CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 2 9^th Septem­ber 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: DEVEL­OP­MENT OF 2023 TO 2027 COR­POR­ATE PLAN

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SERVICES

Pur­pose

This paper seeks Board mem­bers views on the poten­tial struc­ture and con­tent of the Cairngorms NPA Cor­por­ate Plan for 2023 to 2027.

Recom­mend­a­tions

It is recom­men­ded that the Board con­siders the out­line of the pro­posed 2023 to 2027 Cor­por­ate Plan struc­ture and provide any feed­back to sup­port the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of this document.

Back­ground

1. The board agreed a timetable for the devel­op­ment of the Cairngorms NPAs next Cor­por­ate Plan in Decem­ber 2021. This included the estab­lish­ment of a trans­ition­al plan for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ which provides for the deliv­ery of ongo­ing stra­tegic out­comes over the cur­rent fin­an­cial year. This trans­ition­al plan was con­sidered and approved by the board in March 2022 in line with anti­cip­ated schedule.

2. The timetable fore­cast the con­sid­er­a­tion of poten­tial key themes for inclu­sion in the Cor­por­ate Plan and con­sid­er­a­tion of the details of the Cor­por­ate Plan in June and Septem­ber 2022. Pro­gress has slipped slightly behind that inten­ded sched­ule as we worked to final­ise the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) and delivered against oth­er imme­di­ate pri­or­it­ies. This paper now com­mences the dis­cus­sion on the devel­op­ment of the Cor­por­ate Plan for 2023 to 2027, with fur­ther and more detailed con­sid­er­a­tion to come to the board in Novem­ber 2022 pri­or to an aim to com­plete and approve the Cor­por­ate Plan at the board’s meet­ing in March 2023.

Ini­tial Draft Cor­por­ate Plan Structure

1. An ini­tial draft struc­ture for the 2023 to 2027 Cor­por­ate Plan is presen­ted at Annex I to this paper. This Annex is clearly and delib­er­ately incom­plete in order to rein­force the early draft nature of this doc­u­ment. The pur­pose of the skel­et­on doc­u­ment set out at Annex I is to present the Park Author­ity board with an indic­a­tion of the planned struc­ture and format of the Cor­por­ate Plan at an early stage, in order that

2. The Man­age­ment Team pro­pose to take a clear and con­sist­ent focus from the NPPP in devel­op­ment of the Cor­por­ate Plan, tak­ing the agreed NPPP object­ives and actions as a start point. An illus­tra­tion of this pro­cess is provided in the table in Annex I show­ing the devel­op­ment of Cor­por­ate Object­ives for the Nature theme.

3. From those con­sist­ent NPPP based start points, the Cor­por­ate Plan will seek to estab­lish the key dir­ect actions and indir­ect influ­en­cing, part­ner­ship work­ing and coordin­at­ing activ­it­ies that we will under­take over the com­ing four year peri­od. In this way, we pro­pose to make more expli­cit the range of dir­ect and indir­ect action required by the Cairngorms NPA, through its board and staff group, in mak­ing the Park Authority’s con­tri­bu­tion to deliv­er­ing the NPPP.

4. The Annex sets out a small num­ber of illus­trat­ive examples of the type of dir­ect and indir­ect actions that the cor­por­ate plan may show, to give a sense of this pro­posed approach.

5. The Cor­por­ate Plan will also sum­mar­ise the key organ­isa­tion­al devel­op­ment and com­mu­nic­a­tions activ­it­ies planned over the course of the peri­od in a sim­il­ar fash­ion to the estab­lish­ment of our stra­tegic out­comes for People and Place, in the same way as illus­trated for the Nature theme.

Per­form­ance Management

1. Intern­al audit have reviewed our per­form­ance man­age­ment sys­tems earli­er this year, with the report due to be con­sidered by the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee at its next meet­ing. With­in a gen­er­ally pos­it­ive report, a small num­ber of recom­mend­a­tions for improve­ment are sug­ges­ted in our systems.

2. Intern­al audit recom­mend that the Cor­por­ate Plan is sup­por­ted by a suf­fi­cient mix of qual­it­at­ive and quant­it­at­ive meas­ures and indic­at­ors that clearly define the pro­posed out­come of the activ­it­ies being under­taken. In addi­tion, man­age­ment should look to increase the links to the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, hence stream­lin­ing pre­vi­ous meas­ure­ment and report­ing pro­cesses. The pro­posed cor­por­ate plan struc­ture begins the pro­cess of design­ing this recom­mend­a­tion into our future per­form­ance man­age­ment sys­tem through estab­lish­ing a clear and con­sist­ent link from the NPPP object­ives and actions into our cor­por­ate object­ives and pri­or­ity actions. We will also seek to draw wherever pos­sible on out­come meas­ures and key per­form­ance indic­at­ors estab­lished in the NPPP in estab­lish­ing our own organ­isa­tion­al per­form­ance man­age­ment framework.

3. Over­all, our aim is to design a single per­form­ance man­age­ment frame­work and report­ing sys­tem which will allow for single, integ­rated reports to be pro­duced on the over­all achieve­ments against NPPP object­ives, togeth­er with our own cor­por­ate per­form­ance in dir­ectly con­trib­ut­ing to and indir­ectly sup­port­ing NPPP delivery.

Vis­ion, Mis­sion and Culture

1. There are no major changes pro­posed in the mis­sion, vis­ion and cul­ture of the organ­isa­tion from that estab­lished in the 2018 to 2022 cor­por­ate plan. On review, the Seni­or Man­age­ment Team believe that these ele­ments of the Cairngorms NPA cor­por­ate plan remain cur­rent and valid.

2. The draft cor­por­ate plan for 2023 to 2027 also pro­poses to retain the organ­isa­tion­al devel­op­ment object­ive to be the best small pub­lic body in Scotland.

Future Steps

1. The Seni­or Man­age­ment Team will con­tin­ue devel­op­ment of a draft cor­por­ate plan sub­ject to the thoughts of the board on the draft struc­ture presen­ted with this paper.

2. The board, in due course, will be asked to con­sider a full detailed draft of the cor­por­ate plan as a next step in the evol­u­tion of a final pro­pos­al. The board will also be asked to con­sider the estab­lish­ment of a new stra­tegic risk and oppor­tun­ity register to com­ple­ment the devel­op­ment and sub­sequent deliv­ery of the new cor­por­ate plan, and to con­sider its risk appet­ite around ele­ments of cor­por­ate plan delivery.

3. In par­al­lel with this pro­cess, intern­al audit are under­tak­ing a pro­cess of assur­ance map­ping. This will estab­lish the key ele­ments of gov­ernance, man­age­ment and oper­a­tions across which the board and seni­or man­agers must have assur­ance and the sources and strength of that assur­ance. This pro­cess will help ana­lyse the meth­ods through which board and man­age­ment exer­cise con­trol and scru­tiny of deliv­ery of our stra­tegic out­comes and help embed the wider work on gov­ernance under­taken by board and man­age­ment over the last years. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee will be under­tak­ing an ini­tial con­sid­er­a­tion of the pro­cess and struc­ture of this exer­cise at its next meeting.

4. The fin­an­cial plans to under­pin the cor­por­ate plan will be developed from Decem­ber onwards, once the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ budget is pub­lished by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. This point in Decem­ber presents the most appro­pri­ate plat­form on which to build the detailed budget for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ and for­ward budgets for the remainder of this cor­por­ate plan peri­od. The board and its com­mit­tees will inter­act in this pro­cess between Decem­ber 2022 and March 2023.

Dav­id Cameron

15 August 2022

davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk