Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 12 Septem­ber 2025 Page 1 of 9

Draft minutes of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee meeting

Held at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity office, Grant­own-on-Spey Online 12 Septem­ber 2025 at 1.00pm

Present online Fiona McLean (Chair) Paul Gibb Bill Lobban

Peter Cos­grove (Deputy Chair) John Kirk (sub for Geva Black­ett) Duncan Miller

In attend­ance Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions Scott McCready. wbg Tom Reid, Maz­ars Ishana Singh, Maz­ars Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies Geva Black­ett Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services

Wel­come and apologies

1. Fiona McLean, Chair of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee, wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing. Apo­lo­gies were noted.

Approv­al of minutes of pre­vi­ous meetings

1. The draft minutes of the pre­vi­ous Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee meet­ing held on 20 June 2025 were approved with no amendments

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Mat­ters arising not covered elsewhere

1. There were no mat­ters arising.

Ref	Action Detail	Who	When	Status
21/06/24	At para 341 Les­sons learned brief­ing for the com­mit­tee for the next meeting	Dav­id	Will come to meet­ing in June/​Sept depend­ing on staff time available	Open To come to Sept meeting
	Update; on today’s agenda/​closed
27/09/24	At para 20i iv. Update on intern­al audit view on fin­an­cial scen­ario plan­ning to be provided to the Audit and Risk Committee	Dav­id and Stephanie	At the end of the 24⁄25 fin­an­cial year.	Ongo­ing Man­age­ment to report back to Com­mit­tee to give assurance
	Update: Grant and Dav­id have been work­ing on it over the sum­mer; more work to be done before can be brought to the Committee.
21/03/25	At para 28 i. Stat­ist­ic­al ana­lys­is to be brought back to the Com­mit­tee show­ing of the con­tracts awar­ded how many com­pan­ies were based in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, how many around and how many out with	Louise		Out­stand­ing

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	over the course of one year.
	ii. Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between con­flict and declar­a­tion of interest on page 6 of the Pro­cure­ment Action Plan.	Louise
	Update: Com­pleted
20/06/25	At Para 16 iii. Wbg to dis­cuss and agree with Man­age­ment to review the time­tabling of the reports to provide more of an even spread.	Peter Clark, Gra­ham Gilespie, Louise, David	Septem­ber meeting
	Update Closed — On today’s agenda.
20/06/25	At Para 25 iv. Risk One to be amended to include detail which con­siders and reflects the risks posed with­in the	Dav­id	By the next meeting

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	Pub­lic Reform Strategy that was pub­lished the day before the meeting.
	Update Risk Register updated with­in today’s papers. Closed
20/06/25	At Para 29 v. Estim­ated time spent by staff on each inform­a­tion request to be cap­tured and included in the next report. i. Each request to include a little bit of detail to help identi­fy emer­ging themes. ii.	Paul	For the next update to Com­mit­tee Nov meeting
	Update: In hand for next meeting

Declar­a­tions of interest

1. There were no declar­a­tions of interest.

Extern­al audit assur­ances (Paper 1)

1. Tom Reid, Maz­ars presen­ted the paper which sets out the Request for inform­a­tion from Man­age­ment and Those Charged with Gov­ernance pre­pared by Mazars.

2. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee: α) Con­sidered the auditor’s request for inform­a­tion and Management’s response to this.

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1. b) Provided assur­ance that its gov­ernance extends to cov­er the items on which assur­ance is requested.

Action Points Arising:

i. None.

Intern­al audit pro­gress report (Oral)

1. Scott McCready, wbg presen­ted the update which sets out the pro­gress made on the intern­al audit pro­gress report.

2. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee agreed with this approach and advised that, depend­ing on the find­ings of the Intern­al Aud­it­ors on the vari­ous pro­jects for the year they would sched­ule in an addi­tion­al Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee meet­ing in March 2026 should it be required.

3. Action Points Arising: None.

Stra­tegic Risk Registers (Paper 2)

1. Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions presen­ted the paper which sup­ports a review by the Com­mit­tee of the Park Authority’s stra­tegic risk register man­age­ment position.

2. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the report and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: α) A mem­ber quer­ied risk 11 around repu­ta­tion and the poten­tial for unreal­ist­ic expect­a­tions between CNPA and stake­hold­ers, com­mit­ments made regard­ing beavers and their impact on flood banks. The Park Author­ity has made some fin­an­cial guar­an­tees over a lim­ited time­frame but what were the expect­a­tions after this peri­od ends, and was there also a repu­ta­tion­al risk out with the Cairngorms Nation­al Park (CNP) when beavers move across the park bound­ary? CEO advised that the flood bank com­mit­ment would be reviewed in 2026. At time of mak­ing this com­mit­ment, the ini­tial thought was that poten­tial for sup­port through agri-fund­ing would be clear­er, but to date, that was not the case. If neces­sary, fin­an­cial com­mit­ments will be exten­ded to 2028 which was the end of the trans­lo­ca­tion license. NatureScot pick up the

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b) effects out with the CNP. A watching brief is being kept on that. The member

agreed with that approach. CEO com­men­ted that Trans­port Scot­land hav­ing giv­en fund­ing for 2025/ 2026, it would be odd if they did not award us money for the second stage. How­ever, the fact that there is a Scot­tish elec­tion next year cre­ates some uncer­tainty, so it is not guar­an­teed at this stage.

1. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee noted the paper and agreed to the recom­mend­a­tions: α) Con­sidered the cov­er­age and adequacy of the Park Authority’s stra­tegic risk man­age­ment pos­i­tion and advise on any gaps or amend­ments required to the cur­rent stra­tegic risk register. b) Con­sidered the cov­er­age and adequacy of the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme risk man­age­ment pos­i­tion and advise on any gaps or amend­ments required to the cur­rent pro­gramme risk register.

2. Action Points Arising: None.

Pro­cure­ment approaches: les­sons learned (Paper 3)

1. Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Oper­a­tions presen­ted the paper which draws togeth­er reflec­tions on the les­sons learned in identi­fy­ing and tak­ing steps to imple­ment the improve­ments required to the Park Authority’s pro­cure­ment con­trols. The paper is presen­ted at the request of the Com­mit­tee and fol­low­ing reflec­tion by officers involved in the devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of the pro­cure­ment action plan which fol­lowed the intern­al audit review of the Park Authority’s pro­cure­ment controls.

2. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee dis­cussed the report and made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: α) The Chair com­men­ted that the Com­mit­tee had reques­ted the report to be brought to the Com­mit­tee and felt reas­sured by its con­tents. b) CEO advised that the work under­taken was wider than pro­cure­ment. Lots of work had gone into digit­ising vari­ous aspects of our ser­vices, includ­ing pro­cure­ment, grants etc. — 38 dif­fer­ent pro­cesses had been made digit­al — and ensur­ing those pro­cesses are fit for pur­pose for the future.

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1. c) A mem­ber com­men­ted that it was a good paper that covered a lot of ques­tions the Com­mit­tee had raised, and that it dealt with an area that had been picked up at Board meet­ings. How­ever there still remained an under­cur­rent of people with­in the com­munity who do not under­stand the func­tion of CNPA. The mem­ber felt that the report did not pick that up strongly enough and asked who should be lead­ing to address this. CEO advised that the member’s ques­tion was not a mat­ter related to pro­cure­ment but a more gen­er­al point. He agreed there were some grey areas and the devel­op­ment of next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) would be a sens­ible time to con­sider this.

2. The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee dis­cussed and com­men­ted on the les­sons learned from col­lect­ive hand­ling of the Park Authority’s approach to devel­op­ing intern­al con­trols on pro­cure­ment as set out in this paper.

3. Action Points Arising: None.

AOCB

1. The Chair announced that this would be Peter Cosgrove’s last meet­ing as Vice- Chair of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee and thanked him for being an incred­ibly help­ful mem­ber of the Com­mit­tee, a sup­port­ive vice chair whose insight­ful com­ments have made a real dif­fer­ence to this Com­mit­tee. Peter Cos­grove explained that he was now Chair­ing two oth­er groups and remain­ing as vice Chair of this one, was just too much. The Chair wished him well in his new chair­ing opportunities.

2. Motion to take the next items in con­fid­en­tial session.

Date of Next Meeting

1. The date of the next meet­ing is 14 Novem­ber 2025 in person.

2. The pub­lic part of the meet­ing con­cluded at 13.46 pm

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Ref	Action Detail	Who	When	Status
27/09/24	At para 20i V. Update on intern­al audit view on fin­an­cial scen­ario plan­ning to be provided to the Audit and Risk Committee	Dav­id and Stephanie	At the end of the 24⁄25 fin­an­cial year.	Ongo­ing Man­age­ment to report back to Com­mit­tee to give assurance
21/03/25	At para 28 ii. Stat­ist­ic­al ana­lys­is to be brought back to the Com­mit­tee show­ing of the con­tracts awar­ded how many com­pan­ies were based in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, how many around and how many out with over the course of one year.	Louise		Out­stand­ing
20/06/25	At Para 29 iii. Estim­ated time spent by staff on each inform­a­tion request to be cap­tured and included in the next report. iv. Each request to include a little bit of detail to help	Paul	For the next update to Com­mit­tee Nov meeting	Open

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