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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Resources Com­mit­tee Paper ?? 29/10/21

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY RESOURCES COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ BUDGET MONITORING

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services

Pur­pose

This paper presents an over­view of the Cairngorms NPA’s budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion at the end of the third quarter of the cur­rent ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ fin­an­cial year, as at 31 Decem­ber 2021.

The paper seeks the Committee’s views on the budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion and any stra­tegic risks or implic­a­tions of the fin­an­cial position.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Resources Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Con­sider the budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ ; b) Identi­fy any stra­tegic risks or implic­a­tions posed for the Board’s deliv­ery of its stra­tegic object­ives which may require addi­tion­al man­age­ment action; c) 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.

Over­view

1. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has imple­men­ted the 2% in year reduc­tion to resource grant made avail­able to the Cairngorms NPA as advised to the pre­vi­ous meet­ing of the Com­mit­tee: this equates to £125,000 includ­ing recov­ery of expec­ted resource fund­ing for the Cairngorms Peat­land pro­gramme. This reduc­tion is being made across all budgets in the port­fo­lio with­in which the Cairngorms NPA’s resources are man­aged by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, and is not a reduc­tion focused only on the Authority.
2. Cap­it­al fund­ing avail­able for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment is not impacted.
3. The level of staff costs fall­ing against grant in aid has been lower than budgeted. We have secured a high­er level of oth­er income in sup­port of staff costs, while man­age­ment of vacan­cies has exceeded tar­get levels.
4. Man­age­ment has imple­men­ted an action plan to cov­er the resource grant in aid reduc­tion along with man­aging oth­er budget impacts – not­ably real­loc­at­ing staff budget

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Resources Com­mit­tee Paper ?? 29/10/21 into increased oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ments. We con­tin­ue to tar­get a fin­an­cial break even out­turn pos­i­tion to make full use of avail­able resources.

1. There are no unanti­cip­ated impacts from pro­gramme and pro­ject deliv­ery on the Authority’s budget pos­i­tion. All pro­gramme and pro­ject expendit­ure has been recovered from planned fund­ing sources, includ­ing Cairngorms NPA budgeted fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tions where applicable.

2. Oper­a­tion­al Plan invest­ment, as is com­mon in the Authority’s expendit­ure pro­file, is heav­ily weighted toward com­ple­tion of planned invest­ment in the final quarter of the fin­an­cial year. The cur­rent expendit­ure level is sig­ni­fic­antly under budget when pro­filed on a straight-line basis at the end of the cur­rent mon­it­or­ing peri­od. This does carry heightened risk of fin­an­cial object­ives not being met by the end of the fin­an­cial year. Fin­ance staff will now be under­tak­ing reg­u­lar, at least fort­nightly, reviews of the budget and com­mit­ment pos­i­tion with budget hold­ers in the peri­od to the end of March.

Ana­lys­is of Budget Position

1. A sum­mary of the Authority’s budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion and man­age­ment accounts at the half year point is set out at Annexes One and Two to this paper. Annex One sum­mar­ises the over­all pos­i­tion of extern­ally fun­ded pro­gramme activ­ity with­in the fin­an­cial mon­it­or­ing pos­i­tion. Annex Two provides detail on the fin­an­cial pos­i­tion of each extern­ally fun­ded programme.

2. There are no unanti­cip­ated fin­an­cial impacts of pro­gramme activ­ity on the Authority’s fin­an­cial and budget pos­i­tion to report. The net fin­an­cial cost of £150,000 iden­ti­fied rep­res­ents the planned cash con­tri­bu­tion to the Her­it­age Hori­zons: Cairngorms 2030 Programme.

Staff­ing and Run­ning Costs

1. A total of £320,000 has been removed from the pro­jec­ted out­turn budget for staff­ing invest­ment. Man­age­ment of vacan­cies and recruit­ment, com­bined with a high­er than ini­tially budgeted level of staff recov­er­ies from oth­er sources, has allowed for this adjustment.

2. This revised staff­ing pos­i­tion has provided cov­er for the resource grant adjust­ment in the year, with remain­ing resource freed by this action being real­loc­ated into oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ment in pro­gress­ing deliv­ery of exist­ing stra­tegic cor­por­ate plan priorities.

3. The pos­i­tion at the end of the third quarter fol­low­ing the budget out­turn adjust­ment indic­ates an under­spend of just under £61,000 com­pared with revised budget, equi­val­ent to 2.1% of budget. With most of our recruit­ment now in place and sea­son­al ranger staff to com­mence in March 22, we expect this gap to nar­row by the end of the fin­an­cial year.

Oper­a­tion­al Plan Delivery

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Resources Com­mit­tee Paper ?? 29/10/21

1. As plans have become cla­ri­fied in sup­port of the organisation’s adapt­a­tion to oper­a­tions facil­it­at­ing new work­ing prac­tices, we have also been able to release £100,000 from budget pro­vi­sions made to sup­port invest­ment in pre­par­ing IT infra­struc­ture and office equip­ment to oth­er oper­a­tion­al plan activity.

2. Over­all oper­a­tion­al plan deliv­ery remains well behind straight line budget pro­file at the end of the third quarter. This is a typ­ic­al pos­i­tion at this stage in the year, albeit with the level of invest­ment to be com­mit­ted pri­or to the end of the year at a slightly high­er level than in recent years. Sig­ni­fic­ant com­mit­ments are now in place for con­tracts to imple­ment our cloud based IT net­work solu­tions, while mon­it­or­ing meet­ings con­firm that the major­ity of stra­tegic vis­it­or infra­struc­ture invest­ment pro­gramme awards are near com­ple­tion and expec­ted to be released in early Feb­ru­ary. These col­lect­ively account for around £400,000 of the cur­rent under­spend indic­ated in Annex One.

3. The Peat­land Pro­gramme rep­res­ents almost 45% of the total oper­a­tion­al plan under­spend repor­ted at this time. A num­ber of pro­jects are now live and claims expec­ted to come for­ward over the com­ing months to redress the cur­rent position.

4. We have informed Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment that the ori­gin­al ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ cap­it­al alloc­a­tion will not be deployed in full in the year as we con­tin­ue to work to devel­op the con­tract­or sup­ply capa­city to meet the deliv­ery require­ments in the Cairngorms. The works com­mis­sioned in the cur­rent year have also ten­ded to be more straight­for­ward, less expens­ive pro­jects to help bring new con­tract­ors into the sec­tor. Annex One incor­por­ates the reduced cap­it­al fund­ing for the year. We are in nego­ti­ations on the poten­tial to carry for­ward the unclaimed cap­it­al grant into future years of the pro­gramme, at which stages the more com­plex and more expens­ive works will be undertaken.

5. Oper­a­tion­al Plan budget lines set out in Annex One now reflect the adjust­ments to real­loc­ate invest­ment plans men­tioned in this paper and provide the updated fore­cast out­turn pos­i­tion. Adjust­ments from staff and cor­por­ate invest­ment plans into oth­er strands of oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ment has enabled increased pro­vi­sions of £10k to Rur­al Devel­op­ment; £50k to Com­mu­nic­a­tions; and £260k to vis­it­or man­age­ment and improve­ments in vis­it­or infrastructure.

Cash Man­age­ment

1. There are no cur­rent cash man­age­ment issues to highlight.

Dav­id Camer­on 31 Janu­ary 2022 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk