220812PerformanceCtteePaper3AACLLD

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 12^th August 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY PER­FORM­ANCE COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: CAIR­GORMS LEAD­ER AND COM­MUNITY LED LOC­AL DEVEL­OP­MENT FUNDING

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SER­VICES & DEPUTY CHUEF 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). This update focuses on the ongo­ing work to seek replace­ment LEAD­ER fund­ing to sup­port Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD).

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. Con­tinu­ing to respond to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment LEAD­ER Deliv­ery Team coordin­ated response to EU audit points. No loc­al issues arising.

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Per­form­ance Meas­ure	Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
Policy: secure future Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) of equi­val­ent value to LEAD­ER Pro­gramme allocation	Amber	Test­ing change fund­ing of £50,000 secured in 2021⁄22.; alloc­a­tion of £281,000 now secured from 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	Cairngorms Trust have now out­sourced a con­tract for sup­port in devel­op­ing vol­un­tary giv­ing approaches.
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 March 2022 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 also be accessed at the above link. 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.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 12^th August 2022

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.

1. The pro­grammes of activ­ity under con­sid­er­a­tion here also fit with the pri­or­it­ies of the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ Trans­ition­al Plan approved by the board in March 2025, spe­cific­ally the pri­or­ity ​“to pro­mote com­munity led devel­op­ment and man­age­ment of land / assets”.

Per­form­ance Over­view: Deliv­ery Against Stra­tegic Expectations

1. The sig­ni­fic­ant devel­op­ment since the Committee’s last con­sid­er­a­tion of this area of per­form­ance at its meet­ing in May 2022 is the con­firm­a­tion by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment of an award of £281,000 to the Cairngorms Trust (oper­at­ing as the Cairngorms Loc­al Action Group) for CLLD invest­ment in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃.

2. The £50,000 ​“Test­ing Change” fund made avail­able in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ to test new CLLD approaches suc­cess­fully com­pleted, with deliv­ery of a Youth Loc­al Action Group with grant award­ing powers, and a Green Change Fund provid­ing com­munity grants.

3. The fund­ing for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ rep­res­ents a sig­ni­fic­ant increase over pri­or year fund­ing levels, sup­port­ing the con­tinu­ation of evol­u­tion of the Youth Loc­al Action Group and sev­er­al oth­er invest­ment pro­grammes. More inform­a­tion can be found on the Cairngorms Trust’s web­site: Apply for Fund­ing (cairngorm​strust​.org​.uk)

4. The increased fund­ing alloc­a­tion for the Cairngorms in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ sig­nals a very pos­it­ive step for­ward toward the object­ive of secur­ing equi­val­ent levels of CLLD fund­ing for the Cairngorms over the new Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan peri­od of 2022 to 2027 as was received in the pre­vi­ous plan peri­od of approx­im­ately £3 mil­lion. This alloc­a­tion still falls well short of aver­age annu­al fund­ing levels required to achieve that object­ive. The fund­ing also con­tin­ues to oper­ate over a single fin­an­cial year rather than a long-term pro­gramme, which con­strains plan­ning time and capa­city for applic­ants to devel­op and refine pro­ject ideas. Nev­er­the­less, the fund­ing increase does sup­port an increased scale in CLLD activ­ity. This work also allows the Cairngorms 2030 Her­it­age Hori­zons Pro­gramme approach to com­munity grant schemes to be developed and tested through ​“live”, fun­ded approaches rather than solely through policy development.

5. 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

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 12^th August 2022 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.

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 28 July 2022 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

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