221205AuCteePaper3Annex2AAHHRiskManagement

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 3 Annex 2 5^th Decem­ber 2022

Annex 2 Her­it­age Hori­zons Risk Update (Extract of report to Pro­gramme Man­age­ment Group 24 Novem­ber 2022)

Pro­gramme RAG status

Per­form­ance Meas­ure	RAG status	Issue/​mitigation
Pro­gramme risk profile	Green	Pro­gramme being delivered with­in risk tolerances
Fin­ance: impact on Cairngorms NPA budget management	Amber	Pro­pos­al to extend staff employ­ment con­tracts to reduce pro­gramme deliv­ery risk
Future fund­ing profile	Amber	Extern­al 2022 eco­nom­ic factors (sig­ni­fic­ant rises in infla­tion and con­struc­tion industry costs) will impact on ​“buy­ing power/​real value” of Stage 2 budget. Cur­rently being quan­ti­fied but expec­ted to impact par­tic­u­larly on Staff costs and Trans­port pro­jects, both in terms of scale of con­struc­tion and match fund­ing contributions.
Pro­cure­ment	Green	Tenders awar­ded and con­sult­ants in place
Staff­ing	Amber	Staff employ­ment con­tracts end­ing June 2023. Sig­ni­fic­ant risk of staff turnover pri­or to sub­mis­sion date res­ult­ing in loss of skills, know­ledge and exper­i­ence. SMT to con­sider extend­ing con­tracts to March 2024 to reduce risk of los­ing staff between sub­mis­sion and award notice dates.
SEFARI fel­low­ship	Amber	SEFARI fel­low­ship recruit­ment unsuc­cess­ful in first round. Oppor­tun­ity to be re-designed and re-published.
Pro­ject exe­cu­tion and NLHF second phase applic­a­tion timescales	Amber	Times­cale to meet NLHF second round applic­a­tion dead­line is tight. NLHF con­firm earli­est sub­mis­sion date of 25th May 23 but offer to extend applic­a­tion sub­mis­sion date to 17th August 23
Deliv­ery of Sus­trans fun­ded projects	Amber	Align­ing NLHF times­cales to meet Sus­trans ​‘Places for Every­one’ design stages and uncon­firmed fund­ing com­mit­tee meet­ing schedule

Pro­ject Status Review

Pro­ject Name	RAG Status
1a. Well­being economy	Amber
1b. Pub­lic health and the outdoors	Amber
1c. Demen­tia Activ­ity Resource Centre	Amber
2a. Cli­mate learn­ing and education	Green
2b. Effect­ive Com­munity Engagement	Red
2c. Com­munity Arts and Cul­ture programme	Green
3a. Cli­mate con­scious communities	Green
3c. Com­munity Man­aged Grant Scheme	Red
4a. Region­al Land Use Part­ner­ship & Land Rights and Responsibilities	Green
4b. Green Invest­ment Plan	Amber
5a. Wood­land expansion	Amber
5b. Peat­land restoration	Green
5c. Cli­mate Resi­li­ent Catchments	Amber
5d. South Deeside North Angus Deer Man­age­ment Group	Green
5d. South Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group	Amber
5e. Cairngorms Future Farming	Green
5f. Land­scape and communities	Amber
6a. E‑bike network	Green
6b. Glen­more trans­port plan	Green
6c. Act­ive travel: Badenoch and Strathspey	Green
6d. Sus­tain­able trans­port and act­ive travel: Deeside and Angus	Green
6e. Sus­tain­able Trans­port in High­land Perthshire	Green
6f. Act­ive Aviemore	Green
6g. Stra­tegic Net­work Plan	Green

