­en effect by the reg­u­lar Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance report referred to above, com­ple­men­ted by reports on NPPP deliv­ery and reg­u­lar updates on deliv­ery mat­ters to the Board.

4. Over­all, the budget developed must of course be cap­able of hav­ing pro­posed expendit­ure fin­anced by avail­able income in the year with a bal­anced year-end out­turn targeted.

5. As such, the exer­cise of annu­al budget and oper­a­tion­al plan estab­lish­ment in the Author­ity as an NDPB is one of:

   a) The Chief Exec­ut­ive, sup­por­ted by the Man­age­ment Team and wider staff group, estab­lish­ing the most appro­pri­ate deploy­ment of resources to sup­port deliv­ery over the course of the year toward achiev­ing the stra­tegic object­ives set by the Board in the Cor­por­ate Plan; and

   b) Review by the Board to ensure that the pro­posed deploy­ment of resources appears appro­pri­ate as a means of achiev­ing stra­tegic objectives.

²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ Budget

1. The budget pos­i­tion for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ is con­sid­er­ably increased over the anti­cip­ated resource deploy­ment set out in the Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan 2018 ‑2022 (page 12) for this final year of the Cor­por­ate Plan ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. Planned resource avail­ab­il­ity of £4.96 mil­lion was estim­ated at the incep­tion of that cor­por­ate plan for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. The level of resource avail­ab­il­ity on which the budget for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ is now based has increased to £7.1 mil­lion in grant in aid through the Nation­al Parks budget line, with a fur­ther £2.29 mil­lion made avail­able for peat­land res­tor­a­tion through anoth­er Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment budget line. A total resource base of £9.585 mil­lion has been estimated.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 12/03/2021

1. for the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ fin­an­cial year, estab­lish­ing the fin­an­cial pos­i­tion at the start of the fourth and final year of the cur­rent Cor­por­ate Plan.

2. The move­ments in fund­ing alloc­a­tion and income avail­able to sup­port the Author­ity in estab­lish­ing its budget in sup­port of deliv­ery of Cor­por­ate Plan out­comes between the com­ing fin­an­cial year, ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ and the cur­rent fin­an­cial year, ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ is set out in Table One.

Table One: Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Fund­ing Allocations

	2020⁄21 £000	2021⁄22 £000	Vari­ance £000
Resource main allocation	4,779	5,830	+1,051
Resource COV­ID Response		500	+500
Cap­it­al	240	600	+360
Total grant in aid allocations	5,019	6,930	+1,911
Spe­cif­ic Programmes
Peat­land Restoration	246	2,285	+2,039
SG Biod­iversity Funding		196	+196
Oth­er gen­er­ated income	125	174	+49
Total Income	5,390	9,585	+4,195

1. In addi­tion to the spe­cified fund­ing set out in Table One above, the Author­ity over the course of the year will remain lead applic­ant and account­able body for the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­gramme, the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme (ends 31 Decem­ber 2021), Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject, and the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship (pro­gramme ends 31 May 2021 with resid­ual respons­ib­il­ity for over­sight of a small man­age­ment and main­ten­ance budget).

2. The Author­ity has worked with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment through­out 2020 to identi­fy a num­ber of evol­u­tions of our oper­a­tion­al bases which could deliv­er sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tions to Government’s Nation­al Out­comes as set out in the Nation­al Per­form­ance Frame­work, while deliv­er­ing against the Authority’s exist­ing stra­tegic goals. These dis­cus­sions and bids have secured the step change increases in fund­ing con­sidered above. The key changes are sum­mar­ised in Table Two togeth­er with

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 12/03/2021

estim­ated fin­an­cial val­ues asso­ci­ated with each aspect of deliv­ery and its link­age with exist­ing stra­tegic outcomes.

Table Two: Sig­ni­fic­ant Changes in Oper­a­tion­al Deliv­ery for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂

Activ­ity	Value £000	Stra­tegic Fit
Peat­land Restoration	2,285	Cor­por­ate Plan con­ser­va­tion and land man­age­ment pri­or­ity 1: sup­port land­scape scale restoration
Sup­port Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme Bid	150	Vari­ous Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives / approved by Board 12 Feb 2021
Cairngorms NPA Ranger Ser­vice: Sea­son­al Rangers (includ­ing Kick­start rangers)	296	Cor­por­ate Plan vis­it­or exper­i­ence pri­or­ity 2: Increase phys­ic­al activ­ity in both res­id­ents and vis­it­ors and sup­port deliv­ery of Scotland’s Nat­ur­al Health Ser­vice / Green Recov­ery Plan approved Board June 2020
Cairngorms NΡΑ Ranger Ser­vice: per­man­ent ranger ser­vice provision	286
Green Recov­ery Grants	250	Green Recov­ery Plan approved Board June 2020, link­ing to Eco­nom­ic Action Plan approved in 2019, togeth­er with Rur­al Devel­op­ment object­ive 2: sup­port com­munit­ies, spe­cific­ally focus­sing on the most fra­gile, to deliv­er their agen­das for change
Vis­it­or Man­age­ment: cap­it­al fin­an­cing to sup­port enhance­ments to vis­it­or facil­it­ies and improved vis­it­or experience	324	Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence Pri­or­ity I — Con­tin­ue to ensure vis­it­or infra­struc­ture meets the expect­a­tions of vis­it­ors to the Nation­al Park and help deliv­er a sus­tain­able tour­ism eco­nomy. Green Recov­ery Plan approved by Board June 2020 link­ing to Eco­nom­ic Action Plan approved in 2019.
Organ­isa­tion­al and Cairngorms NP responses to COVID	220	As Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence Pri­or­ity I in above line / Rur­al Devel­op­ment Object­ive 2 (see Green Recov­ery Grants above) plus Cor­por­ate Plan Pri­or­ity 3 on Cor­por­ate Ser­vices – deliv­er­ing ongo­ing ser­vice improve­ments which in this case will sup­port organ­isa­tion­al adapt­a­tion to work

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Activ­ity	Value £000	Stra­tegic Fit
		after COVID19 response.
Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Funding	196	Sup­port deliv­ery of Cairngorms Nature Action Plan pro­jects in line with Scot­tish Biod­iversity Strategy
Total ser­vice increases	4,007

1. The ser­vice changes out­lined in Table Two there­fore account for around 96% of the step changes in fund­ing received for the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ fin­an­cial year. Many of the above step changes in fund­ing have been pre­vi­ously dis­cussed by Board and, as can be seen, link to deliv­ery of exist­ing Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives and cor­por­ate strategy agreed by the Board:

   a) Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion: dir­ect bid for funds to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment to sup­port exist­ing cor­por­ate plan priority.

   b) Her­it­age Hori­zons: provid­ing for the Authority’s con­tri­bu­tion to the Devel­op­ment phase as agreed by the Board in Feb­ru­ary 2012.

   c) Devel­op­ing Ranger ser­vices: as approved by Board in Janu­ary 2021 regard­ing sea­son­al and ​“Kick­start” rangers and con­sidered fur­ther in this paper regard­ing the estab­lish­ment of a per­man­ent ranger service.

   d) Green Recov­ery grants: pro­pos­al to sup­port a second phase of green recov­ery grants, sup­por­ted by the COV­ID recov­ery grant alloc­a­tion made avail­able by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and again in part­ner­ship with the Cairngorms Loc­al Action Group Trust.

   e) Vis­it­or man­age­ment cap­it­al infra­struc­ture invest­ment: to sup­port fol­low up actions to the review of the 2020 sea­son with invest­ment pro­pos­als to be developed and final­ised through the early part of 2021.

   f) Cairngorms NP responses to COVID19 and organ­isa­tion­al adapt­a­tions to work­ing envir­on­ments after COVID19: pro­gramme of work to be developed in early part of 2021 sup­por­ted by the COV­ID recov­ery grant alloc­a­tion made avail­able by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. This may include some ​“rev­en­ue” sup­port to the devel­op­ment and deliv­ery of cap­it­al pro­gramme proposals.

   g) Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Funds: alloc­ated to cre­at­ing new and enhan­cing exist­ing nat­ive wood­land, mont­ane wood­land and fresh­wa­ter hab­it­at along­side focussed action for Cairngorms Nature pri­or­ity spe­cies includ­ing north­ern dam­sel­fly, fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sel, aspen and pine hov­er­fly. Pro­jects are tak­ing place through­out the Nation­al Park on a vari­ety of land­hold­ings. The work will employ loc­al fen­cing con­tract­ors, eco­lo­gists, for­est­ers and heavy plant oper­at­ors and provide accred­ited train­ing and ment­or­ing for envir­on­ment­al volun­teer­ing and skills development.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 12/03/2021

1. Fur­ther sig­ni­fic­ant adjust­ments to the Authority’s budget base between the cur­rent fin­an­cial year, ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁, and the forth­com­ing fin­an­cial and oper­a­tion­al year, ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂, sup­port pro­vi­sion across all ele­ments of the agreed Cor­por­ate Strategy. Table Three sets out the more sig­ni­fic­ant of the cross-organ­isa­tion­al move­ments in the pro­jec­ted cost base for the Author­ity for ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁.

Table Three: Changes in Cost Base Sup­port­ing All Cor­por­ate Outcomes

Activ­ity	Value £000	Stra­tegic Fit
Revis­ing organ­isa­tion­al struc­ture to fit future pri­or­it­ies and step change in operations	140	Deliv­er­ing all exist­ing cor­por­ate plan out­comes and agreed Board stra­tegic objectives.
Move­ment in pay	164	Deliv­er­ing Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Pub­lic Sec­tor Pay Policy; observing CNPA pay policies.
Enhan­cing shared ser­vices to estab­lish a fully sup­por­ted GIS service.	48	Cor­por­ate Plan, Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Pri­or­ity 2 — Ensure that the office exten­sion, exist­ing accom­mod­a­tion and ICT facil­it­ies are ​‘fit for pur­pose’ and help to deliv­er the Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy — imple­ment GIS strategy
Total ser­vice increases	352

1. The sig­ni­fic­ant cross-organ­isa­tion­al ser­vice changes rep­res­ent a fur­ther 8% of the fund­ing increases secured for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. These changes, plus those in table two dir­ec­ted toward more spe­cif­ic cor­por­ate plan out­comes, thus account for 104% of the total increase in fund­ing alloc­ated to the Author­ity for the year ahead. This is off­set by some reduc­tions in oper­a­tion­al plan expendit­ure require­ments where invest­ments have come to a con­clu­sion, togeth­er with oth­er budget man­age­ment assess­ments. Some of the more sig­ni­fic­ant budget assump­tions are covered in a fol­low­ing sec­tion of this paper.

Stra­tegic Policy Considerations

Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Budget Policies

1. The ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ budget is set with­in wider pub­lic sec­tor fin­an­cial policy in Scot­land, which seeks to estab­lish a fin­an­cial envir­on­ment in which pub­lic fin­ances are deployed to

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 12/03/2021

begin the pro­cess of rebuild­ing from a year ser­i­ously impacted by the COVID19 pan­dem­ic. There are many com­pet­ing pri­or­it­ies as the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment seeks to rebuild a fairer, stronger and green­er eco­nomy. As such, there are clear dir­ec­tions to the Author­ity to main­tain expendit­ure with­in avail­able resource levels and deliv­er a bal­anced out-turn pos­i­tion. The addi­tion­al fund­ing alloc­a­tions set out in this paper also help identi­fy the areas whereby the Cairngorms NPA may make spe­cif­ic, sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tions to build­ing that fairer, stronger and green­er economy.

1. The Author­ity also con­tin­ues to adopt the Scot­tish Government’s ​“No Com­puls­ory Redund­ancy Policy” which is an ele­ment of the wider Pubic Sec­tor Pay Policy for NDPBs. While the Author­ity would not wish to use redund­an­cies as a budget man­age­ment tool, and has pos­it­ively taken for­ward the No Com­puls­ory Redund­ancy (NCR) Policy, this does mean that a long term view must be taken around staff employ­ment levels. The poten­tial impact of recruit­ment must be con­sidered not only in the year of recruit­ment, but also over sub­sequent years’ fin­an­cial com­mit­ment levels and in the con­text of budget and staff deploy­ment flex­ib­il­it­ies. As in pri­or years, this paper looks at the levels of staff­ing as a pro­por­tion of income under man­age­ment in estab­lish­ing budget pro­pos­als. The Board’s Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee and Audit and Risk Com­mit­tees have also con­sidered the Authority’s Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy, and through that have taken assur­ance over the con­trols in place by seni­or man­agers over man­age­ment of staff­ing levels in the short and long term.

