CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Annu­al Report and Accounts ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉

Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 4 Annex I 06/09/19

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY ÙGH­DAR­RAS PÀIRC NÀISEANTA A’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH

…AN OUT­STAND­ING NATION­AL PARK, ENJOYED AND VAL­UED BY EVERY­ONE, WHERE NATURE AND PEOPLE THRIVE TOGETH­ER… …SÀR PHÀIRC NÀISEANTA, A THA A’ CÒRDADH RIS A H‑UILE DUINE AGUS AIR A BHEIL IAD UILE A’ CUR LUACH, AGUS FAR A BHEIL NÀDAR AGUS DAOINE A’ SOIRBHEACHA…

Con­tents

Key Per­son­nel and Spon­sor­ing Body 2

Part 1 — Per­form­ance Report 3

• Over­view 4
• For­ward 4
• The Park Author­ity 6
• