Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 1

27 Septem­ber 2024

Page 1 of 3

For decision

Title: ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ Final Accounts

Pre­pared by: Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Operations

Pur­pose

To present and seek approv­al for the annu­al report and accounts for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ pri­or to their sub­mis­sion to Audit Scot­land for final certification.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Approve the annu­al report and accounts pri­or to sub­mis­sion to Maz­ars and Audit Scot­land for final certification.

Over­view

1. Maz­ars, the Authority’s extern­al aud­it­ors, are expec­ted to give an unqual­i­fied audit opin­ion on the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ fin­an­cial statements.

2. The Audit & Risk Committee’s role and respons­ib­il­it­ies regard­ing the pro­cess of pre­par­ing the annu­al report and accounts are set out in the Scot­tish Pub­lic Fin­ance Manu­al. The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee is in place to provide assur­ance on risk man­age­ment, gov­ernance, and intern­al con­trol and to act as a source of inde­pend­ent advice on these mat­ters to the Account­able Officer and Board. The Committee’s role regard­ing the accounts is to sup­port the Account­able Officer with their per­son­al respons­ib­il­it­ies for issues of risk, con­trol, and gov­ernance through a pro­cess of con­struct­ive challenge.

3. The Com­mit­tee has pre­vi­ously con­sidered its exer­cise of this role for the ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ fin­an­cial year in con­sid­er­a­tion and approv­al of the Gov­ernance State­ment now included in the final accounts document.

Review of the annu­al report and accounts

1. Pre­par­a­tion of fin­an­cial state­ments requires man­age­ment to make sig­ni­fic­ant judg­ments and estim­ates. I draw the Committee’s atten­tion to pages 111 and 113 of the annu­al report and accounts, where there is inform­a­tion on pro­vi­sions car­ried in the pri­or year’s accounts for costs that might have been irre­cov­er­able from fund­ing provided from the LEAD­ER rur­al devel­op­ment pro­gramme. Giv­en the length of time since the clos­ure of the LEAD­ER pro­gramme, and the suc­cess­ful audit of the scheme, the Dir­ect­ors con­sider that this pro­vi­sion is no longer required, and the accounts for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ have been adjus­ted accordingly.

2. Dur­ing the year, fin­an­cial guar­an­tees have been made to landown­ers in respect of poten­tial dam­age to flood banks that might be caused by beaver bur­row­ing. The Dir­ect­ors’ opin­ion is that the like­li­hood of a fin­an­cial claim from this arrange­ment is very low, and con­sequently this risk has been dis­closed as a con­tin­gent liab­il­ity in the notes to the accounts (page 113).

3. The Park Authority’s per­form­ance for the year is shown in the State­ment of Com­pre­hens­ive Net Expendit­ure on page 92 of the annu­al report and accounts. The Authority’s fin­an­cial pos­i­tion on 31 March 2024 is described in the State­ment of Fin­an­cial Pos­i­tion (page 93). Cash move­ments dur­ing the year are reflec­ted in the State­ment of Cash Flows (page 94). The Author­ity applied funds provided through grant-in-aid to the pur­poses inten­ded and to meet the aims of the oper­a­tion­al plan. Pro­ject fund­ing was sim­il­arly dis­posed of in accord­ance with the plans approved by fun­ders. Over­all, fund­ing through grant-in-aid was £1.158m high­er than in the pre­vi­ous year. The Author­ity slightly over­spent its tar­get to break even by £0.004m (0.03% of grant-in-aid received), an out­turn that is well with­in our Key Per­form­ance Indic­at­or for annu­al expendit­ure (over­spend of no more than 1%; under­spend of no more than 2%).

4. Of the full budget alloc­a­tion towards peat­land res­tor­a­tion of £3.636m, £0.9m was not drawn down from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. The tar­get for ha of res­tor­a­tion was met, des­pite the unused budget.

5. High­lights of the Authority’s oper­a­tion­al activ­ity dur­ing the year, includ­ing per­form­ance against the object­ives of the Park Part­ner­ship Plan, are provided in sec­tion 1.7 of the annu­al report (pages 25 to 47).

Con­clu­sion

1. The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee is reques­ted, fol­low­ing fur­ther dis­cus­sion of the annu­al report and accounts now presen­ted, and in the con­text of any input from the aud­it­ors, to approve the accounts for sig­na­ture by the Chief Exec­ut­ive, who is also the Account­able Officer.

Louise Allen

18 Septem­ber 2024

louiseallen@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Page 3 of 3