CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 Annex 2 11/02/22

The Cairngorms LAG Trust

LEAD­ER Quarterly Report

16/11/2021

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CAIRNGORMS TRUST

Con­tents

• Quarterly update Novem­ber 2021 2
• 1) Pro­ject sum­mary table 2
• 2) Fin­ance 4
• 3) Com­mit­ments to date 5
• 5) Mon­it­or­ing and Eval­u­ation 8

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1) LEAD­ER Quarterly update August 2021 to Novem­ber 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 30^th March 2022.

An applic­a­tion to the ​‘Rur­al Com­munit­ies Test­ing Change’ fund­ing stream 1 for Cairngorms LAG to deliv­er activ­ity up to £50,000 was approved and both sub-pro­jects ​‘CT Green Change Fund’ and ​‘Cairngorms Youth LAG’ are now in delivery.

An applic­a­tion to RCTC against stream 2 on behalf of all 21 LAG groups to com­plete a col­la­tion of all com­pleted eval­u­ations of the 2014 – 2020 pro­gramme and make recom­mend­a­tions for future deliv­ery was unsuc­cess­ful but this work has now to be under­taken dir­ectly by SRN.

1) LEAD­ER Pro­ject sum­mary table

		This quarter 11/08/21 to 10/11/21	Pro­gramme to date
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	31
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): Cyc­ling UK met with Dav­id & Brid­get in early Octo­ber and form­ally gave notice that they no longer wished to deliv­er the ACE pro­ject. The team took the decision to bring the bikes back into stor­age for the winter while the Trust con­sider next steps. Stor­age has been found in Grant­own and arranged to end of March 2022 for the 15 bikes owned by the Cairngorms Trust.

The pro­ject itself was very suc­cess­ful with over 50 indi­vidu­als hav­ing had loan of bikes over the life­time of the project.

E‑vehicle pro­cure­ment: Only one bid was received in response to the tender pro­cess and that sup­pli­er has now con­firmed they will be unable to meet the deliv­ery dead­line. Under­spend from the vehicle will be used to fin­ish the ACE pro­ject and the resid­ual declared as an underspend.

Trans­port Hub: HiTrans have con­firmed an install­a­tion date of 15^th Novem­ber with all invoicing and pro­ject sign off by 30^th November.

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 pro­ject has mostly delivered now and Sus­trans are in the pro­cess of load­ing final claims to LARCs. There was a high uptake for the pro­ject with­in Cairngorms.

Co-oper­a­tion pro­ject led by High­land LAG: Green Health: The pro­ject is final­ising deliv­ery and should be sub­mit­ting claims this month.

The co-oper­a­tion pro­ject with both North & South Aber­deen­shire LAGs: Moun­tain Bike Aber­deen­shire: This pro­ject is has now sub­mit­ted their M&E reports and the pro­ject will be closed hav­ing had a min­im­um under­spend and delivered all outcomes.

Closed and in-situ pro­ject updates:

There is one pro­ject still open that requires an in-situ vis­it — TICK.

There have been one in-situ check car­ried out on pro­jects: Wig­wam Cabins.

Addi­tion­al pro­ject updates:

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Wig­wam Hol­i­days (Tomin­toul / Glen­liv­et) The applic­ant has now repor­ted that one fully-access­ible cab­in has been delivered to site and con­nec­ted up to electricity/​water etc. The oth­er cab­in is in Perth, mostly built and the applic­ant is hop­ing to get it delivered to site pri­or to open­ing. The con­crete pad for the cab­in is in place. Two jobs have been advert­ised and a couple have been chosen to go through train­ing for the site at the end of Octo­ber 2021. They have passed the train­ing and have been offered the jobs. They will move up and live on site until accom­mod­a­tion in the area can be found for them. Open­ing of the site will now be very early Janu­ary in time for the ski sea­son. There is still some land­scap­ing to be done although almost all of it has been com­pleted at this stage.

2) Fin­ance

Cairngorms Total Alloc­a­tion	£ 3,052,324.70	Pro­gramme Value 2016 – 2020
Pro­jects Allocation	£ 2,473,908.89	Total Pro­ject Value	£ 3,968,496.15
Total LEAD­ER Pro­ject fund­ing committed	£ 2,357,550.61 95.30%	Increase on LEAD­ER Pro­ject cost	168%
Remain­ing Pro­ject Allocation	£ 116,358.28 4.70%	Total LEAD­ER pro­ject fund­ing paid out	£ 2,236,411.21
Remain­ing includ­ing under spend	£ 116,358.28	Pro­ject Under­spend for Re-allocation	-
LEAD­ER Pro­jects Com­mit­ment Break­down 2016 – 2020		Pro­gramme Value Break­down 2016 – 2020
Total Main fund­ing committed	£ 1,424,932.37 46.68%	Total Main value	£ 1,913,336.43 48.21%
Total Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion fund­ing committed	£ 177,824.08 5.83%	Total Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion value	£ 315,277.58 7.94%
Total Enter­prise fund­ing committed	£ 472,912.01 15.49%	Total Enter­prise value	£ 960,604.68 24.21%
Total Co-oper­a­tion fund­ing committed	£ 281,882.15 9.23%	Total Co-oper­a­tion value	£ 454,442.69 11.45%

The Cairngorms LEAD­ER pro­gramme cur­rently has a fin­an­cial com­mit­ment to approved pro­jects of £2,357,550 or 95.30% of the total pro­ject alloc­a­tion of £3,052,324.

