240308PerfCtteePaper2PeatlandActionProgramme

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 08 March 2024 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 1 of 5

For dis­cus­sion

Title: Cairngorms Peat­land ACTION Programme

Pre­pared by: Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change

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

Recom­mend­a­tions The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to review the pro­gramme update and note:

a) pro­gress against pro­gramme tar­gets for 2023 – 24. b) planned pro­gramme for 2024 – 25 c) pos­sible effects on the pro­gramme of revised nation­al budget positions

Stra­tegic Background

1. The peat­land pro­gramme will con­trib­ute to the deliv­ery of the tar­gets and pri­or­it­ies of NPPP4. It is also key for assist­ing in the imple­ment­a­tion of the Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme, provid­ing £12mill of the Programme’s planned match fund­ing. The pro­gramme is sup­port­ing the deliv­ery of the Scot­tish Government’s peat­land res­tor­a­tion targets.

Per­form­ance Dashboard

Per­form­ance Meas­ure	Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
Fin­ance: max­im­ise use of £3.63 mil­lion cap­it­al fin­ance avail­able in 2023⁄24 for peat­land restoration	Amber	As of 9th Feb­ru­ary 2024 the value of com­pleted pro­jects was 1.426 mill. The value of ongo­ing, act­ive pro­jects is estim­ated at 759K. The value of pro­jects we aim to start in March 2024 is estim­ated at 542K. This indic­ates a total of £900,000 of avail­able cap­it­al not fully utilised.
Fin­ance: impact on Cairngorms NPA budget management	Green	No wider unplanned demands cur­rently made by pro­gramme on fin­an­cial resources. The resource budget is likely to be fully spent.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 08 March 2024 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 2 of 5

Per­form­ance Meas­ure	Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
Res­tor­a­tion tar­get 2023⁄24: 1300ha Res­tor­a­tion Area	Amber	Com­pleted pro­jects are estim­ated to have delivered 831ha. Sites where work is still ongo­ing are likely to deliv­er a max­im­um of 361ha. This is a total max­im­um deliv­ery of 1192ha.
Pipeline for 2024⁄25: 1515ha Res­tor­a­tion Area	Green	Demand for peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­jects remains high and the pipeline is fully developed with 13 con­firmed and 2 con­tin­gency pro­jects. Full deliv­ery would exceed the 2024⁄25 target.
2024⁄25 Pro­gramme risk profile	Green	Budget set­tle­ment for the 2024⁄25 pro­gramme is agreed in prin­ciple to meet min­im­um cap­it­al and resource com­mit­ments. Pipeline pro­jects can be accom­mod­ated with the cur­rent CNPA staff alloc­a­tion and capa­city. Min­im­um cap­it­al com­mit­ment is suf­fi­cient to deliv­er the pipeline and res­tor­a­tion tar­get. Assess­ments of the con­tract­or base and extern­al deliv­ery part­ners (agents and estates) indic­ate suf­fi­cient capa­city to meet the demands of the 2024⁄25 programme.
Future fund­ing profile	Amber	There has been a reduc­tion in alloc­a­tion of approx 40% to the over­all, nation­al 2024⁄25 Peat­land ACTION budget, from £34mill to £20.6 mill for 2024/2025. The like­li­hood is that future budgets will reflect the 2024⁄25 levels of alloc­a­tion. Future funds will be expec­ted to pri­or­it­ise value for many in achiev­ing ha tar­gets, blen­ded fin­ance mod­els, and mul­tiple benefits.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 08 March 2024 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 3 of 5

Per­form­ance Meas­ure	Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
Future deliv­ery profile	Amber	The Park Authority’s min­im­um com­mit­ments have been estab­lished for 2024⁄25 as required match fund­ing for the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme and exist­ing staff resource. It is uncer­tain if this clas­si­fic­a­tion of com­mit­ments will con­tin­ue for future years. Landown­ers remain engaged with peat­land res­tor­a­tion. There is a robust and resi­li­ent pipeline of pro­jects and expres­sions of interest suf­fi­cient for sev­er­al years. Con­tract­or con­fid­ence to invest fur­ther in peat­land res­tor­a­tion could be affected by the reduc­tion in Scotland’s Peat­land Action fund­ing. Upskilling, embed­ding expert­ise and build­ing capa­city in extern­al deliv­ery part­ners could be com­prom­ised by a lack of con­fid­ence in the sec­tor. No increase in resource capa­city in the Park Author­ity could lead to a reduc­tion in innov­a­tion, capa­city build­ing and new pro­ject devel­op­ment. Pri­or­it­ising achiev­ing ha tar­gets could lead to a focus of pub­lic fund­ing on more simple drain block­ing pro­jects at low alti­tude, which could reduce the oppor­tun­it­ies for private invest­ment into these low-risk areas. The reduced budget scen­ari­os present an oppor­tun­ity to drive for­wards blen­ded fin­ance mod­els, com­munity wealth build­ing mod­els and deliv­ery of mul­tiple bene­fits. The

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 08 March 2024 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 4 of 5

Per­form­ance Meas­ure	Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
		Nation­al Park is well-placed to cap­it­al­ise on this dir­ec­tion of travel.

