220513PerformanceCtteePaper3AALEADERTrust v01

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 13/05/22

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY PER­FORM­ANCE COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: CAIR­GORMS LEAD­ER AND CAIRNGORMS TRUST DELIVERY

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SER­VICES & DEPUTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE

Pur­pose

This paper presents the latest deliv­ery updates on the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme and vol­un­tary and char­it­able giv­ing activ­it­ies as man­aged by the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Loc­al Action Group Trust (Cairngorms Trust).

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to review the deliv­ery updates presen­ted with this paper and con­sider: a) wheth­er the pro­grammes of activ­ity are mak­ing the expec­ted con­tri­bu­tion to the Cairngorms NPA’s agreed stra­tegic out­comes; b) wheth­er the deliv­ery updates sug­gest any stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s agreed per­form­ance object­ives; c) wheth­er any mater­i­al impacts on the Cairngorms NPA’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures arise from assess­ment of pro­gramme delivery.

Per­form­ance Dashboard

Per­form­ance Meas­ure	Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
Fin­ance: Deliv­er Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme, max­im­ising use of resources made available	Blue (Com­plete)	Pro­gramme con­cluded 31 Decem­ber 2021, with final pro­ject LEAD­ER spend at 95% of alloc­a­tion and total pro­ject expendit­ure at 168% of alloc­a­tion after account­ing for match fund­ing levered into projects.
Audit: clean clos­ure of LEAD­ER Pro­gramme includ­ing mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation of per­form­ance indicators	Green	All pro­ject records final­ised. Cur­rently respond­ing to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment LEAD­ER Deliv­ery Team coordin­ated response to EU audit points.
Policy: secure future Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD)	Amber	Test­ing change fund­ing of £50,000 secured in 2021⁄22. Ini­tial indic­a­tion of nation­al alloc­a­tion of £7 mil­lion for 2022⁄23. No long term or multi-year com­mit­ment in place.
Policy: Devel­op and imple­ment vol­un­tary giv­ing mech­an­isms through Cairngorms Trust	Amber	Evol­u­tion of vol­un­tary giv­ing schemes has stalled dur­ing two years of COV­ID inter­rup­tions. Fund­ing secured to rein­vig­or­ate this work over com­ing year.
Fin­ance: increase vol­un­tary giv­ing returns with­in Trust’s future fund­ing pro­file to a level which sus­tain costs of infra­struc­ture and return mean­ing­ful sur­pluses for investment.	Red	Cur­rent level of returns over peri­od of COV­ID restric­tions well below tar­geted levels, while receipts of around £1,000 per quarter from vari­ous vol­un­tary dona­tion sources con­tin­ue to demon­strate viab­il­ity of approaches.
Policy: oper­a­tion of char­it­able mech­an­ism an effect­ive ele­ment of NPPP pri­or­ity delivery	Green	The capa­city to work in part­ner­ship with an inde­pend­ent char­ity cov­er­ing the Cairngorms has been a cru­cial ele­ment in suc­cess­ful deliv­ery of Green Recov­ery Fund­ing; in secur­ing resource for CLLD made avail­able over the last two years; and in com­munity engage­ment in deliv­er­ing loc­al priorities.

Stra­tegic Background

1. The most recent update to the Board on deliv­ery of the Authority’s stra­tegic object­ives as set out in the agreed Cor­por­ate Plan for 2018 to 2022 was presen­ted at the June 2021 meet­ing. The Cor­por­ate Plan deliv­ery report may be accessed at: Meet­ing — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity The Authority’s stra­tegic object­ives of rel­ev­ance to con­sid­er­a­tion of the deliv­ery of the pro­gramme report­ing presen­ted with this paper are: a) Suc­cess­fully con­clude the Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme and con­sider future fund­ing for com­munity led loc­al devel­op­ment (CLLD); b) Devel­op and deliv­er a vis­it­or giv­ing scheme with part­ners. This object­ive has since been refo­cused as devel­op­ment of a vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme.

2. The latest review of the Stra­tegic Risk Register was con­sidered by the Board in March 2022 and may be accessed at: Meet­ing — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity. Stra­tegic risks of rel­ev­ance to con­sid­er­a­tion of per­form­ance of the pro­grammes of work con­sidered by this paper are: a) Al: Resource risk remedi­al mit­ig­a­tion: Con­tinu­ing to sup­port ​“deliv­ery bod­ies” such as Cairngorms Nature, Cairngorms Trust in secur­ing inward invest­ment. b) All.I Stra­tegic Risk on Resourcing: Role as Lead / Account­able body for major pro­grammes (e.g. LEAD­ER, Land­scape Part­ner­ship) has risk of sig­ni­fic­ant fin­an­cial claw­back should expendit­ure prove to be not eli­gible for fund­ing, while CNPA car­ries respons­ib­il­it­ies as employ­er for pro­gramme staff. c) A11.2 Stra­tegic Risk Resourcing: the end of major pro­gramme invest­ments (Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et, LEAD­ER) requires sig­ni­fic­ant ongo­ing staff­ing to man­age audit and leg­acy which the Author­ity finds dif­fi­cult to resource. d) A12.2 Stra­tegic Risk on Resourcing: future com­munity led loc­al devel­op­ment fund­ing cur­rently delivered through LEAD­ER, togeth­er with wider fund­ing pre­vi­ously from EU struc­tur­al and agri­cul­tur­al sources is lost and cre­ates a sig­ni­fic­ant gap in our capa­city to deliv­er against our devel­op­ment pri­or­it­ies. e) A28 Stra­tegic Risk on Staff­ing: deliv­ery of key out­comes is impacted by staff turnover, par­tic­u­larly in pro­ject teams.

3. The pro­grammes of activ­ity under con­sid­er­a­tion here also fit with the pri­or­it­ies of the cur­rent Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP), the most recent over­view of deliv­ery of the NPPP hav­ing been presen­ted to the Board at its meet­ing in Septem­ber 2021: Meet­ing — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity. The rel­ev­ant ele­ments of the NPPP deliv­ery relat­ing to these pro­grammes are: a) Cairngorms Trust tak­ing for­ward devel­op­ment of vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme to sup­port devel­op­ment of new fund­ing sources sup­port­ing pub­lic bene­fits (Land­scape scale con­ser­va­tion pri­or­ity li). b) Devel­op­ing new ways includ­ing vis­it­or giv­ing to fund infra­struc­ture invest­ment and main­ten­ance (vis­it­or infra­struc­ture pri­or­ity 4a). c) Improv­ing vis­it­or trans­port options (vis­it­or infra­struc­ture pri­or­ity 4f). d) Tar­get­ing people cur­rently liv­ing sedent­ary life­styles and those with long-term med­ic­al con­di­tions (Act­ive Cairngorms pri­or­ity 5b). e) Improv­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for act­ive travel in Aviemore (Act­ive Cairngorms pri­or­ity 5g). f) Bet­ter coordin­a­tion and pro­mo­tion of pub­lic trans­port and act­ive travel (Act­ive Cairngorms pri­or­ity 5f)

Per­form­ance Over­view: Deliv­ery Against Stra­tegic Expectations

1. The Cairngorms Trust / Cairngorms Loc­al Action Group’s quarterly reports received on the deliv­ery of char­it­able and LEAD­ER activ­it­ies respect­ively are presen­ted with this paper at Annexes I and 2.

2. The LEAD­ER Pro­gramme is now closed. Sup­ply chain and COV­ID restric­tions pre­ven­ted the sup­ply of an elec­tric minibus to the Badenoch and Strath­spey Com­munity Trans­port Com­pany and there­fore res­ul­ted in a short­fall in planned expendit­ure, which was com­poun­ded by small under­spends in a num­ber of co- oper­a­tion pro­jects under the man­age­ment of oth­er LEAD­ER areas. How­ever, final com­mit­ment of 95% of LEAD­ER grant alloc­a­tion with total invest­ment of 168% of grant alloc­a­tion when addi­tion­al match fund­ing is accoun­ted for is con­sidered a good res­ult for a £3 mil­lion pro­gramme impacted over 2 years of deliv­ery by COV­ID restrictions.

3. The £50,000 ​“Test­ing Change” fund made avail­able in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ to test new CLLD approaches has also suc­cess­fully com­pleted, with deliv­ery of a Youth Loc­al Action Group with grant award­ing powers, and a Green Change Fund provid­ing com­munity grants. This work also allows the Her­it­age Hori­zons approach to com­munity grant schemes to be ​“live” developed and tested.

4. The Trust con­tin­ues to receive small value vol­un­tary dona­tions each quarter. Fund­ing has been made avail­able to the Trust to rein­vig­or­ate the vol­un­tary giv­ing scheme over the course of ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ with an object­ive of estab­lish­ing wheth­er there is poten­tial for such an ini­ti­at­ive to gen­er­ate a level of return in the medi­um to long term which would become self-sus­tain­ing and provide mean­ing­ful levels of invest­ment in the Trust’s char­it­able objectives.

Per­form­ance Over­view: Risks Under Management

1. Trust­ees and staff involved in sup­port­ing the work of the Cairngorms Trust con­tin­ue to engage in devel­op­ment of nation­al policy around the future of CLLD fund­ing in Scot­land. There is an increas­ingly pos­it­ive out­look on this sub­ject, with a fur­ther £7 mil­lion to be made avail­able through Loc­al Action Group (LAG) net­works in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ from a total of over £11 mil­lion alloc­a­tion for CLLD activ­ity in the year.

2. Avail­ab­il­ity of addi­tion­al resource for the Trust in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ will allow fur­ther action on the evol­u­tion of vol­un­tary giv­ing and address cur­rent risks iden­ti­fied in this area around the lim­it­a­tions arising from lim­ited capa­city and COV­ID restric­tions over the last 2 years.

Con­clu­sions: Per­form­ance Over­view and Mat­ters Mer­it­ing Stra­tegic Review

1. There are no mat­ters of stra­tegic sig­ni­fic­ance which mer­it escal­a­tion at this time in the opin­ion of seni­or man­agers lead­ing the Cairngorms NPA’s link­age to the areas of activ­ity covered by this paper and asso­ci­ated reports.

Dav­id Camer­on 2 May 2022 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk