Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority

Audit and Risk Committee

Paper 6

13 March 2026

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For decision

Title: Intern­al audit plan ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆: Grants admin­is­tra­tion and management

Cov­er Paper: Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Operations

Report sub­mit­ted by: Peter Clark, Scott McCready, wbg

Pur­pose

This paper presents the Intern­al Auditor’s review of the imple­ment­a­tion of the Park Authority’s pro­ject ini­ti­ation pro­ced­ures and was con­duc­ted as part of the agreed plan of work for 2025 – 26 (Annex 1). The pur­pose of this review was:

a) to assess wheth­er the Park Author­ity is oper­at­ing effi­ciently and effect­ively in respect of grants admin­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment b) to assess if the Authority’s pro­ced­ures are being adhered to, and c) to con­sider the new expres­sion of interest sys­tem and the new grants programme.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to a) Con­sider the intern­al aud­it­ors report and find­ings. b) Endorse the man­age­ment responses to recom­mend­a­tions for future action and improvements.

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. Wbg have com­pleted their intern­al audit review of the Park Authority’s grant admin­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment procedures.

2. Six con­trol object­ives were audited: a) The Organ­isa­tion has robust arrange­ments in place for admin­is­ter­ing and man­aging grants

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b) The Organ­isa­tion is con­sist­ent in its approach to nego­ti­at­ing, record­ing, and mon­it­or­ing grants c) Staff are aware of these arrange­ments and are adher­ing to these d) The Author­ity has effect­ive qual­ity assur­ance arrange­ments in place for grants e) The Author­ity has suf­fi­cient mon­it­or­ing and track­ing of grants f) The Author­ity has appro­pri­ate report­ing mech­an­isms sur­round­ing the organisation’s pro­vi­sion, where robust per­form­ance meas­ures have been iden­ti­fied and are repor­ted against.

1. A strong level of assur­ance was provided in rela­tion to the grant admin­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment pro­cesses. In addi­tion, sev­er­al areas of good prac­tice were identified:

The fol­low­ing is a list of areas where the Organ­isa­tion is oper­at­ing effect­ively and fol­low­ing good practice.

1. The pro­cess for receiv­ing, record­ing and pro­gress­ing grant applic­a­tions is robust. Expres­sions of interest are used to screen applic­a­tions at the ini­tial stage, with more detailed inform­a­tion required in the full applic­a­tion. Grant Man­agers are respons­ible for tak­ing applic­a­tions for­ward, and receive auto­mat­ic noti­fic­a­tion when new expres­sions of interests are received. Grant man­agers record details onto the Grant Inform­a­tion Man­age­ment List as they are received.
2. Grant applic­a­tions are assessed based on spe­cif­ic cri­ter­ia developed for each grant, focused on the spe­cif­ic out­comes, themes and tar­gets that the grant fund­ing offer­ing is meant to achieve.
3. The pro­cess for man­age­ment of grant applic­a­tions and grants awar­ded, includ­ing gath­er­ing evid­ence, issu­ing offer let­ters and review­ing sup­port­ing evid­ence for claims, is clearly defined with­in the Grant Man­age­ment Process.
4. The Organ­isa­tion has a ded­ic­ated Grant Man­age­ment Pro­cess in place, developed by the Com­munity Grants Man­ager, provid­ing robust details of the pro­ced­ure to be fol­lowed for admin­is­ter­ing and man­aging grants.
5. Grant Man­agers are alloc­ated to each grant applic­a­tion, and are respons­ible for the mon­it­or­ing and man­age­ment of that applic­a­tion. This includes ensur­ing that the Grant Inform­a­tion Man­age­ment List is updated, and stor­age of grant doc­u­ment­a­tion with­in rel­ev­ant Share­Point folders.
6. The Com­munity Grants Team have pre­pared pro­cess doc­u­ment­a­tion and stand­ard tem­plates for Grant Man­agers to fol­low for their grants. These are avail­able to all mem­bers of staff via the Com­munity Grant Team’s page on Eolas.
7. The Grant Inform­a­tion Man­age­ment List used to mon­it­or cur­rent grants is based on the Microsoft List sys­tem, set­ting out desired fields for details of each grant.
8. The Com­munity Grants Man­ager mon­it­ors the Grant Inform­a­tion Man­age­ment List reg­u­larly, ensur­ing this is robust and entries are complete.
9. Report­ing arrange­ments for each grant vary based on respons­ib­il­ity for the rel­ev­ant fund­ing stream, ensur­ing inform­a­tion is only repor­ted to rel­ev­ant groups.

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1. Four low-grade recom­mend­a­tions were made: i. The Park Author­ity should form­al­ise the require­ment to con­duct peri­od­ic spot-checks of the Grant Inform­a­tion Man­age­ment List with­in the Grant Man­age­ment Pro­cess. ii. The Park Author­ity should form­al­ise a pro­cess for the post-com­ple­tion review of grants with­in the Grant Man­age­ment Pro­cess. iii. Con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to adding a dir­ect link on the Grant Inform­a­tion Man­age­ment List to the Share­Point folder for each grant. iv. The Park Author­ity should form­ally doc­u­ment the decision-mak­ing pro­cess and approv­al routes for each grant fund­ing type with­in a single guid­ance document.

2. The Intern­al Aud­it­or also made an obser­va­tion on work cur­rently under­way to devel­op PowerBI ana­lys­is of grants data.

3. The recom­mend­a­tions made were accep­ted by management.

Louise Allen 02 March 2026 louiseallen@​cairngorms.​co.​uk