Deliv­ery against stra­tegic expectations

1. The pro­gramme remains on track to deliv­er the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan tar­get for a min­im­um of 38,000 ha of peat­land under res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment. In order to achieve this tar­get, the hec­tares of res­tor­a­tion per annum will increase over time. The ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ pipeline and imme­di­ate future of the pro­gramme remains in line with the expec­ted tra­ject­ory on long term tar­gets and 2027 actions for hec­tares of peat­land under restoration.

2. Increas­ing con­tract­or and estate capa­city and cre­at­ing jobs has pro­gressed well, not­ably via the new entrants’ scheme and more recently sup­port­ing pro­ject design and over­sight by land agents. There is a risk that reduc­tion in Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment fund­ing alloc­a­tion will have a neg­at­ive effect on the sector’s will­ing­ness to invest time and resource into scal­ing up peat­land res­tor­a­tion enter­prises. The Park Authority’s approach remains to upskill extern­al deliv­ery part­ners and embed expert­ise in estates, demon­strat­ing a long-term com­mit­ment to peat­land res­tor­a­tion through the devel­op­ment of altern­at­ive fund­ing mech­an­isms and sus­tain­able approaches.

3. Peat­land res­tor­a­tion is evolving away from 100% pub­lic fund­ing and look­ing towards increas­ing value for money, recog­nising the dis-bene­fits with a primar­ily tar­get focused approach and the need to con­tin­ue com­mit­ment to the medi­um to long term. The Park Author­ity and part­ners are well placed to innov­ate and demon­strate new, sus­tain­able mod­els. The pro­gramme in the Nation­al Park takes a lead­ing role in the deliv­ery of mul­tiple bene­fits and cross sec­tor­al policy integ­ra­tion, aggreg­at­ing res­tor­a­tion at sale, draw­ing in private invest­ment and deliv­er­ing com­munity bene­fit. These ambi­tions are reli­ant on staff capa­city and resource to devel­op and ser­vice new approaches.

Stra­tegic risks under management

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 08 March 2024 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 5 of 5

1. Staff­ing and resourcing: com­mit­ment to meet the Park Authority’s cur­rent staff­ing resource and budget needs is agreed in prin­ciple, sub­ject to Account­able Officer approv­al. This will ensure there is no reduc­tion in the staff con­tin­gent for the ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ pro­gramme and suf­fi­cient cap­it­al allow­ance to deliv­er the res­tor­a­tion pro­gramme. A stat­ic resource budget may put con­straints on the abil­ity to devel­op new approaches as staff capa­city is dir­ec­ted towards ser­vi­cing the exist­ing res­tor­a­tion pipeline. Min­im­um cap­it­al require­ments for the ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ pro­gramme have been cal­cu­lated con­sid­er­ing the con­tri­bu­tions Peat­land ACTION makes as match fund­ing to the Cairngorms2030 pro­gramme as com­mit­ted spend. The entire match fund­ing com­mit­ment for Cairngorms2030 equates to £12 mil­lion over 4 years.

2. Sup­port­ing the sec­tor: con­fid­ence in both the ser­vices and land man­age­ment sec­tors may be neg­at­ively affected by a reduc­tion in cap­it­al allow­ance. Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme com­mit­ments will provide some secur­ity to land man­agers, con­tract­ors and deliv­ery agents. 15% of pro­jects in the Park receive private sec­tor con­tri­bu­tions which are nearly always from the landown­er them­selves. We are explor­ing the appet­ite for increased private sec­tor con­tri­bu­tions with landown­ers and with oth­ers through­out 2024 – 25.

Con­clu­sions: Per­form­ance Over­view and Mat­ters Mer­it­ing Stra­tegic Review

1. There are no mat­ters of stra­tegic sig­ni­fic­ance which 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.

Andy Ford andyford@​cairngorms.​co.​uk