Work­force Management

1. The Author­ity has under­taken a Vol­un­tary Exit exer­cise with staff between Octo­ber 20 and Janu­ary 21. This has res­ul­ted in four mem­bers of staff who will take vol­un­tary exist from the organ­isa­tion at the end of April 21. The costs of the VE com­pens­a­tion pay­ments are fully covered by the pro­vi­sion for the equi­val­ent salary over the ²¹⁄₂₂ fin­an­cial year. This action by man­age­ment will release around £160,000 from the authority’s staff payroll costs at the end of the ²¹⁄₂₂ fin­an­cial year.

2. Staff of course remain a key ele­ment in our resource mix. Almost all staff and pro­jects oper­ate across all three areas of our Cor­por­ate Plan: Con­ser­va­tion, Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence and Rur­al Devel­op­ment. Staff in turn work across each of the Park aims. This is also the case for all cor­por­ate and com­mu­nic­a­tions staff, who sup­port deliv­ery and achieve­ment of cor­por­ate pri­or­it­ies across the breadth of our Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives. There­fore, while we cat­egor­ise our pro­ject activ­it­ies against on one of the top level pri­or­ity areas of our Cor­por­ate Plan for plan­ning, account­ing and pro­ject man­age­ment pur­poses, almost all such pro­ject activ­it­ies have mul­tiple impacts across our stra­tegic objectives.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 12/03/2021

1. There are no increases to employ­ers’ pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions advised at the time of draw­ing up this budget.

Lever­age: Secur­ing Inward Invest­ment to the Cairngorms

1. The Author­ity has sought over recent years to max­im­ise the impact of our avail­able resources through invest­ing funds to secure lever­age of extern­al fund­ing into the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Par­tic­u­larly suc­cesses have been secured with EU LEAD­ER fin­ance and Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Funds (NLHF) for The Moun­tains and The People Pro­ject, the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship, Badenoch Great Place Scheme and more recently the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject. The sep­ar­ate paper to this Board meet­ing on major pro­jects high­lights that total fund­ing of these pro­jects is £15million (not includ­ing addi­tion­al LEAD­ER match fund­ing secured by applic­ants which equates to a fur­ther £1.5m). This is a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of fund­ing that the CNPA and part­ners has lever­aged through these pro­jects. The dir­ect fin­an­cial CNPA con­tri­bu­tion is £855,000: a very high lever­age rate of roughly £17.50 for every £1 inves­ted. The pri­or­ity to ensure ongo­ing flex­ib­il­ity in resource deploy­ment to allow fin­an­cial invest­ment to lever­age sig­ni­fic­ant addi­tion­al inward invest­ment remains a key ele­ment of the Man­age­ment Team’s budget and resource plan­ning strategy. As the Board are aware, a sig­ni­fic­ant bid to NLHF has now been made for the ​“Her­it­age Hori­zons” pro­pos­als and the ini­tial fin­an­cial con­sequences of a suc­cess­ful bid have been incor­por­ated into the budget pro­pos­als now presented.

Deliv­er­ing Best Value Ranger Services

1. Table Two above high­lights pro­pos­als that the Author­ity com­mence the devel­op­ment of a per­man­ent Cairngorms NP Ranger Ser­vice in line with the bid made to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment to secure increased fund­ing. This will fur­ther aug­ment the cur­rent mixed deliv­ery mod­el for ranger ser­vices in the Cairngorms com­pris­ing private, char­it­able and pub­lic ranger ser­vices com­bined with the Authority’s own sea­son­al rangers. These budget pro­pos­als for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ pro­pose the con­tinu­ation of sup­port for 11.2 full time equi­val­ent rangers employed by estates and char­it­ies with pro­vi­sions mak­ing allow­ance for a 10% increase, equi­val­ent to £15,000, in the level of ranger fund­ing in recog­ni­tion that rates of fin­ance have not been increased by the Author­ity for sev­er­al years. A pro­vi­sion has also been made in the budget for a poten­tial sea­son­al ranger post with Estates in the Angus Glens and help with traffic man­age­ment staff resource for Bal­mor­al and Mar Lodge.

2. To fur­ther address the needs of man­aging an increase in vis­it­or num­bers by 40% since des­ig­na­tion of the Cairngorms NP, the budget pro­pos­als include for the estab­lish­ment of a per­man­ent Cairngorms NPA ranger ser­vice. These pro­pos­als are sup­por­ted by an increase in grant in aid alloc­ated by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, included in the resource

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 12/03/2021

fig­ures set out in Table One, in response to bids made by the Author­ity over the course of ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁. The sea­son­al ser­vice will be aug­men­ted with 4 full-time ranger posts for the CNPA. Two will be focused on the East­ern Cairngorms, and two will be focused on the West­ern Cairngorms. The Ranger Ser­vice Man­ager will have oper­a­tion­al con­trol of the CNPA Ranger Ser­vice and will also be the liais­on point with the estate-based ranger ser­vices. These per­man­ent rangers will also provide the basis for enabling the CNPA to deliv­er the 5 Kick­start ranger posts.

1. The CNPA Ranger Ser­vice provides 3 key ingredi­ents as part of a mixed mod­el of ranger ser­vices in the Cairngorms blend­ing private, pub­lic and char­it­able services:

   a) Flex­ib­il­ity — provides sup­port across all land in the Nation­al Park to deal with vis­it­or man­age­ment and oth­er issues as they arise;

   b) Vis­ib­il­ity — provides strong vis­ib­il­ity for CNPA across the Park for vis­it­ors and com­munit­ies. Provides a good loc­al point of contact.

   c) Prac­tic­al­ity and Best Value — provides the struc­ture to ensure close work­ing with estate-based ranger ser­vices and provides resource for edu­ca­tion, volun­teer­ing and main­ten­ance work that the CNPA is respons­ible for.

2. Addi­tion­ally, at its meet­ing in Janu­ary 2021, the Board wel­comed the pro­pos­al for the employ­ment of youth rangers and young entrants to ranger work, sup­por­ted by the UK Government’s ​“Kick­start” youth employ­ment scheme. A core, employed ranger ser­vice is an essen­tial require­ment to enable the employ­ment of these roles.

3. More detail of the mixed mod­el for ranger ser­vices and the Cairngorms NPA’s Ranger Ser­vice is presen­ted at Annex 3 and asso­ci­ated appen­dices to that Annex.

Stra­tegic Risk Management

1. The Board most recently con­sidered the stra­tegic risk register at its meet­ing in Septem­ber 2020.

https://cairngorms.co.uk/resource/docs/boardpapers/11092020/200911CNPABdPaper2Annex3Strategic%20Risk%20Register%20v5.3.pdf3Strategic Risk Register v5.3.pdf (cairngorms​.co​.uk)

The stra­tegic risk register has also been sub­sequently reviewed by the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee at its meet­ing in Novem­ber 2020:

201127AuCtteePaper|Annex Stra­tegic Risk Register v6.1 Cttee Version.pdf (cairngorms​.co​.uk)

There are a num­ber of stra­tegic risks linked to the devel­op­ment of the budget for the forth­com­ing year. The primary risks of rel­ev­ance are con­sidered briefly here.

1. Risk Al — Resources: pub­lic sec­tor fin­ances con­strain capa­city to alloc­ate suf­fi­cient resources to deliv­er cor­por­ate plan. This risk is again seen to be sig­ni­fic­antly mit­ig­ated by suc­cess­ful fund­ing bids made by man­age­ment over ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ on the basis of

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the pro­pos­als set out in this paper, and through the Authority’s demon­stra­tion of the effect­ive­ness of cor­por­ate per­form­ance and effect­ive fin­an­cial management.

1. Risk A11.2 high­lights the poten­tial resource require­ment estab­lished by the leg­acy of large scale fun­ded pro­jects after they com­plete their deliv­ery phases. For example, there is a spe­cif­ic leg­acy phase with­in the terms of the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship pro­ject which will need resourced by the Author­ity as lead applic­ant; the close of the LEAD­ER Pro­gramme in Decem­ber 2021 will require ongo­ing admin­is­tra­tion to close the pro­gramme and remain exposed to extern­al audit for sev­er­al years; and the end of the cap­it­al build phase of the Moun­tains and the People pro­ject will move these paths, like oth­er infra­struc­ture invest­ment, into con­sid­er­a­tion of cov­er for ongo­ing main­ten­ance. This risk there­fore begins to poten­tially impact the Authority’s resource deploy­ment. How­ever, there are no spe­cif­ic budget impacts arising from this risk for the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ fin­an­cial year itself.

2. Risk A19 that ​“fail­ure to effect­ively man­age staff­ing num­bers in the long term will reduce the capa­city for the Author­ity to deploy adequate fin­an­cial invest­ment toward pri­or­ity pro­jects in the Nation­al Park” con­tin­ues to be man­aged in line with the approved Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy and management’s con­trols in place over recruit­ment and use of an appro­pri­ate mix of per­man­ent and fixed term con­tracts. The Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee con­sidered an update on the pos­i­tion at its meet­ing in March 2020 high­light­ing a low risk of impacts arising from man­age­ment of fixed term con­tracts. Fig­ures set out in this budget paper also high­light that staff budgets are decreas­ing sig­ni­fic­antly both as a per­cent­age of total expendit­ure and also as a pro­por­tion of total avail­able resources.

3. With the scale of increase in fund­ing reflec­ted in this budget paper, the Board may wish to reflect on the poten­tial risks around the needs of the Author­ity to adapt its scale of oper­a­tions to the capa­cit­ies required to effect­ively and effi­ciently deliv­er this increased scale of pro­grammes of activ­ity. The Board will be aware that work is well advanced in review­ing man­age­ment struc­tures to accom­mod­ate these changes. Fur­ther­more, early decisions have been taken on the devel­op­ment of a sea­son­al ranger ser­vice, while staff teams have also ini­ti­ated devel­op­ment of the pro­ced­ures sup­port­ing the peat­land res­tor­a­tion programme.

Stra­tegic Implic­a­tions and Key Assumptions

Poten­tial Implic­a­tions for Cor­por­ate Performance

1. The core budget and Oper­a­tion­al Plan pro­pos­als set out in this paper present a broadly bal­anced budget deliv­er­ing across all three areas of the Cor­por­ate Plan, and

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address­ing all stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies. The budget presents a broadly bal­anced pos­i­tion of planned expendit­ure covered in full by avail­able resources from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment grant in aid and oth­er income, in line with our fin­an­cial tar­get of achiev­ing a fin­an­cial break-even pos­i­tion at the end of each fin­an­cial year.

1. There are no excep­tions to high­light – there are no risks anti­cip­ated by Man­age­ment Team that the resource deploy­ment pro­posed will give rise to short­com­ings in achieve­ment of Cor­por­ate Plan targets.

2. Con­versely, the pre­vi­ous cor­por­ate per­form­ance report high­lighted that the achieve­ment of the cor­por­ate plan object­ive on peat­land res­tor­a­tion was escal­ated to a sig­ni­fic­ant risk of not being achieved. The budget now presen­ted has secured an addi­tion­al enhance­ment for peat­land res­tor­a­tion work which will be under the con­trol of the Author­ity for a des­ig­nated peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­gramme fol­low­ing extens­ive nego­ti­ations with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment over the course of ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁. There­fore, there is a sub­stan­tial resource invest­ment into Cairngorms peat­land res­tor­a­tion for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ which will begin to redress the risk escal­a­tion repor­ted to the Board in Septem­ber 2020.

Key Budget­ing Assump­tions: Vacancy Savings

1. In set­ting the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ budget, the Board approved a pos­i­tion includ­ing an estim­ated £78,000 in vacancy sav­ings gen­er­ated from slip­page in recruit­ment and / or from hold­ing vacant posts for a peri­od of time before recruit­ment where this was appro­pri­ate to deliv­ery con­sid­er­a­tions. This rep­res­en­ted 2.6% of the total staff budget for the year of £2,964,000. Staff­ing in the cur­rent year rep­res­en­ted 55.0% of avail­able income at the time of estab­lish­ing the budget for the year.

2. Our budget devel­op­ment pro­cess for ²¹⁄₂₂ recog­nises the increase in staff levels to deliv­er these new pro­grammes of activ­ity sum­mar­ised in this paper. We anti­cip­ate that there will be some delays in recruit­ment and increased levels of turnover impact­ing on budgets. As such, we have increased the vacancy sav­ings assump­tion to £171,600, or 4.0% of the revised staff budget of £4,329,000. Staff­ing for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ rep­res­ents 42.8% of avail­able resources for the year, the sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion as a per­cent­age of income reflect­ing the increase in peat­land pro­gramme togeth­er with oth­er resource and cap­it­al alloc­a­tions to the Author­ity for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂.

3. Out­turn pro­jec­tions repor­ted to the Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee in Feb­ru­ary 2021 and covered in Annex I indic­ate that total sav­ings of £175,000 have been achieved in the cur­rent fin­an­cial year sup­port­ing this estim­ate for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂.

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1. The Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee reviewed this budget plan­ning assump­tion at its meet­ing of 26 Feb­ru­ary 2021 and agreed this rep­res­ents an appro­pri­ate plan­ning basis for the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ budget.

Key Budget­ing Assump­tions: Over-programming

1. Over the last two to three years, the Author­ity has gradu­ally elim­in­ated the prac­tice of ​“over-pro­gram­ming” as an ele­ment of its budget set­ting. Over-pro­gram­ming allowed for some expect­a­tion of slip­page in expendit­ure plans over the course of the year by budget­ing for a great­er level of expendit­ure than could be sup­por­ted be the funds avail­able in the year. Man­age­ment of slip­page through over-pro­gram­ming helped ensure that the Author­ity could max­im­ise use of resources avail­able each year and come as close to a tar­get break-even out­turn pos­i­tion at the end of the year as pos­sible. The rationale for the remov­al of an over-pro­gram­ming assump­tion linked to the increas­ing cer­tainty of pro­ject man­agers on their spend­ing plans as our part­ner­ships and oper­a­tion­al agree­ments matured, and con­sequently reduced expect­a­tion of sig­ni­fic­ant slip­page in plans.

2. As is set out in this paper, there is a sig­ni­fic­ant step change in resource avail­ab­il­ity for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. It is appro­pri­ate to revis­it the assump­tions on over-pro­gram­ming budget with the poten­tial for some increase in over-pro­gram­ming to ensure the Author­ity is able to max­im­ise deploy­ment of resources avail­able in the year. Over-pro­gram­ming may also be a worth­while approach to man­aging poten­tial uncer­tain­ties in pro­ject deliv­ery arising from COVID19 restric­tions which are likely to remain at least over the first quarter of ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂.

3. The Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee reviewed this budget plan­ning assump­tion at its meet­ing of 26 Feb­ru­ary 2021 and agreed that the budget should con­tin­ue to be developed on the basis of a break-even tar­get with no over-pro­gram­ming allow­ance. Any require­ment to adapt budget estim­ates to accom­mod­ate slip­page can be taken by Board, its Com­mit­tees and exec­ut­ive man­age­ment as appropriate.

Budget Assump­tions: Cap­it­al Programme

1. Work remains to com­plete the cap­it­al pro­gramme of planned cap­it­al invest­ments for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. We have inform­a­tion on the approved Green Recov­ery Plan to work from at the out­set. Fur­ther work is required on this aspect of our plans over the course of the next months.

2. To date, an alloc­a­tion of £170,000 of avail­able cap­it­al resources has been used to sup­port cap­it­al ele­ments of the Oper­a­tion­al Plan and a fur­ther £100,000 to support

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invest­ment in cor­por­ate sys­tems and equip­ment. Fur­ther details of the oper­a­tion­al plan pro­vi­sions are set out in Annexes I and 2 to this paper.

1. The Man­age­ment Team is devel­op­ing a pro­gramme of cap­it­al works with part­ners to help sup­port vis­it­or man­age­ment across the Nation­al Park, look­ing at key sites for improve­ment. This one-year pro­vi­sion has been included in Table Two of this paper.

2. In fur­ther devel­op­ing cap­it­al pro­pos­als for for­ward years we will seek to build a multi-year cap­it­al invest­ment pro­gramme, enabled by the inform­a­tion provided by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment on our multi-year cap­it­al alloc­a­tions, and sup­port­ing the pri­or­it­ies of the new Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) for 2022 to 2027 and our Cor­por­ate Plan set­ting out the Authority’s dir­ect con­tri­bu­tion to the NPPP. The multi-year approach will help facil­it­ate man­age­ment of cap­it­al expendit­ure allow­ing move­ment of pro­jects between fin­an­cial years to allow for slip­page in devel­op­ment of plans and max­im­ising resource util­isa­tion. The Authority’s draft man­age­ment struc­ture plans include a pro­gramme board to ensure cross-organ­isa­tion­al col­lab­or­a­tion in devel­op­ing the cap­it­al programme.

Deliv­ery of Outcomes

1. The Author­ity divides its work into Con­ser­va­tion, Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence and Rur­al Devel­op­ment for cor­por­ate plan­ning and oper­a­tion­al plan­ning reas­ons. This allows us to have an intern­al con­trol sys­tem to man­age both staff and resources and give people a clear indic­a­tion of what the organ­isa­tion does.

2. How­ever, it is also clear that people some­times mis­in­ter­pret this, for example in the belief that expendit­ure on con­ser­va­tion has no impact on vis­it­or exper­i­ence, rur­al devel­op­ment or indeed the wider eco­nomy of the Cairngorms. This is not the case. Almost all staff and pro­jects oper­ate across all these three areas and in turn deliv­er against all of the Park aims. This also applies to all cor­por­ate and com­mu­nic­a­tions staff who sup­port deliv­ery across all three priorities.

3. To illus­trate this there are examples below linked to lines in the oper­a­tion­al plan that show the com­plex­ity and deliv­ery across all the out­comes by the work of the CNPA.

   a) LEAD­ER and Green Recov­ery Grants: our sup­port for grant mech­an­isms are typ­ic­ally con­tained with­in our Rur­al Devel­op­ment cat­egor­isa­tion of resource deploy­ment. These grants deliv­er com­munity and rur­al devel­op­ment while also sup­port­ing busi­ness devel­op­ment, farm diver­si­fic­a­tion, access and vis­it­or infra­struc­ture pro­jects and con­ser­va­tion work.

   b) Forest Man­age­ment – Wood­land expan­sion is a pri­or­ity for the CNPA and we have a tar­get of 5000ha over 5 years. This is obvi­ously a significant

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con­ser­va­tion area of work for CNPA staff being flagged up in Cairngorms Nature. How­ever, a 200ha nat­ive wood­land in our tar­get area would mean the landown­er would receive £720,000 in grant pay­ments and oth­er grants are avail­able for deer fen­cing etc. Wood­land, as well as deliv­er­ing our con­ser­va­tion out­comes, is also deliv­er­ing vis­it­or exper­i­ence (amen­ity and recre­ation) and rur­al devel­op­ment (wood products, tim­ber etc.).

c) Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan — The LDP is our main tool for rur­al devel­op­ment in the Nation­al Park. This guides where devel­op­ment goes and sets our hous­ing land sup­ply tar­gets etc. It is also a tool to pro­tect and enhance nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age with polices cov­er­ing all these areas. The pre­sump­tion against hill­tracks in open moor­land is a way to pro­tect land­scapes and wild land which are both con­ser­va­tion pri­or­it­ies. Again, there­fore, a pro­ject activ­ity alloc­ated size­able fin­an­cial and staff resource and ​“iden­ti­fied” with­in Rur­al Devel­op­ment is sup­port­ing across all aspects of con­ser­va­tion and vis­it­or exper­i­ence, and requires staff input from across all areas of the organ­isa­tion in order to effect­ively achieve the inten­ded results.

d) Volun­teer Rangers – The Volun­teer Rangers pro­gramme is part of the vis­it­or exper­i­ence team. Volun­teer rangers deliv­er con­ser­va­tion pro­jects, access pro­jects, provide great oppor­tun­it­ies for people to upskill and help deliv­er across com­munit­ies in the Park.

1. The above examples could be provided for all the lines in the oper­a­tion­al plan. Some pro­jects we lead, some we sup­port and some are part­ner­ships: look­ing simply at the fig­ures and com­par­ing spend and staff alloc­a­tion between Con­ser­va­tion, Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence & Rur­al Devel­op­ment does not give the full pic­ture of what is being delivered for con­ser­va­tion, vis­it­or exper­i­ence and rur­al devel­op­ment by Park staff and fund­ing. The breadth and depth of what we do can be found in our cor­por­ate plan report­ing, the CEO Report and the annu­al NPPP review.

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²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ Sum­mary

1. Fol­low­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of all above factors and assump­tions, the sum­mary budget pos­i­tion is presen­ted in Table Four.

Table Four: Sum­mary Budget Pos­i­tion ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂

| | ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ Budget Pro­pos­als £000 | | 20