211029_PerformanceCttee_Paper 2_Cairngorms LEADER and Cairngorms Trust Delivery

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 29/10/21

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY PER­FORM­ANCE COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: CAIRNGORMS LEAD­ER AND CAIRNGORMS TRUST

		DELIVERY

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services

Pur­pose

This paper presents the latest deliv­ery updates on the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme and vol­un­tary and char­it­able giv­ing activ­it­ies as man­aged by the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Loc­al Action Group Trust (Cairngorms Trust).

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to review the deliv­ery updates presen­ted with this paper and con­sider: a) Wheth­er the pro­grammes of activ­ity are mak­ing the expec­ted con­tri­bu­tion to the Cairngorms NPA’s agreed stra­tegic out­comes; b) Wheth­er the deliv­ery updates sug­gest any stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s agreed per­form­ance object­ives; and c) Wheth­er any mater­i­al impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures arise from assess­ment of pro­gramme delivery.

Stra­tegic Background

1. The most recent update to the Board on deliv­ery of the Authority’s stra­tegic object­ives as set out in the agreed Cor­por­ate Plan for 2018 to 2022 was presen­ted at the June 2021 meet­ing. The Cor­por­ate Plan deliv­ery report may be accessed at: [Meet­ing — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority](Meeting — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity) The Authority’s stra­tegic object­ives of rel­ev­ance to con­sid­er­a­tion of the deliv­ery of the pro­gramme report­ing presen­ted with this paper are: a) Suc­cess­fully con­clude the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme and con­sider future fund­ing for com­munity led loc­al devel­op­ment (CLLD); and b) Devel­op and deliv­er a vis­it­or giv­ing scheme with part­ners. This object­ive has since been refo­cused as devel­op­ment of a vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme.

2. The latest review of the Stra­tegic Risk Register was con­sidered by the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee in Septem­ber 2021 and may be accessed at: [210910AuCtteePaper5AnnexIStrategicRiskRegisterV8.1.pdf (cairngorms.co.uk).](210910AuCtteePaper5AnnexIStrategicRiskRegisterV8.1.pdf (cairngorms​.co​.uk).)

3. Stra­tegic risks of rel­ev­ance to con­sid­er­a­tion of per­form­ance of the pro­grammes of work con­sidered by this paper are: a) Al: Resource risk remedi­al mit­ig­a­tion: Con­tinu­ing to sup­port ​“deliv­ery bod­ies” such as Cairngorms Nature, Cairngorms Trust in secur­ing inward invest­ment. b) AII.I Stra­tegic Risk on Resourcing: Role as Lead / Account­able body for major pro­grammes (e.g. LEAD­ER, Land­scape Part­ner­ship) has risk of sig­ni­fic­ant fin­an­cial claw­back should expendit­ure prove to be not eli­gible for fund­ing, while CNPA car­ries respons­ib­il­it­ies as employ­er for pro­gramme staff. c) A11.2 Stra­tegic Risk Resourcing: the end of major pro­gramme invest­ments (Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et, LEAD­ER) requires sig­ni­fic­ant ongo­ing staff­ing to man­age audit and leg­acy which the Author­ity finds dif­fi­cult to resource. d) A12.2 Stra­tegic Risk on Resourcing: future com­munity led loc­al devel­op­ment fund­ing cur­rently delivered through LEAD­ER, togeth­er with wider fund­ing pre­vi­ously from EU struc­tur­al and agri­cul­tur­al sources is lost and cre­ates a sig­ni­fic­ant gap in our capa­city to deliv­er against our devel­op­ment pri­or­it­ies. e) A28 Stra­tegic Risk on Staff­ing: deliv­ery of key out­comes is impacted by staff turnover, par­tic­u­larly in pro­ject teams.

