230811ResourcesCtteePaper1_2023-24BudgetMonitoring

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 1 11 August 2023 Page 1 of 4

For dis­cus­sion Title: Budget mon­it­or­ing Pre­pared by: Louise Allen Pur­pose This paper sets out an over­view of the Park Authority’s budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion at the end of the first quarter of the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ fin­an­cial year — 30 June 2023.

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

Over­view

1. Appendix 1 provides a sum­mary of expendit­ure against the pro­filed budget for the first quarter of the year. Over­all, expendit­ure is well with­in budget: 12% lower than anti­cip­ated against the phased budget for this first quarter of the year.

Budget changes

1. Since the budget was form­ally approved, there have been changes to the avail­ab­il­ity of fund­ing: a) we were able to pay for­ward on our ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ com­mit­ment to Cairngorms 2030 (C2030), b) we have been made aware that our expect­a­tions for both cap­it­al and resource fund­ing to sup­port peat­land res­tor­a­tion may not be met, and c) the anti­cip­ated pay award for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄, may exceed our budget pro­vi­sion. These changes are set out in appendix 2.

2. In March 2023, we paid £150k from the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ budget to sup­port our com­mit­ment to C2030 for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ by provid­ing cash flow cov­er for the Devel­op­ment Phase activ­it­ies. This provided extra head­room in the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ budget. We have applied this to cov­er some areas of the budget that we felt, from fur­ther exam­in­a­tion of the detail of the likely costs, were under-resourced, such as the cost of our shared- ser­vices agree­ment with Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Nation­al Park Authority.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 1 11 August 2023 Page 2 of 4

1. £3.5k has been alloc­ated to cov­er a short exten­sion to the con­tract of the Green Health Link Work­er cur­rently engaged on the nature pre­scrip­tions pro­ject with­in the C2030 pro­gramme. This will allow con­tinu­ity of staff­ing, on what is a well-regarded pro­ject, for a short time after the end of the C2030 devel­op­ment phase (17 August 2023).

2. Anti­cip­ated resource fund­ing for peat­land res­tor­a­tion was £614k, and this included an alloc­a­tion to cov­er ele­ments of sup­port costs such as trans­port, office costs, and fin­ance and IT sup­port. We now have avail­able fund­ing of £510k. This leaves the peat­land team with around £100k less budget for non-staff costs than had been anti­cip­ated. In addi­tion, the cap­it­al budget made avail­able has been reduced by £507k to £3,636k. There is some con­fid­ence that these short­falls will be secured from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment as part of their ongo­ing budget revi­sions pro­cess. For the time being, it is sug­ges­ted appro­pri­ate that we take a prudent fin­an­cial man­age­ment per­spect­ive and recog­nise the pos­i­tion includ­ing the cur­rent shortfall.

3. Mod­el­ling of the impact of the poten­tial pay award indic­ates that our ori­gin­al budget estim­ate, made before the dir­ec­tion on the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ award had been determ­ined, is likely to require a fur­ther £85k of resources.

4. Fur­ther space has been found with­in the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ budget. This arises from a change in the account­ing treat­ment we are required to apply to leases for prop­erty and vehicles. In the past these costs have been accoun­ted for as resource expendit­ure. We are now required to treat leased assets as cap­it­al items known as ​‘Right of Use’ (RoU) assets. The ini­tial recog­ni­tion of these RoU assets happened in the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ accounts, using cap­it­al budget (CDEL) spe­cific­ally provided to accom­mod­ate the new account­ing treat­ment. The change releases a little over £140k from the resource grant budget. New lease arrange­ments under­taken dur­ing the year will res­ult in cap­it­al expendit­ure. At present there is uncer­tainty around wheth­er these costs will be met by addi­tion­al budget from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. To ful­fil our cur­rent plans without addi­tion­al budget we will need to alloc­ate £160k from our dir­ect cap­it­al budget (£1,100k) to cov­er new vehicle leases and the renew­al of the Bal­later office lease. We will mon­it­or pro­gress on this budget pos­i­tion over the com­ing months.

5. The adjus­ted pos­i­tion is a small sur­plus of £3k.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 1 11 August 2023 Page 3 of 4

Staff and Board

1. The cost of staff and board remu­ner­a­tion (includ­ing employ­ers’ nation­al insur­ance and pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions) is with­in budget for the quarter. Allow­ance has been made for the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ pay awards not yet hav­ing been imple­men­ted. As dis­cussed above, the out­turn fore­cast has been increased by the budget adjust­ment of £85k.

Pro­gramme management

1. All pro­gramme man­age­ment costs have been recovered from extern­al funds as expec­ted. The alloc­a­tion of a fur­ther £3.5k to the C2030 pro­gramme is dis­cussed above. There are no oth­er budget excep­tions to report.

Run­ning costs

1. Over­all, run­ning costs are in line with budget expectations.

2. There is a small over­spend against the phased budget for ​‘Oth­er staff and board costs’. This budget has been pro­filed in an even spread across the year. How­ever, expendit­ure in the first quarter includes early costs for Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment, includ­ing train­ing and recruit­ment advert­ising. Presently, there are no con­cerns about the poten­tial for over­spend towards the year end.

3. Oth­er run­ning costs (facil­it­ies and IT/ pro­fes­sion­al costs) are run­ning below the phased budget, so that the over­all pos­i­tion is £1.5k under budget. Pro­jec­tions for the full year remain in line with budget.

Oper­a­tion­al plan

1. The pro­file for invest­ment on the oper­a­tion­al plan is shown in appendix 3.

2. As anti­cip­ated, the spend in the first quarter has been light – 3% of the oper­a­tion­al plan budget.

3. The fore­cast for quarter two shows a step increase, so that by the half year mark we’re anti­cip­at­ing a spend of just under a quarter of the total oper­a­tion­al plan budget. Quar­ters three and four then apply the remain­ing budget in equal measure.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 1 11 August 2023 Page 4 of 4

1. At the end of June, we had com­mit­ted £1,621k towards the oper­a­tion­al plan – actu­al spend of £181k togeth­er with leg­al com­mit­ments of £1,440k. This rep­res­ents 24% of planned invest­ment. Reg­u­lar mon­it­or­ing of the com­mit­ted pos­i­tion will continue.

2. The most sig­ni­fic­ant budget with­in the oper­a­tion­al plan is that for peat­land res­tor­a­tion. To date, there has been very little expendit­ure against this budget, but the award of grant con­tracts is under­way, with cap­it­al com­mit­ments of £635k at the end of June.

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