220211ApprovedPublicMinutes

MINUTES OF THE RESOURCES COM­MIT­TEE MEET­ING of

THE CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY held via Lifes­ize Video Con­fer­en­cing on I th Feb­ru­ary, 2022 at 10.30am

PRESENT Deirdre Fal­con­er (Chair) Car­o­lyn Cad­dick (Vice Chair) Derek Ross Pippa Hadley

In Attend­ance: lan McLar­en Xan­der McDade (Con­ven­or) Geva Blackett

Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, CNPA Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment, CNPA Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer, CNPA Lynn Ander­son, Minute Clerk, CNPA

Apo­lo­gies: No apologies

Wel­come and Apologies

1. The Chair wel­comed every­one to the meeting.

Declar­a­tion of Interests

1. There were no interests declared.

Minutes of last meet­ing held – for approval

1. The draft Minutes of the last meet­ing held on 29^th Octo­ber were agreed, pro­posed by Deirdre Fal­con­er, seconded by Car­o­lyn Caddick.

Mat­ters Arising

1. Amend­ments to the terms of ref­er­ence have now been con­sol­id­ated into a paper and will be presen­ted to the Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee when space on the Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee agenda allows for this.

2. Con­fid­en­tial papers have been marked in red as confidential.

²¹⁄₂₂ Budget Mon­it­or­ing (Paper I)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced the paper which presents an over­view of the Cairngorms NPA budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion at the end of the third quarter of the cur­rent ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ fin­an­cial year as at 31 Decem­ber, 2021.

2. The Resources Com­mit­tee is asked to: i. Con­sider the budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ ;

ii. Identi­fy any stra­tegic risks or implic­a­tions posed for the Board’s deliv­ery of its stra­tegic object­ives which may require addi­tion­al man­age­ment action; iii. Note the imple­men­ted reduc­tion in the Authority’s resource grant fund­ing of 2% and that man­age­ment have plans in place to accom­mod­ate this action with­in a con­tin­ued break-even fin­an­cial target.

1. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and observations:

2. A mem­ber com­men­ted that, as the reduc­tion in grant aid is small, there should be no sav­ings made in delay­ing recruit­ment as this can put extra pres­sure on exist­ing staff.

3. Mem­bers noted that this time of year is dif­fi­cult: the money is all alloc­ated how­ever this needs con­ver­ted to ensure the spend is made before the end of the fin­an­cial year.

4. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed there is no impact on recruit­ment or our recruit­ment plans, even though the grant in aid reduc­tion of 2% is mean­ing­ful. The delays in spend being made is largely due to lead times work­ing with part­ners and final­ising invest­ment plans and grant awards.

5. The Chair thanked the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices for the paper.

6. The Resources Com­mit­tee indic­ated they were all happy with the budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion. They iden­ti­fied no addi­tion­al stra­tegic risks and noted the expec­ted 2% reduc­tion in the Authority’s grant resource funding.

²²⁄₂₃ Budget For­ward Plan (Paper 2)

1. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced this paper which presents an over­view of the of the Cairngorms NPA’s budget pos­i­tion for the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ fin­an­cial year.

2. The Resources Com­mit­tee is asked to: i. Con­sider the budget pos­i­tion for ²²⁄₂₃; ii. Identi­fy any stra­tegic risks or implic­a­tions posed for the Board’s deliv­ery of its stra­tegic object­ives which may require addi­tion­al man­age­ment action; iii. Identi­fy any spe­cif­ic budget issues to be con­sidered in devel­op­ment of final ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ budget pro­pos­als to be presen­ted to the board in March 2022.

3. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices asked mem­bers to note that the budget for the com­ing year is in a rel­at­ively form­at­ive stage. The paper gives the Resources Com­mit­tee sight of where we are at in terms of draw­ing the budget togeth­er to achieve our inten­ded aim of a break even position.

4. The Resources Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the paper and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and observations:

5. A mem­ber asked wheth­er there was likely to be any expendit­ure in terms of vent­il­a­tion with­in our buildings?

6. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed that this is some­thing that is being looked at as part of the new nor­mal pro­ject. There is a work­ing group which is look­ing at the deploy­ment of our facil­it­ies and how we use the offices as we move out of the cov­id busi­ness con­tinu­ity peri­od. There are no plans for spend on arti­fi­cial means of vent­il­a­tion but this may change as staff begin to use the office more.

7. Mem­bers were asked to note that staff will begin to use the office more fully from 1^st March and there will be a con­tinu­al review in the first 3 months which will allow staff to feed­back on their exper­i­ence of being back in the office.

8. The Chair asked wheth­er there is a pos­sib­il­ity of there being no resource fund­ing for peat­land? Would this mean the fund­ing would need to be found from some­where else? Would this impact on the staff involved and would these staff mem­bers be re- deployed else­where in the organisation?

9. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that it would be extremely unlikely that there would be no resource fund­ing at all for peat­land res­tor­a­tion. It is more likely to be a reduc­tion in fund­ing and this should not impact on staff. If there is a sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion which would impact pro­ject deliv­ery we would need to flag this to the board to dis­cuss how we go about man­aging that resource gap.

10. A mem­ber asked when the paper talks about staff­ing cost in the ini­tial expendit­ure pro­jec­tions, is this talk­ing about per­man­ent staff rather than pro­ject staff as their costs will be included in the projects.

11. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed that the paper looks at the level of staff invest­ment that falls against our core grant in aid resource, and excludes staff fun­ded dir­ectly by projects.

12. The Chair quer­ied the fig­ure in Table I under Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Project.

13. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed the fig­ure should be £305,000 rather than £315,000.

14. The Chair expressed con­cern around expendit­ure and devel­op­ment pro­pos­als as set out in Item 10.

15. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that it is dif­fi­cult to com­pare one set of fig­ures on Oper­a­tion­al Plan invest­ment for this year, ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂, dir­ectly against the fig­ures for next year due to there being move­ment in the expendit­ure pos­i­tion between the dif­fer­ent cat­egor­ies to get the best fit on where it fits with­in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship evol­u­tion. The budget pro­pos­als which will go to the Board in March will have a more detailed oper­a­tion­al plan sum­mary which will show the lines of activ­ity against each oper­a­tion­al plan head­ing. The key high­light activ­ity will show where it fits with­in the new Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan categorisation.

16. The Resources Com­mit­tee noted the budget pos­i­tion for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. They iden­ti­fied no addi­tion­al stra­tegic risks or spe­cif­ic budget issues.

Updated Organ­isa­tion­al Chart (Paper 3)

1. Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment intro­duced this paper by con­firm­ing that there has been a lot of staff move­ment over the last 6 months and this organ­isa­tion­al chart reflects the staff com­ple­ment at the cur­rent time.

2. There was a request that this organ­isa­tion­al chart be cir­cu­lated for inform­a­tion to all staff board mem­bers and the Head of Organ­isa­tion Devel­op­ment was happy to take the com­mit­tees steer on that.

3. Com­mit­tee mem­bers con­firmed they were happy with this sug­ges­tion how­ever asked for it to be noted in the cov­er­ing email that this is for inform­a­tion only.

4. A mem­ber asked why some of the pos­i­tions are high­lighted in yellow?

5. The Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment con­firmed these posts were spe­cific­ally posts related to the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­gramme. Whilst these posts work togeth­er on the pro­gramme the posts all sit in dif­fer­ent dir­ect­or­ates which is dif­fer­ent to oth­er pro­ject staff.

6. The Con­ven­or asked wheth­er the Exec­ut­ive Man­age­ment Team line man­age­ment struc­ture should include the Head of Communications.

7. The Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer con­firmed this was a mis­take and would be corrected.

8. A mem­ber sug­ges­ted that when the paper is cir­cu­lated it could include a key to all pro­ject staff and this should fea­ture at the begin­ning of the document.

SCF Minutes (Paper 4)

1. Minutes were noted no fur­ther discussions/​actions.

H&SC Minutes (Paper 5)

1. Minutes were noted no fur­ther discussions/​actions.

Equal­it­ies

1. The Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment had hoped to bring the revamped equal­ity main stream report which gets pub­lished every 4 years how­ever although it is pro­gress­ing well, it is not quite ready. The inten­tion is to bring this to the May meet­ing of the Resources Committee.

2. The Head of Organ­isa­tion Devel­op­ment updated the Com­mit­tee let­ting mem­bers know that 3 new mem­bers have been recruited to the Extern­al Advis­ory Pan­el. A face to face meet­ing is planned for 27^th May at Bad­aguish and it is hoped that some board mem­bers might attend. More details will fol­low in due course

3. An intern­al Equal­ity, Diversity and Inclu­sion Advocacy Group has been recently con­sti­tuted. This group com­prises of 10 staff mem­bers and shows good

rep­res­ent­a­tion across equal­ity char­ac­ter­ist­ics. It is inten­ded to be a safe place for minor­it­ies to share their opin­ions and views that might help to inform our policy and decision making.

1. The Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer, Grant Moir con­firmed that we are in the pro­cess of ten­der­ing for equal­it­ies train­ing for staff and board in due course