Formal Board Paper 2 - Budget and Operational Plan 26-27

Form­al Board Paper 2 27 March 2026 Page 1 of 9

For decision

Title: ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ budget and oper­a­tion­al plan Pre­pared by: Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Operations

Pur­pose

This paper sets out the Park Authority’s pro­posed budget for the ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ fin­an­cial year.

It provides the Board with the oppor­tun­ity to con­sider the over­all budget pos­i­tion, togeth­er with the impact of any key assump­tions made in estab­lish­ing budget estimates.

The paper also presents the pro­posed oper­a­tion­al plan for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ (Annex 4) to allow mem­bers to scru­tin­ise, and take assur­ance on, the alloc­a­tion of avail­able resources, both fin­an­cial and staff resources. The budget alloc­a­tions seek to provide a bal­anced approach to deliv­ery of the Park Authority’s agreed stra­tegic object­ives, as set out in the approved Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) and Cor­por­ate Plan.

Annex 3 to the paper sets out the risks iden­ti­fied dur­ing budget devel­op­ment and ref­er­ences these to the Stra­tegic Risk Register, which is also provided for ref­er­ence (Annex 5).

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is asked to:

a) Approve the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority’s budget and oper­a­tion­al plan for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ as set out in this paper. b) Con­sider the impact of the budget and oper­a­tion­al plan on the stra­tegic risk register and any amend­ments arising.

Stra­tegic context

1. This paper builds on the inform­a­tion provided to the Board at its busi­ness ses­sion in Janu­ary 2026, and sub­sequent dis­cus­sions with the Resources Com­mit­tee at its meet­ing the fol­low­ing month.

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1. While we await form­al con­firm­a­tion of fund­ing for the year, the Authority’s pre­dicted set­tle­ment from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG) for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ is:

	£m
Grant in Aid	Resource fund­ing — RDEL Resource Depart­ment­al Expendit­ure Limits	8.560
Grant in Aid	Cap­it­al fund­ing — CDEL Cap­it­al Depart­ment­al Expendit­ure Limits	2.085
Peat­land restoration	RDEL	0.705
Peat­land restoration	CDEL	3.500
Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund	Applic­a­tion for funds	1.045
Com­munity Led Loc­al Development	Pending con­firm­a­tion of allocation	0.350

1. Avail­able resources have been alloc­ated accord­ing to pri­or­it­ies estab­lished to meet the require­ments of the NPPP and the Cor­por­ate Plan. The budget has been con­struc­ted on a line-by-line basis against each aim of the Cor­por­ate Plan.

2. When gen­er­ated income budgeted at £0.25 mil­lion togeth­er with deploy­ment of £4.763 mil­lion fund­ing from the Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) pro­gramme is taken into account, total resources under man­age­ment for the com­ing year, ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇, is budgeted at £21.258 million.

3. The pro­cess of budget devel­op­ment requires the con­sid­er­a­tion of risk. Detail on the risks con­sidered by man­age­ment and presen­ted to the Board are provided in Annex 3 to this paper.

Over­view of draft ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ budget position

1. The over­view of the pro­posed budget for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ is presen­ted in Annex 1, while Annex 2 provides a com­par­is­on of the pro­posed ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ budget with the final budget pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆.

2. The budget sets out the Park Authority’s pro­pos­al for the applic­a­tion of core resources provided by SG through the Nation­al Parks budget, and through oth­er SG budgets: for peat­land res­tor­a­tion, Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) and nature recov­ery. In addi­tion, the budget includes the applic­a­tion of the

Form­al Board Paper 2 27 March 2026 Page 3 of 9

sig­ni­fic­ant fin­ances provided for the third full year of deliv­ery of the C2030 programme.

1. The Author­ity has yet to receive a final grant award let­ter for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ from SG. How­ever, cur­rent inform­a­tion on alloc­a­tions provides the best avail­able basis for budget plan­ning, des­pite uncer­tainty pending the final­isa­tion and receipt of grant award letters.

2. The Author­ity was invited to apply for fin­an­cial sup­port through the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund (NRF). We have con­fid­ence that an alloc­a­tion of NRF fund­ing will be received for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇. Pro­jects that would be eli­gible for sup­port from the fund have been included in the budget alloc­a­tion, in sup­port the Park Authority’s pri­or­ity to deliv­er nature res­tor­a­tion out­comes (£1.045 mil­lion) and the equi­val­ent NRF fund­ing is assumed to be avail­able to the Park Author­ity. (Annex 3‑Risk 1).

3. Fund­ing for CLLD is still to be final­ised, and the fig­ure of £0.350 mil­lion included in the budget rep­res­ents our best estim­ate; we await decisions from SG on both the total fund­ing avail­able for CLLD, and how it will be alloc­ated across part­ner bod­ies. This presents very lim­ited risk to the over­all budget pos­i­tion presen­ted. Any vari­ation in assumed income will be equally off­set by vary­ing the fund­ing awar­ded, while resource cov­er for staff costs has been confirmed.

4. This pos­i­tion as regards a degree of fund­ing uncer­tainty is rel­at­ively com­mon at this point in set­ting the Park Authority’s budget for the year ahead. As part of our ongo­ing budget mon­it­or­ing activ­ity through the year, we will con­sider the suf­fi­ciency of income along­side the man­age­ment of expenditure.

5. Deliv­ery against the C2030 pro­gramme in ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ is expec­ted to cost £7.763 mil­lion in total. Of this, £3 mil­lion is included in our cur­rent budget estim­ates for Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion. Sim­il­arly, staff costs asso­ci­ated with C2030 deliv­ery that will be met from core resources are provided for in our estim­ates. The Park Authority’s com­mit­ted fund­ing con­tri­bu­tion is also recog­nised. The bal­ance of C2030 pro­gramme fund­ing of £4.763 mil­lion to be met dir­ectly from pro­gramme fin­ances man­aged by the Park Author­ity out­side of our core SG fund­ing is shown in Annex 1 as income along­side matched expenditure.

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1. Inform­a­tion on the pro­posed budget for staff salar­ies is provided in para­graphs 22 to 26 below. Staff­ing costs for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ (exclud­ing any poten­tial vacancy sav­ings and staff costs recov­er­able through the C2030 pro­gramme) account for 39.9% of the total oper­a­tion­al plan income shown of £16.495 mil­lion. In the budget for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ the like-for-like costs were 39.6% of total oper­a­tion­al plan income (£15.677 mil­lion), giv­ing a very sim­il­ar pro­file for the cost of staff resource required to deliv­er the oper­a­tion­al plan for the year.

2. Invest­ment in the ​‘People’ actions of the Cor­por­ate and Oper­a­tion­al Plans stems from fund­ing through both the core Nation­al Parks grant and ear­marked CLLD grants, on which the Park Author­ity part­ners with the Cairngorms Trust as the Trust’s Account­able Body. For budget con­trol pur­poses, these two strands of activ­ity have been developed sep­ar­ately in the budget fig­ures. Total invest­ment in the People ele­ments of the Park Authority’s plans total £0.745 mil­lion for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇, com­pared with £0.699 mil­lion in the pri­or year.

	2026⁄27 £’000	2025⁄26 £’000
Deliv­ery from Grant in aid	428	378
Deliv­ery from CLLD funding	280	284
Unre­covered staff costs	37	37
Total invest­ment	745	699

1. The fol­low­ing sec­tions present some spe­cif­ic points of estim­ate and judge­ment in the devel­op­ment of these budget estim­ates for con­sid­er­a­tion by the Board.

Income

1. Grant-in-aid for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ is set to increase by £0.804 mil­lion, from £9.841 mil­lion to £10.645 mil­lion, an 8% increase in cash fund­ing from SG for the com­ing fin­an­cial year. This is split between resource and cap­it­al fund­ing: a) Resource Depart­ment­al Expendit­ure Lim­its (RDEL) — increase of £0.469 mil­lion b) Cap­it­al Depart­ment­al Expendit­ure Lim­its (CDEL) — increase of £0.335 million

In addi­tion, fund­ing for peat­land res­tor­a­tion is assumed at:

c) Peatland restoration RDEL - increase of £55,000 to £705,000 (staff and non-staff costs)

Form­al Board Paper 2 27 March 2026 Page 5 of 9

d) Peat­land res­tor­a­tion CDEL – reduc­tion of £170,000 to £3,500,000

1. CLLD activ­ity, also fun­ded through SG, is expec­ted to remain at the same level as in the pri­or year, around £350,000. Total resource avail­able nation­ally has increased slightly to £9.3 mil­lion with this fig­ure pro­jec­ted to remain fixed for the fol­low­ing two years, ²⁰²⁷⁄₂₈ and ²⁰²⁸⁄₂₉. Final alloc­a­tions across Scotland’s 20 Loc­al Action Groups are still to be announced at the time of writ­ing this paper.

2. Oth­er sources of income (£250,000) included in the draft budget pos­i­tion are: a) Oth­er grant fund­ing b) Plan­ning fees, and c) Bank interest.

Expendit­ure

1. Staff costs have been a major uncer­tainty in set­ting the budgets over the past two years, because of the delay in agree­ing annu­al pay awards. How­ever, the three-year pay award (2024÷25 to ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇) agreed both with SG and with staff, provides cer­tainty over the rate of annu­al pay increase for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇. (Annex 3 — Risk 2)

2. The Board’s Resources Com­mit­tee has over­seen man­age­ment of the three-year pay award since its imple­ment­a­tion in 2024. Two key mat­ters out with the Park Authority’s con­trol impacted the pay pos­i­tion in the course of ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆: infla­tion levels remained sig­ni­fic­antly above the tar­get level and in excess of 3% through­out the year; and a nation­al award to SG’s main bar­gain­ing unit sig­ni­fic­antly above our pay pos­i­tion was agreed for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ and ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇. Con­sequently, the Park Author­ity secured approv­al from the SG’s Remu­ner­a­tion Group for an addi­tion to our staff pay agree­ment. An addi­tion­al 1% was awar­ded with effect from 01 Janu­ary 2026, bring­ing total pay awards to 3.3% for the ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ fin­an­cial year. An addi­tion­al 0.7% was also approved for addi­tion to the ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ set­tle­ment, bring­ing total increases for the com­ing year to 3.0%. The full year effect of both these addi­tion­al ele­ments of staff pay are provided for in full in these staff budget fig­ures. No addi­tion­al move­ment in staff pay is expec­ted for the ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ fin­an­cial year.

Form­al Board Paper 2 27 March 2026 Page 6 of 9

1. The budget includes a pay award impact of £290,000.

Break­down of payroll budget 2026⁄27	£m
Full year cost of staff cohort before the 2026⁄27 award	7.532
Award 2026⁄27	290
Total budget estim­ate 2026⁄27	7.822

1. Estim­ates have been made of the levels of staff payroll recov­er­ies from extern­al fund­ing sources. Cur­rent estim­ates are for recov­er­ies through C2030 of £1.172 mil­lion and through CLLD of £70,000 in ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇.

2. Con­sid­er­a­tion has been giv­en to the man­age­ment of vacan­cies, both in respect of wheth­er exist­ing vacan­cies should be filled, the impact of these vacan­cies on work­load and the value of any sav­ings that might be real­ised from delays in recruit­ment. The avail­ab­il­ity of vacancy sav­ings depends on the cir­cum­stances of staff turnover and recruit­ment in any par­tic­u­lar year and is there­fore inher­ently dif­fi­cult to estim­ate. Last year, a met­ric of 3% of the total budget was applied. This met­ric would indic­ate likely sav­ings of around £197,000 (3% of budget estim­ate net of recov­er­able costs). The Exec­ut­ive con­siders this to be a prudent approach to the estim­a­tion of vacancy sav­ings. The payroll budget will be mon­itored closely through­out the year, with any avail­able addi­tion­al sav­ings being applied to oper­a­tion­al deliv­ery. (Annex 3 — Risks 2 and 3).

3. Using this mod­el­ling, the net cost for staff salar­ies in ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ is there­fore £6.382 million.

Payroll budget net of recharges and sav­ings	£m
Total budget estim­ate 2026⁄27	7.822
Total recov­er­able	(1.242)
	6.580
Vacancy sav­ings / recruit­ment delays	(0.197)
Total net cost	6.382

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Oper­a­tion­al plan investment

1. The full oper­a­tion­al plan, flow­ing from the core object­ives of the Cor­por­ate Plan, is set out at Annex 4 to this paper. Total budget of £8.482 mil­lion has been alloc­ated across our oper­a­tion­al plan delivery.

