Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Form­al Board Paper 2 Annex 5 27 March 2026

Paper 2

Annex 5

Risk Ref	Old Ref	Theme	Risk cat­egory	Risk descrip­tion	Mitigation/​controls in place	Cur­rent Impact	Cur­rent Like­li­hood	Risk Score	Trend	Com­ment	Planned actions	Due date	Risk appet­ite	Tar­get Impact	Tar­get Like­li­hood	Tar­get Risk Score	Risk own­er	Date last updated
1	A1	All	Resources — financial	Pub­lic sec­tor fin­ances con­strain capa­city to alloc­ate suf­fi­cient resources to deliv­er cor­por­ate plan.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: Ongo­ing liais­on with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment through our spon­sor­ship team, Peat­land Action Team, and Rur­al Com­munit­ies Team high­light­ing achieve­ments of CNPA. - Pre­vent­at­ive: pre­pare brief­ing on work and pri­or­ity invest­ment for post-elec­tion budget alloc­a­tions, tak­ing on Board expect­a­tion of fund­ing con­straints. - Remedi­al: Focus resource on diver­si­fic­a­tion of income streams to altern­at­ive, non-pub­lic income gen­er­a­tion. - Remedi­al: Con­tinu­ing to sup­port ​“deliv­ery bod­ies” such as Cairngorms Nature, Cairngorms Trust in secur­ing inward investment.	12	3	36	Decreas­ing	Alloc­a­tions for 2026⁄27 fin­an­cial year provide a good set­tle­ment suf­fi­cient to cov­er planned deliv­ery against cor­por­ate plan object­ives. Mit­ig­a­tion actions have sup­por­ted pos­it­ive risk man­age­ment. Risk decreas­ing while recog­nising alloc­a­tions remain sub­ject to approv­al of Scot­tish budget, with resid­ual risk around in year adjust­ments in line with devel­op­ment of new 2027 to 2032 Cor­por­ate Plan and NPPP. Award of £1.19 mil­lion from NRF togeth­er with sig­ni­fic­ant NLHF fund­ing to 2029 con­firms suc­cess of mit­ig­a­tion approaches. Risk asso­ci­ated with forth­com­ing elec­tion is recog­nised and risk pro­file will be recon­sidered in June 26.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: Ongo­ing liais­on with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment through our spon­sor­ship team and the Peat­land Action Team, high­light­ing achieve­ments of CNPA. - Remedi­al: scen­ario plan­ning on for­ward budget mod­el­ling to pre­pare options for future resource alloc­a­tions with­in final alloc­a­tions, based on fund­ing para­met­ers sug­ges­ted by spon­sor­ship team.	Ongo­ing	Open	3	4	12	Dav­id Cameron	18/02/2026
2	A8	All	Resources — financial	Risk of C2030 match fund­ing not being secured — cur­rent match fund­ing in bid not fully com­mit­ted and/​or for one year only in many areas.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: Ongo­ing liais­on with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment through our spon­sor­ship team and the Peat­land Action Team, high­light­ing achieve­ments of CNPA and import­ance of Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion fund­ing to inward invest­ment by NLHF. - Remedi­al: Dis­cus­sions with Trans­port Scot­land on fund­ing for act­ive travel design work. - Remedi­al: ongo­ing explor­a­tion with part­ners to secure C2030 pro­gramme funding	4	3	12	Decreas­ing	Fund­ing for 2026⁄27 Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion has been secured in line with require­ments. This provides a suit­able level of match fund­ing for the C2030 pro­gramme, in line with the programme’s 5‑year budget. Peat­land res­tor­a­tion deliv­ery pro­file is healthy, with expect­a­tion that suf­fi­cient will be spent with­in the year to meet required con­tri­bu­tion to C2030 deliv­ery. Fund­ing for Act­ive Com­munit­ies pro­jects now in place (Trans­port Scot­land). Con­tract­or for RIBA stages 3 and 4 design work now appoin­ted. Trans­port Scot­land fund­ing awar­ded must be used by 31 March 2026, the short time-frame put­ting pres­sure on deliv­ery. Con­tinu­ation of the pro­jects past design stage 3 will require an addi­tion­al award of fund­ing for 2026⁄27 which is now in applic­a­tion pro­cess. Dis­cus­sions with HIE pro­gress­ing well toward secur­ing budgeted con­tri­bu­tion plus poten­tially a slight increase.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: high pro­file and ongo­ing focus for SMT in enga­ging in influ­en­cing to secure the match fund­ing needed from part­ners; pro­ject man­agers aware of rel­ev­ant pro­ject match fund­ing pos­i­tion and tasked with seek­ing addi­tion­al match fund­ing where appro­pri­ate. - Pre­vent­at­ive: con­sid­er­a­tion of new, wider match fund­ing oppor­tun­it­ies. - Remedi­al: Fully updated C2030 budget devel­op­ment in Q1 of 26⁄27 to identi­fy any remaing spe­cif­ic issues or remedi­al work.	Ongo­ing	Open	2	4	8	Dav­id Cameron	18/02/2026
3	A9	All	Resources — staffing	There are per­ceived gaps in our skill set with respect to: pro­cure­ment pro­cesses, recruit­ment of tech­nic­al staff, abil­ity to under­take neces­sary due dili­gence on out­put from con­sult­ants and con­tract­ors. — Risks that pro­cure­ment and wider skill set capa­cit­ies are insuf­fi­cient to meet the evolving needs of the organ­isa­tion. Lack of expert­ise and exper­i­ence in man­aging con­struc­tion pro­jects may com­prom­ise the effect­ive­ness and effi­ciency of planned deliv­ery. Fin­an­cial risks asso­ci­ated with the let­ting of con­tracts where part­ner­ship fund­ing is likely to be depend­ent on the achieve­ment of sat­is­fact­ory standards.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: Recruit­ment of Pro­cure­ment Officer - Pre­vent­at­ive: Sup­port secured from Scot­land Excel (and from Cent­ral Gov­ern­ment Pro­cure­ment Shared Ser­vices (CGPSS) if required). - Pre­vent­at­ive: Con­sider deliv­ery through part­ners with con­struc­tion pro­ject deliv­ery exper­i­ence where appro­pri­ate to deliv­ery object­ives. - Remedi­al: use of leg­al sup­port or oth­er out­sourced sup­port where required	4	2	8	Man­aged	This risk now appears under effect­ive man­age­ment. As a rel­at­ively small organ­isa­tion, staff turnover will have sig­ni­fic­ant impacts on pos­i­tion. Recruit­ment to new Pro­cure­ment Officer post achieved. Pro­gramme of improve­ment in pro­cure­ment pro­cesses, pro­ced­ures and con­trols well under­way, includ­ing estab­lish­ment of new Pro­cure­ment Strategy. Con­struc­tion pro­jects of the size anti­cip­ated with­in the C2030 pro­gramme are new to the organ­isa­tion. We need to improve our know­ledge of Con­struc­tion Design and Man­age­ment Reg­u­la­tions (CDM) and con­tracts (NEC4). We lack exper­i­ence in pro­du­cing briefs and review­ing tenders of this size and type. Improve­ments in our skill set will also bene­fit: peat­land res­tor­a­tion, river res­tor­a­tion, con­struc­tion of paths, act­ive travel projects.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: explore back up arrange­ments — shared ser­vices and com­mer­cial back up includ­ing increas­ing scale of our oper­a­tions if sup­por­ted by shared ser­vice income from third parties - Pre­vent­at­ive: Staff reten­tion approaches and link to organ­isa­tion­al devevl­op­ment. - Remedi­al: Con­tin­ued focus on train­ing and devel­op­ment of staff	31/03/2026	Cau­tious	2	4	8	Dav­id Cameron	18/02/2026