The pro­grammes of activ­ity under con­sid­er­a­tion here also fit with the pri­or­it­ies of the cur­rent Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP), the most recent over­view of deliv­ery of the NPPP hav­ing been presen­ted to the Board at its meet­ing in Septem­ber 2021: [Meet­ing — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority](Meeting — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity). The rel­ev­ant ele­ments of the NPPP deliv­ery relat­ing to these pro­grammes are: a) Cairngorms Trust tak­ing for­ward devel­op­ment of vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme to sup­port devel­op­ment of new fund­ing sources sup­port­ing pub­lic bene­fits (Land­scape scale con­ser­va­tion pri­or­ity li). b) Devel­op­ing new ways includ­ing vis­it­or giv­ing to fund infra­struc­ture invest­ment and main­ten­ance (vis­it­or infra­struc­ture pri­or­ity 4a). c) Improv­ing vis­it­or trans­port options (vis­it­or infra­struc­ture pri­or­ity 4f). d) Tar­get­ing people cur­rently liv­ing sedent­ary life­styles and those with long-term med­ic­al con­di­tions (Act­ive Cairngorms pri­or­ity 5b). e) Improv­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for act­ive travel in Aviemore (Act­ive Cairngorms pri­or­ity 5g). f) Bet­ter coordin­a­tion and pro­mo­tion of pub­lic trans­port and act­ive travel (Act­ive Cairngorms pri­or­ity 5f).

Per­form­ance Over­view: Deliv­ery Against Stra­tegic Expectations

1. With­in the above stra­tegic con­text, gen­er­ally pos­it­ive pro­gress has been made des­pite the impacts of impacts of COV­ID on deliv­ery since March 2020.

2. The LEAD­ER quarterly report high­lights the pro­gramme is well advanced to the planned pro­gramme clos­ure in Decem­ber 2021.

3. Devel­op­ment of plans for a replace­ment to CLLD fund­ing remains in its early stages, while the LAG has secured funds to imple­ment tri­al of fund­ing com­munity led approaches to cli­mate action and con­ser­va­tion; and to imple­ment­a­tion of a youth based grant award­ing group. Fund­ing is also in place to secure the LEAD­ER team until

4. the end of the cur­rent fin­an­cial year, with focus on future years’ work hoped to become expli­cit through the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment budget pro­cess in early December.

While rel­at­ively small scale, the Cairngorms Trust, in its deliv­ery of a com­mis­sioned LEAD­ER pro­jects sup­ply­ing free use of E‑bikes to res­id­ents, has made excel­lent pro­gress in enabling the demon­stra­tion of act­ive travel inter­ven­tions for inactiv­ity and health bene­fits, and in pro­mot­ing over­all life­style change.

Per­form­ance Over­view: Risks Under Management

1. The Trust con­tin­ues to work on the deliv­ery of integ­rated trans­port sig­nage in Aviemore and sup­ply of an elec­tric minibus to sup­port com­munity trans­port ini­ti­at­ives. Both these pro­jects have been impacted by pro­cure­ment and sup­ply issues and are not yet com­plete with a rel­at­ively short time frame remain­ing until pro­gramme clos­ure and loss of avail­able LEAD­ER funding.

2. The Trust’s work in the devel­op­ment of a vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme has been sig­ni­fic­antly inter­rup­ted by COV­ID. Des­pite this, the work by the Trust­ees and the Trust Man­ager as set out in the update does demon­strate the lat­ent poten­tial for part­ner­ship with com­mer­cial and oth­er organ­isa­tions to secure new fund­ing streams with worth­while levels of fund­ing which could be attrac­ted to the object­ives of the scheme. While focus on the devel­op­ment of vol­un­tary giv­ing was largely sus­pen­ded dur­ing COV­ID pan­dem­ic response, the Trust has played a valu­able part in coordin­at­ing and help­ing deliv­ery of two phases of Green Recov­ery Grants with the Cairngorms NPA and oth­er partners.

3. The resource levels needed to devel­op and deliv­er a vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme of a mean­ing­ful scale is a mat­ter under con­sid­er­a­tion by Trust­ees in light of the exper­i­ence of devel­op­ment of such a scheme with­in the wider needs of char­ity man­age­ment and oth­er demands on the Trust Man­agers lim­ited time. This will be a mat­ter for con­sid­er­a­tion in poten­tial resource deploy­ment mov­ing forward.

Con­clu­sions: Per­form­ance Over­view and Mat­ters Mer­it­ing Stra­tegic Review

1. There are no mat­ters of stra­tegic sig­ni­fic­ance which mer­it escal­a­tion at this time in the opin­ion of seni­or man­agers lead­ing the Cairngorms NPA’s link­age to the areas of activ­ity covered by this paper and asso­ci­ated reports.

Dav­id Camer­on 28 Septem­ber 2021 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk