CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Board Paper 2 25/03/22

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ BUDGET DEVELOPMENT

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services

Pur­pose

This paper presents the Cairngorms NPA’s pro­posed budget for the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ fin­an­cial year.

The paper presents the Cairngorms NPA’s expec­ted income for the year from core sources, com­pris­ing Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment resource and cap­it­al grants togeth­er with gen­er­ated income. The paper sets out the planned deploy­ment of those resources across ​“core” organ­isa­tion­al invest­ment on staff and sup­port ser­vices togeth­er with oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ment on pro­ject delivery.

The paper also presents the trans­ition­al invest­ment plan for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃, set­ting out the stra­tegic object­ives and work pack­ages deliv­er­ing against those stra­tegic object­ives in the com­ing year. This approach accords with the trans­ition­al arrange­ments in devel­op­ing cor­por­ate plans agreed by the board in Decem­ber 2021.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The board is asked to:

a) Agree the pro­posed budget alloc­a­tions for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃; b) Con­sider the pro­posed trans­ition­al invest­ment plan for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃; c) Sub­ject to any agreed changes, agree the trans­ition­al invest­ment plan for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃; d) Identi­fy any stra­tegic risks or implic­a­tions posed for the Board’s deliv­ery of its stra­tegic object­ives which may require addi­tion­al man­age­ment action.

Over­view

1. The Board agreed a trans­ition­al budget and stra­tegic plan­ning pro­cess for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ at its meet­ing in Decem­ber 2021, recog­nising the need to estab­lish an appro­pri­ate stra­tegic deliv­ery base over the course of the com­ing year while the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) is final­ised. This paper presents the pro­posed budget and trans­ition­al stra­tegic plan for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ in line with that agreed process.

2. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment pub­lished its budget for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ in Decem­ber 2021. The Author­ity has con­firmed resource and cap­it­al grant in aid alloc­a­tions with­in the Nation­al Parks line of that budget.

3. The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment team respons­ible for the peat­land res­tor­a­tion budget line have also con­firmed, on 16 March 2022, the resource and cap­it­al alloc­a­tions for the Cairngorms Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion Pro­gramme in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. Resource alloc­a­tion has been provided to meet our request in full, of £505,000. The cap­it­al alloc­a­tion has also been aug­men­ted to provide some carry over of the under­spend from ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ to assist in pro­ject deliv­ery for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃, sup­port­ing the Authority’s request to put in place this facility.

4. The estim­ated fin­an­cial impact of staff pay pro­pos­als for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ are included in the fig­ures presen­ted in this paper. The staff pay pro­pos­als have been developed and agreed through the Resources Com­mit­tee in Feb­ru­ary 2022, and remain sub­ject to approv­al by Scot­tish Government’s Fin­ance Pay Policy Team and sub­ject to con­sulta­tion and agree­ment with the staff group.

5. There are no unanti­cip­ated impacts from pro­gramme and pro­ject deliv­ery on the Authority’s for­ward budget pos­i­tion. All pro­gramme and pro­ject expendit­ure has been recovered from planned fund­ing sources, includ­ing Cairngorms NPA budgeted fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tions where applic­able, in devel­op­ing the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ for­ward fin­an­cial plan.

6. Oper­a­tion­al Plan invest­ment, as is com­mon in the Authority’s expendit­ure pro­file, is heav­ily weighted toward com­ple­tion of planned invest­ment in the final quarter of the fin­an­cial year. At present, we con­tin­ue to work on the assump­tion that we will deliv­er the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ com­mit­ments in full in that fin­an­cial year and there will be no adverse impacts on ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ fin­an­cial year from ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ deliv­ery plans.

Stra­tegic Context

1. The Author­ity, as a Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Body (NDPB), oper­ates with­in the con­text of a Man­age­ment State­ment estab­lished by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. The Man­age­ment State­ment sets out the respect­ive respons­ib­il­it­ies of Scot­tish Min­is­ters, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Port­fo­lio Account­able Officer, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Spon­sor Team, the Con­vener and Depute Con­vener of the Board, the Board as a whole and the Chief Exec­ut­ive as Account­able Officer as they relate to the stra­tegic dir­ec­tion, oper­a­tion and fin­an­cial account­ab­il­ity of the Authority.

2. The Board is respons­ible with­in the terms of the Man­age­ment State­ment for estab­lish­ing the over­all stra­tegic dir­ec­tion of the NDPB with­in the policy, plan­ning and resources frame­work determ­ined by the Scot­tish Min­is­ters. The Board achieves this aim through determ­in­ing the dir­ec­tion and con­tent of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) and there­after the Authority’s own Cor­por­ate Plan which sets out the CNPA’s dir­ect con­tri­bu­tions to deliv­ery of NPPP object­ives. The Authority’s cur­rent Cor­por­ate Plan was approved by the Board and Scot­tish Min­is­ters in March 2018: https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​a​u​t​h​o​r​i​t​y​/​c​o​r​p​o​r​a​t​e​-​p​l​a​n​s​/​c​o​r​p​o​r​a​t​e​-​plan/

3. Deliv­ery against the Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives is repor­ted on each year, high­light­ing achieve­ments and excep­tions, per­form­ance against tar­gets and key per­form­ance indic­at­ors and wider stra­tegic risk man­age­ment. The fourth such deliv­ery report on the cur­rent 2018 to 2022 Cor­por­ate Plan was presen­ted to the Board at its meet­ing in Septem­ber 2020: https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​t​o​g​e​t​h​e​r​/​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​s​/​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​/​b​o​a​r​d​-2020 – 09-11/

4. In terms of annu­al budget­ing, the Man­age­ment State­ment sets out the role for the Board as hav­ing cor­por­ate respons­ib­il­ity for pro­mot­ing the effi­cient and effect­ive use of staff and oth­er resources by the NDPB, and ensur­ing that any stat­utory or admin­is­trat­ive require­ments for the funds fall­ing with­in the stew­ard­ship of the NDPB are com­plied with.

5. The Chief Exec­ut­ive, as Account­able Officer, is per­son­ally respons­ible for estab­lish­ing the Authority’s Cor­por­ate and Oper­a­tion­al Plans in the light of Scot­tish Minister’s wider stra­tegic aims. The Chief Exec­ut­ive is also respons­ible under the terms of the Man­age­ment State­ment for estab­lish­ing a robust per­form­ance man­age­ment frame­work which sup­ports the achieve­ment of the NDPB’s aims and object­ives as set out in the cor­por­ate and oper­a­tion­al plans; and which enables full per­form­ance report­ing to the Board, the spon­sor Dir­ect­or­ate and the wider pub­lic. This lat­ter respons­ib­il­ity is giv­en effect by the reg­u­lar Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance report referred to above, com­ple­men­ted by reports on NPPP deliv­ery and reg­u­lar updates on deliv­ery mat­ters to the Board.

6. Over­all, the budget developed must of course be cap­able of hav­ing pro­posed expendit­ure fin­anced by avail­able income in the year with a bal­anced year-end out­turn targeted.

7. As such, the exer­cise of annu­al budget and oper­a­tion­al plan estab­lish­ment in the Author­ity as an NDPB is one of: a) The Chief Exec­ut­ive, sup­por­ted by the Man­age­ment Team and wider staff group, estab­lish­ing the most appro­pri­ate deploy­ment of resources to sup­port deliv­ery over the course of the year toward achiev­ing the stra­tegic object­ives set by the Board in the Cor­por­ate Plan; b) Review by the Board to ensure that the pro­posed deploy­ment of resources appears appro­pri­ate as a means of achiev­ing stra­tegic objectives.

8. The paper there­fore cov­ers the fol­low­ing aspects of devel­op­ment of Board strategy, scru­tiny of plan­ning and assur­ance: a. Stra­tegic risk man­age­ment and risk appet­ite: do the budget plans, fin­an­cial object­ives set and any risks and judge­ments taken on estim­ates and pro­vi­sions estab­lish an appro­pri­ate plat­form for the Authority’s budget set­ting and fin­an­cial man­age­ment pro­cesses for the com­ing fin­an­cial year? b. Deliv­er­ing stra­tegic object­ives: do the fin­an­cial plans, at this stage in their evol­u­tion, estab­lish an appro­pri­ate resource alloc­a­tion base from which to deliv­er approved stra­tegic object­ives? c. Assur­ance: are there any aspects of budget alloc­a­tion and deploy­ment that mer­it spe­cif­ic atten­tion by the Board or its Com­mit­tee in con­duct­ing the assur­ance and scru­tiny role dur­ing ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂?

Ana­lys­is of Budget Position

Income

1. A sum­mary of the Authority’s cur­rent income expect­a­tions for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ is set out in Table One.

Table One: Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Fund­ing Allocations

	2020⁄21	2021⁄22	2022⁄23	22⁄23 Change from pri­or year
	£000	£000	£000	£000
Resource: main allocation	4,779	5,830	6,467	+637
Resource: COV­ID	-	500	-	-500
Response
Resource: Vis­it­or	-	-	500	+500
Man­age­ment Support
Cap­it­al	240	600	600	0
Total grant in aid allocations	5,019	6,930	7,567	+637
Spe­cif­ic Programmes
Peat­land Restoration	246	440	505	+65
Resource fund­ing
Peat­land Restoration	-	1,850	2,962	+1,112
Cap­it­al Funding
SG Biod­iversity Funding	-	196	0	-196
			To be confirmed	To be confirmed
Oth­er gen­er­ated income	125	174	182	+8
Total Income from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and gen­er­ated from operations	5,390	9,590	11,216 tbc	+1,626 tbc
Fund­ing under man­age­ment with­in sig­ni­fic­ant ongo­ing projects
Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Project	-	610	915	+305
Her­it­age Hori­zons (estim­ated split)	-	100	2,753	+2,653
Funds under man­age­ment before spe­cif­ic pro­ject contributions	-	10,300	14,884 tbc	+4,584 tbc

1. An alloc­a­tion of £500,000 has been secured for vis­it­or man­age­ment activ­ity, which secures expendit­ure on rangers, sea­son­al rangers, grants to part­ner ranger ser­vices and some equip­ment and expenses for ranger ser­vices. This grant must be deployed on these items of expendit­ure. There­fore any decision to reduce expendit­ure in this aspect of the budget is likely to res­ult in an equi­val­ent loss of income to the Authority.

Expendit­ure

1. High level expendit­ure estim­ates fall­ing against these resources are set out in Table Two.

2. Table Two cov­ers our invest­ment in staff, board fees, and oper­a­tion­al run­ning costs; invest­ment in spe­cif­ic pro­grammes of work; and our invest­ment pro­pos­als for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ which form the trans­ition­al plan for the year ahead. As approved by the board in Decem­ber, the single year trans­ition­al plan is inten­ded to dir­ect the Authority’s activ­it­ies and pri­or­it­ise invest­ment while the organ­isa­tion moves from the cur­rent Cor­por­ate and NPPP deliv­ery peri­od into the first year of the 2022 to 2027 NPPP and devel­ops its future Cor­por­ate Plan which is likely to span 2023 to 2027.

3. The pro­posed trans­ition­al invest­ment plan for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ sup­por­ted by oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ment is set out in Annex I to this paper.

4. In order to show the full scale of funds under man­age­ment by the Author­ity, with sig­ni­fic­ant extern­al invest­ment being made by the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF), both income (Table One above) and expendit­ure (Table Two below) reflect the levels of fin­an­cial activ­ity covered by the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject and Her­it­age Hori­zons: Cairngorms 2030 Programme.

Table Two: Ini­tial Expendit­ure Pro­jec­tions ²⁰²²⁄₂₃

	2021⁄22	2022⁄23	22⁄23 Change from pri­or year
Budget	£000	£000	£000
Staff­ing	4,102	4,439	+337
Board fees	180	185	+5
Oth­er staff and board costs	177	177	0
Facil­it­ies	377	407	+30
IT and Pro­fes­sion­al Services	156	225	+69
Sub-total core expenditure	4,992	5,433	+441
Pro­gramme Investment
Her­it­age Horizons	150	150	0
Peat­land cap­it­al investment	1,972	2,962	+990
Peat­land ser­vice support	0	200	+200
Stra­tegic Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture Improve­ment Programme	324	324	0
Nature Chal­lenge and Green Recov­ery Grants	446	0	-446
COV­ID Organ­isa­tion­al and com­munity response	220	30	-190
Sub-total Pro­gramme Investment	3,112	3,666	+554
Oper­a­tion­al Plan
Con­ser­va­tion and Land Management	406		See para 21
Nature and Cli­mate Investment		795	See para 21
Vis­it­or Services	512		See para 21
Place		306	See para 21
Stra­tegic Plan­ning and Rur­al Development	310		See para 21
People		425	See para 21
Cor­por­ate	160		See para 21
Com­mu­nic­a­tions	101		See para 21
Sup­port and Facil­it­at­ing Deliv­ery across all NPPP and cor­por­ate areas		604	See para 21
Sub-total Oper­a­tion­al Plan	1,489	2,130	+641
Total invest­ment fun­ded from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment grant and gen­er­ated income	9,593	11,229	+1,636
Invest­ment fun­ded by oth­er sums under management	710	3,668	+2,958
Total invest­ment under management	10,303	14,897	+4,594

1. The budget presen­ted is there­fore a broadly bal­anced pos­i­tion, seek­ing to again deliv­er a ​“break-even” out­turn pos­i­tion whereby the Author­ity max­im­ises use of fin­an­cial resources avail­able in year. Total resource avail­able from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and

from loc­ally gen­er­ated sources are £11.216 mil­lion with budgeted expendit­ure fin­anced by that income of £11.229 mil­lion. A slight open­ing excess of expendit­ure over income of £0.013 million.

1. Extern­ally fun­ded pro­ject and pro­gramme income is budgeted to fully off­set expendit­ure of a fur­ther £3.668 million.

2. Total funds under man­age­ment for the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ fin­an­cial year are pro­jec­ted at £14.897 mil­lion, as com­pared with £10.303 mil­lion in the cur­rent year (although this fig­ure excludes the final year of LEAD­ER funds under man­age­ment to provide a like for like comparison).

Trans­ition­al Invest­ment Plan (see Annex I for detail)

1. The expendit­ure and invest­ment pro­pos­als developed for the trans­ition­al plan ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ fol­low the new Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) struc­ture and there­fore move away from the cat­egor­isa­tion used in pre­vi­ous years which fol­lows the cur­rent Cor­por­ate Plan 2018 to 2022 struc­ture. Year on year vari­ations are not presen­ted in Table Two. While there may be per­ceived to be some com­mon­alty between old and new cat­egor­isa­tions, in real­ity there is more blur­ring between the impacts of invest­ment between nature, cli­mate, people, place, cor­por­ate and com­mu­nic­a­tions invest­ment plans. Year on year com­par­is­ons would not there­fore be appro­pri­ate nor robust.

2. Over­all, invest­ment into oper­a­tion­al plan pro­jects has increased by £641,000 (43% of ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ budget level). This increase relates to the Authority’s own, dir­ectly led pro­ject invest­ment in the Cairngorms. This invest­ment is also likely to lever in fur­ther extern­al funds from part­ners. The addi­tion­al levered in part­ner invest­ment is not factored into the budget fig­ures presen­ted in this paper.

3. The Her­it­age Hori­zons: Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme will also make con­sid­er­able con­tri­bu­tions across all areas of the new NPPP over the course of its Devel­op­ment Phase in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. The Oper­a­tion­al Plan and Pro­gramme Invest­ment con­tri­bu­tions set out in Table Two are in addi­tion and com­pli­ment­ary to the Her­it­age Hori­zons work programme.

Key Assump­tions

1. There are two key assump­tions under­pin­ning devel­op­ment of the budget estim­ates presen­ted at this time to board: levels of vacancy sav­ings which may be achieved over the course of the year; and the degree to which the budget should be over-pro­grammed. The budget now presen­ted fol­lows pre­vi­ous decisions on these assump­tions by the board for the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ fin­an­cial year. Con­sid­er­a­tion of both assump­tions is set out in the fol­low­ing sec­tions for trans­par­ency and to allow the board to review the appro­pri­ate­ness of assump­tions for the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ fin­an­cial year.

Vacancy Sav­ings

1. Our budget devel­op­ment pro­cess for ²¹⁄₂₂ recog­nised the increase in staff levels to deliv­er new pro­grammes of activ­ity. We anti­cip­ated that some delays in recruit­ment and increased levels of turnover would impact on budgets. As such, we increased the vacancy sav­ings assump­tion to £171,600, or 3.9% of the revised staff budget of £4,455,600. Staff­ing for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ rep­res­en­ted 47.5% of avail­able resources for the year, the sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion as a per­cent­age of income reflect­ing the increase in peat­land pro­gramme and cap­it­al alloc­a­tions to the Author­ity for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂.

2. As the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ budget mon­it­or­ing repor­ted to Resources Com­mit­tee has shown over the course of the year, our staff budgets includ­ing these vacancy assump­tions have been under­spent. This val­id­ates the assump­tion made in set­ting the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ budget and sug­gests a high­er level of vacancy sav­ing may have been appropriate.

3. For ²⁰²²⁄₂₃, we have again set budget assump­tions on an expect­a­tion of real­ising sav­ings from vacancy man­age­ment and some delays in recruit­ment between expec­ted and actu­al start dates. Budgets are there­fore being developed once again with a vacancy sav­ing assump­tion of around 4% of full estab­lish­ment costs.

Over-pro­gram­ming

1. Over the last two to three years, the Author­ity has gradu­ally elim­in­ated the prac­tice of ​“over-pro­gram­ming” as an ele­ment of its budget set­ting. Over-pro­gram­ming allowed for some expect­a­tion of slip­page in expendit­ure plans over the course of the year by budget­ing for a great­er level of expendit­ure than could be sup­por­ted be the funds avail­able in the year. Man­age­ment of slip­page through over-pro­gram­ming helped ensure that the Author­ity could max­im­ise use of resources and come as close to a tar­get break-even out­turn pos­i­tion at the end of the year as pos­sible. A key advant­age of the over-pro­gram­ming approach is that the Author­ity also min­im­ised risk of funds being clawed back if not fully com­mit­ted dur­ing the year. The dis­ad­vant­age of the approach is the heightened risk of over-spend­ing if the levels of com­mit­ment are not adequately managed.

2. The rationale for the remov­al of an over-pro­gram­ming allow­ance is linked to the increas­ing cer­tainty of pro­ject man­agers on their spend­ing plans as our part­ner­ships and oper­a­tion­al agree­ments matured, and con­sequently reduced expect­a­tion of sig­ni­fic­ant slip­page in plans.

3. It may be appro­pri­ate to budget on the basis of some increase in over-pro­gram­ming to ensure the Author­ity is able to max­im­ise deploy­ment of resources avail­able in the year ahead, giv­en this is a trans­ition­al year with the poten­tial for part­ner­ship pro­grammes of work to take some time to mature to a point of com­mit­ting funds. How­ever, for the pur­pose of budget estim­ates now presen­ted to the board, we have adop­ted a bal­anced budget pos­i­tion as set out at para­graph 21.

Wider Fin­an­cial Analysis

Staff­ing

1. Level of invest­ment in our staff team increases by £337,000 in cur­rent pro­jec­tions for the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ year com­pared with the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ base pro­vi­sion, an increase of 8%. This

increase cov­ers the full year con­sequences of recruit­ment under­taken in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂; increase of 1.5% in employ­ers’ nation­al insur­ance con­tri­bu­tions imple­men­ted as part of the UK Government’s budget; pro­vi­sion for the pay award for staff in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ with­in the pub­lic sec­tor pay policy for the year; and the mod­elled con­sequences of a small level of recruit­ment expec­ted in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ (around 6 full time equi­val­ent posts).

1. While increas­ing on the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ level, the invest­ment in the staff team for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ rep­res­ents a decrease in the deploy­ment of Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment grant and gen­er­ated income, with 39.6% of this income inves­ted in the staff team as opposed to 42.8% in the pre­vi­ous year.

2. Giv­en the scale of total fin­an­cial resources now under man­age­ment by the Author­ity, a bet­ter meas­ure of the scale of the level of staff invest­ment is giv­en in com­par­ing staff levels with this total fin­an­cial invest­ment under man­age­ment. Our staff invest­ment for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ rep­res­ents 29.8% of total resources cur­rently fore­cast for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ com­pared with 39.8% in the pri­or year.

IT and Pro­fes­sion­al Support

1. The budget for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ high­lights a sig­ni­fic­ant increase of £69,000 in the IT and Pro­fes­sion­al Sup­port budget line. Over the course of the cur­rent year, the staff group has been work­ing to deliv­er against our approved IT Strategy and Scot­tish Government’s Digit­al Strategy to move more of our IT sys­tems into cloud-based ser­vices. The con­sequence of such a move is to trans­fer expendit­ure from sporad­ic cap­it­al expendit­ure on serv­ers and multi-year soft­ware con­tracts into annu­al user licences. As such, this change in deliv­ery pat­tern is reflec­ted in a trans­fer with­in the budget to reflect increased annu­al resource costs in the IT and Pro­fes­sion­al Ser­vices budget line, and con­trib­utes to a reduc­tion in the Cor­por­ate oper­a­tion­al plan budget lines where cap­it­al invest­ment require­ments were pre­vi­ously contained.

Oper­a­tion­al Plan Delivery

1. Oper­a­tion­al Plan invest­ment over the trans­ition­al plan­ning peri­od and first (part) year of the NPPP has increased sig­ni­fic­antly from the pri­or year pos­i­tion to £2.130 million.

2. This invest­ment is aug­men­ted by a range of pro­gramme invest­ments which are dis­closed sep­ar­ately in Table Two for added trans­par­ency on the fin­an­cial plans, cov­er­ing the peat­land pro­gramme; stra­tegic vis­it­or infra­struc­ture improve­ment plan (cap­it­al invest­ment plans); the Authority’s cash con­tri­bu­tion to the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­gramme; and we expect final year of invest­ment in the organ­isa­tions intern­al and extern­al work on move­ment out of COVID19 busi­ness con­tinu­ity and lock­down operations.

Cash Man­age­ment

1. There are no cur­rent cash man­age­ment issues to high­light. The scale of extern­ally fun­ded pro­grammes under man­age­ment, and typ­ic­al delay between incur­ring expendit­ure and recov­er­ing funds through claims will put increased pres­sure on the Authority’s cash flow man­age­ment. We have developed a detailed cash flow fore­cast for the Her­it­age Hori­zons: Cairngorms 2030 Pro­gramme and we will con­tin­ue to mon­it­or and adapt that as necessary.

2. There is some flex­ib­il­ity in our capa­city to draw down grant sup­port from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. This flex­ib­il­ity is expec­ted to provide suf­fi­cient cov­er to allow for cash flow man­age­ment over the course of the year ahead. As fur­ther mit­ig­a­tion, the fin­ance team will also work closely with Heads of Ser­vice to estab­lish a detailed expendit­ure and cash flow pro­file for deliv­ery of their trans­ition­al invest­ment plans at an early point in the year.

Dav­id Camer­on 16 March 2022 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk