221209CNPAReroucesCtteePaper1AAFinanceMonitoring2223

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Resources Com­mit­tee Paper | 9 Decem­ber 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY RESOURCES COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ BUDGET MON­IT­OR­ING Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services

Pur­pose This paper presents an over­view of the Cairngorms NPA’s budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion at as at 31 Octo­ber 2022, the end of the sev­enth month of the cur­rent fin­an­cial year.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Resources Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Con­sider the budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃; b) Con­sider any risks around achiev­ing an out­turn with­in tar­get para­met­ers arising from the cur­rent budget mon­it­or­ing pos­i­tion on which the Com­mit­tee wishes to see spe­cif­ic man­age­ment action.

Over­view

1. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has announced that the pre­vi­ously advised 2% reduc­tion in ori­gin­al grant in aid alloc­a­tions will not now be removed from envir­on­ment bod­ies alloc­a­tions for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. This returns £129,000 into the fore­cast resource pos­i­tion avail­able for the Cairngorms NPA in the cur­rent fin­an­cial year.
2. Pre­vi­ous key ele­ments of the in-year fin­an­cial pos­i­tion are sus­tained into the cur­rent mon­it­or­ing pos­i­tion. The under­spend against the ori­gin­al pro­file of invest­ment in staff remains, and has been util­ised in part through the agreed sup­ple­ment­ary pay award to staff in year to reflect the impact of the cost of liv­ing crisis and linked eco­nom­ic con­di­tions such as increas­ing interest rates. Levels of oper­a­tion­al plan com­mit­ment against expect­a­tions also remains low in some areas of activ­ity, as has been com­mon in many years of the park authority’s operations.
3. The fin­an­cial pos­i­tion con­tin­ues to sup­port pro­jec­tion of a break-even out­turn pos­i­tion as tar­geted in the Authority’s approved budget for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃.
4. The detail of the fin­an­cial mon­it­or­ing pos­i­tion is set out in Annex One to this paper.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Resources Com­mit­tee Paper | 9 Decem­ber 2022

Staff and Board

1. After imple­ment­a­tion and back-dat­ing of the ini­tial ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ pay award, and allow­ance for the phased imple­ment­a­tion of the sup­ple­ment­ary award which will not be imple­men­ted through payroll until 28 Novem­ber 2022, our actu­al expendit­ure against salar­ies budget remains in a favour­able pos­i­tion. An under­spend of £65,800 remains at the end of the mon­it­or­ing peri­od: equi­val­ent to 2.66% of the £2.473m budget for the peri­od in ques­tion. While there is expect­a­tion that this level of under­spend will con­tin­ue to reduce as more planned recruit­ment is com­pleted over the course of the year, there is a reas­on­able expect­a­tion that up to £120,000 of this budget may be avail­able for real­loc­a­tion to sup­port oper­a­tion­al plan investment.

Pro­gramme Management

1. All expec­ted pro­gramme man­age­ment costs have been recovered from extern­al funds as expec­ted. There are no budget excep­tions to report, and no unanti­cip­ated impacts of pro­gramme budget man­age­ment on the cent­ral budget for the Park Authority.

Run­ning Costs

1. Over­all, run­ning costs are broadly in line with budget expect­a­tions. At the end of the cur­rent report­ing peri­od, there are rel­at­ively small under­spends on oth­er staff and board costs and facil­it­ies costs. This is off­set by an over­spend on phased budgets at the end of the peri­od on IT and Pro­fes­sion­al Ser­vices costs, bring­ing the over­all pos­i­tion for run­ning costs into line with budget phasing.

Oper­a­tion­al Plan

1. The oper­a­tion­al plan pos­i­tion on budget against actu­al invest­ment shows a vari­able pos­i­tion across the park authority’s areas of activ­ity, with invest­ment in pro­jects sup­port­ing People, Place and Com­mu­nic­a­tions in line with or ahead of budget pro­file and oth­er areas under budget. Over­all, exclud­ing peat­land res­tor­a­tion works which is under­pinned by a sep­ar­ate ring-fenced budget, the pos­i­tion at the end of the mon­it­or­ing peri­od is some £85,000 under a pro­filed budget expendit­ure of £962,000.

2. While still under­spent against over­all budget, the pos­i­tion is rel­at­ively strong in terms of expendit­ure pos­i­tion against budget com­pared with equi­val­ent point of pre­vi­ous years. This is a strong achieve­ment by the staff group at a time when there is also a sig­ni­fic­ant resource deploy­ment in terms of staff time into the Her­it­age Hori­zons Cairngorms 2030 Programme.

3. The fin­ance team are aware that con­tracts and requis­i­tions con­tin­ue to be raised, giv­ing some assur­ance that work con­tin­ues at a pace which will bring over­all budget pos­i­tions toward the out­turn expect­a­tion by the end of the fin­an­cial year.

Peat­land Programme

1. While the pos­i­tion against the peat­land pro­gramme remains par­tic­u­larly low for actu­al cash expendit­ure in com­par­is­on with full year budget, we are aware that a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of grant con­tracts have now been issued and agreed for the year, with capital

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 19 Decem­ber 2022 com­mit­ments now at around £2m. There is clearly a sig­ni­fic­ant lag in grant claims or grant pay­ments which will be invest­ig­ated with the team.

1. The Peat­land and Fin­ance Teams have under­taken a mid-year review of the pos­i­tion of the peat­land pro­gramme. It is expec­ted that at least £700,000 of the alloc­ated cap­it­al resource for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ will not be required in the cur­rent year as the over­all mix of work com­plex­it­ies have delivered con­tract val­ues lower than ori­gin­ally fore­cast when sub­mit­ting the pro­jec­tions for the peat­land pro­gramme in 2021. We will engage with the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment team man­aging this area of work and budget on this mat­ter to con­sider poten­tial reph­as­ing of budget into future years should the Cairngorms Peat­land Action team believe that is necessary.

2. The pro­gramme review has con­firmed that tar­get area for res­tor­a­tion in the fin­an­cial year will be achieved or exceeded des­pite the lower than fore­cast expenditure.

Oth­er Budget Con­sid­er­a­tions Impacts

1. There are no pro­gramme or pro­ject man­age­ment impacts on the Park Authority’s core budget iden­ti­fied. There are no unanti­cip­ated calls on fin­an­cial resources cre­ated by the Park Authority’s lead­er­ship or account­able body roles for these pro­grammes and projects.

2. With the grant-in-aid pos­i­tion con­firmed again at the ori­gin­al alloc­a­tion level, the only impact on income levels is from oth­er, non-grant income from plan­ning fees, oth­er recharged costs and con­tri­bu­tions received toward core expendit­ure. This income pos­i­tion is £15,600 below budget in the report­ing peri­od, with some risk that the full budget level will not be real­ised by the end of the fin­an­cial year. Over­all this risk can be mit­ig­ated in man­age­ment of the wider budget pos­i­tion and does not pose a sig­ni­fic­ant risk to the fin­an­cial man­age­ment pos­i­tion for the year.

Dav­id Camer­on Novem­ber 2022 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk