230630ResourcesCtteePaper12023-24BudgetMonitoring

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 1 30 June 2023

For dis­cus­sion Page 1 of 3 Title: ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ Budget mon­it­or­ing Pre­pared by: Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Operations

Pur­pose This paper presents an early over­view of the Park Authority’s budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion at the end of the first two months of the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ fin­an­cial year, as at 31 May

1. The paper focuses on the pos­i­tion of actu­al payroll for the first two months of the year against budget as a test of the robust­ness of this sig­ni­fic­ant ele­ment of the Authority’s budget.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Resources Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Con­sider the budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄

Over­view

1. The appendix provides a sum­mary of expendit­ure against the pro­filed budget. It is early in the year yet and mean­ing­ful trends in expendit­ure have not been estab­lished. How­ever, actu­al spend is 10% lower than anti­cip­ated against the phased budget for the first two months of the year.
2. Budget adjust­ments have been incor­por­ated into the fig­ures and the appendix shows these changes against the budget presen­ted to the Board at its meet­ing in March 2023. These adjust­ments have been made pos­sible by pay­ment for­ward, at the end of 2022 – 23, of part (£150k) of our annu­al con­tri­bu­tion to the Cairngorms 2030 project.

Staff Costs

1. The budgeted invest­ment in staff over the year is a key ele­ment of the budget, at £4.841 mil­lion, equi­val­ent to 36.8% of the total expendit­ure budget resourced by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment grant in aid. The pos­i­tion against this budget fig­ure of the first two months’ payroll there­fore rep­res­ents a key test of the robust­ness of this sig­ni­fic­ant budget figure.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 1 30 June 2023

Page 2 of 3

1. Expec­ted budget for payroll in April and May after allow­ing for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ pay awards not yet being imple­men­ted, is £776,000 includ­ing employ­ers’ nation­al insur­ance and pen­sion contributions.
2. Actu­al value of payroll and asso­ci­ated costs for April and May is £770,000: a favour­able vari­ance of £6,000 against budget: less than 1% vari­ation under budget.
3. The budget allows for per­form­ance related incre­ments, and an annu­al award of 4%. Provid­ing the final award remains at this level, the budget would appear to be realistic
4. As is always the case, the fin­ance team and Seni­or Man­age­ment Team will play close atten­tion to this budget pos­i­tion over the early months of the year to determ­ine wheth­er any budget real­loc­a­tion may be warranted.

Pro­gramme Management

1. All expec­ted pro­gramme man­age­ment costs are being recovered from extern­al fun­ders, and there are no unanti­cip­ated impacts from the pro­grammes on the cent­ral budget for the Park Authority

Run­ning Costs

1. Over­all, run­ning costs show an under­spend of £50k against the phased budget. This seems to be a tim­ing effect and the Fin­ance Man­ager is cur­rently review­ing the budget pro­file to allow us to provide mem­bers with a more appro­pri­ate bench­mark for run­ning costs.

Oper­a­tion­al Plan

1. Heads of Ser­vice have car­ried out an exer­cise to fore­cast the phas­ing of their budgets across the year. This will provide a bench­mark against which to under­stand the tim­ing of expendit­ure. They are work­ing to con­tract expendit­ure as early in the year as pos­sible, with the aim of achiev­ing a more bal­anced spend pro­file across the year. The phased oper­a­tion­al plan budget shown in the appendix reflects the pre­dicted pro­file for April and May. While this approach is not an exact sci­ence, it will give us a view of where expendit­ure is fall­ing behind our expec­ted time­frame and should there­fore provide us with early warn­ing of the poten­tial for under/​overspend.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 1 30 June 2023

Page 3 of 3 Peat­land restoration

1. Most of the sig­ni­fic­ant expendit­ure to date on peat­land res­tor­a­tion has con­trib­uted to the final­isa­tion of pro­jects con­trac­ted in 2022 – 23 or before. The lim­ited expendit­ure (circa £12k) has been on sun­dry staff resources, includ­ing train­ing and equipment.

Oth­er Budget Considerations

1. No pro­gramme or pro­ject man­age­ment impacts on the Park Authority’s core budget have been 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.

Louise Allen Louiseallen@​cairngorms.​co.​uk