This total com­mit­ment con­sists of £1,424,932 of gen­er­al pro­gramme fund­ing, £650,736 of the sub- alloc­a­tion for invest­ment in Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion and Enter­prise pro­jects com­bined (of a min­im­um invest­ment of £593,704) and £281,882 inves­ted in Co-Oper­a­tion funding.

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 21.32% of our total allocation.

Against our Cooper­a­tion sub-alloc­a­tion 5% of total (min­im­um £149,479) our 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.

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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 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		£3,968,385	£2,357,551		£2,094,868
Closed pro­jects
3	Volun­teer Cairngorms (CLOSED)	£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 (CLOSED)	£189,907	£159,133	83.80%	£159,133.26
6	BSC Pilot (CLOSED)	£19,962	£19,962	100%	£19,962.00
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

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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
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	£3,176	5%	£3,176.56

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38	Inver­al­lan 20/20 (CLOSED)	£98,620	£35,456	35.95%	£35,455.84
35	Moun­tain Bike Aber­deen­shire (CLOSED)	£139,575	£33,158	35% (of 70%)	£33,158.82
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 (CLOSED)	£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
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.

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Live Pro­jects with Green status
48	TICK Rur­al Transport	£125,715	£125,715	100%	£71,676.68
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
52	Sus­trans Cycle Tourism	£48,028	£16,006	33.33%	£6,952.06
9‑Wigwam Cab­ins: Applic­ant has exten­ded their pro­ject timeline to Octo­ber 2021 in order to site two fully access­ible cab­ins and to open the site.
52 – Sus­trans Cycle Tour­ism: Pro­ject due to com­plete 31st July 2021 but there are still 3 mile­stones out­stand­ing with no claims against them uploaded as yet. There­fore this pro­ject has been moved from Green to Amber.

The total eli­gible pro­ject costs for all approved pro­jects to date are approx­im­ately £3,968,385 with a total LEAD­ER com­mit­ment of approx­im­ately £2,357,551 which accounts for 95.30% of the over­all pro­ject alloc­a­tion. To date the LEAD­ER pro­gramme has paid out £2,094,868 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

Pay­ments from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment remain up to date.

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.

5) Mon­it­or­ing and Evaluation

Cairngorms LEAD­ER 2014 – 2020 Pro­gramme Evaluation

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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 no pro­jects closed this quarter — St Margaret’s have now com­pleted their mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation for agree­ment by the team.

Per­form­ing well

At present there are only two pro­jects open – TICK and Wig­wam Cabins.

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.

Indic­at­or	M&E Total tar­get S	M&E achieve d 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	105
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

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| 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 | 7327 | | 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 | 93 |

Notes

1 pro­jects closed this quarter -

St Margaret’s, Brae­mar repor­ted the fol­low­ing achieved tar­get figures:

No of indi­vidu­als par­ti­cip­at­ing in com­munity pro­jects for the first time — tar­get 4, achieved 0. The applic­ant has sub­mit­ted com­pleted activ­ity pro­gramme forms detail­ing each of the 10 events that took place dur­ing the life of the pro­ject. It was noted on the forms that four adults con­firmed they were par­ti­cip­at­ing in com­munity pro­jects for the 1^st time how­ever none of them were asked to com­plete a par­ti­cipant form.

No of par­ti­cipants in envir­on­ment-focused or her­it­age-focused pro­jects, events and ini­ti­at­ives — tar­get 30, achieved 35. The applic­ant has sub­mit­ted com­pleted activ­ity pro­gramme forms detail­ing each of the 10 events that took place dur­ing the life of the pro­ject. It was noted on the forms that 35 chil­dren took part in the Tower Tours and mini build­ing mod­el work shop and Comper’s Appren­tice Mas­ter Build­er work shop. As we do not ask chil­dren to com­plete par­ti­cipant forms, we have accep­ted this figure.

No of new recre­ation oppor­tun­it­ies for loc­al people and for vis­it­ors — tar­get 12, achieved 10.

The fol­low­ing work­shops were run over the course of a year pri­or to lock­down: Tower tours and mini build­ing mod­el work shop, Guided walk & Talk, Doors Open day, Sketch­ing work­shop, Com­per Week­end, Con­ser­va­tion House­keep­ing, Build­ing Health Checks, Masonry sur­vey & Sta­bil­isa­tion, Artistry & Archi­tec­ture Lec­ture, Comper’s Appren­tice Mas­ter Build­er w‑shop

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

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

Ver­sion	Staff	Date
Draft 0.1	SM	26/10/21
Draft 0.2	SM	09/11/21
Final 1.0	BT	09/11/21
Final 2.0