230808PerfCtteePaper1_PeatlandACTION

For Dis­cus­sion

Title: Cairngorms Peat­land ACTION Pro­gramme Pre­pared by: Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Management

Pur­pose This paper presents an update on the deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority’s Peat­land ACTION pro­gramme in 2023 – 24.

Recom­mend­a­tions a) The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to note the pro­gramme update

Stra­tegic Background

1. The peat­land pro­gramme will con­trib­ute to the deliv­ery of the tar­gets and pri­or­it­ies of Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 4. It is also key for assist­ing in the imple­ment­a­tion of the Her­it­age Hori­zon Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme, provid­ing the major­ity of the Programme’s planned match fund­ing for the deliv­ery phase com­men­cing mid 2023 sub­ject to bid approv­al. The pro­gramme is sup­port­ing the deliv­ery of the Scot­tish Government’s peat­land res­tor­a­tion targets.

Per­form­ance Dashboard

Per­form­ance Meas­ure for 2023⁄24	Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
Fin­ance: max­im­ise use of £3.63m cap­it­al fin­ance avail­able in 2023⁄24 for peat­land restoration	Green	Spend pro­file is cur­rently on-track.
Fin­ance: impact on Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity budget management	Green	No wider unplanned demands cur­rently made by pro­gramme on fin­an­cial resources.
Res­tor­a­tion tar­get 2023⁄24: 1300ha Res­tor­a­tion Area	Amber	To the end of July, 204ha of res­tor­a­tion work is com­plete, 530 ha is under­way, 365ha of work is sched­uled to start in August 2023, and pro­ject designs are com­plete for a fur­ther 411ha with pro­cure­ment pro­cesses sched­uled for August / Septem­ber 2023. This rep­res­ents a total of 1456ha of work tak­ing place in 2023⁄24 at dif­fer­ent stages of deliv­ery. Works both cur­rently under­way and yet to be awar­ded remain at risk of non-deliv­ery due to on-site com­plic­a­tions, weath­er and con­tract­or capacity.
Pipeline for 2024⁄25: 1515ha Res­tor­a­tion Area	Green	The num­ber of iden­ti­fied pro­jects and total res­tor­a­tion area is robust in terms of secur­ity of land man­ager approv­al and res­tor­a­tion poten­tial, and resi­li­ent in terms of sur­plus built in to accom­mod­ate any slip­page, con­tract­or or tech­nic­al issues. The tar­get can be accom­mod­ated with the cur­rent Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity staff allocation.
Pro­gramme risk profile	Amber	Staff capa­city in the team is largely spent deliv­er­ing the cur­rent year’s pro­gramme. It is chal­len­ging to plan ahead and start work on pre­par­ing the next year’s pipeline. A pro­cured, full ser­vice approach provided by a 3rd party is still in the early stages of devel­op­ment. Early examples will provide reas­sur­ance and a com­pet­it­ive mar­ket­place is expec­ted to evolve. The pace at which this hap­pens is crit­ic­al. Con­tract­or capa­city is build­ing but there remains a sig­ni­fic­ant risk of not being able to secure con­tract­ors for pro­jects put out to tender at this time of year when res­tor­a­tion is already under­way on oth­er sites.
Future fund­ing profile	Green	£3.95m cap­it­al budget has been alloc­ated for 2024⁄25 Pre­vi­ous alloc­a­tions have been suf­fi­cient to deliv­er all pro­filed activ­ity, exceed tar­gets and accom­mod­ate any price fluctuations.
Future deliv­ery profile	Green	Landown­ers remain engaged with Peat­land Action and we have a robust and resi­li­ent pipeline of pro­jects and expres­sions of interest suf­fi­cient for a num­ber of years. We have encour­aged estates to con­sider devel­op­ing agent-led pro­jects with less input from Peat­land Officers. This approach will hope­fully devel­op over the next 1 – 2 years.

²⁰²³⁄₂₄ Deliv­ery progress

1. To the end of July, 204ha of res­tor­a­tion work has been com­pleted, includ­ing approx. 150ha of res­tor­a­tion from pro­jects star­ted in the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ deliv­ery cycle. The remainder of works car­ried over were on Atholl, Mar Lodge and Tulchan of Glen Isla estate.
2. 530 ha of res­tor­a­tion from the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ sched­ule is cur­rently under­way on Del­nadamph (phase 1), Glen Fesh­ie (phase 7), Glen Muick, Atholl and Mar Lodge. 365ha of work has been pro­cured, sched­uled to start in August 2023 on Aber­nethy, Del­nadamph (phase 2) and Lynaberack.
3. Pro­ject designs are com­plete for a fur­ther 411ha on Allar­gue, Atholl, Mar and Phoines. Pro­cure­ment pro­cesses are sched­uled for August/​Septem­ber 2023. Pro­cure­ment pro­cesses at this time of year are at risk of not secur­ing con­tract­ors as many con­tract­ors are com­mit­ted to work on oth­er sites.
4. This rep­res­ents a total of 1456ha of work tak­ing place in ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ in vari­ous stages of completion.
5. Pro­gress against the planned deliv­ery timetable for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ has been chal­len­ging, impacted by a num­ber of com­pound­ing factors. These include delays in land man­agers appoint­ing Peat­land Code agents, land man­ager capa­city to pro­cess mul­tiple sites on one estate, com­plex pro­cure­ment pro­cesses, reduc­tion in size of res­tor­a­tion foot­prints, innov­a­tion in the agent-led approach tak­ing time to devel­op, and con­tract­or capa­city for work tendered in Autumn; all with sub­sequent impacts on Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity staff capacity.
6. In light of these ongo­ing chal­lenges, expect­a­tions are that the total of 1456ha is unlikely to be achieved in full.

²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ Pipeline

1. There is cur­rently a robust pipeline of 25 pos­sible pro­jects that could yield approx. 1700 – 1800ha of res­tor­a­tion activ­ity. This exceeds the tar­get of 1515ha. The pipeline con­sists of exist­ing multi-year com­mit­ments, defer­rals from ²⁰²³⁄₂₄, con­tinu­ations and resump­tions with pre­vi­ous sites, and new applications.
2. Land man­ager interest is not con­sidered to be the main con­strain­ing factor in devel­op­ing a pipeline of pro­jects. To meet the increas­ing tar­gets from the exist­ing, or a slightly aug­men­ted, staff com­ple­ment, a vari­ety of approaches will be needed. The cur­rent ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ pipeline takes this into account with a range of estate, agent and Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity led pro­cesses. Ration­al­isa­tion and pri­or­it­isa­tion of poten­tial pro­jects takes place Janu­ary / Feb­ru­ary 2024. This pro­cess con­siders future pro­gramme needs such as demon­stra­tion sites, innov­a­tion, sup­ply chain capa­city build­ing and land­scape-scale, multi-year fund­ing opportunities.

Fin­ance and Staffing

1. Fin­an­cial sup­port from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment is £4.14m in ²⁰²³⁄₂₄. This com­prises £3.63m cap­it­al fund­ing and £0.51m resource fund­ing. As of the end of July report­ing peri­od, cap­it­al expendit­ure was £380,000. This is in line with the pro­jec­ted cost pro­file. Cap­it­al expendit­ure will increase sig­ni­fic­antly over the com­ing months as the pro­ject cycle moves into the deliv­ery win­dow of Autumn / Winter. Grant offer let­ters issued total approx­im­ately £1.4m.
2. To scale up the peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­gramme towards an annu­al tar­get of around 2000ha per year the pro­ject has encour­aged agent-led approaches whereby the scop­ing and design, his­tor­ic­ally done by Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity, is a pro­cured ser­vice man­aged by the land manager.
3. Land agents, private forest com­pan­ies and spe­cial­ist con­sultan­cies have all star­ted to increase their peat­land res­tor­a­tion expert­ise and we plan to work with them to help devel­op that resource. At this stage the fin­ance driv­ing agent-led pro­jects still comes from Peat­land Action, but green fin­ance options may devel­op if and when the price of car­bon rises.
4. Con­tract­or capa­city is con­sidered adequate and grow­ing suf­fi­ciently to ser­vice the num­ber of pro­jects in the pipeline to meet future tar­gets. We con­tin­ue to mon­it­or this and encour­age ment­or­ing, hybrid approaches and joint ven­tures to grow the skill base in both the con­sultancy and deliv­ery sectors.
5. The 2021/2022 Azets Intern­al Audit of the peat­land pro­gramme con­trols and pro­cesses iden­ti­fied nine improve­ment actions. One Grade 4 (Red) action, four Grade 3 (amber) actions and one Grade 2 (yel­low) action have been imple­men­ted, and one Grade 3 (amber) has been assessed as not a pri­or­ity and is not yet star­ted. The remain­ing actions under­way are:

a) A Ser­vice Level Agree­ment identi­fy­ing the roles and respons­ib­il­it­ies of Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity, Peat­land Action grant applic­ants and con­tract­ors. This is in its final draft. b) A man­age­ment frame­work out­lining all con­trols, pro­cesses and doc­u­ment­a­tion from pre-applic­a­tion to pro­ject clos­ure is under review. This is a sig­ni­fic­ant, com­plex piece of work that will extend through­out 2023.

Colin McCle­an 8^th August 2023