240322CNPABdPaper2_BudgetPosition2024-25

Form­al Board Paper 2 22 March 2024 Page 1 of 32

For dis­cus­sion Title: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ budget and oper­a­tion­al plan Pre­pared by: Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Operations

Pur­pose

1. This paper sets out the Park Authority’s pro­posed budget for the ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ fin­an­cial year.

2. The paper provides the Board with the oppor­tun­ity to con­sider the over­all budget pos­i­tion togeth­er with the impact of any key assump­tions made in estab­lish­ing budget estimates.

3. The paper also presents the pro­posed oper­a­tion­al plan for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ to allow mem­bers to scru­tin­ise and take assur­ance on the deploy­ment of avail­able resources in provid­ing a bal­anced approach to deliv­ery of the Park Authority’s agreed stra­tegic object­ives set out in the approved Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and Cor­por­ate Plan.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Board is invited to: a) approve the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity budget and oper­a­tion­al plan for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ as set out in this paper.

Over­view of draft ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ budget position

1. The budget sets out the Authority’s pro­pos­al for the applic­a­tion of core resources provided by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment through the Nation­al Parks’ budget and through oth­er Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment budgets for peat­land res­tor­a­tion, com­munity led loc­al devel­op­ment (CLLD) and nature recov­ery. In addi­tion, ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ is the first full year of the Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) pro­gramme, fun­ded by the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF). Deliv­ery against this major pro­ject has been integ­rated into the budget for the year.

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1. The Park Author­ity has yet to receive a final grant award let­ter for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. We also await final noti­fic­a­tion of the alloc­a­tion for grants in sup­port of our peat­land res­tor­a­tion work, and for CLLD.

2. Grant-in-aid for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ is set to increase by £0.977 mil­lion from £8.144m to £9.121m, a 12% increase in cash fund­ing alloc­ated to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment for the com­ing fin­an­cial year.

3. Our under­stand­ing is that the alloc­a­tions of grant-in-aid, of fund­ing for peat­land res­tor­a­tion and of Nature Res­tor­a­tion fund­ing are rel­at­ively final and secure, pending final­isa­tion and receipt of grant award letters.

4. Fund­ing for CLLD is still to be final­ised, and the fig­ure of £300k included in the budget rep­res­ents our best estim­ate; we await decisions from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment on both the total fund­ing avail­able for CLLD, and how it will be alloc­ated across part­ner bod­ies. This presents very lim­ited risk to the over­all budget pos­i­tion presen­ted. The min­im­um value of grant fin­an­cing for staff salar­ies has been con­firmed, cov­er­ing these staff com­mit­ments. Any vari­ation in assumed income may there­fore be equally off­set by vary­ing the pro­vi­sion avail­able for CLLD fund­ing awards.

5. This pos­i­tion is rel­at­ively com­mon at this point in set­ting the Park Authority’s budget for the year ahead. As part of our ongo­ing budget mon­it­or­ing activ­ity through the year, we will con­sider the suf­fi­ciency of income along­side the man­age­ment of expenditure.

6. Oth­er sources of income (£0.250m) included in the draft budget pos­i­tion are:

   • Plan­ning fees, and
   • Bank interest (£0.070m)

7. The over­view of the draft budget pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ is presen­ted in Appendix 1; this pos­i­tion includes both oper­a­tion­al plan activ­it­ies and deliv­ery of the Cairngorms 2030 pro­ject. It shows a bal­anced pos­i­tion. Appendix 2 provides a com­par­is­on of the pro­posed ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ budget with the approved budget for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄.

8. As is clear from Appendix 2, the alloc­a­tion of Grant-in-Aid has increased from £8.144m to £9.121m (£0.977m 12%). How­ever, the increase of close to £1m is

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weighted towards cap­it­al funds (£0.710m). Indeed, cap­it­al alloc­a­tions have increased from £0.600m in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ to £1.810m in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅. Our abil­ity to take advant­age of this fund­ing has been key to budget devel­op­ment for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅.

1. To date we have used cap­it­al (CDEL) alloc­a­tions to fund the pur­chase of fixed assets (CDEL-dir­ect), to devel­op path­ways and to sup­port land­scape res­tor­a­tion pro­jects as an inter­me­di­ary provid­ing grant sup­port to landown­ers and oth­er pub­lic bod­ies (CDEL-indir­ect). Typ­ic­ally, pro­jects fun­ded through CDEL-indir­ect, involve phys­ic­al alter­a­tion of the land­scape, such as build­ing or improv­ing path­ways, the work involved in res­tor­a­tion of peat­land, and the man­age­ment of catch­ments. The sums involved, (exclud­ing peat­land res­tor­a­tion, which has its own ring-fenced fund­ing alloc­a­tion) have been around £0.600m per annum.

2. Our response to the change in weight­ing of the budget towards cap­it­al fund­ing has included:

   • A pro­pos­al to estab­lish a Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion fund provid­ing fin­an­cial resources to grant applicants.
   • Increas­ing the cap­it­al alloc­a­tion to our aims around the access­ible path and cycle network.
   • The design of nature and con­ser­va­tion activ­it­ies to include more cap­it­al works.

3. Inform­a­tion on the pro­posed budget for staff salar­ies is provided in para­graphs 19 to 22 below. Staff­ing costs for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ (exclud­ing any poten­tial vacancy sav­ings) account for 41% of the total oper­a­tion­al plan income shown of £13.701m. In the budget for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ the like-for-like costs were 38% of total oper­a­tion­al plan income (£13.663m). Con­trib­ut­ors to the increase in staff­ing costs year on year include:

   • ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ pay award £0.333m
   • Enforced increase in employ­er pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions £0.77m

4. It should be noted that for budget con­trol pur­poses, the oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ment in Nature and Con­ser­va­tion actions has been split across the oper­a­tion­al plan budget line and a sep­ar­ate Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund line to ensure the appro­pri­ate applic­a­tion of the ear­marked nature recov­ery grant. Total invest­ment for Nature and Con­ser­va­tion in Appendix 2 is £0.961m for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ (Nature res­tor­a­tion £0.450m plus Nature and cli­mate £0.511m) com­pared with £0.818m in the pre­vi­ous year.

5. Sim­il­arly, invest­ment in the ​“People” actions of the Cor­por­ate and Oper­a­tion­al Plans stems from fund­ing through both the core Nation­al Parks grant and earmarked

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Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment grants on which the Park Author­ity part­ners with the Cairngorms Trust as Account­able Body. Again, for budget con­trol pur­poses, these two strands of activ­ity have been developed sep­ar­ately in the budget fig­ures. Total invest­ment in the People ele­ments of the Park Authority’s plans total £0.533m for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅, com­pared with £0.607m in the pri­or year.

1. The fol­low­ing sec­tions present some spe­cif­ic points of estim­ate and judge­ment in the devel­op­ment of these budget estim­ates for con­sid­er­a­tion by the Board. These aspects of estim­a­tion and assump­tion have pre­vi­ously been con­sidered by the Board’s Resources Com­mit­tee at its meet­ing on 26 Janu­ary 2023.

Staff­ing Investment

1. Staff­ing levels a) The Park Authority’s estab­lish­ment will increase sig­ni­fic­antly in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅. There will be a need to provide resource to the Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) pro­ject (14 FTE) as high­lighted in the paper presen­ted to the board in June 2023 pri­or to sub­mis­sion of the C2030 bid. How­ever, most of the cost of new posts estab­lished will be recov­er­able through the pro­ject. In addi­tion, cost recov­ery will be avail­able through C2030 for exist­ing posts; these staff have been paid for from core funds dur­ing the gap between the end of the devel­op­ment phase of the pro­ject, and the start of the deliv­ery phase. The full year cost (includ­ing pro­spect­ive pay award) of new C2030 posts is estim­ated at £0.568m, with exist­ing C2030 fun­ded posts cre­ated in the devel­op­ment phase and con­tinu­ing into the deliv­ery phase adding a fur­ther £0.520m (£1.088m in total). These costs are recov­er­able from the C2030 pro­gramme budget and are repor­ted to mem­bers for trans­par­ency – they do not impact on the resource cov­er to be provided from our grant-in-aid allocations.

b) There are three vacan­cies (3FTE) that we have mod­elled at present for recruit­ment in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ and provided for with­in the staff­ing budget. The full year cost of the pro­vi­sion for recruit­ment into these vacan­cies, which sup­port deliv­ery of plan­ning and cor­por­ate ser­vices, is estim­ated at £0.159m. Our usu­al approach to recruit­ment will be applied, with a busi­ness case for recruit­ment into these vacan­cies tested pri­or to any recruit­ment, as part of our stand­ard pro­cesses; any decision not to take for­ward the recruit­ment pro­cess will allow for real­loc­a­tion of budgets elsewhere.