4	A24	Nature & conservat	Stra­tegic delivery	Action on wild­life crime depends on the devel­op­ment, deliv­ery and design of stra­tegic part­ner­ships. Fin­an­cial con­straints with­in the Authority’s range of powers com­bined with stra­tegic part­ner­ships is insuf­fi­cient to deliv­er out­comes on wild­life crime. Wild­life crime is dif­fi­cult to evid­ence and pop­u­la­tions are affected by a vari­ety of inter­re­lated factors.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: licen­cing arrange­ments con­trib­ute to more effect­ive con­trol frame­work. - Tracker/​satel­lite mon­it­or­ing deployed for some rap­tors. Data gath­er­ing to high­light pub­lic presence/​absence	4	4	16	Stat­ic	and third sec­tors is likely to reduce the level of resource avail­able to tackle this issue. No dir­ect cor­rel­a­tion between inter­ven­tion and pop­u­la­tion increases due to com­plex­ity of factors, but tan­gible efforts demon­strate com­mit­ment to the issue.	- Remedi­al: NPPP devel­op­ment pro­cesses used to explore part­ner­ship atti­tudes, engage­ment and powers. - Remedi­al: Development/​strength­en­ing of stra­tegic partnerships.	Ongo­ing	Open	4	3	12	Andy Ford	20/01/2025
6	A11	All	Sys­tems development	The speed/​scale of oper­a­tion­al demand for sup­port from cor­por­ate sys­tems is such that we are more react­ive and focused on pro­ject spe­cif­ic issues rather than pro­act­ively design­ing effect­ive, gen­er­ic sup­port systems/​ways of work­ing through bet­ter use of M365 applic­a­tions Remedi­al: Imple­ment new fin­ance sys­tem to sup­port wider digit­isa­tion of sys­tems and effect­ive fin­an­cial report­ing. sys­tems. How­ever, that ongo­ing fire-fight­ing and imme­di­ate advice pre­vents us hav­ing suf­fi­cient time to design, devel­op and imple­ment new sys­tems to bet­ter suit the new organisation.	- Remedi­al: recruit­ment of addi­tion­al staff to cor­por­ate func­tion dur­ing 22⁄23 and 23⁄24. - Remedi­al: pro­ject man­age­ment train­ing provided - Remedi­al: devel­op­ment of improved systems/​ways of work­ing includ­ing stream­lin­ing and cla­ri­fy­ing pro­ject ini­ti­ation con­trols. - Pre­vent­at­ive: design and imple­ment pro­ject ini­ti­ation con­trols sup­port­ing more man­aged timelines and fuller, earli­er con­sid­er­a­tion of pro­ject plans.	3	3	9	Stat­ic	Ini­tial mit­ig­a­tion actions now in place and embed­ding, includ­ing fur­ther rein­force­ment of oper­a­tion of con­trols to be undetaken. New fin­ance sys­tem installed on sched­ule by 31/03/25; new pro­ject ini­ti­ation con­trol sys­tem imple­men­ted dur­ing 2025.	- Remedi­al: apply resource to devel­op­ment of improved systems/​ways of work­ing - Remedi­al: provide train­ing — pro­cure­ment and in wider assess­ment of pro­ject impacts at ini­ti­ation stage. - Remedi­al: ongo­ing roll-out and embed­ding of pro­ject ini­ti­ation guidance.	31/08/2025	Open	2	3	6	Dav­id Cameron	18/02/2026
