CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper | 14/05/21

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FIN­ANCE & DELIV­ERY COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: DRAFT OUT­TURN FOR THE YEAR TO 31 MARCH 2021 Pre­pared by: DANIEL RAL­PH, FIN­ANCE MAN­AGER DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SERVICES

Pur­pose

To present the draft out­turn, sub­ject to audit, for the year to 31 March, 2021 to the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Committee.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee is reques­ted to:

a) note the unaudited res­ults of the year to 31 March 2021

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. A key table from the draft Annu­al Report and Accounts is repro­duced below which shows the out­turn for the fin­an­cial year ended 31 March 2021.

2. All the inform­a­tion in this report are sub­ject to audit.

3. In a par­tic­u­larly chal­len­ging year for budget­ary and fin­an­cial man­age­ment brought about by COVID19 restric­tions and the require­ment to sig­ni­fic­antly review budget deploy­ment to meet rap­idly chan­ging oper­a­tion­al cir­cum­stances, the draft out­turn is over­all a small under­spend on each of Resource, Cap­it­al and Non-cash budget allocations:

a) £6,000 Resource arising from a £4,000 cash over­spend which has been off­set by a £10,000 non-cash alloc­a­tion (see para 8); b) £44,000 Cap­it­al; and c) £171,000 on ring fenced non-cash, depre­ci­ation, (see para 9).

1. This out­turn is viewed by the Fin­ance Team as a pos­it­ive achieve­ment in a very chal­len­ging oper­a­tion­al year.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper | 14/05/21

Draft Out­turn

1. Table I, sum­mar­ises expendit­ure for the year with total oper­a­tion­al plan income and cash grant-in-aid received, (as adjus­ted for the spend on cap­it­al­ised tan­gible and intan­gible assets [£51,000], and a non-cash Resource award [£10,000]):

£’000s Oper­a­tion plan income (1,337) Oth­er income (374) Total oper­at­ing income (1,711) Cash grant-in-aid less spend on cap­it­al­ised assets (5,364) Total income (7,075)

Board mem­ber and staff costs 3,800 Oper­a­tion­al plan expendit­ure 1,625 Pro­ject expendit­ure 976 Oth­er oper­at­ing costs 634 Total oper­at­ing expendit­ure 7,035

Under­spend on cash received (40)

1. The cash under­spend for the year rep­res­ents 0.7% of cash grant-in-aid received, and 0.6% of total income and grant-in-aid.

2. Table 2, to be included in the draft unaudited Annu­al Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2021, sum­mar­ises the net expendit­ure for the year and com­pares to budget alloc­a­tions, cash and non-cash alloc­ated by Scot­tish Government.

Table 2

	Resource DEL £’000s	Cap­it­al DEL £’000s	Total DEL £’000s	Non-Cash DEL £’000s	Total £’000s
Budget alloc­a­tion	4,938	487	5,425	320	5,745
Resources expendit­ure	(4,932)	(392)	(5,324)		(5,324)
Depre­ci­ation				(149)	(149)
Non-cur­rent assets bought		(51)	(51)		(51)
(Over)/underspend	6	44	50	171	201
(Over)/underspend %	.12%	9.0%	.9%	53.4%	3.5%

1. The Resource DEL budget for the year includes a non-cash alloc­a­tion of £10,000, to cov­er expendit­ure relat­ing to accru­ing staff bene­fits (staff hol­i­day pay accru­al) recog­nise that staff have been less able to either take their full hol­i­day enti­tle­ment or in using accu­mu­lated flexi­time / TOIL due to either cov­id restric­tions of changed work pat­terns. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment have recog­nised this man­age­ment issue, and also the com­mit­ment of Cairngorms NPA staff to deliv­er­ing tar­gets over the year, by award­ing an addi­tion­al £10,000 cov­er for the addi­tion­al value of leave and accu­mu­lated time

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee Paper | 14/05/21

1. car­ried for­ward by the Author­ity and which we must recog­nise in our fin­an­cial state­ments. This is ​“non-cash” cov­er as it effect­ively provides gov­ern­ment approv­al for the increase in our estim­ated costs of staff bene­fit owed by the organ­isa­tion and brought into our accounts as a pro­vi­sion, rather than a ​“cash cost” of addi­tion­al pay­ments to staff.

2. The Ring-fenced (non-cash) DEL budget for the year included an alloc­a­tion to cov­er the imple­ment­a­tion of IFRS 16: Leases, that had been due to be intro­duced in 2020 – 21 but has been deferred until April 2022. No reduc­tion of the award was made in the year and Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment are con­tent to accept the con­sequent under­spend due to the deferred imple­ment­a­tion of IFRS 16. Sim­il­arly, for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂, the ring-fenced (non-cash) budget awar­ded includes an alloc­a­tion to cov­er IFRS 16 and the out­turn for the year will again show a sub­stan­tial vari­ance, and in line with cur­rent guid­ance, there will be no early adop­tion of the deferred stand­ard in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂.

3. Fol­low­ing a change in the fund­ing mech­an­isms of Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion, resources were made avail­able late in the year dir­ect to the Author­ity from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. Due to a com­bin­a­tion of cov­id restric­tions and weath­er con­di­tions in the run up to the year end the pro­ject team were unable to com­mis­sion work to fully util­ise the cap­it­al fund­ing and this accounts for the sig­ni­fic­ant under­spend. Out of £97,000 awar­ded only £53,000 cold be spent.

4. The draft out­turn fig­ures are sub­ject to audit by Grant Thornton who were appoin­ted by Audit Scot­land for a 5 year peri­od. Due to cov­id their term of office has been exten­ded by one year and will end with the audit of ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. The ini­tial ​“inter­im” audit was com­pleted remotely by 30^th April, with the final audit due to com­mence on June again remotely due to cov­id restric­tions. The audited accounts will be presen­ted to the Audit and Risk com­mit­tee for approv­al and sig­na­ture on 6^th September.

Daniel Ral­ph Dav­id Camer­on 30 April 2021

danielralph@​cairngorms.​co.​uk davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk