Paper 2 - Budget Development 2026-27

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 2 13 Feb­ru­ary 2026

For dis­cus­sion

Title: Budget devel­op­ment ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ Pre­pared by: Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Operations

Pur­pose

The pur­pose of the paper is to update the Resources Com­mit­tee on pro­gress made towards devel­op­ment of the budget for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Review the pos­i­tion achieved in devel­op­ment of the ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ fin­an­cial year budget. b) Provide feed­back to officers pri­or to the present­a­tion of the budget pro­pos­als to the full board in March 2026.

Intro­duc­tion

1. Fol­low­ing pub­lic­a­tion of the indic­at­ive set­tle­ment for the year to 31 March 2027, the ini­tial draft budget pos­i­tion for the year was dis­cussed at the recent Board Busi­ness Session.
2. This pos­i­tion is provided in Annex 1. The fig­ures do not include deliv­ery against the Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) pro­gramme. The deliv­ery on C2030 planned for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ will be added into full budget fig­ures in future devel­op­ments of our fin­an­cial plans. We do not expect any addi­tion­al fin­an­cial impacts on our budget from C2030 deliv­ery, oth­er than pro­vi­sion from avail­able income, of the Park Authority’s own cash con­tri­bu­tions to the C2030 programme.
3. All fig­ures for grant income from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG) sources remain sub­ject to Par­lia­ment­ary budget approv­al at this point in the process.

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Risks inher­ent in the budget

As out­lined at the Board Busi­ness Session

1. The Park Author­ity budget has, of neces­sity, been built on assump­tions about future events. Amongst the most sig­ni­fic­ant of these assump­tions are: a) The amount of fund­ing to be awar­ded, where inform­a­tion provided is either indic­at­ive or estim­ated. b) The staff turnover likely in the year. c) The budget for train­ing activ­it­ies is included at £72,000 (an infla­tion­ary increase over the pri­or year). This fig­ure remains to be reviewed in the light of work­force man­age­ment plans. d) Extern­al factors, such as the state of the eco­nomy and infla­tion­ary pres­sures. e) Delay of com­mit­ted deliv­ery, planned for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆, but slip­ping into ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇. f) The oppor­tun­ity to advance spend­ing into ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ to relieve pres­sure on the ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ budget.

2. The table below provides a view of the poten­tial fin­an­cial effect of these risks

	Amount included in draft budget £’000	Max at risk £’000	Likely risk £’000
Staff costs — estim­ated vacancy savings	288	288	91
Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund (NRF) – amounts relat­ing to ongo­ing delivery	335	335	-
NRF — bid for addi­tion­al funds (income and expendit­ure £710,000)	710	-	-
Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD) – recov­ery of salary costs	70	52	-
CLLD — fund­ing for grant awards (income and expendit­ure £280,000)	280	25	-
Inflam­mat­ory pres­sure on run­ning costs an addi­tion­al 1% on 3% already provided	30	10	-
Oppor­tun­ity to advance spending	-	-	(300)

1. Vacancy sav­ings: typ­ic­ally, we would assume the like­li­hood of achiev­ing vacancy sav­ings of around 3% of the cost of payroll. For ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ 3% would amount to

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£197,500. An addi­tion­al sum of £90,500 has been included in the draft budget tak­ing the total of required sav­ings to £288,000 (4.4% of payroll costs). Rationale sup­port­ing this increase links to the move­ment through C2030; wider pub­lic sec­tor expect­a­tions of man­age­ment of work­force num­bers; and con­sequen­tial expec­ted increase of begin­ning of slight reduc­tion in total staff­ing with­in the Park Author­ity as vacan­cies cre­ate chance of oppor­tun­ity to adapt staff struc­ture. Nev­er­the­less, this pro­vi­sion in budget remains under con­sid­er­a­tion for reduc­tion in value.

1. Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund (NRF): a num­ber of ongo­ing pro­jects would be at risk if we were unsuc­cess­ful in our bid for fund­ing; without sup­port from NRF we would want to fund these through Grant in Aid. An addi­tion­al £335,000 would need to be real­loc­ated from oth­er planned deliv­ery cur­rently included in the budget.

2. The addi­tion­al ask for £710,000 would sup­port valu­able deliv­ery, but if the fund­ing were not avail­able, we would not go ahead with deliv­ery and would not incur the costs.

3. Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD): annu­al fund­ing from CLLD sup­ports £70,000 of the salary costs of our grants team. If no fund­ing were awar­ded to the Author­ity, then this con­tri­bu­tion to salary costs would be lost. A com­mit­ment has been received to fin­ance quarter one salary costs, there­fore max­im­um risk to budget is around £52,000.

4. The amount of any award in excess of £70,000 would be made avail­able for com­munity pro­jects and the value of awards made by the Park Author­ity would be tailored to the amount made avail­able from the CLLD fund. Indic­a­tions are that the total fund avail­able is con­sist­ent with last year, so the risk of not receiv­ing any fund­ing is con­sidered low.

5. Infla­tion: run­ning costs have been uplif­ted by 3% to account for infla­tion. Any increase in the rate of infla­tion above 3% would be likely to add an addi­tion­al £10,000 per 1% increase to budget commitments.

6. Advance spend­ing: There is likely to be an oppor­tun­ity to advance spend­ing to ensure a bal­anced out­turn for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆. This oppor­tun­ity arises primar­ily in respect of the Park Authority’s ongo­ing com­mit­ment to con­trib­ute to the C2030 project.

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The total con­tri­bu­tion has been sched­uled for pay­ment in annu­al tranches of £450,000. In ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅, in addi­tion to our sched­uled pay­ment of £450,000 to C2030, we advanced an amount of £300,000. We could make a fur­ther advance in ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆, so that the con­tri­bu­tion of £450,000 included in the budget for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ could be reduced by up to say £300,000, and these funds could then be real­loc­ated with­in the ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ budget.

Out­stand­ing issues remain­ing to be resolved

1. We con­tin­ue to explore the budget require­ment to sup­port ongo­ing run­ning costs.
2. Requests for fin­an­cial sup­port for addi­tion­al aspects of deliv­ery against the oper­a­tion­al plan are being considered.
3. We await form­al con­firm­a­tion of fund­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, should the offer of fund­ing for NRF fall below £335,000, some adjust­ment to expendit­ure plans more widely across the budget will be required if ongo­ing pro­ject activ­it­ies star­ted through ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ NRF are to be supported.
4. The con­tri­bu­tion to the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme has been retained at £450,000. Fund­ing of £300,000 was advanced to the pro­ject in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅, and there is poten­tial to advance a fur­ther sum in ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆. This would allow a reduc­tion in the £450,000 cur­rently allowed in the ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ budget if required, while main­tain­ing this level of C2030 fund­ing pro­vi­sion will help alle­vi­ate budget pres­sure in future years by bring­ing the Park Author­ity closer to the £2.25 mil­lion total agreed pro­gramme contribution.

Con­clu­sion

1. Fur­ther work is required to com­plete the devel­op­ment of the budget for ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇. How­ever, the basis is now estab­lished, albeit with areas of risk.
2. The risks iden­ti­fied over fund­ing levels will be removed as fund­ing alloc­a­tions are formalised.
3. The oppor­tun­ity to advance spend­ing, par­tic­u­larly in respect of the con­tri­bu­tion to C2030, offers flex­ib­il­ity towards the achieve­ment of a bal­anced budget.

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Louise Allen louiseallen@​cairngorms.​co.​uk 29 Janu­ary 2026

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