Paper 9 Annex 3 Strategic risk register

Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 9 Annex 3 13 March 2026

Risk Old ref­er­ence	ref­er­ence	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: Cor­por­ate plan pri­or­it­ised around anti­cip­ated budget alloc­a­tions, tak­ing on Board expect­a­tion of fund­ing con­straints. Remedi­al: Focus resource on diver­si­fic­a­tion of income streams to altern­at­ive, non-pub­lic income gen­er­a­tion. 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. Remedi­al: Con­tinu­ing to sup­port ​“bod­ies” such as Cairngorms Nature, Cairngorms Trust in secur­ing inward investment.	4	3	12	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. 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: pre­pare brief­ing on work and pri­or­ity invest­ment for post-elec­tion in line with devel­op­ment of new 2027 to 2032 Cor­por­ate Plan and NPPP.	Ongo­ing	Open	3	2	6	Dav­id Cameron	18/02/2026
2	A2	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.	on match fund­ing pos­i­tion and con­sequent impacts to ensure C2030 pro­gramme plans and fin­an­cing of them fully aligned by end of year. : 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. Pre­vant­at­ive: 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	A3	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. Con­struc­tion pro­jects of the size anti­cip­ated with­in the C2030 pro­gramme are new to 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 Pre­vent­at­ive: licen­cing arrange­ments con­trib­ute to more effect­ive con­trol framework.	4	2	8	Man­aged	Recruit­ment to new Pro­cure­ment Officer post achieved. Pro­gramme of improve­ment in pro­cure­ment pro­cesses, pro­ced­ures and con­trols well under­way, includ­ing estab­lish­ment of new Pro­cure­ment Strategy. We need to improve our know­ledge of Con­struc­tion Design and link to organ­isa­tion­al devevl­op­ment. 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 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	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.	Tracker/​satel­lite mon­it­or­ing deployed for some rap­tors. Data gath­er­ing to high­light presence/​absence Remedi­al: NPPP devel­op­ment pro­cesses used to explore part­ner­ship atti­tudes, engage­ment and powers. Tar­geted, tan­gible inter­ven­tion at known drivers of pop­u­la­tion decline	4	4	16	Stat­ic	Action on wild­life crime depends on the devel­op­ment, deliv­ery and design of stra­tegic part­ner­ships. Fin­an­cial con­straints with­in the pub­lic 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: Development/​strength­en­ing of stra­tegic partnerships.	Ongo­ing	Open	4	3	12	Andy Ford	20/01/2025
6	A4	All	Sys­tems