	£000
Cli­mate adapt­a­tion fund	345
Peat­land res­tor­a­tion programme	3,530
Nature and climate	1,761
People	429
Com­munity led loc­al development	280
Place	893
Pro­gramme con­tri­bu­tion Cairngorms 2030	450
Com­mu­nic­a­tions	210
Fire byelaws	204
Cor­por­ate support	380
Total Oper­a­tion­al Plan investment	8,482

1. In line with recent years, the oper­a­tion­al plan has been budgeted without ​“over-pro­gram­ming”. The total value of the budget alloc­ated to the oper­a­tion­al plan is based on expect­a­tion of the total income likely to be avail­able at the begin­ning of the fin­an­cial year. No addi­tion­al pro­vi­sion has been made for slip­page over the course of the year, for example, by budget­ing for a great­er value of oper­a­tion­al plan invest­ments than are cap­able of being covered by fund­ing levels. This is a prudent approach, giv­en the vari­ous uncer­tain­ties in income levels and expendit­ure pres­sures in the com­ing year. If slip­page or under­spend arises in any pro­jects or budget areas, man­age­ment action can be taken to real­loc­ate avail­able resources to pri­or­ity areas of invest­ment or to cov­er oth­er emer­ging budget pressures.

Run­ning costs and infla­tion­ary impacts

(Annex 3 — Risk 4)

1. The budget for run­ning costs has been built on the out­turn fore­cast for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆. Infla­tion­ary increases of 3% have been applied. This adds £30,000 to run­ning costs.

2. Soft­ware licences con­tin­ue to be an essen­tial part of the organisation’s infra­struc­ture, with our core pro­grammes avail­able only as Soft­ware As A Ser­vice (SAAS) and provided on the Cloud:

Form­al Board Paper 2 27 March 2026 Page 8 of 9

a) Microsoft applications
b) Finance software - Access Financials
c) Payroll and HR software - Access
d) E-planning system- Idox
e) Geographic Information System (GIS)

1. The e‑planning and GIS sys­tems are provided through a shared ser­vice agree­ment with Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Nation­al Park Authority.

Effi­ciency savings

1. In pre­vi­ous years grant award let­ters have included a require­ment to achieve effi­ciency sav­ings. There appears to be some accept­ance that effi­ciency sav­ings may not be pos­sible in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate, but we await cla­ri­fic­a­tion on this require­ment. Man­age­ment will in any case con­tin­ue to seek effi­cien­cies in our oper­a­tions, with for example sig­ni­fic­ant invest­ment in digit­al solu­tions to office pro­cesses, vacancy and oth­er sav­ings in staff­ing where pos­sible and through pro­cure­ment and man­age­ment of contracts.

2. The Park Author­ity also con­tin­ues to address the Pub­lic Sec­tor Reform (PSR) agenda, includ­ing man­age­ment of work­force num­bers and cor­por­ate costs. Oppor­tun­it­ies to man­age cor­por­ate costs and devel­op shared ser­vices will be pur­sued as they arise, while more designed actions will be con­sidered as part of our engage­ment with PSR groups and in devel­op­ing our forth­com­ing Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy.

Stra­tegic risk management

1. The cur­rent stra­tegic risk register is presen­ted at Annex 5. The stra­tegic risk register has been reviewed by the Exec­ut­ive Man­age­ment Team in Feb­ru­ary along­side the devel­op­ment of the budget pos­i­tion now presen­ted. The stra­tegic risk register was also con­sidered by the Board’s Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee at its meet­ing on 13 March 2026. The risk register is con­sidered to be an accur­ate reflec­tion of the sig­ni­fic­ant stra­tegic risks impact­ing the Park Authority’s deliv­ery of its object­ives and sets out agreed actions to mit­ig­ate those risks.

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1. The board is reques­ted to con­sider the cov­er­age of the stra­tegic risk register in the con­text of the budget and oper­a­tion­al plan pos­i­tion now presen­ted, and in light of dis­cus­sions by board mem­bers on these pro­pos­als, and to con­sider wheth­er any amend­ments to the Park Authority’s risk register is required.

Next steps

1. Fol­low­ing board con­sid­er­a­tion and approv­al of a budget for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇, alloc­a­tions will be con­firmed to budget hold­ers to allow plans for deliv­ery over the com­ing fin­an­cial year to commence.

2. We will con­tin­ue to provide budget mon­it­or­ing reports to the Board’s Resources Com­mit­tee over the course of the year ahead, identi­fy­ing any sig­ni­fic­ant budget vari­ations and action in man­aging those variations.

3. The estab­lished pro­cess of review and devel­op­ment of the Stra­tegic Risk Register will con­tin­ue through the year.

Louise Allen 16 March 2026 louiseallen@​cairngorms.​co.​uk