231208PerfCtteePaper2CCLDCTrustUpdate

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 8 Decem­ber 2023

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For Dis­cus­sion Title: Cairngorms Trust and Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment Update Pre­pared by: Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Pur­pose This paper presents an update on the work of the Cairngorms Loc­al Action Group Trust (‘the Cairngorms Trust’) and the col­lect­ive work of the Cairngorms Trust and the Park Author­ity in Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) activity.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Board Is asked to: a) Wheth­er the pro­grammes of activ­ity are mak­ing the expec­ted con­tri­bu­tion to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority’s agreed stra­tegic outcomes.

b) Wheth­er the deliv­ery updates sug­gest any stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant impacts on the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority’s agreed per­form­ance objectives.

c) Wheth­er any mater­i­al impacts on the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures arise from assess­ment of pro­gramme delivery.

Per­form­ance Dash­board Assess­ment of the deliv­ery of work being taken for­ward by the Cairngorms Trust and in devel­op­ment of Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park against key per­form­ance meas­ures is presen­ted in the fol­low­ing table. The over­all assess­ment and risk rat­ing against these meas­ures is presen­ted as com­pared to the pre­vi­ous rat­ing last repor­ted to the Com­mit­tee in June 2023.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 8 Decem­ber 2023

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Per­form­ance Meas­ure	Pri­or Rat­ing	Cur­rent Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
Fin­ance: Deliv­er Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme, max­im­ising use of resources made available.	Blue (Com­plete)	Blue (com­plete)	Pro­gramme con­cluded 31 Decem­ber 2021, with final pro­ject LEAD­ER spend at 95% of alloc­a­tion and total pro­ject expendit­ure at 168% of alloc­a­tion after account­ing for match fund­ing levered into projects.
Audit: clean clos­ure of LEAD­ER Pro­gramme includ­ing mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation of per­form­ance indicators.	Blue (Com­plete)	Blue (com­plete)	All pro­ject records final­ised. No mat­ters arising with respect to LEAD­ER clos­ure over last 8 months. Sug­gest this can now be closed as an ele­ment of per­form­ance monitoring.
Policy: secure future Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) of equi­val­ent value to LEAD­ER Pro­gramme allocation.	Amber	Green	Final alloc­a­tion of £320,000 secured from nation­al alloc­a­tion of £7 mil­lion for 2022⁄23. Ini­tial alloc­a­tion of £225,000 for 2023⁄24, has been increased sub­sequently to £373,000 and in Novem­ber to £403,000 through access­ing fur­ther cap­it­al funds made avail­able and suc­cess­fully bid for. While no long term or multi-year com­mit­ment is in place, fund­ing alloc­a­tions to CLLD is now approach­ing pre­vi­ous LEAD­ER Pro­gramme values.
Policy: Devel­op and imple­ment vol­un­tary giv­ing mech­an­isms through Cairngorms Trust.	Amber	Amber	This remains a chal­len­ging area of work. Cairngorms Trust is seek­ing to rein­vig­or­ate the stake­hold­er group advising on the devel­op­ment of vol­un­tary giv­ing approaches while con­tinu­ing to tri­al and test approaches.
Fin­ance: increase vol­un­tary giv­ing returns with­in Trust’s	Red	Red	Cur­rent level of returns over peri­od of COV­ID restric­tions well below

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 8 Decem­ber 2023

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Per­form­ance Meas­ure	Pri­or Rat­ing	Cur­rent Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
future fund­ing pro­file to a level which sus­tain costs of infra­struc­ture and return mean­ing­ful sur­pluses for investment.			tar­geted levels and remain below ori­gin­al targets.
Policy: oper­a­tion of char­it­able mech­an­ism an effect­ive ele­ment of Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan pri­or­ity delivery.	Green	Green	The capa­city to work in part­ner­ship with an inde­pend­ent char­ity cov­er­ing the Cairngorms has been a cru­cial ele­ment in suc­cess­ful deliv­ery of Green Recov­ery Fund­ing; in secur­ing resource for CLLD made avail­able over the last three years; and in com­munity engage­ment in deliv­er­ing loc­al pri­or­it­ies. The use of the char­ity mech­an­ism to estab­lish the Cairngorms Youth Loc­al Action Group as a del­eg­ated grant award­ing body has received nation­al prom­in­ence and now fea­tures as an exem­plar approach in Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment CLLD guid­ance for 2023/2024.

Stra­tegic context

1. The Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan for 2022 to 2027 includes the fol­low­ing object­ive: a) B7 Com­munity-led Plan­ning and Devel­op­ment: Com­munit­ies have up to-date com­munity action plans and are sup­por­ted by a com­munity-led loc­al devel­op­ment fund­ing pro­gramme, deliv­er­ing the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.

2. This object­ive has an asso­ci­ated action of: devel­op and admin­is­ter a new com­munity-led devel­op­ment fund­ing stream, which is being taken for­ward through the work covered by this paper.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 8 Decem­ber 2023

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1. The Park Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan agreed by the board in March 2023 includes the fol­low­ing rel­ev­ant stra­tegic object­ives asso­ci­ated with this aspect of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan: a) Dir­ect activ­ity by the Park Author­ity: act as account­able body or oth­er sup­port­ing role as required to under­pin deliv­ery of CLLD in Cairngorms. b) Indir­ect activ­ity sup­por­ted or resourced by the Park Author­ity: influ­ence stra­tegic devel­op­ment of nation­al focus on and design of CLLD to secure an adequate level of resourcing which con­tin­ues to focus on Cairngorms NP as an admin­is­trat­ive boundary.

Stra­tegic risk management

1. Stra­tegic risks of rel­ev­ance to con­sid­er­a­tion of per­form­ance of the pro­grammes of work con­sidered by this paper are: a) A1: Resource risk remedi­al mit­ig­a­tion: Con­tinu­ing to sup­port ​“deliv­ery bod­ies” such as Cairngorms Nature, Cairngorms Trust in secur­ing inward invest­ment. b) A11.1 Stra­tegic Risk on Resourcing: Role as Lead / Account­able body for major pro­grammes (e.g. LEAD­ER, Land­scape Part­ner­ship) has risk of sig­ni­fic­ant fin­an­cial claw­back should expendit­ure prove to be not eli­gible for fund­ing, while CNPA car­ries respons­ib­il­it­ies as employ­er for pro­gramme staff. c) A11.2 Stra­tegic Risk Resourcing: the end of major pro­gramme invest­ments (Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et, LEAD­ER) requires sig­ni­fic­ant ongo­ing staff­ing to man­age audit and leg­acy which the Author­ity finds dif­fi­cult to resource. d) A12.2 Stra­tegic Risk on Resourcing: future com­munity led loc­al devel­op­ment fund­ing cur­rently delivered through LEAD­ER, togeth­er with wider fund­ing pre­vi­ously from EU struc­tur­al and agri­cul­tur­al sources is lost and cre­ates a sig­ni­fic­ant gap in our capa­city to deliv­er against our devel­op­ment pri­or­it­ies. e) A28 Stra­tegic Risk on Staff­ing: deliv­ery of key out­comes is impacted by staff turnover, par­tic­u­larly in pro­ject teams.

2. There are no mat­ters of stra­tegic sig­ni­fic­ance which are assessed to mer­it escal­a­tion at this time in the opin­ion of seni­or man­agers lead­ing the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority’s link­age to the areas of activ­ity covered by this paper and asso­ci­ated reports.

Sup­port­ing information

1. The Cairngorms Trust work­ing with the Park Author­ity as its Account­able Body has suc­cess­fully secured addi­tion­al fund­ing for the cur­rent year in sup­port of CLLD

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 8 Decem­ber 2023

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activ­it­ies for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄. The ori­gin­al alloc­a­tion of £225,000 in resource (rev­en­ue) fund­ing was sup­ple­men­ted by a suc­cess­ful bid for an addi­tion­al £179,000 in cap­it­al fund­ing. This cap­it­al fin­ance has now been fur­ther increased by a fur­ther £30,000 from remain­ing fin­ances avail­able with­in the nation­al pro­gramme. Total CLLD resources of over £400,000 for the cur­rent fin­an­cial year are now at a level of total fund­ing which approach the equi­val­ent annu­al val­ues avail­able in pre­vi­ous multi-year LEAD­ER pro­grammes of between £2m and £3m over a 5 to 6 year period.

1. The lack of con­firmed multi-year fund­ing remains a key lim­it­a­tion in our sup­port of CLLD activ­it­ies. Com­munity groups are not able to plan and devel­op their pro­ject pro­pos­als over the long term without facing the risks of fin­ances not being avail­able in future years. This acts to pre­vent sup­port to sig­ni­fic­ant ​‘step-change’ pro­jects in loc­al communities.

2. The funds made avail­able over the course of the cur­rent year have sup­por­ted a total of 22 pro­jects over a range of Cairngorms com­munit­ies: Grant­own-on-Spey, Kin­gussie, Glen­more, Carr-Bridge, Badenoch & Strath­spey, Brae­mar, New­ton­more, Aviemore, Dal­whin­nie, Marr Area, and Park-Wide projects.

3. The most recent update presen­ted by the Trust Man­ager to the Trust’s board meet­ing of 21 Novem­ber is presen­ted at Annex 1 to this report. This report gives a fla­vour of the recent activ­it­ies of the Cairngorms Trust to Com­mit­tee members.

4. The Trust con­tin­ues to receive small value vol­un­tary dona­tions each quarter. The Trust is seek­ing to rein­vig­or­ate an advis­ory group of stake­hold­ers estab­lished to advise on its work in devel­op­ment of vol­un­tary giv­ing schemes. This has proven to be a very dif­fi­cult area to devel­op, and impacted sig­ni­fic­antly by the COVID19 pan­dem­ic and the wider focus on recov­ery from that by com­munit­ies and busi­nesses in recent years.

5. The Trust will devel­op its busi­ness case to 2027 over the com­ing months and future work in devel­op­ing vol­un­tary giv­ing approaches is expec­ted to fea­ture as part of that busi­ness plan.

6. The col­lect­ive work of the Cairngorms Trust and Park Author­ity in this area of activ­ity is to an extent lead­ing the way for devel­op­ment of approaches to CLLD in Scot­land. Our decision to incor­por­ate the Loc­al Action Group (LAG) some years ago as a Scot­tish Incor­por­ated Char­it­able Organ­isa­tion (SCIO) is now a high­lighted aspect of

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 8 Decem­ber 2023

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good gov­ernance with­in the Scot­tish Government’s policy doc­u­ment­a­tion. Sim­il­arly, our decision to estab­lish the Youth LAG, and to do so with­in the Trust’s char­it­able struc­ture, is also now reflec­ted as an exem­plar approach by Scot­tish Government’s CLLD guidance.

Dav­id Cameron