CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 Annex I 29/10/2021

The Cairngorms LAG Trust

LEAD­ER Quarterly Report

17/08/2021

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Con­tents

CAIRNGORMS TRUST

Quarterly update August 2021 2 1) Pro­ject sum­mary table 2 2) Fin­ance 4 3) Com­mit­ments to date 5 5) Mon­it­or­ing and Eval­u­ation. 9

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1) LEAD­ER Quarterly update May 2021 to August 2021

Pro­gramme Update includ­ing Covid-19:

The cur­rent LEAD­ER pro­jects end date remains as 31^st Decem­ber 2021.

The Account­able Body (CNPA) has under­taken to keep the cur­rent staff team in post until 31^st Janu­ary 2022.

An applic­a­tion to the ​‘Rur­al Com­munit­ies Test­ing Change’ fund­ing stream 1 for Cairngorms LAG to deliv­er activ­ity up to £50,000 will be sub­mit­ted on 13^th August.

An applic­a­tion to RCTC against stream 2 on behalf of all 21 LAG groups will be sub­mit­ted in early Septem­ber to com­plete a col­la­tion of all com­pleted eval­u­ations of the 2014 – 2020 pro­gramme and make recom­mend­a­tions for future delivery.

1) LEAD­ER Pro­ject sum­mary table

		This quarter	Pro­gramme to date
		18/05/21 to
		10/08/21
Enquir­ies	Received	0	263
Eol	Received	0	119
Applic­a­tions	Under devel­op­ment	0
	Sub­mit­ted	0	55
	Approved by LAG		39
Not yet started		0
Live		0
Closed		0	30
With­drawn		0	17

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Co-oper­a­tion Pro­jects – Cairngorms led

The Cairngorms Youth Action Team (EURO­PARC Youth Mani­festo) trans-nation­al pro­ject is now closed.

TICK — Trans­port Innov­a­tion Cairngorms & Kilkenny:

Act­ive Cairngorms E‑bikes (ACE): The pro­ject has loaned bikes to 48 people to date. There are cur­rently 12 bikes in use, with anoth­er 3 still being built in coun­try and hope­fully in ser­vice by the end of the month. The pro­ject officer presen­ted an up to date review of the pro­ject pro­cesses and made some recom­mend­a­tions for where the pro­ject could update these to make the pro­ject more efficient.

Fund­ing from the Cairngorms Trust to UK Cyc­ling has been agreed until Novem­ber. Before the end of the cur­rent fund­ing a fund­ing bid to Smarter Choices, Smarter Places (admin­istered by Paths for All) will be sub­mit­ted, with part­ner­ships likely to include CNPA, Green Health Part­ner­ship and poten­tially High­life High­land. Match fund­ing will also be needed and a small pro­ject team will take this forwards.

E‑vehicle pro­cure­ment: Only one bid was received in response to the tender pro­cess and that sup­pli­er is cur­rently in nego­ti­ations to ensure the vehicle can be delivered to spe­cific­a­tion and in the required timeline.

Trans­port Hub: HiTrans con­tin­ue to move for­wards with get­ting the cor­rect per­mis­sions in place to install the hub at Aviemore, with some con­sulta­tions as to best loc­a­tion with­in the area still being con­sidered. A quote for the hub has been received from HiTrans to include install­a­tion and all man­age­ment costs. The quote is on budget.

Co-oper­a­tion Pro­jects – non-Cairngorms led

Pro­mo­tion of Cycle Tour­ism in Rur­al Scot­land led by Forth Val­ley & Lomond LAG (and delivered with Argyll & the Islands LAG): The last update received from the lead-LAG sug­ges­ted that a lot of activ­ity had been com­pleted against the pro­ject. A fur­ther update has been reques­ted to identi­fy what has been achieved to date, espe­cially in the Cairngorms NP area.

Co-oper­a­tion pro­ject led by High­land LAG: Green Health: The pro­ject has been awar­ded addi­tion­al fund­ing from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and the Cairngorms over­all alloc­a­tion has been increased by £8,888 accord­ingly. A pro­ject deliv­ery update has been reques­ted dir­ect from the pro­ject officer.

The co-oper­a­tion pro­ject with both North & South Aber­deen­shire LAGs: Moun­tain Bike Aber­deen­shire: Remains broadly in the same pos­i­tion as last report with some pro­gress on the fin­an­cial side with a claim being final­ised for pay­ment. Cal­cu­la­tions on LARCs sug­gest an under­spend of £2,314.30 will be the final pos­i­tion, which is £810 for Cairngorms. Final fin­an­cial adjust­ments will be made by the lead LAG.

Closed and in-situ pro­ject updates:

There are only two pro­jects still open that require an in-situ vis­it — Wig­wam Cab­ins and TICK.

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There have been one in-situ check car­ried out on pro­jects: St Margaret’s.

Addi­tion­al pro­ject updates:

Wig­wam Hol­i­days (Tomin­toul / Glen­liv­et) This pro­ject was approved to extend its final pro­ject date to 31^st August 2021, by which time the pro­ject should have delivered 2 fully-access­ible cab­ins to site and be open for business.

The applic­ant has now repor­ted that finally the water has been con­nec­ted so the ground works for the site can now be com­pleted dur­ing the month of August. As con­firmed pre­vi­ously, one of the access­ible cab­ins has been com­pleted and should be on site in time for open­ing in early Septem­ber and the oth­er is in con­struc­tion. The applic­ant will shortly be advert­ising for staff to work on site. The remain­ing 10 cab­ins will go into pro­duc­tion with­in the next 18 months and be sited as soon as is possible.

Note: this site will be the first Wig­wam Cab­ins Forest site and will be run by Wig­wam Cab­ins them­selves rather than being fran­chised out. The applic­ant is hop­ing to loc­ate oth­er forest sites to add to this strand of his oper­a­tion going forward.

St Margaret’s This pro­ject has had its final claim paid out on but we are still work­ing on the mon­it­or­ing and evaluation.

2) Fin­ance

Cairngorms Total Alloc­a­tion £ 3,052,324.70

Pro­jects Alloc­a­tion	f 2,473,908.89
Total LEAD­ER Pro­ject fund­ing committed	f 2,455,173.72 99.24%
Remain­ing Pro­ject Allocation	f 18,735.17 0.76%
Remain­ing includ­ing under spend	f 26,234.65
LEAD­ER Pro­jects Com­mit­ment Break­down 2016 – 2020
Total Main fund­ing committed	f 1,423,033.16 46.62%
Total Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion fund­ing committed	f 177,824.04 5.83%
Total Enter­prise fund­ing committed	f 467,316.00 15.31%
Total Co-oper­a­tion fund­ing committed	f 379,505.26 12.43%

Pro­gramme Value 2016 – 2020

Total Pro­ject Value	f 4,065,085.87
Increase on LEAD­ER Pro­ject cost	166%
Total LEAD­ER pro­ject fund­ing paid out	f 2,234,019.91
Pro­ject Under­spend for Re-allocation	f 7,499.49
Pro­gramme Value Break­down 2016 – 2020
Total Main value	f 1,913,336.43 47.07%
Total Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion value	f 315,277.58 7.76%
Total Enter­prise value	f 960,604.68 23.63%
Total Co-oper­a­tion value	f 551,026.68 13.56%

The Cairngorms LEAD­ER pro­gramme cur­rently has a fin­an­cial com­mit­ment to approved pro­jects of £2,455,174 or 99.24% of the total pro­ject alloc­a­tion of £3,052,324.

This total com­mit­ment con­sists of £1,423,033 of gen­er­al pro­gramme fund­ing, £645,140 of the sub-alloc­a­tion for invest­ment in Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion and Enter­prise pro­jects com­bined (of a min­im­um invest­ment of £593,704) and £379,505 inves­ted in Co-oper­a­tion funding.

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In terms of achiev­ing tar­gets in rela­tion to the sub-alloc­a­tions, as our sub-alloc­a­tions for Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion and Enter­prise are amal­gam­ated into one tar­get of 20% cov­er­ing both, cur­rently we are 21.14% of our total allocation.

Against our Cooper­a­tion sub-alloc­a­tion 5% of total (min­im­um £149,479) our total Co-Oper­a­tion com­mit­ment at present is £379,505 or 12.43%. This fig­ure has ris­en as we have now received the extra alloc­a­tion for the Green Health project.

Under­spend at present is show­ing as approx. £26,234. This fig­ure will be closely mon­itored over the next few months to the end of the pro­gramme. Fol­low­ing on from the like­li­hood that one or two of our co-oper­a­tion pro­jects might under­spend, we can expect this to increase slightly.

Pro­ject fin­ance review: This exer­cise con­tin­ues as pro­jects com­plete their pro­jects and recon­cile their fin­ances at final claim stage. We will con­tin­ue to mon­it­or the few remain­ing pro­jects to ensure that they stay on track to spend all funds alloc­ated to them.

Budget spend fore­cast: The team are in reg­u­lar con­tact with all applic­ants of live pro­jects for updates on cur­rent budget and activ­ity. We will con­tin­ue to mon­it­or spend as the pro­jects close.

3) LEAD­ER Com­mit­ments to date

			Com­mit­ments
App Num­ber	Pro­ject Name	Total Eli­gible Costs	Cairngorms LEAD­ER grant	Interve- ion rate %	Defrayed total (fin­ance s/​sheet as opposed to LARCS)
					Status of project
	Total	£4,064,969	£2,455,174		£2,061,711
	Closed pro­jects
3	Volun­teer Cairngorms	£78,886	£78,886	100%	£78,886.41
4	Kin­gussie 2017 (CLOSED)	£170,570	£133,195	78.08%	£133,195.38
5	Tomin­toul Dis­cov­ery Centre	£189,907	£159,133	83.80%	£159,133.26
6	BSC Pilot (CLOSED)	£19,962	£19,962	100%	£19,962.00

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7	Cairngorms Import­ant Plant Area	£157,571	£143,314	90.05%	£143,314.51
10	Brae­mar Com­munity Play Park (CLOSED)	£79,427	£38,427	48.38%	£38,426.53
11	Brae­mar Castle Con­ser­va­tion Pro­ject Phase 1 (CLOSED)	£60,880	£30,880	50.72%	£29,399.06
12	Wild­life ID & Guid­ing in the CNP (CLOSED)	£19,387	£16,887	87.10%	£16,886.65
13	Farm­house Renov­a­tion (CLOSED)	£201,852	£121,111	60%	£121,111.38
14	Com­munity Ori­enteer­ing & Prot of the Envir­on­ment (CLOSED)	£25,741	£19,398	75.35%	£19,397.89
16	Out­door Classroom (CLOSED)	£14,260	£6,013	42.17%	£5,880.61
17	Caber­feidh Hori­zons Trans­ition and Train­ing Pro­ject (CLOSED)	£149,579	£138,113	92.33%	£138,112,86
20	Rothiemurchus & Aviemore Ten­nis Club Facil­ity Enhance­ment (CLOSED)	£332,694	£189,012	56.81%	£188,989.22
21	Lag­gan Glamp­ing (CLOSED)	£113,425	£56,713	50%	£56,712.70
23	Rare Inver­teb­rates in the Cairngorms (CLOSED)	£54,752	£54,752	100.00%	£54,751.56
24	Siege works at Castle Roy (CLOSED)	£103,541	£96,145	92.85%	£96,160.00
25	Old Manse of Blair (CLOSED)	£121,826	£96,826	79.47%	£96,826.00
28	St Margaret’s – Sup­port­ing com­munity dvlpm­nt in Brae­mar (CLOSED)	£30,000	£30,000	100%	£30,000
32	Carr-bridge Caper­cail­lie Com­munity Ranger Pro­ject (CLOSED)	£50,280	£50,280	100%	£50,280.49

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33	Tul­lich Kirk­yard (CLOSED)	£111,889	£54,657	48.84%	£54,656.58
36	EURO­PARC Youth Mani­festo (CLOSED)	£68,463	£68,463	100%	£68,462.90
37	Pro­ject Mgr for NE Rur­al Food & Drink Tour­ism (CLOSED)	£63,531	£3,177	5%	£3,176.56
38	Inver­al­lan 20/20 (CLOSED)	£98,620	£35,456	35.95%	£35,455.84
43	Dwell @ Howe of Torbeg (CLOSED)	£40,146	£32,913	81.98%	£32,911.05
45	Com­munity 1st (CLOSED)	£55,720	£43,655	78.34%	£43,654.77
46	Cairngorm School of Dance Stu­dio (CLOSED)	£92,347	£57,347	62.09%	£57,346.63
47	Inspir­ing Out­door Access (CLOSED)	£39,650	£29,650	74.77%	£29,650.39
49	Paths & Trails	£57,047	£4,609	8.07%	£4,603.68
	Closed pro­jects with issues around final claim
8	Brae­mar Enhanced Access­ib­il­ity (CLOSED)	£44,986	£34,518	76.79%	£35,608.43
18	Spòrs Gàidh­lig (CLOSED)	£120,781	£83,179	68.86%	£73,464.72
19	Grow­ing Capa­city in Social Enter­prise in the Park (CLOSED)	£52,186	£26,210	50.22%	£35,818.59
22	The Cairngorms Nature Big Week­end (CLOSED)	£89,404	£74,004	82.77%	£74,004.28

8 – Pro­ject has been over­paid – query into SG to resolve. Invoicing arrange­ments have been agreed 18- Spors Gaidh­lig – pro­ject did not meet all object­ives with regards to par­ti­cipant num­bers and there­fore final 10% of grant was withheld

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19- SG have come back to Account­able Body con­firm­ing IR to be 70% now rather than agreed rate. Over­pay­ment to applic­ant and over claim on LARCS of £9,608.71. SG have invoiced Account­able Body who have agreed to pay on behalf of applic­ant. Applic­ant con­tent with out­come. 22- Over­pay­ment noti­fic­a­tions have been sub­mit­ted to SG for the amount of £25.85.

	Live Pro­jects with Green status
48	TICK Rur­al Transport	£222,299	£222,298	100%	£71,676.68
52	Sus­trans Cycle Tourism	£48,028	£16,008	33.33%	£6,953.57
51	Green Health	£276,812	£30,754	11.11%	£19,905.40
	Live Pro­jects with Amber status
9	Wig­wam Holidays	£468,945	£125,033	26.66%	£75,046.89
35	Moun­tain Bike Aberdeenshire	£139,575	£34,196	35% (of 70%)	£34,196.03

9‑Wigwam Cab­ins: Applic­ant has exten­ded their pro­ject timeline to August 2021 in order to site two fully access­ible cab­ins and to open the site. 35 – MBA: Claims have been received and the applic­ant has now indic­ated a final claim fig­ure pending sub­mis­sion on the final claim. Pro­ject has there­fore moved from Red to Amber.

The total eli­gible pro­ject costs for all approved pro­jects to date are approx­im­ately £4,064,969 with a total LEAD­ER com­mit­ment of approx­im­ately £2,455,174 which accounts for 99.24% of the over­all pro­ject alloc­a­tion. To date the LEAD­ER pro­gramme has paid out £2,061,711 to eli­gible claims. This dif­fers from the total in the fin­ance check­er in the Fin­ance sec­tion of the report as this is the actu­al sum paid out, where­as the Fin­ance fig­ure includes pay­ments that have been approved but not yet defrayed.

4) Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment LEAD­ER team & LARCS

In June the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment LEAD­ER Deliv­ery Team (LDT) reques­ted an up to date risk register. Wig­wam Cab­ins were high­lighted as an at risk pro­ject due to the ongo­ing issues with water, which have sub­sequently been resolved.

We also com­pleted a fin­ance work­book for LDT to help them to alloc­ate fund­ing for staff­ing, admin & anim­a­tion to fin­ish the cur­rent pro­gramme and deliv­er the pro­posed addi­tion­al £50,000 RCTC pro­gramme. An up to date 2014 – 2020 fin­an­cial pos­i­tion was also sub­mit­ted to show actu­als rather than LARCS.

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5) Mon­it­or­ing and Evaluation

Cairngorms LEAD­ER 2014 – 2020 Pro­gramme Evaluation

The final reports can now be cir­cu­lated and pub­lished after the elec­tion hiatus. A let­ter from the Chair and Account­able Body will accom­pany the cir­cu­la­tion to key MSPs and MPs. Fur­ther pro­mo­tion will be made in con­junc­tion with any announce­ment of new fund­ing for the area.

Nation­al update on M&E: We have not received an update on the nation­al pos­i­tion since before lock down. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment LEAD­ER Team have been focus­sing on recon­cili­ation of the fin­an­cial side of the nation­al pro­gramme, with the M&E LARCS pro­ject now tak­ing a back seat.

Notes on M&E

Although 3 pro­jects closed this quarter – Volun­teer Cairngorms, St Margaret’s Brae­mar and Paths and Trails Co-oper­a­tion pro­ject, only two pro­jects have com­pleted and sub­mit­ted their mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation for agree­ment by the team. We are still work­ing on St Margaret’s.

Per­form­ing well

At present all pro­jects that are still open are per­form­ing as well as can be expec­ted in the cur­rent COV­ID 19 climate.

Pro­jects / Tar­gets At risk (M&E)

Wig­wam Cab­ins see above for update.

M&E tar­gets & achieved are also included below. These were the tar­gets that each pro­ject set them­selves and were agreed in their Pro­ject Eval­u­ation Frame­work at time of application.

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Mon­it­or­ing and Eval­u­ation update for Aug 21 LAG meeting

Indic­at­or	M&E Total tar­gets	M&E achieved targets
No of pro­jects that have developed as a res­ult of net­work­ing or shar­ing good practice	63	42
No of indi­vidu­als par­ti­cip­at­ing in com­munity pro­jects for the first time	64	106
No of hard to reach people who have begun an act­ive role in com­munity projects	49	126
No of career or per­son­al devel­op­ment oppor­tun­it­ies created	213	220
No of busi­nesses set up	7	6
No of new jobs created	26.2	22.2
No of busi­nesses sup­por­ted to become more diverse through the devel­op­ment of new products	18	19
No of jobs cre­ated with wages on or above the liv­ing wage	15.7	11.7
No of people who have year round employ­ment who pre­vi­ously worked seasonally	1	1
No of new learn­ing, recre­ation and job oppor­tun­it­ies in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park for young people	142	172
No of young par­ti­cipants liv­ing or work­ing in the Nation­al Park, access­ing train­ing includ­ing Fur­ther and High­er Edu­ca­tion through the remov­al of barriers	9	10
Num­ber of loc­al res­id­ents who have access to new or improved com­munity-based services	50	224
No of new afford­able trans­port options (routes, links and modes) that have been created	2	0
No of prop­er­ties provided with access to next gen­er­a­tion 24 meg plus broadband	0	0
No of bene­fi­ciar­ies of improve­ments in ICT and broad­band infrastructure	0	0
No of par­ti­cipants in envir­on­ment-focused or her­it­age-focused pro­jects, events and initiatives	4859	7298
No of par­ti­cipants who have gained skills or know­ledge relat­ing to pre­serving and enhan­cing the CNP land­scape, wild­life, loc­al her­it­age and wider environment	1282	1140
No of par­ti­cipants mak­ing changes to the way they live to reduce car­bon emissions	30	50
No of tour­ist oppor­tun­it­ies which have exten­ded their oper­at­ing cal­en­dar year	5	5
No of ini­ti­at­ives to increase access­ib­il­ity to tour­ist and recre­ation opportunities	26	37
No of tour­ism oppor­tun­it­ies report­ing high­er levels of vis­it­or satisfaction	5	5
No of pro­ject par­ti­cipants report­ing improved well­being as a res­ult of access­ing recre­ation opportunities	393	114
No of new recre­ation oppor­tun­it­ies for loc­al people and for visitors	89	92

Notes 2 pro­jects closed this quarter -

Paths and Trails co-oper­a­tion pro­ject with High­land LEAD­ER repor­ted the fol­low­ing achieved tar­get figures:

No of pro­jects that have developed as a res­ult of net­work­ing or shar­ing good prac­tice — tar­get 1, achieved 1.

No of ini­ti­at­ives to increase access­ib­il­ity to tour­ist and recre­ation oppor­tun­it­ies — tar­get 1, achieved 1.

The applic­ant repor­ted 5 sec­tions of trail have been con­struc­ted in com­munity wood­lands (one with­in the CNP), con­trib­ut­ing to wider path net­works and thus increas­ing the recre­ation value of these woods and enhan­cing oppor­tun­it­ies for health and well-being.

Trail net­work pro­mo­tion strategies have been developed for the five par­ti­cip­at­ing com­munity wood­land groups to help shape and sup­port the future devel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion of recre­ation facil­it­ies at these wood­lands. Train­ing events facil­it­ated demon­stra­tion of con­struc­tion tech­niques and shar­ing best prac­tice on the pro­mo­tion and man­age­ment of trails, whilst the com­ple­tion of a lib­rary of resources sup­ports longer term dis­sem­in­a­tion of know­ledge and skills.

Volun­teer Cairngorms pro­ject repor­ted the fol­low­ing achieved tar­get figures:

No of indi­vidu­als par­ti­cip­at­ing in com­munity pro­jects for the first time – tar­get 39, achieved 75. The applic­ant has sub­mit­ted 188 com­pleted par­ti­cipant forms. On the form is a ques­tion about volun­teer­ing for the 1^st time. Of the 188 forms com­pleted, 75 con­firmed that they had not volun­teered before.

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No of hard to reach people who have begun an act­ive role in com­munity pro­jects — tar­get 3, achieved 69 As above, of the 188 forms com­pleted, 69 con­firmed they were in a ​‘Hard to Reach’ cat­egory. The only cat­egory that was not taken into con­sid­er­a­tion was Eld­erly as the split between ages included 65+ so we are unable to break­down this to those aged 70 and over. The defin­i­tion of +’Hard to Reach’ from the LEAD­ER Loc­al Devel­op­ment Strategy to be: Earn­ing less than £15000/​year, being a carer, being a young per­son, being eld­erly, liv­ing with a dis­ab­il­ity, being a mem­ber of a Black or Minor­ity Eth­nic pop­u­la­tion. For the pur­poses of report­ing ​‘Young Per­son’ is con­sidered those aged 21 or under. ​‘Eld­erly’ is con­sidered to be those aged 70 or over. No of par­ti­cipants in envir­on­ment-focused or her­it­age-focused pro­jects, events and ini­ti­at­ives – tar­get 39, achieved 188 The applic­ant has sub­mit­ted 188 com­pleted par­ti­cipant forms. Each par­ti­cipant took part in a volun­teer­ing activ­ity linked to this pro­ject. No of par­ti­cipants who have gained skills or know­ledge relat­ing to pre­serving and enhan­cing the Cairngorms nation­al Park land­scape, wild­life, loc­al her­it­age and wider envir­on­ment – tar­get 12 (Rangers ​‘employed’ by the park), achieved 38 The applic­ant has con­firmed that the recruit­ment of volun­teer rangers was so suc­cess­ful dur­ing the first phase, they re- opened the recruit­ment in the second and third year and now have 38 volun­teer rangers ​‘work­ing’ for the park.

Items in yel­low have exceeded tar­gets, items in red are in danger of not being met.

Themes 1 — 6 are split by col­our in des­cend­ing order.

Ver­sion	Staff	Date
Final 1.0	SM
Final 2.0	BT