220812PerformanceCtteePaper2AAPeatlandUpdate

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 12^th August 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY PER­FORM­ANCE COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: CAIRNGORMS PEAT­LAND ACTION PRO­GRAMME DELIV­ERY Pre­pared by: COLIN MCCLE­AN, HEAD OF LAND MANAGEMENT

Pur­pose

This paper presents an update on the deliv­ery of the CNPA’s Peat­land ACTION pro­gramme for 2022 – 23.

Recom­mend­a­tion

a) The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to note the pro­gramme update.

Stra­tegic Background

1. The peat­land pro­gramme will con­trib­ute to the deliv­ery of the tar­gets and pri­or­it­ies of NPPP4. It is also key for assist­ing in the imple­ment­a­tion of the Her­it­age Hori­zon Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme, provid­ing the major­ity of the Programme’s planned match fund­ing for the deliv­ery phase com­men­cing mid 2023 sub­ject to bid approv­al. The pro­gramme is sup­port­ing the deliv­ery of the Scot­tish Government’s peat­land res­tor­a­tion targets.

Per­form­ance Dashboard

Per­form­ance Meas­ure for 2022⁄23	Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
Fin­ance: max­im­ise use of £2.962 mil­lion cap­it­al fin­ance avail­able in 2022⁄23 for peat­land restoration	Amber	We are unlikely to use the entire cap­it­al budget but, at this stage, pro­ject tenders are still being sub­mit­ted and costs are rising across the sec­tor. It is there­fore cur­rently dif­fi­cult to assess the level of likely underspend.
Fin­ance: impact on Cairngorms NPA budget management	Green	No wider unplanned demands cur­rently made by pro­gramme on fin­an­cial resources.
Area of restored peat­land: 905 hec­tare tar­get 2022⁄23 (Res­tor­a­tion Area)	Green	At this early stage in the res­tor­a­tion year, we have approved grant to bring 591 ha under res­tor­a­tion (Res­tor­a­tion Area).
Pro­gramme risk profile	Amber	Cur­rently we have suf­fi­cient con­tract­or interest in pro­jects to achieve tar­gets. This may change as the tender pro­cess continues.
Future fund­ing profile	Amber	Future levels of fund­ing from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment are uncer­tain giv­en the cur­rent review of pub­lic fin­ance. How­ever, we do have a four year fund­ing pro­file agreed, albeit while con­tinu­ing to oper­ate with­in single year allocations.
Future deliv­ery profile	Green	The require­ment to recruit new Peat­land Officers and pro­ject assist­ants intro­duces a degree of uncer­tainty around the achieve­ment of tar­gets in the short term. We are optim­ist­ic the 22⁄23 pro­gramme tar­get of 905 ha (Res­tor­a­tion Area) will be achieved while action on devel­op­ing the staff team cur­rently under­way will under­pin suc­cess­ful long-term pro­gramme delivery.

Tar­get for 2022 – 23

1. Areas of bare peat are spread through the land­scape and may be con­cen­trated or widely dis­persed. We meas­ure peat­land res­tor­a­tion areas in two ways. First we meas­ure Res­tor­a­tion Area by cap­tur­ing all areas of bare peat with­in a poly­gon. This poly­gon will include veget­ated areas between eroded areas. We often meas­ure Res­tor­a­tion Area before work begins, so we have a meas­ure of the hec­tares involved without going into fine detail. We also meas­ure Res­tor­a­tion Foot­print, which is more detailed and takes much longer to record. Res­tor­a­tion Foot­print involves meas­ur­ing each indi­vidu­al eroded fea­ture and adding a buf­fer area of stand­ard size around each fea­ture. Res­tor­a­tion Foot­print is used as a meas­ure with­in the Peat­land Code. If a landown­er wishes to register a pro­ject under Peat­land Code, then they must meas­ure the Res­tor­a­tion Foot­print of the site before work begins. Both meas­ure­ments of Res­tor­a­tion Area and Res­tor­a­tion Foot­print are use­ful, but there is poten­tial for con­fu­sion between them.

2. Under Peat­land Action we meas­ure Res­tor­a­tion Area at the start of a pro­ject. Both Res­tor­a­tion Area and Res­tor­a­tion Foot­print are recor­ded at the end of a pro­ject. These means that annu­al Peat­land Action pro­gramme area tar­gets have been set using Res­tor­a­tion Area, but tar­get achieve­ment has been recor­ded using both Res­tor­a­tion Area and Res­tor­a­tion Foot­print. This has led to con­fu­sion in record­ing work achieved

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 12^th August 2022

against tar­get and we need to stand­ard­ise meas­ure­ments across Peat­land Action at nation­al level.

1. In 2022 – 23 we plan to deliv­er 905 hec­tares of peat­land res­tor­a­tion (Res­tor­a­tion Area). This com­pares to a tar­get of 557ha for 2021 – 22 (Res­tor­a­tion Area). This tar­get for 2021 – 22 was exceeded, with 730ha being brought under res­tor­a­tion (Res­tor­a­tion Foot­print) and 900 ha as meas­ured by Res­tor­a­tion Area.

Fin­ance and staffing

1. Fin­an­cial sup­port from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment is £3.47 mil­lion in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. This com­prises £2.962m cap­it­al fund­ing (primar­ily sup­port­ing grant awards to land man­agers) and £0.505m resource fund­ing (sup­port­ing staff­ing, team oper­a­tions and oth­er deliv­ery costs). As in pre­vi­ous years, we are unlikely to spend all this budget. How­ever rising costs across the sec­tor make it cur­rently dif­fi­cult to estim­ate the amount of poten­tial under­spend. We will aim to estab­lish a robust out­turn pro­jec­tion by the end of Septem­ber 2022 to feed into an anti­cip­ated Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment autumn budget review exercise.

2. As of 19^th July, we have issued Grant Offer let­ters to four estates. The total grant offered to date is £956,282 (approach­ing one third of budget) and this will bring 591 ha of peat­land under res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment (over 60% of hec­tare tar­get). Of this, 466 ha involves the res­tor­a­tion of act­ively erod­ing peat, with an addi­tion­al 125 ha of ditch block­ing. All meas­ure­ments are Res­tor­a­tion Areas at this point. Work will begin on these pro­jects in late July/​early August.

3. Steph­en Corcor­an, Pro­gramme Man­ager left CNPA in May 2022. We are grate­ful for Stephen’s efforts in estab­lish­ing the Peat­land Action Pro­gramme with­in the CNP. Stephen’s depar­ture allowed us to re-struc­ture the Peat­land team and to tackle per­sist­ent capa­city issues with­in Peat­land Action. We have replaced Stephen’s post with two pro­gramme man­agers. Emma Stew­art is now Pro­gramme Man­ager (Oper­a­tions) and will have respons­ib­il­ity for the deliv­ery of pro­jects on the ground. Matt Wat­son is now Pro­gramme Man­ager (Pro­gramme Devel­op­ment) and will have respons­ib­il­ity for pro­gress­ing stra­tegic issues like con­tract­or capa­city, inter­ac­tion with the Peat­land Code, Green Fin­ance and how we scale up the pro­gramme. Along­side Seni­or Man­age­ment, Matt will work to imple­ment the recom­mend­a­tions of the Intern­al Audit, which is near­ing final­isa­tion with recom­mend­a­tions expec­ted on devel­op­ment of sys­tems and pro­ced­ures. Man­age­ment spe­cific­ally reques­ted this intern­al audit recog­nising the Peat­land ACTION Team is a new area of dir­ect respons­ib­il­ity oper­at­ing with­in a dynam­ic environment.

4. Both Emma and Matt are intern­al appoint­ments and we are now recruit­ing replace­ment Peat­land Officers. Later this year we plan to recruit a pro­ject assist­ant and we also plan to second a Peat­land Officer. This per­son will work as an addi­tion­al pro­ject assist­ant until the end of the fin­an­cial year. All the costs of this recruit­ment can be met with­in our exist­ing resource budget of £0.505 million.

5. The sum­mer of 2022 is a peri­od of con­sid­er­able change with­in the Peat­land team. New man­agers have the chal­lenge of tak­ing on new roles while con­tinu­ing to over­see pro­jects from their pre­vi­ous roles as Peat­land Officers. There is an unavoid­able time

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 12^th August 2022

lag sur­round­ing the back filling of pro­moted posts. New recruits will need time to become famil­i­ar with pro­jects and with CNPA pro­cesses. This trans­ition peri­od will inev­it­ably con­strain pro­ject pro­gress to some extent in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. How­ever, re- struc­tur­ing should enable the pro­gramme to expand in future years.

Pro­gress to date on the pro­gramme for 2022 – 23.

1. The peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­gramme has a sea­son­al cycle. Little res­tor­a­tion work on the ground is pos­sible dur­ing spring and early sum­mer as we are con­strained by the need to pro­tect breed­ing birds etc. Spring and early sum­mer are used for sur­vey work and pro­ject plan­ning, with most res­tor­a­tion work begin­ning from mid July onwards.

2. Tenders have been issued for fur­ther pro­jects through­out the Park and the area being brought under res­tor­a­tion will expand rap­idly over late sum­mer and autumn.

3. Con­tract­or capa­city con­tin­ues to be an issue, but to date, tenders have been received for all pro­jects which have been advert­ised on PCS. We will con­tin­ue to con­sider new ways of increas­ing con­tract­or interest and capacity.

4. Cur­rently we feel we are on track to achieve the pro­gramme tar­get of 905ha in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. How­ever there are con­tinu­ing risks that issues like Peat­land Code val­id­a­tion, lack of con­tract­ors and adverse weath­er may slow pro­gress in the autumn and winter.

5. Table 1 and 2 below sum­mar­ise the cur­rent pos­i­tion of all cur­rent and pipeline projects.

Table 1: Com­mit­ted grants-pro­jects which gained grant approv­al in 2021- 22 but where work remains to be car­ried out in 2022 – 23.

Type of res­tor­a­tion	Cur­rent status	Cost
Erosion	Work being car­ried out	£38,754
Hand­work	Work being car­ried out	£15,000
Drains	To start Aug/​Sep 2022	£40,812
Hand­work	To re-start Aug 2022	£26,376
Hand­work	To re-start Aug 2022	£12,000
	Total	£132,942

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 12^th August 2022

Table 2: New pro­jects approved in cur­rent year or seek­ing grant approv­al in 2022 – 23.

Type of res­tor­a­tion	Cur­rent status	Cost
Erosion	70% com­plete and work on going	£151,949 grant approved
Drains	In prep	£110,000 estim­ate
Erosion	Act­ive	0 repair work from pre­vi­ous project
Erosion	Tenders being scored	£119,000 estim­ate
Erosion	Tenders being scored	£320,000 estim­ate
Drains + 5ha of erosion	In prep	£240,000 estim­ate
Erosion	Act­ive	£27,000 estim­ate
	Total	£967,949 estim­ate
	Com­mit­ted grant in 2022 – 23	£956,282
	Estim­ated total pro­ject spend in 2022 – 23 to date	£1.924 mil­lion out of cap­it­al budget of £2.962 million

Colin McCle­an 28^th July 2022 colinmaccean@​cairngorms.​co.​uk