9	A13/ A18	All	Tech­nic­al	CNPA IT ser­vices are not suf­fi­ciently robust/​secure/​or well enough spe­cified to sup­port effect­ive and effi­cient ser­vice deliv­ery. Increas­ing demand for know­ledge around Microsoft 365 and cyber secur­ity is out­strip­ping the team’s knowledge/​skill-set. Increas­ing ICT depend­ency for effect­ive and effi­cient oper­a­tions is not adequately backed up by ICT sys­tems sup­port. Use of AI increases risk of cyber secur­ity threats such as spear-phishing.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: Daily review of Scot­tish Cyber Coordin­a­tion Centre threat sum­mar­ies, with fol­low up action taken (eg patch­ing) as appro­pri­ate. - Preventative/​remedi­al: Col­lab­or­a­tion with LL&TNPA provides sup­port. - Pre­vent­at­ive: advis­ory intern­al audit com­mis­sioned Jan 26 to sup­port plan­ning of future sys­tems devel­op­ment - Pre­vent­at­ive: Trans­ition to Share­point com­plete; R‑drive now a read-only repos­it­ory, redu­cing risk of threats from out­side the organ­isa­tion. - Pre­vent­at­ive: imple­ment Cyber Secur­ity Plus controls	5	2	10	Stat­ic	Move­ment into Microsoft 365 deploy­ment and cloud based sys­tems con­tin­ues to evolve and become embed­ded. Cyber Secur­ity Plus accred­it­a­tion now in place and sys­tems oper­at­ing to those stand­ards. Con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to effect­ive­ness of shared ser­vices with LL&TNPA. Action to be taken on advis­ory audit and busi­ness con­tinu­ity plan­ning once advice is received.	- Devel­op­ment of the IT oper­a­tion­al risk register has iden­ti­fied poten­tial for struc­tur­al improve­ment. These con­sid­er­a­tions to be developed fur­ther: action to be taken on advis­ory audit and busi­ness con­tinu­ity plan­ning once advice is received. - Cyber essen­tials accred­it­a­tion achieved; audit towards essen­tials plus accred­it­a­tion under­way (11÷09÷24). - A review of IT staff role descrip­tions now com­pleted; renewed focus on IT action plans will flow from that. - Work on the inform­a­tion man­age­ment plan will pro­duce great­er resi­li­ence of data and access to key inform­a­tion when complete.	Ongo­ing	Cau­tious	4	2	8	Dav­id Cameron	18/02/2026
10	A22	All	Tech­nic­al	Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plans (BCP) are inad­equate to deal with sig­ni­fic­ant impacts to nor­mal work­ing arrange­ments and res­ult in ser­vice failure.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: Devel­op­ment of hybrid work­ing meth­ods and cloud com­put­ing approaches have improved the organisation’s resi­li­ence. - Remedi­al: devel­op updated busi­ness con­tinu­ity plan and embed its provisions	5	4	20	Stat­ic	Advis­ory audit now com­mis­sioned. Out­puts from this will plug into wider BCP. Con­sultancy on this will be tendered pri­or to year end.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: pro­posed con­sultancy to devel­op new BCP	31/03/2026	Min­im­al	3	1	5	Dav­id Cameron	18/02/2026
11	-	All	Repu­ta­tion	Repu­ta­tion­al dam­age may res­ult from: - Unreal­ist­ic expect­a­tions of what the Park Author­ity and its part­ners can achieve in the face of the sig­ni­fic­ant risks presen­ted by cli­mate change, spe­cies extinc­tion, flood man­age­ment and fire; and/​or - Dis­agree­ment between the Park Author­ity and stake­hold­er groups with­in the Park. - Dis­in­form­a­tion cir­cu­lated about the Park Authority’s actions	- Pre­vent­at­ive: Exist­ing stra­tegic part­ner­ships and stake­hold­er rela­tion­ships help to cre­ate a wider under­stand­ing of the factors that are with­in, and those that are out­side the con­trol of the Park Author­ity and its part­ners. - Pre­vent­at­ive: com­mu­nic­a­tions strategy devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion to ensure Park Authority’s mes­sages and inform­a­tion are widely received and under­stood by appro­pri­ate audiences	4	3	12	Decreas­ing	Scor­ing reviewed fol­low­ing over­view of NPPP deliv­ery to be sub­mit­ted to board in September,with like­li­hood decreased from 4 to 3. Stake­hold­er rela­tion­ship data­base now designed and under development	- Pre­vent­at­ive: Man­age­ment of expect­a­tions through: - Tar­geted com­mu­nic­a­tions - Fur­ther devel­op­ment of stake­hold­er rela­tion­ships. - Development/​strength­en­ing of stra­tegic part­ner­ships. - Ongo­ing assess­ment of oper­a­tion­al risk man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion in our com­mu­nic­a­tions. - Devel­op­ment of stake­hold­er rela­tion­ship data­base - Clear pos­i­tion­ing on the Park Authority’s role / level of involve­ment in sig­ni­fic­ant issues	Ongo­ing	Open	3	3	9	Grant Moir	17/10/2025
13	-	All	Stra­tegic delivery	The Park Author­ity does not adequately respond or adpat to changes in fund­ing or policy envir­on­ment at Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment policy levels; from extern­al fund­ing sources; or in evol­u­tion of private fin­ance investment.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: alloc­ate seni­or time to engage­ment with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment in policy dis­cus­sion and devel­op­ment, identi­fy­ing and respond­ing to risk implic­a­tions. - Pre­vent­at­ive: pro­act­ively identi­fy oppor­tun­it­ies for private invest­ment and struc­tures to sup­port their invest­ment to com­ple­ment and sup­port NPPP and cor­por­ate object­ives. - Pre­vent­at­ive: pri­or­it­ise time alloc­a­tion to policy evol­u­tion, such as Pub­lic Ser­vice Reform	3	4	12	Stat­ic	Pos­it­ive rela­tion­ships developed at seni­or levels on engage­ment with the Park Author­ity and our fin­an­cial require­ments. Work pro­gress­ing on devel­op­ment of a private fin­ance frame­work. Need iden­ti­fied to begin plan­ning for end of C2030 fin­an­cing peri­od and replace­ment of NLHF fund­ing with­in the Park Authority’s resource mix. Seni­or staff are fully engaged at a lead­er­ship level in Pub­lic Ser­vice Reform and wider policy evolution	- Multi-year work­force man­age­ment and fin­an­cial fore­casts estab­lished to guide actions - Final­ise private fin­ance framework	31/03/2026	Open	2	2	4	Dav­id Cameron	18/02/2026
14	-	All	Resources — staffing	The Park Authority’s work­force is not adequately flex­ible to respond to chan­ging stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies or to chan­ging oper­a­tion­al scale	- Pre­vent­at­ive: work­force man­age­ment strategy updated and reg­u­larly reviewed to take a 5+ year for­ward view. - Pre­vent­at­ive: con­tin­ued invest­ment in train­ing and devel­op­ment for staff sup­port­ing per­form­ance in cur­rent roles and suc­ces­sion / devel­op­ment plans. - Pre­vent­at­ive: estab­lish an appro­pri­ate mix of per­man­ent and fixed term staff to allow for flex­ib­il­ity in future struc­tures. - Remedi­al: retain scru­tiny of all vacan­cies and iden­ti­fic­a­tion of oppor­tun­it­ies to adapt vacan­cies toward future needs.	3	3	9	Stat­ic	Work­force man­age­ment strategy reviewed by board at busi­ness ses­sion, Octo­ber 2025. This will now guide asso­ci­ated policy devel­op­ment work fol­low­ing full intern­al con­sulta­tion. Mit­ig­a­tion actions pro­gress­ing to plan.	- Con­sulta­tion on work­force man­age­ment strategy. - Devel­op­ment of organ­isa­tion­al policies sup­port­ing deliv­ery of work­force man­age­ment objectives.	31/12/26 31/12/26	Cau­tious	3	1	3	Dav­id Cameron	17/10/2025
15	-	All	Sys­tems development	NPPP deliv­ery respons­ib­il­it­ies are not suf­fi­ciently clear across the part­ner­ship and Park Author­ity is expec­ted to address more than it is cap­able to deliver.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: rein­force spe­cif­ic part­ner deliv­ery respons­ib­il­it­ies through per­form­ance man­age­ment sys­tems and report­ing. - Pre­vent­at­ive: rein­force NPPP deliv­ery link­ages through grant con­tract terms.	3	4	12	Stat­ic	NPPP Per­form­ance Man­age­ment dash­board now complete.	- Part­ner engage­ment and clar­ity of respons­ib­il­ity to be addressed as aspect of devel­op­ment of 27 – 32 NPPP.	31/12/26	Open	3	3	9	Gav­in Miles	17/10/2025
16	-	All	Tech­nic­al	Evol­u­tion of the Park Authority’s range of activ­it­ies and pro­jects res­ults in uniden­ti­fied and unmit­ig­ated expos­ure to leg­al implic­a­tions and asso­ci­ated liabilities	- Pre­vent­at­ive: under­take risk ana­lys­is over­view of 2025⁄26 oper­a­tion­al plan to identi­fy any deliv­ery areas with poten­tial expos­ure; devel­op and deliv­er mit­ig­a­tion action plan	3	3	9	Decreas­ing	Evid­ence that pro­ject ini­ti­ation pro­cesses is work­ing in draw­ing out poten­tial leg­al implic­a­tions of pro­ject plans.	- Mon­it­or effect­ive­ness of sys­tem and level of any issues arising.	TBC	Open	3	2	6	Dav­id Cameron	17/10/2025
17	-	Place	Stra­tegic delivery	Uncer­tain­ties on fin­ance, pro­cure­ment, con­tract­or capa­city and part­ner­ship devel­op­ment com­bine to pre­vent achieve­ment of key Cairngorms 2030 com­munity trans­port infra­struc­ture enhancements.	- Pre­vent­at­ive: pres­sure on extern­al fun­ders to make decisions with­in neces­sary timetable - Pre­vent­at­ive: revised pro­cure­ment approach to sim­pli­fy require­ments and min­im­ise per­ceived con­tract­or risk - Pre­vent­at­ive: estab­lish over-arch­ing agree­ments with partners	4	3	12	Decreas­ing	Pro­gress over 2025 in man­aging these extern­al risks to pro­gramme deliv­ery has been gen­er­ally suc­cess­ful with con­sequen­tial declin­ing risk profile.	- Ongo­ing con­tact with extern­al fun­ders to secure fund­ing for 2026⁄27. - Devel­op­ment of memor­andum of agree­ment with key loc­al author­ity partner	Ongo­ing	Cau­tious	2	3	6	Gav­in Miles	18/02/2026
18	-	All	Resources — staffing	Deliv­ery oppor­tun­it­ies and extern­al fund­ing offers are lost as a con­sequence of con­straints on staff­ing levels imposed by pub­lic policy and work­force management	- Pre­vent­at­ive: engage at seni­or levels with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment to ensure there is clar­ity in pub­lic policy with regard to work­force man­age­ment actions and staff­ing levels under­pinned by extern­al and non-core income. - Pre­vent­at­ive: ensure intern­al work­force man­age­ment policy and man­age­ment con­trols - Pre­vent­at­ive: seek to move to a more dynam­ic and flex­ible staff­ing pos­i­tion allow­ing deploy­ment of staff resource toward emer­ging priorities	4	4	16	Stat­ic	New risk iden­ti­fied by Exec­ut­ive Team Janu­ary 2026	- Pre­vent­at­ive: Man­age­ment Team Policy Day over­view of pro­gramme status; eval­u­ation of 2029 out­comes; iden­ti­fic­a­tion of key actions and risk mitigations	March 2026	Cau­tious	2	2	4	Dav­id Cameron	18/02/2026