220211PerformanceCtteePaper2AACairngormPeatlandACTIONProgrammeV20

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 11/02/2022

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 note the deliv­ery update and consider:

a) pro­ject risks and mit­ig­a­tion; b) the scope and scale of the Peat­land Pro­gramme and the resource implic­a­tions for the Author­ity; c) 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. The Scot­tish Government’s Peat­land ACTION pro­gramme, estab­lished since 2012, aims to bring 250,000 hec­tares of degraded peat­land under res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment by 2030 sup­por­ted by a £250 mil­lion fund­ing package.

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 enter­ing its eighth year, with dir­ect fund­ing to the CNPA agreed in 2020, and the CNPA now one of five ​“Deliv­ery Part­ners” in the Peat­land ACTION Programme.

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. 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.

6. For this fin­an­cial year, ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂, the Peat­land Pro­gramme tar­get is to deliv­er 557 hec­tares of peat­land res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment sup­por­ted by £1.94 mil­lion (includ­ing staff and sur­vey costs) of Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment funding.

Per­form­ance Over­view: Deliv­ery update

1. The team will deliv­er approx­im­ately 511 hec­tares across 8 pro­ject sites on 5 estates by the middle of Feb­ru­ary. The major­ity of this work was drain block­ing using the com­bin­a­tion of wave dams and zip­per re-pro­fil­ing tech­niques to com­pletely remove the drains. One leg­acy pro­ject from NatureScot was com­pleted on 2 sites after work first star­ted in 2017.

2. Con­tract­ors are cur­rently work­ing on three sites and should com­plete shortly. We have three new drain block­ing pro­jects with con­tract­ors appoin­ted and about to start later in Feb­ru­ary (sub­ject to weath­er, but these are low ground sites under 500 metres). If the weath­er holds those new pro­jects should deliv­er a fur­ther 317 hec­tares (all drain block­ing work).

3. One high alti­tude site could com­plete in March if weath­er per­mits deliv­er­ing a fur­ther 11 hec­tares of work, plus con­tract­ors could also com­plete hand work on a fur­ther three sites (coir logs, geo-tex­tile, stone dams etc.) also poten­tially in March.

4. This will bring the total deliv­ery in fin­an­cial year ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ to a pos­sible 839 hec­tares sub­ject to weath­er and con­tract­or constraints.

5. An audit of pro­gramme pro­cesses, con­trols, doc­u­ment­a­tion and staff­ing resource is under­way. This will be com­pleted in Feb­ru­ary 2022 with any recom­mend­a­tions to strengthen gov­ernance and sup­port deliv­ery being imple­men­ted in fin­an­cial year ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. Addi­tion­al resource fund­ing to sup­port an expand­ing pro­gramme of activ­ity is alloc­ated with­in the 5 year fore­cast sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Government.

6. The Pro­gramme is plan­ning fur­ther data col­lec­tion on breed­ing birds, peat depth and herb­i­vore impact on peat­land across poten­tial res­tor­a­tion areas spring 2022. We are look­ing at a pack­age of spe­cif­ic works as well as appoint­ing sev­er­al eco­lo­gic­al con­sult­ants on a call-off basis for any future work.

7. We are devel­op­ing, in liais­on with NatureScot and oth­er part­ners, a pro­tocol to tri­al res­tor­a­tion work dur­ing the breed­ing bird sea­son (April – June) on a num­ber of suit­able sites. This should fol­low the cur­rent, agreed pro­to­cols in the con­struc­tion and

forestry indus­tries, and will require the ser­vices of Eco­lo­gic­al Clerk of Works to enable work to be under­taken dur­ing this peri­od without dis­turb­ing birds. This should enable us to extend the pro­ject work sea­son on suit­able sites expand­ing the capa­city of contractors.

1. The pro­gramme of works for sum­mer and autumn 2022 is well advanced with a poten­tial 21 pro­jects iden­ti­fied on 19 estates across the Nation­al Park. If all these pro­jects were to go ahead, and have con­tract­ors appoin­ted they would deliv­er approx­im­ately 1,404 hec­tares of res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment requir­ing fund­ing of over £3.2 mil­lion. It is likely that team capa­city, con­tract­or avail­ab­il­ity and land man­ager agree­ment will scale back this poten­tial mak­ing our tar­get for fin­an­cial year ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ of 905 hec­tares, with a cap­it­al budget alloc­a­tion of £2.9 mil­lion, more than achievable.

2. A fur­ther 20 pro­jects on twenty estates are in the devel­op­ment stage and in the pipeline for deliv­ery in 2023.

3. A 5 year budget fore­cast was pre­pared and sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment on 2 Feb­ru­ary. This fore­cast is for a total budget of £23.2 mil­lion to deliv­er 6,525 hec­tares of peat­land res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment over 5 years.

CNPA Peat­land Budget Hec­tares	2022⁄23 905	2023⁄24 1304	2024⁄25 1369	2025⁄26 1438	2026⁄27 1510
	£M	£M	£M	£M	£M
Res­tor­a­tion	Cap­it­al	£2.962	£4.143	£4.042	£4.307	£4.593
Staff costs, sur­veys, support	Resource	£0.505	£0.614	£0.645	£0.676	£0.710
Total		£3.467	£4.757	£4.687	£4.983	£5.303

| TOTAL 5 YEAR PRO­GRAMME | 6525 | Hec­tares | £23.197 | Million | |

1. The New Entrant pro­gramme to train up loc­al civil and plant busi­nesses is prov­ing very suc­cess­ful. Four con­tract­ors, with lim­ited peat­land exper­i­ence pri­or to work­ing with the pro­gramme have now acquired the skills to under­take the rel­at­ively straight­for­ward drain block­ing work using the tech­niques of wave dam­ming and zip­per re-pro­fil­ing. Two of these con­tract­ors have sub­sequently won fur­ther work on CNPA peat­land pro­jects on the back of this train­ing. A video show­ing some of the work was pro­duced by Atholl Estates: https://​www​.you​tube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​m​A​H​T​g​f​9uF8g

Per­form­ance Over­view: Risks under Management

1. Pro­gramme staff are all work­ing bey­ond capa­city and this is impact­ing on team mor­ale. There is not cur­rently the capa­city in the team to deliv­er the tar­get for res­tor­a­tion in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. A review of cur­rent resource and an assess­ment of the resources required to deliv­er future aspir­a­tions is under­way as part of the audit pro­cess. Fin­ance suf­fi­cient to sup­port recruit­ment into the pro­ject team is pro­grammed into resource forecasts.

2. Much of the peat­land res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment this year is drain block­ing as this is where there is adequate con­tract­or resource. How­ever, the Pro­gramme had anti­cip­ated more erosion work, which is 3 times the costs of drain block­ing work and car­ried a large under­spend as a res­ult. A budget review in Novem­ber 2021 iden­ti­fied £0.44 mil­lion cap­it­al that was not required this fin­an­cial year and that was com­mu­nic­ated to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. They agreed to re-pro­file this fin­ance back into our cap­it­al budgets in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ and ²⁰²³⁄₂₄.

3. The Pro­gramme has spent £0.31 mil­lion to end Janu­ary 2022 and there are grant claims, for pro­jects com­pleted, totalling £0.87 mil­lion due in Feb­ru­ary. A fur­ther £0.23 mil­lion is alloc­ated to pro­jects, with con­tract­ors, which could be delivered by the fin­an­cial year end if weath­er and con­tract­or avail­ab­il­ity allows. If this work is com­pleted by the year end, the Pro­gramme will have an under­spend in the region of £33,000 from a £1.94 mil­lion budget.

4. Going for­ward con­tract­or capa­city still remains a key issue, par­tic­u­larly for the more com­plex erosion work. The New Entrants pro­gramme will con­tin­ue in 2022 with some addi­tion­al train­ing provided to those who went through it in 2021 on erosion tech­niques to devel­op their skill set.

5. Weath­er this winter has been excep­tion­ally mild enabling pro­jects to work in Janu­ary and into Feb­ru­ary. There still remains a sig­ni­fic­ant risk of snow in Feb­ru­ary and March that could pre­vent sev­er­al pro­jects start­ing and com­plet­ing impact­ing on pro­ject spend and hec­tares under management.

6. Fol­low­ing the intern­al audit, Pro­gramme pro­ced­ures and doc­u­ment­a­tion will need fur­ther resource to ensure they meet the required stand­ards. This will take place dur­ing early Spring.

7. A peat­land map­ping pro­ject is being under­taken using a con­tract­or and this work will pro­duce a map of impacted peat­land for the whole Nation­al Park. It will show areas of drained peat­land and areas of eroded peat­land and will help inform our stra­tegic plan­ning and pro­ject development.

Con­clu­sions: Per­form­ance Over­view and Mat­ters Mer­it­ing Stra­tegic Review

1. The deliv­ery and spend of the Peat­land Pro­gramme is cur­rently on track to exceed expect­a­tions in terms of hec­tares under res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment with a lower risk of weath­er and con­tract­or avail­ab­il­ity impact­ing on the pro­gramme. Resource require­ments and pro­gramme man­age­ment pro­ced­ures will need to be addressed to ensure the Pro­gramme is able to scale up and achieve its potential.

Steph­en Corcor­an 2 Feb­ru­ary 2022 stephencorcoran@​cairngorms.​co.​uk