Pro­jects with Red or Amber RAG Status: Detail of Risks

Pro­ject Name	RAG status	Issue/​mitigation
3c. Com­munity Man­aged Grants	Red	Pro­ject has delivered lots of test and change this peri­od, but much of the con­sol­id­a­tion work on writ­ing the final report has been delayed due to reduced oper­a­tion­al capa­city. Mit­ig­a­tion: Imme­di­ate agency recruit­ment of a Band C post to assist Com­munity Grants Man­ager to devel­op HH pro­ject. The Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Com­munit­ies team are also provid­ing sup­port and guid­ance to com­munit­ies to aid them through their applic­a­tion and assess­ment pro­cess for grant fund­ing. This will con­tin­ue for the remainder of this fin­an­cial year.
2b. Effect­ive Com­munity Engagement	Red	Unsat­is­fact­ory con­sultancy per­form­ance and report­ing. 30-day con­tract improvement/​termination notice to be issued. Pro­ject to be re-alloc­ated to Rur­al Devel­op­ment Team for completion.
1a. Well­being Economy	Amber	Our part­ner did not anti­cip­ate so much time on paper­work, use of ​‘click up’ or par­ti­cip­at­ing in intern­al meet­ings, such as our Eco­nom­ic Steer­ing Group, and Well­being Eco­nomy Work­ing Group (WEWG), and POWER weekly theme meet­ing. Mit­ig­a­tion: WEAll to be effect­ive in their time man­age­ment, to attend essen­tial meet­ings. To put an end date of 30th Nov for all engage­ment and stake­hold­er works for this phase. Util­ise WEWG as advis­ory for devel­op­ment of corner­stone indic­at­ors and busi­ness of wellbeing.
1b. Pub­lic Health & the Outdoors	Amber	Pro­ject requires close mon­it­or­ing due to NHS capa­city in cer­tain areas and the com­mis­sion­ing of mater­nity cov­er caused a slight delay.
1c. Demen­tia Activ­ity Resource Centre	Amber	Pro­gress on cer­tain tasks tak­ing longer than anti­cip­ated. Plan now in place to man­age this.
4b. Green Invest­ment Plan	Amber	Great in-depth review of private fin­ance mod­els for peat­land res­tor­a­tion in Cairngorms. Ini­tial mod­el found want­ing. Exped­ite con­sid­er­a­tion of wider Nat­ur­al cap­it­al invest­ment oppor­tun­it­ies. Uncer­tain regard­ing suf­fi­cient rev­en­ue returns to sat­is­fy total bene­fits envis­aged from pro­jects. Adop­tion of a Con­tract for Dif­fer­ence approach may prove too rad­ic­al for Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and NatureScot.
5a Wood­land Expansion	Amber	Delay in find­ing suit­able pro­ject for £450k deliv­ery phase pro­ject after land man­ager removed sup­port. Team invest­ig­at­ing altern­at­ive options. Budget real­loc­a­tion to Com­munity Grant Fund if none found
5c. Cli­mate Resi­li­ent Catchments	Amber	Pro­ject per­form­ance is good where we have con­sult­ants in place how­ever the delays on one of the pro­jects (Kin­nordy) due to no bids for the first tender and the poten­tial for delays with SEPA flood risk assess­ment approv­al. Mit­ig­a­tion: read­vert­ised tender with high­er budget to entice more bids, we now have two com­pet­ent bids under assess­ment Delays with SEPA mit­ig­ated by early warn­ing to SEPA and by factor­ing in the time required for this dur­ing sum­mer 2023.
5d. South Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group	Amber	SGDMG, SLMP pro­ject was always going to be dif­fi­cult to pro­gress and bring to a good con­clu­sion lead­ing to deliv­er­able out­comes, due to a his­tory of con­flict between mem­bers and agen­cies. Remov­ing deer as the sole con­sid­er­a­tion and con­sid­er­ing wider stra­tegic land man­age­ment has allowed for more con­struct­ive dia­logue and few­er entrenched pos­i­tions. Pro­ject approach agreed with SAC Con­sult­ing provides an oppor­tun­ity to con­sider altern­at­ive land man­age­ment prac­tices with reduced uncer­tainty regard­ing the future for people involved.
5f. Com­munit­ies and Landscape	Amber	Suc­cess­ful deliv­ery of pro­ject con­di­tion­al to SGDMG and NatureScot agree­ing Sec­tion 7 Deer Man­age­ment Plan (how­ever risk of Sec­tion 8). Mit­ig­a­tion: Though we have so far mit­ig­ated for the timetable squeezes, the rat­ing is still amber because of the pos­sible effects on the final stages i.e. hav­ing suf­fi­cient time for the remain­ing sur­vey work and then col­la­tion of out­puts by the land­scape archi­tects. How­ever, to mit­ig­ate this issue dis­cus­sions have been had with con­sult­ants and we are cur­rently review­ing timetable to see if any changes need to be made in scope of work to com­pensate. We are con­fid­ent of the timely deliv­ery of the work, but the amber remains as a pre­cau­tion­ary assessment.