Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 8

27 Septem­ber 2024

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For inform­a­tion

Title: Pro­cure­ment action plan

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

Pur­pose

This paper presents an action plan towards improve­ment of the Park Authority’s pro­cure­ment pro­cesses, pro­ced­ures and intern­al con­trols. It has been developed in response to the Intern­al Audit review of pro­cure­ment car­ried out by Azets as part of the approved ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ audit programme.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Review pro­gress made against each activ­ity in the pro­gramme for improve­ment developed by management.

Pro­gramme for improvement

1. The table below sets out actions required towards improv­ing the Park Authority’s pro­cure­ment pro­cesses and controls.

2. Appoint­ment of a Pro­cure­ment Officer has been key to the set­ting of tar­get dates. Mikko Saari was appoin­ted to the post and joined us in the middle of August; tar­get dates have now been reviewed to provide real­ist­ic goals.

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Report ref	Man­age­ment action	Tar­get date	Respons­ible officer	Pro­gress	Date of review / comment
All	Fur­ther dis­cus­sion of offer­ing from Cent­ral Gov­ern­ment Pro­cure­ment Shared Ser­vices (CGPSS) team and Scot­land Excel	Ongo­ing	Louise Allen	Rela­tion­ship with Scot­land Excel (SE) con­tin­ues to devel­op well. The pro­cure­ment for a catch­ment pro­ject on the River Dee (Cairngorms 2030) involving 2 pro­cure­ments: con­tract­or and pro­ject man­age­ment. Park Author­ity has pur­chased con­sultancy hours (£6k) to sup­port the pro­cure­ment (from Cor­por­ate budget provided for pro­cure­ment sup­port £45k total).	11/09/24
1.1	Draft strategy received from Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity (LLT­NPA)	30.06.24	Dav­id Cameron	A draft Pro­cure­ment Strategy has now been writ­ten, primar­ily based on a strategy pre­pared by Scot­land Excel for Dun­dee City Coun­cil, agreed by the Coun­cil and adap­ted for the Park Authority’s scale and cir­cum­stances. The draft strategy is presen­ted to Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee 27/09/24.	11/09/24
All	Pro­cure­ment officer in post	30.09.24	Louise Allen	Mikko Saari in post 19/08/24 and work­ing through induction/​pro­ba­tion. COMPLETE	11/09/24
1.1	Update policies and pro­ced­ures. Include: Pro­cess flow for dif­fer­ent pro­cure­ment thresholds	30.09.24		SG guid­ance reviewed. Pro­cure­ment jour­ney guid­ance reviewed.
2.1	Explan­a­tion of each step in the pro­cure­ment route	31.12.24	Louise Allen/​Mikko Saari	Pro­cure­ment Jour­ney tem­plates to be tailored to CNPA needs. Guid­ance doc­u­ment com­menced (see below)	11/09/24
2.2	Approvals and levels of authority
3.1	Del­eg­ated Levels of Author­ity (DLA)
3.1	Non-com­pet­it­ive actions

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Report ref	Man­age­ment action	Tar­get date	Respons­ible officer	Pro­gress	Date of review / comment
2.2	Form­al­ise con­trols: Approvals required at each stage of pro­cure­ment process	30.09.24	Louise Allen/​Mikko Saari	Inter­im con­trol arrange­ments estab­lished through Seni­or Man­age­ment Team to height­en scru­tiny of pro­cure­ment plans / pro­cure­ment jour­ney to be fol­lowed for any con­tracts over £25,000. Sup­port­ing doc­u­ment­a­tion is being retained cent­rally with­in Sharepoint..	11/09/24
3.1	Form­al eval­u­ation process	31.12.24		Form­al eval­u­ation tem­plate down­loaded from Pro­cure­ment jour­ney site for review and tailoring.
3.2	Required due dili­gence checks
1.1	Provide form­al train­ing for staff	31.12.24 30/06/25	Louise Allen/​Mikko Saari	Options for train­ing dis­cussed with Academy Team at Scot­land Excel (SE). Train­ing needs assess­ment tool now sent out to all staff at pay band C and above. Intro­duct­ory train­ing provided for Pro­cure­ment Officer and Trans­port Man­ager. Ment­or­ing arranged for Pro­cure­ment Officer with Alan Brough from SE. Form­al train­ing for wider staff group is likely to be put on hold depend­ing on any relax­a­tion of Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment budget controls.	11/09/24
1.1	Draft guid­ance for staff	31.12.24	Louise Allen/​Mikko Saari	DRAFT CNPA guid­ance doc­u­ment in pro­gress (route 1 complete)	11/09/24
2.1	Draft tem­plates for each stage of the pro­cure­ment journey	30.09.24 31.12.24	Louise Allen/​Mikko Saari	Pro­cure­ment Jour­ney tem­plates to be com­pared with FLS tem­plates as part of the pro­cess of devel­op­ing tailored resources for use by Park Author­ity colleagues.	11/09/24

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Report ref	Man­age­ment action	Tar­get date	Respons­ible officer	Pro­gress	Date of review / comment
1.2	Set up con­tracts register	31.12.24	Louise Allen/​Mikko Saari	This can be done in PCS. Will need to con­sider: Any pro­cure­ments done out­side of PCS How long data is held with­in PCS
4.1	Devel­op pro­cure­ment KPIs	31.03.25	Louise Allen/​Mikko Saari
1.2	Devel­op report­ing for pro­cure­ment activity	31.03.25	Louise Allen/​Mikko Saari
2.1	Review exist­ing con­tracts and pre­pare sched­ule for retendering	31.03.25	Louise Allen/​Mikko Saari

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Con­clu­sions

1. There remains a con­sid­er­able amount of work to be done in devel­op­ing, doc­u­ment­ing and embed­ding pro­cure­ment pro­cesses with­in the organ­isa­tion. Mikko Saari, our new Pro­cure­ment Officer is pro­gress­ing well through his peri­od of induc­tion into the organ­isa­tion. He brings exper­i­ence from the private sec­tor and is work­ing with his ment­or to trans­fer this know­ledge to the pub­lic sec­tor environment.

2. Pro­gress against the plan will con­tin­ue to be provided monthly to the Chair and Vice-Chair of the com­mit­tee and will be presen­ted to the full com­mit­tee at its next meet­ing in November.

Louise Allen

11 Septem­ber 2024

louiseallen@​cairngorms.​co.​uk