211029_PerformanceCttee_Paper 4 Cairngorms Peatland ACTION Programme

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 4 29/10/21

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY PER­FORM­ANCE COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: CAIRNGORMS PEAT­LAND ACTION PRO­GRAMME DELIV­ERY Pre­pared by: STEPH­EN CORCOR­AN, Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Man­ager Purpose

This paper presents the latest deliv­ery update for the Cairngorms Peat­land ACTION Programme

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to review the deliv­ery update and con­sider: a) Pro­gress towards the project’s agreed pur­poses; b) Be aware of the deliv­ery risks posed by weath­er and con­tract­or capa­city; c) Under­stand the scope and scale of the Peat­land Pro­gramme and the resource implic­a­tions for the Author­ity; d) Wheth­er the deliv­ery updates sug­gest any stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s agreed per­form­ance object­ives; and e) Wheth­er any mater­i­al impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures arise from assess­ment of pro­gramme delivery.

Back­ground

1. Peat­lands cov­er nearly a quarter of Scot­land and con­tain over half of the total Scot­tish soil car­bon. How­ever, a high pro­por­tion of Scot­tish peat­lands has been altered by land man­age­ment prac­tices to such an extent that it is now degraded, caus­ing sub­stan­tial green­house gas emis­sions. Con­sequently, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has estab­lished ambi­tious peat­land res­tor­a­tion tar­gets; a large fund­ing pro­gramme – Peat­land Action
   • has been in place since 2012.

2. Over 25% of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park is peat­land hab­it­at with around 90,000 ha of that being degraded. This rep­res­ents nearly one-fifth of the Nation­al Park being in poor con­di­tion. Dam­aged peat­lands can lead to poor water qual­ity, increased flood risk, reduced biod­iversity as well as car­bon emis­sions mak­ing peat­land res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment a high priority.

3. The pro­gramme of res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park is now in its sev­enth year. Work star­ted in the spring of 2014 with the recruit­ment of one pro­ject officer with grant-aid from Peat­land ACTION through SNH (now NatureScot). Fund­ing for peat­land res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment was through grants from SNH’s Peat­land ACTION to land man­agers. All fund­ing was for one fin­an­cial year only (includ­ing the pro­ject staff). An addi­tion­al Peat­land ACTION Pro­ject Officer was recruited in 2018, fun­ded by NatureScot to sup­port the expand­ing pro­gramme and increased level of pro­ject admin­is­tra­tion. From 2020 the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment dir­ectly fun­ded the CNPA as a ​“Deliv­ery Part­ner” in the Peat­land ACTION pro­gramme provid­ing fund­ing for staff costs and sur­vey work. Grants for res­tor­a­tion work were provided by NatureScot in 2020.

4. The Peat­land ACTION Pro­ject Officers provide a full pro­ject man­age­ment ser­vice from the ini­tial pro­ject design, sur­veys and field work through to assist­ing with grant applic­a­tions, con­tract­or man­age­ment and report­ing for land managers.
5. Dur­ing the peri­od 2014 to 2019 twenty one pro­jects were under­taken across || dif­fer­ent estate in the Nation­al Park. This work brought 2,041 hec­tares of peat­land under res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment. 2020 saw lim­ited pro­ject deliv­ery due to the coronavir­us pan­dem­ic and lim­ited con­tract­or avail­ab­il­ity: only 131 hec­tares of man­age­ment work was under­taken on 5 estates. The last few years have seen repeated issues with a lack of suit­able peat­land con­tract­ors to carry out the work across Scotland.
6. The CNPA made a pro­pos­al to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment to become a full Peat­land ACTION Deliv­ery Part­ner provid­ing grants for res­tor­a­tion in March 2020. Due to the pan­dem­ic this pro­pos­al went through a num­ber of iter­a­tions before being finally agreed in Novem­ber 2020. The CNPA Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme, start­ing in April 2021 will run for three years and deliv­er approx­im­ately 2,766 hec­tares of res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment are provid­ing £9.92 mil­lion dir­ectly to the CNPA for this deliv­ery. The ambi­tious pro­gramme includes cre­at­ing a new peat­land team with­in the Authority.
7. The peat­land pro­gramme will con­trib­ute to the deliv­ery of the tar­gets and pri­or­it­ies of the cur­rent Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and the next plan. It is also key for assist­ing in the imple­ment­a­tion of the Her­it­age Hori­zon 2030 pro­ject, provid­ing the major­ity of the project’s matched fund­ing. The pro­gramme is sup­port­ing the deliv­ery of the Scot­tish Government’s peat­land res­tor­a­tion targets.
8. For this fin­an­cial year, ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂, the Peat­land Pro­gramme plans to deliv­er 557 hec­tares of peat­land res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment sup­por­ted by £2,285,146 (includ­ing staff and sur­vey costs) of Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment funding.

Per­form­ance Over­view: Deliv­ery against Stra­tegic Expectations

1. The estab­lish­ment of the Peat­land Pro­gramme is in pro­gress des­pite the impacts of COV­ID. Four new staff were recruited this year and a Pro­gramme Man­ager appointed.

2. A grants sys­tem and asso­ci­ated doc­u­ment­a­tion is com­plete, with a pro­ced­ure in place with the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Spon­sor­ship Hub for approv­ing grants above the CNPA’s del­eg­ated author­ity (£100,000).

3. One of the key con­di­tions of accept­ing the CNPA grant for peat­land works, is that estates must provide unin­ter­rup­ted access to con­tract­ors and staff from I Septem­ber to 31 March as a min­im­um. One estate was unable to provide this and a poten­tial peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­ject was deleted from the programme.
4. New pro­to­cols had to be developed to cov­er a change in legis­la­tion giv­ing peat­land res­tor­a­tion Per­mit­ted Devel­op­ment rights with the need for Pri­or Noti­fic­a­tion from Plan­ning Author­it­ies for projects.
5. The devel­op­ment of a stra­tegic pro­gramme plan, peat­land map­ping, risk register, ENFOR coordin­a­tion and sup­port­ing doc­u­ment­a­tion remains to be com­pleted. The focus of staff resources is cur­rently on pro­ject deliv­ery with the next few months being the busiest time of year for under­tak­ing res­tor­a­tion work.
6. The Pro­gramme con­tin­ues to col­lect data on breed­ing birds, peat depth and herb­i­vore impact on peat­land across the Nation­al Park. Peat depth sur­veys and herb­i­vore impact assess­ments were under­taken on eight areas, across 7 estates, cov­er­ing 5,205 hec­tares. Breed­ing bird sur­veys were car­ried out across sev­en estates over an area of 8,542 hec­tares. This data is used for plan­ning work this year and for future years.
7. Peat­land res­tor­a­tion work can, on some sites, require the use of mater­i­als like coir logs or geo-tex­tiles for block­ing erosion chan­nels or cov­er­ing bare peat. These products are made from coir, a coconut based product. Lead times for buy­ing this equip­ment can be long so we have pur­chased these mater­i­als in advance for pro­jects to use, and arrange stor­age with sev­er­al estates. We are sup­port­ing a con­tract­or in devel­op­ing machinery and tri­al­ling the cut­ting of rect­an­gu­lar heath­er bales as a more loc­ally sus­tain­able altern­at­ive to coir logs.
8. The CNPA inher­ited a num­ber of leg­acy pro­jects that star­ted pri­or to 2021 with fund­ing from NatureScot. The CNPA will deliv­er these pro­jects through our fund­ing pro­gramme. Most of these pro­jects do not con­trib­ute to the hec­tares tar­get. A pro­gramme of new peat­land works is being delivered across the Nation­al Park this year, and a port­fo­lio of pro­jects are under devel­op­ment for 2022.

9. The team has a poten­tial to deliv­er 932 hec­tares of res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment across 14 sites on twelve estates in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. This rep­res­ents a pos­sible spend of £1,761,265. This is against a tar­get of 557 hec­tares with £1,760,200 fin­ance (exclud­ing staff and sur­vey costs) from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. Con­tract­ors are appoin­ted and work­ing, or about to work, on 570 hec­tares of peat­land res­tor­a­tion sup­por­ted by grants of £956,743. A fur­ther 130 hec­tares of pro­ject work is out for tender and work could poten­tially be delivered on these sites this year. Two sites, cov­er­ing 141 hec­tares, were tendered for the third year in a row and no con­tract­ors tendered for this work. One more site, cov­er­ing 91 hec­tares, has a con­tract­or appoin­ted but is unlikely to see work hap­pen­ing due to estate administration.

10. Con­tract­or capa­city remains the biggest chal­lenge for deliv­er­ing peat­land res­tor­a­tion work at scale. The Peat­land Pro­gramme has ini­ti­ated a new entrant scheme for loc­al con­tract­ors this year and is provid­ing ded­ic­ated train­ing on the job for 4 new entrants. Work­ing with 2 estates, the new entrants receive train­ing and super­vi­sion from the Peat­land team in drain block­ing (the easi­est tech­nique in the suite of peat­land res­tor­a­tion tools) on a very straight­for­ward pro­ject site.

Per­form­ance Over­view: Risks under Management

1. Staff­ing: three new staff joined the pro­gramme in 2021, a Pro­gramme Man­ager was appoin­ted and a fourth officer is due to start in late Octo­ber The sev­enth mem­ber of the team, a Pro­ject Assist­ant, should be recruited later this autumn.
2. The pro­gramme is on course to deliv­er slightly more than the tar­geted 557 hec­tares of peat­land res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment sub­ject to weath­er and con­tract­or con­straints this year. Des­pite the best efforts of the team, many con­tract­ors star­ted later than hoped due to a com­bin­a­tion of team resources, the intro­duc­tion of the Pri­or Noti­fic­a­tion pro­cess, grant doc­u­ment­a­tion, estate decision mak­ing and con­tract­or availability.
3. While the Pro­gramme is look­ing likely to deliv­er the tar­get hec­tares, the spend­ing pro­file is much less than anti­cip­ated. Spend­ing on pro­ject deliv­ery is likely to be £0.96m leav­ing an under­spend of £0.8m. Part of the reas­on for this is because more drain block­ing pro­jects were developed which are cheap­er com­pared to the more com­plex eroded sites. This emphas­is on drain block­ing pro­jects is also a reflec­tion of the lack of more exper­i­enced peat­land con­tract­ors who can man­age the com­plex erosion sites. There are sev­er­al con­tracts out to tender that if suc­cess­ful could reduce the under­spend to around £0.6m though the risk of weath­er is more of a threat to the Programme’s spend profile.
4. As men­tioned above, con­tract­or capa­city remains the biggest chal­lenge and risk to the programme’s deliv­ery. Some of the solu­tions to capa­city require nation­al coordin­a­tion from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (and its Agen­cies) and con­fid­ence in the con­tract­or sec­tor to expand. As peat­land work is restric­ted to only part of the year (around 6 months) many con­tract­ors do not have the scope to scale up without hav­ing oth­er non- peat­land work on their books. The Pro­gramme will con­tin­ue the train­ing of new entrants to attract a wider pool of con­tract­ors. In addi­tion, the Pro­gramme is explor­ing the pos­sib­il­it­ies of estab­lish a con­tract­or frame­work agree­ment that would offer con­tract­ors work over 3 years at agreed costs.

5. Weath­er remains a sig­ni­fic­ant risk to deliv­ery, as the many sites are above 650m. It is not uncom­mon to have sub­stan­tial snow in Novem­ber or Decem­ber that will pre­vent work on the ground. Sites in Janu­ary and Feb­ru­ary are nearly always snowed out. To mit­ig­ate this access for some pro­jects is avail­able from July and a num­ber of pro­jects were delib­er­ately developed on lower ground (400 – 500m). Bird sur­vey work this year will enable the devel­op­ment of some pro­jects that could start in March and run right through the spring and sum­mer (with the appro­pri­ate bird pro­tec­tion meas­ures in place).

6. Pro­ject doc­u­ment­a­tion is sched­uled to all be com­pleted before Christ­mas but the stra­tegic plan­ning and map­ping will take longer. The Pro­gramme needs to com­plete the map­ping of degraded peat (for future plan­ning and sup­port­ing Her­it­age Hori­zon 2030) and con­struct a new GIS archi­tec­ture for our data and map­ping needs. A GIS officer has been appointed.

7. The devel­op­ment of the Peat­land Pro­gramme is a sig­ni­fic­ant new ven­ture for the Park Author­ity involving sub­stan­tial fund­ing (nearly £10m over 3 years, with increased fund­ing bey­ond), com­plex con­tract­or and pro­cure­ment man­age­ment. The trans­ition of the Author­ity toward a dir­ect deliv­ery organ­isa­tion will require the devel­op­ment of new pro­ced­ures and require addi­tion­al resources to enable prop­er con­tract man­age­ment and procurement.

Con­clu­sions: Per­form­ance Over­view and Mat­ters Mer­it­ing Stra­tegic Review

1. The deliv­ery and spend of the Peat­land Pro­gramme is cur­rently on track but risks due to weath­er and con­tract­or avail­ab­il­ity are sig­ni­fic­ant and may impact on the programme.

Steph­en Corcor­an 13 Octo­ber 2021 stephencorcoran@​cairngorms.​co.​uk