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1. ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ pay con­sid­er­a­tions a) Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has developed a 2‑year approach to its own main award. There is pres­sure on the Author­ity to fol­low suit with awards over two years that, taken togeth­er, provide sim­il­ar remu­ner­a­tion levels to the Scot­tish Government’s main award.

b) A key point of estim­ate and judge­ment there­fore con­cerns the pro­vi­sions made for the ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ pay award. It is anti­cip­ated that the award will vary amongst the salary band­ings and will be a com­bin­a­tion of fixed sums and per­cent­age increases.

c) The budget includes a pay award impact of £0.333m (exclud­ing costs rechargeable through C2030) which, com­bined with the award made in ²⁰²³⁄₂₄, is designed to achieve an increase aver­aging around 10% for staff over the 2 years from April 2023 to March 2025. This will be broadly in line with the over­all impact of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Main Group set­tle­ment already agreed with staff and their uni­ons, and we under­stand in keep­ing with the gen­er­al approach of oth­er pub­lic bod­ies in our sec­tor. We await fol­low up pay policy advice from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. A more detailed update on the poten­tial pay award for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ will be presen­ted in the com­ing months to the Board’s Resources Com­mit­tee in accord­ance with our estab­lished, agreed gov­ernance prac­tices, pri­or to com­men­cing con­sulta­tion on this mat­ter with the staff group and their staff and uni­on rep­res­ent­at­ives, through our Staff Con­sultat­ive Forum.

Break­down of total payroll budget ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ includ­ing posts recovered from third party income | | £m| | —- | —- | |Full year cost of exist­ing staff pre ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ award | 5.770 | |Increase in employ­er pen­sion rate | 0.077 | |Award ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ | 0.333| |Cost of exist­ing staff | 6.180 | |Vacan­cies for recruit­ment Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity | 0.159| |New posts C2030 | 0.568 | |Total budget estim­ate ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ | 6.907|

1. Payroll recov­er­ies

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a) Estim­ates have been made of the levels of staff payroll recov­er­ies from extern­al fund­ing sources. Cur­rent estim­ates are for recov­er­ies through C2030 of £1.088m in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅.

b) A pro­por­tion of the salary costs of staff engaged on Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) will also be recov­er­able, assum­ing that CLLD fund­ing will be awar­ded in broadly the same amount for the com­ing year and with the same allow­ances for admin­is­tra­tion and anim­a­tion costs: salary costs of £0.096m are budgeted, of which around £0.067m are expec­ted to be recovered, leav­ing a cost of around £0.029 to be met by the Authority.

Break­down of recov­er­able payroll costs ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ | |£m| | —- | —- | |Exist­ing posts C2030 | 0.520| |New posts C2030 | 0.568 | |Total C2030 | 1.088| |CLLD posts | 0.067 | |Total recov­er­able | 1.154|

1. Vacancy sav­ings and recruit­ment delays a) In arriv­ing at budget estim­ates for staff­ing, we make an estim­ate of payroll sav­ings that may be achieved over the course of the year from staff turnover and man­age­ment of vacant posts. The payroll budget is not there­fore set to cov­er full estab­lish­ment. Rather, it is adjus­ted to allow for a level of expec­ted vacan­cies through turnover and recruit­ment timetables.

b) The estim­ates presen­ted provide for a 1% sav­ing in payroll for staff costs that are not recov­er­able from oth­er sources of income. This provides for £0.071m of reduc­tion in the value of payroll that would oth­er­wise be budgeted for. This estim­ate of pos­sible sav­ings is sig­ni­fic­antly lower than was applied in ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ (5% of payroll budget, £248k). Vacancy sav­ings have not been real­ised as anti­cip­ated dur­ing ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ and, giv­en the oppor­tun­it­ies provided by C2030 and ongo­ing Park Part­ner­ship Plan activ­it­ies, sig­ni­fic­ant staff turnover is not anti­cip­ated for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅. This reduc­tion in anti­cip­ated vacancy sav­ings has there­fore con­trib­uted sig­ni­fic­antly to the increase in staff budget for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ as com­pared to the pri­or year.

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c) In addi­tion, a small allow­ance has been made for sav­ings arising from recruit­ment delays. It has been assumed that the three Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity vacant posts will not be filled until the sum­mer of 2024, sav­ing a quarter of the year’s salary costs (£0.056). In addi­tion, payroll sav­ings may be avail­able if staff cur­rently in core posts are appoin­ted to C2030 roles, and their ori­gin­al post is not back­filled. Fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en to this option and could lead to sav­ings of between £50k and £185k if required; a prudent approach has been adop­ted, and no allow­ance has been made for this poten­tial sav­ing in the budget presented.

d) Using this mod­el­ling, the net cost for staff salar­ies in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ is there­fore £5,626m:

	£m
Total budget estim­ate 2024⁄25	6.907
Total recov­er­able payroll costs	(1.154)
	5.753
Allow­ance for pos­sible recruit­ment delays	(0.056)
	5.697
Allow­ance for vacancy savings	(0.071)
Net cost for staff salar­ies in 2024⁄25	5.626

Infla­tion­ary impacts and run­ning costs

1. The budget for run­ning costs has been built on the out­turn fore­cast for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄. Infla­tion­ary increases of 3% have been applied, reflect­ing the Bank of England’s estim­ates that infla­tion will fall from its cur­rent level of 4.6% to a tar­get level of 2%. The budget approach rep­res­ents an expect­a­tion of the aver­age rate over the course of the fin­an­cial year. An increase of 0.5% in the budgeted rate is equi­val­ent to increased costs of £4.5k; the budget presen­ted would remain in bal­ance if the aver­age infla­tion rate were to increase to 3.5%.

2. Over the course of ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ we have exper­i­enced notice­able pres­sure on the budgets for power and mileage. The budget for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ reflects these increases as well as an infla­tion­ary uplift.

3. Soft­ware licences are now an essen­tial part of the organisation’s infra­struc­ture, with our core pro­grammes avail­able only as ​‘Soft­ware As A Ser­vice’ (SAAS). The increase

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in staff­ing levels and the need for applic­a­tions with great­er func­tion­al­ity (e.g. Microsoft Pro­ject for pro­ject man­age­ment) is res­ult­ing in high­er costs year on year.

1. An alloc­a­tion of £0.045m has been made to provide scope for addi­tion­al pro­cure­ment guid­ance required as a res­ult of the anti­cip­ated increase in pro­cure­ment and contracting.

2. Effi­ciency sav­ings a) It is likely that the require­ment to achieve a 5% effi­ciency sav­ing (£0.367m) will be included in grant award let­ters. Sub­ject to the terms of this require­ment being cla­ri­fied, the cur­rent under­stand­ing is that the effi­ciency sav­ings require­ments will be met by con­tain­ing ongo­ing infla­tion­ary increases and man­aging staff vacan­cies where this is pos­sible. The table below out­lines how this might be achieved:

	£’000
Vacancy sav­ings	71
Delayed recruit­ment	56
Delay in back­filling for staff appoin­ted to C2030	159
Con­tain­ment of infla­tion­ary increases	8
Review of IT and shared services	73
	367

Oper­a­tion­al plan investment

1. The full oper­a­tion­al plan, flow­ing from the core object­ives of the Cor­por­ate Plan, is set out at Appendix 3 to this paper.

2. The oper­a­tion­al plan cov­ers a huge range of invest­ment by the Park Author­ity in the Nation­al Park. Two ele­ments to high­light to the board are the Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund and the Red Deer Hind Incent­ive Scheme.

3. Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund This fund will help with cap­it­al invest­ment in cli­mate adapt­a­tion and will be open to indi­vidu­al busi­nesses, incor­por­ated com­munity bod­ies, registered char­it­ies and busi­ness asso­ci­ations. Cli­mate change adapt­a­tion is about respond­ing to the changes that we have seen in our cli­mate over the last few dec­ades, and preparing

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for the chal­lenges that we will face as our cli­mate con­tin­ues to change. The fund will have four guid­ing principles:

a) Adapt­a­tion – pro­jects will con­trib­ute to cli­mate adapt­a­tion with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park that help deliv­er the nation­al Cli­mate Change Adapt­a­tion Programme.

b) Part­ner­ship Plan Out­comes – pro­jects will con­trib­ute to the out­comes of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan

c) Nature Based Solu­tions – pro­jects will pro­mote nature-based solu­tions and green engin­eer­ing to help adapt to cli­mate change effects, con­trib­ut­ing to hab­it­at and spe­cies recov­ery in the Nation­al Park.

d) Eco­nomy – Pro­jects will endeav­our to max­im­ise their con­tri­bu­tion to loc­al employ­ment and eco­nom­ic activ­ity with­in the Nation­al Park.

1. Red Deer Hind Incent­ive Scheme The Park Author­ity is devel­op­ing a two-year tri­al to incentiv­ise increased red deer hind culls in the Nation­al Park. Oper­a­tion­al details will be dis­cussed with Deer Man­age­ment Groups in the Park dur­ing May with the scheme start­ing before the end of the female hind close sea­son. This will be fun­ded through the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund.

2. Appendix 2 high­lights the increase in the Park Authority’s fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tion to the deliv­ery phase of the C2030 Pro­gramme. The full pro­gramme con­tri­bu­tion to the C2030 pro­gramme has been set at £2.250m over the 5 years of the pro­ject (£0.450m per annum) and this secures addi­tion­al cash fund­ing of £19m over the 5 years of delivery.

3. In line with recent years, the oper­a­tion­al plan has been budgeted without ​“over- pro­gram­ming”. The total value of the oper­a­tion­al plan is estab­lished with­in the para­met­ers of total income expec­ted to be avail­able at the com­mence­ment of the fin­an­cial year. No addi­tion­al pro­vi­sion has been made for slip­page over the course of the year through budget­ing for a great­er value of oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ments than are cap­able of being covered by fund­ing levels. This is a prudent approach, giv­en the vari­ous uncer­tain­ties in income levels and expendit­ure pres­sures in the com­ing year. If slip­page or under­spend arises in any pro­jects or budget areas, man­age­ment action

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can be taken to real­loc­ate avail­able resources to pri­or­ity areas of invest­ment or to cov­er oth­er emer­ging budget pressures.

1. Lever­age a) The Park Author­ity con­tin­ues to secure sig­ni­fic­ant lever­age in inward invest­ment to the Cairngorms through its deploy­ment of resources in con­tri­bu­tions to part­ner­ship pro­jects and in secur­ing grant fund­ing from non-gov­ern­ment sources. Sig­ni­fic­ant lever­age over ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ will con­tin­ue to come from the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF) through the Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme. A sum­mary of the lever­age pos­i­tion estab­lished by the Authority’s suc­cess­ful ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with NLHF is shown below:

Project/​pro­gramme fund­ing	2024⁄25 budget pro­pos­als £’000	2023⁄24 budget £’000	Vari­ance £’000
Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Project	-	556	(556)
Cairngorms 2030 (based on cash flow projections)	2,520	1,365	1,155
Oth­er sig­ni­fic­ant income under management	2,520	1,921	599
Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and oth­er core income	13,701	13,663	38
Total income under management	16,221	15,584	637

b) The amount of fund­ing anti­cip­ated in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ (£2,520) is 13% of the total cash receiv­able across the 5 years of the pro­gramme. The twenty pro­jects with­in the pro­gramme are of vary­ing scale, with some of the lar­ger pro­jects (par­tic­u­larly those involving con­struc­tion activ­it­ies) planned into the later years of the programme.

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Risk

1. Budget responses to the live risks on the stra­tegic risk register are shown in Appendix 4.

2. Fin­an­cial risks inher­ent in the budget presen­ted include the following:

Budget area	Value £’000	Nature of risk
Fund­ing
Grant-in aid	9,121
Peat­land	3,580	Form­al con­firm­a­tion awaited
Nature Res­tor­a­tion	450
CLLD	300
Oth­er income	250	Oth­er income not assured
Staff costs
Pay award impact	333	Depends on SG pay policy and stake­hold­er agreement
Staff­ing levels vacan­cies for recruitment	159	Busi­ness case to be tested pri­or to recruit­ment; cost depends on when/​if posts filled
Vacancy sav­ings – staff turnover	(71)	Turnover can­not be pre­dicted with certainty
Vacancy sav­ings — recruit­ment delays	(56)	Com­mence­ment date of new posts uncertain
Impact of inflation	9	Each 1% increase in infla­tion poses a £9k risk to budget management
CDEL pro­pos­als
Cli­mate adapt­a­tion fund	360	Fund may be under/​over-sub­scribed

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1. Next steps a) Fol­low­ing board con­sid­er­a­tion and approv­al of a budget for ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅, budget alloc­a­tions will be con­firmed to budget hold­ers to allow plans for deliv­ery over the com­ing fin­an­cial year to commence.

b) We will con­tin­ue to provide budget mon­it­or­ing reports to the Board’s Resources Com­mit­tee over the course of the year ahead, identi­fy­ing any sig­ni­fic­ant budget vari­ations and action in man­aging those variations.

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

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Appendix 1 – Over­view of ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ budget development

	Oper­a­tion­al Plan		C2030		Total
	Resource £’000	Cap­it­al £’000	Resource £’000	Cap­it­al £’000	£’000
Income
Nation­al Parks Grant in Aid — Resource	7,311				7,311
Nation­al Parks Grant in Aid — Capital		1,810			1,810
Peat­land grant — capital		3,000			3,000
Peat­land grant — resource — staff	580				580
Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund		450			450
CLLD	300				300
Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme funding			1,725	795	2,520
Oth­er income	250				250
Total income	8,441	5,260	1,725	795	16,221
Expendit­ure
Oper­a­tion­al plan
Cli­mate adapt­a­tion fund	10	360			370
Peat­land programme	50	3,000			3,050
Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund		450			450
Nature	299	212	120	373	1,004
People	290		231	23	543
Place	420	440	206	381	1,447
Comms	166	60			226
CLLD	150	93			243
Cor­por­ate	257	135	55	18	465
Pro­gramme contributions		450			450
	1,642	5,200	612	795	8,249
Run­ning costs
Board com­pens­a­tion	192				192
Staff com­pens­a­tion	5,626		1,088		6,714
Oth­er board costs	37				37
Oth­er staff costs	226		25		251
Facil­it­ies	373				373
Cap­it­al­isa­tion of leases		60			60
IT and professional	346				346
	6,799	60	1,113	0	7,973
Total expendit­ure	8,441	5,260	1,725	795	16,221
Sur­plus	0	0	0	0	0

Form­al Board Paper 2 22 March 2024 Page 14 of 32

Appendix 2 – ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ budget pro­pos­al com­pared to pri­or year budget

	2024⁄25 Budget pro­pos­al £’000	2023⁄24 Approved budget £’000	Move­ment increase/​(reduc­tion) £’000
Income
Nation­al Parks Grant in Aid — Resource	7,311	7,044	267 4% increase in resource allocation
Nation­al Parks Grant in Aid — Capital	1,810	1,100	710 65% increase in cap­it­al allocation
Peat­land grant — capital	3,000	4,143	(1,143) Reduc­tion in alloc­a­tion across all peat­land res­tor­a­tion deliv­ery partners
Peat­land grant — resource — staff	580	614	(34)
Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund	450	250	200 Addi­tion­al £50k alloc­ated mid-year 2023; Red Hind Incent­ive fund
CLLD	300	330	(30) Best estim­ate of likely award
Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme funding	2,520	-	2,520 First full year of the programme
Oth­er income	250	182	68 Addi­tion­al bank interest
Total income	16,221	13,663	2,558
Expendit­ure
Oper­a­tion­al plan
Cli­mate adapt­a­tion fund	370	-	370 New ini­ti­at­ive for 2024⁄25
Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund	450	250	200 Red Hind Incent­ive fund payments
Peat­land programme	3,050	4,328	(1,278) Reduc­tion in deliv­ery appro­pri­ate to grant allocation
Nature	511	568	(57)
CLLD	300	300	0
Less cost of CLLD staff included in run­ning costs	(57)	(54)	(3)
Cairngorms 2030 programme	1,407	-	1,407 First full year of the programme
People	290	307	(17)

Form­al Board Paper 2 22 March 2024 Page 15 of 32

	£’000	£’000	£’000
Place	860	865	(5)
Comms	226	198	28
Cor­por­ate	392	598	(206) Sig­ni­fic­ant level of one-off expendit­ure in 2023⁄24
Pro­gramme contributions	450	285	165 Agreed increase in con­tri­bu­tion dur­ing deliv­ery phase
	8,099	7,645	454
Run­ning costs
Board com­pens­a­tion	192	192	(0)
Staff com­pens­a­tion	5,697	5,143	554 Pay award/​increased e’er pen­sion contributions
Anti­cip­ated sav­ing through vacancy management	(71)	(248)	177
Oth­er staff and board costs	263	164	99 Travel and subsistence/​train­ing costs
Facil­it­ies	373	520	(147) Change in account­ing treat­ment of leases
Cap­it­al­isa­tion of leases	60	-	60
IT and professional	346	261	85 Increase in leg­al fees and intern­al audit fees
Cairngorms 2030 programme	1,113	-	1,113 First full year of the programme
	7,972	6,032	1,940
Total expendit­ure	16,221	13,677	2,544
Sur­plus	0	(14)	14

Form­al Board Paper 2 22 March 2024 Page 16 of 32

Appendix 3 – Oper­a­tion­al plan | Cor­por­ate plan Aim | Park Author­ity deliv­ery | Thumb­nail sketch | Resource | Fin­an­cial require­ments Cap­it­al | NRF | C2030 | Oper­a­tion­al plan | Staff resource C2030 | | —- | —- | —- | —- | —- | —- | —- | —- | —- | | A1 | Net zero Deliv­er­ing baseline report, mon­it­or and annu­ally report on pro­gress towards CNP achiev­ing net-zero and sub­sequently act­ing as a car­bon sink Lead on deliv­er­ing Cairngorms 2030, empower­ing people to con­trib­ute to net zero ambi­tions | Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund — See Para 26 See cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme | 10,000 | 360,000 | | | 0.3 | | | A2 | Wood­land expan­sion Deliv­er 1,000 ha of new or expan­ded wood­land with new and innov­at­ive uses of the Forest Grant Scheme as part of Cairngorms 2030. Pro­mote and admin­is­ter a Wood­land Chal­lenge Fund to sup­port land man­agers in the pre­par­a­tion of FGS applic­a­tions. | Two wood­land cre­ation schemes are in pre­par­a­tion on Atholl Estates. These will enhance biod­iversity and land­scape around Glen Fend­er and Dal­namein. This fund­ing is designed to reduce the cost of devel­op­ing wood­land cre­ation pro­pos­als by fund­ing some sur­veys and the cre­ation of plans. | 10,000 | | | | Fund­ing giv­en dir­ectly to part­ners | 1.0 | | A3 | Peat­land res­tor­a­tion Sup­port and fin­ance the res­tor­a­tion of peat­land, with 6,500 hec­tares restored by 2027 | We aim to run at least 12 peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­jects across the Park in 2024 – 25. With­in these pro­jects we aim to bring some 1500ha of peat­land under res­tor­a­tion. | 50,000 | 3,000,000 | | | 8.0 | |

Form­al Board Paper 2 22 March 2024 Page 17 of 32

Cor­por­ate plan Aim	Park Author­ity deliv­ery	Thumb­nail sketch	Resource	Fin­an­cial require­ments Cap­it­al	NRF	C2030	Oper­a­tion­al plan	Staff resource C2030
A4	Deer and herb­i­vore impacts Work with Deer Man­age­ment Groups, as part of Cairngorms 2030, to deliv­er stra­tegic land man­age­ment plans to sup­port a reduc­tion in deer num­bers. Invest­ig­ate and tri­al mod­els which achieve policy out­comes and retain skills and employ­ment in the sec­tor Cairngorms 2030 3 Nature Recovery	Deer reduc­tions will be achieved in some areas of the Park through a Sec­tion 7 Agree­ment. We will also seek to incentiv­ise deer reduc­tions through a ven­ison sub­sidy scheme. Red Deer Hind Incent­ive Scheme see para 26	5,000 150,000			200,000	0.8
A5	Moor­land man­age­ment Lead the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship as a demon­stra­tion of sus­tain­able moor­land man­age­ment deliv­er­ing both pub­lic and private interests.	We will fund pro­jects which enhance moor­land man­age­ment and biod­iversity with­in ECMP.	10,000	30,000			0.6
A6	Gamebird man­age­ment Estab­lish baseline and assess impact of gamebird releases on nat­ive biod­iversity. Pro­duce report & recom­mend­a­tions on poten­tial options based on impact assessment.	A part­ner­ship pro­ject with GWCT is under­way to determ­ine num­bers of gamebirds released with­in 6 catch­ments in the Park. Fur­ther work in sub­sequent years will seek to determ­ine the eco­lo­gic­al and socio-eco­nom­ic impacts of those releases.	5,000				0.2
A7	Fire man­age­ment

Form­al Board Paper 2 22