CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 Annex 2 13/05/22

The Cairngorms LAG Trust

LEAD­ER Quarterly Report

26/01/2022

CAIRNGORMS TRUST

Con­tents

Quarterly update Feb­ru­ary 2022 2 1) Pro­ject sum­mary table 2 2) Fin­ance 3 3) Mon­it­or­ing & Eval­u­ation Error! Book­mark not defined.

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1) LEAD­ER Quarterly update Novem­ber 2021 to Feb­ru­ary 2022

Pro­gramme Update

The 2014 – 2020 LEAD­ER Pro­gramme closed at 31^st Decem­ber 2021 with all pro­jects pay­ments com­pleted before that date. The team are now work­ing with both Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment LEAD­ER Deliv­ery Team and CNPA Fin­ance team to final­ise all the out­stand­ing draw­downs and to bal­ance LARCS against loc­al record- keep­ing. This has been a pos­it­ive pro­cess and cur­rently the dis­crep­ancy between LARCS and our loc­al files stands at less than £3k, which when viewed against a £3 mil­lion plus alloc­a­tion is excel­lent. The team are con­fid­ent that all the small items will now be agreed ahead of form­al clos­ure on 31^st March.

On clos­ure the team will write to all pro­jects con­firm­ing clos­ure of the pro­gramme and updat­ing them on audit and reten­tion require­ments to meet their fund­ing terms and conditions.

1) LEAD­ER Pro­ject sum­mary table

	This quarter 11/11/21 to 10/02/22	Pro­gramme to date
Applic­a­tions
	Live	0
	Closed	5	37
	With­drawn	0	18

Co-oper­a­tion Pro­jects – Cairngorms led

TICK — Trans­port Innov­a­tion Cairngorms & Kilkenny:

Act­ive Cairngorms E‑bikes (ACE): All the E‑bikes (15) owned by the Trust have been col­lec­ted from users and Cyc­ling UK and are now stored in Grant­own. Nancy and Brid­get have been work­ing with stake­hold­ers and part­ner organ­isa­tions to identi­fy how best to move for­wards with the project.

Trans­port Hub: HiTrans have installed the hub in Aviemore, just out­side the train sta­tion. The hub is now live and dis­play­ing live bus timetable inform­a­tion. In the com­ing months more inform­a­tion will be added and an ongo­ing part­ner­ship with HiTrans will ensure the Cairngorms Trust retains an influ­ence over the inform­a­tion displayed.

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Addi­tion­al pro­ject updates:

Wig­wam Hol­i­days (Tomin­toul / Glen­liv­et) The applic­ant has now repor­ted that both fully-access­ible cab­in have been delivered to site and con­nec­ted up to electricity/​water etc.

The couple that had passed the inter­view stage and were trained on site before Christ­mas pulled out in very early Janu­ary. WWH have held fur­ther inter­views with a loc­al couple who cur­rently stay in Tomin­toul and things are look­ing very pos­it­ive. The couple are hop­ing to start early next month with an assist­ant man­ager begin­ning the month after if fur­ther inter­views go well.

The web­site is now up and run­ning and the site is due to open on 1^st April 2022. There are already 6 book­ings on the books. Wig­wam® Hol­i­days Glen­liv­et (wig​wam​hol​i​days​.com)

The final report for the pro­ject has been received and has been shared for you.

2) Fin­ance

Cairngorms Total Alloc­a­tion	£ 3,052,324.70	Pro­gramme Value 2016 – 2020
Pro­jects Allocation	f 2,473,908.89	Total Pro­ject Value	f 3,947,072.98
Total LEAD­ER Pro­ject fund­ing committed	f 2,345,713.90 94.82%	Increase on LEAD­ER Pro­ject cost	168%
Remain­ing Pro­ject Allocation	f 128,194.99 5.18%	Total LEAD­ER pro­ject fund­ing paid out	f 2,357,162.12
Remain­ing includ­ing under spend	£ 128,194.99	LEAD­ER Pro­jects Com­mit­ment Break­down 2016 – 2020	Pro­ject Under­spend for Re-allocation	f
Total Main fund­ing committed	£ 1,424,617.98 46.67%	Pro­gramme Value Break­down 2016 – 2020
Total Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion fund­ing committed	f 177,824.08 5.83%	Total Main value	f 1,913,002.04 48.47%
Total Enter­prise fund­ing committed	£ 464,594.07 15.22%	Total Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion value	f 315,277.58 7.99%
Total Co-oper­a­tion fund­ing committed	f 278,677.77 9.13%	Total Enter­prise value	f 952,286.74 24.13%
		Total Co-oper­a­tion value	f 454,331.52 11.51%

The Cairngorms LEAD­ER pro­gramme has now paid out the final claim for the pro­gramme and the pro­gramme spend sits at approved pro­jects of £2,345,713 or 94.82% of the total pro­ject alloc­a­tion of £3,052,324.

This total com­mit­ment con­sists of £1,424,618 of gen­er­al pro­gramme fund­ing, £642,418 of the sub- alloc­a­tion for invest­ment in Farm Diver­si­fic­a­tion and Enter­prise pro­jects com­bined (of a min­im­um invest­ment of £593,704) and £278,678 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, we fin­ished on 21.05% of our total allocation.

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Against our Cooper­a­tion sub-alloc­a­tion 5% of total (min­im­um £149,479) our end spend is £278,677 or 11.51%.

Under­spend rose at the end as pro­jects fin­ished from approx. £26,234 to £128,195. This is due largely to the TICK pro­ject being unable to pro­cure an elec­tric vehicle for the BS&TC in Aviemore. This was due to sup­ply issues due to Brexit & Cov­id. Four of our co-oper­a­tion pro­jects run by oth­er LAGs also repor­ted underspend.

3 Mon­it­or­ing and Evaluation

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.

Mon­it­or­ing and Eval­u­ation update for Feb 22 LAG meeting

Indic­at­or	M&E tar­gets	M&E Total tar­gets	achieved
No of pro­jects that have developed as a res­ult of net­work­ing or shar­ing good practice	63	43
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	222
No of busi­nesses set up	7	7
No of new jobs created	26.2	24.2
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	11.17
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	259
No of new afford­able trans­port options (routes, links and modes) that have been created	2	7
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	39
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	94

Items in yel­low have met or exceeded tar­gets, items in red are tar­gets that were not met.

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

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Notes — 5 pro­jects closed this quarter — We are still wait­ing on con­firmed tar­gets achieved for The Green Health pro­ject and these will be repor­ted at our next meet­ing. At the same time, we will con­firm final M&E fig­ures for the programme.

Wig­wam Hol­i­days, Glen­liv­et repor­ted the fol­low­ing achieved tar­get figures:

No of career or per­son­al devel­op­ment oppor­tun­it­ies cre­ated; Tar­get 3, achieved 2 — Man­ager and Assist­ant Man­ager hired to open and run site. As COV­ID has set back the com­ple­tion and open­ing of the site by a min­im­um of six months it has not been pos­sible to employ a 3^rd per­son pri­or to clos­ure of LEAD­ER project.

No of busi­nesses set up; Tar­get 1, achieved 1 — Wig­wam Hol­i­days Tomin­toul is a new business

No of new jobs cre­ated; Tar­get 3, achieved 2. As above.

No of ini­ti­at­ives to increase access­ib­il­ity to tour­ist and recre­ation oppor­tun­it­ies; Tar­get 1, achieved 2. Two fully access­ible cab­ins on site ready for use.

No of new recre­ation oppor­tun­it­ies for loc­al people and for vis­it­ors; Tar­get 1, achieved 1. One new camp­site due to open shortly.

TICK repor­ted the fol­low­ing achieved tar­get figures:

No. of pro­jects that have developed as a res­ult of net­work­ing or shar­ing good prac­tice; Tar­get 1, achieved 1 — Work­ing part­ner­ship with Kilkenny LEAD­ER Partnership.

No of afford­able trans­port options (routes, links and modes) that have been cre­ated; Tar­get 2, achieved 2 — The pro­vi­sion of E‑Bikes and an elec­tron­ic Totem board show­ing bus times etc.

No. of loc­al res­id­ents who have access to new or improved com­munity-based ser­vices; Tar­get 30, achieved 35 — ACE provided a com­pre­hens­ive spread­sheet detail­ing those who showed an interest in the pro­ject and in par­tic­u­lar the use of an E‑bike and the reas­ons why they wanted to try one. In all 35 people used an E‑bike using the life time of the project.

Pro­mo­tion of Cycle Tour­ism in Rur­al Scot­land repor­ted the fol­low­ing achieved tar­gets: NB there were no actu­al tar­gets for the Cairngorms area of the pro­ject but we have been able to pull out some inform­a­tion from the final report.

No of pro­jects that have developed as a res­ult of net­work­ing or shar­ing good prac­tice; tar­get 0, achieved

1. The pro­ject ran an autumn leis­ure cyc­ling promo cam­paign in part­ner­ship with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Partnership.

No of tour­ist oppor­tun­it­ies which have exten­ded their oper­at­ing cal­en­dar; tar­get 0, achieved 5. There were 16 new day trips cre­ated for the pro­ject, 5 of which are situ­ated with­in the NP boundary.

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Moun­tain Bike Aber­deen­shire repor­ted the fol­low­ing tar­get figures:

No of pro­jects that have developed as a res­ult of net­work­ing or shar­ing good prac­tice; Tar­get 2, achieved 2. Two loc­al groups formed — Aber­deen Trail Asso­ci­ation and Aber­deen­shire MTB Devel­op­ment Cluster.

No of career or per­son­al devel­op­ment oppor­tun­it­ies cre­ated; Tar­get 2, achieved 2. 11 courses were run over the course of the pro­ject that had people who live or work in the NP attending

No of new busi­nesses set up; Tar­get 1, achieved 1. E‑Guide: New busi­ness start-up — Guid­ing com­pany using E‑MTB’s in Deeside/​Cairngorms.

No of Tour­ist oppor­tun­it­ies which have exten­ded their oper­at­ing cal­en­dar year; Tar­get 1, achieved 2. Ride in Peace Adven­tures and Bal­later Bike Fest­iv­al both con­firm exten­sion of their oper­at­ing calendar

MBA also had two fur­ther tar­gets which although in prin­ciple were achieved, MBA have not provided the back up evid­ence to con­firm the num­bers so we have chosen not to include the two res­ults below on our M&E.

No of indi­vidu­als par­ti­cip­at­ing in a com­munity pro­ject for the first time; Tar­get 6, achieved N/A. MBA con­firm that Com­munity Trail Main­ten­ance pro­ject attract­ing an aver­age of 25 people to monthly ses­sions, the major­ity of whom were not act­ively engaged in com­munity or MTB projects.

No of pro­ject par­ti­cipants report­ing improved well­being as a res­ult of access­ing recre­ation oppor­tun­it­ies; Tar­get 100, achieved N/A. Doon Tha Brae Events (DTB) and Scot­tish Enduro Series (SES) report com­bined attend­ance of roughly 850 riders. DTB sug­gest 35% of their attendees are from out­with Aber­deen­shire and SES 75% out with Aberdeenshire.

Ver­sion	Staff	Date
Draft 0.1	SM	26/01/22
Draft 0.2	SM	01/02/22
Draft 0.3−0.4	SM	02 & 03/02/22
Final 1.0	BT	03/02/22
Final 2.0	BT	08/02/2022

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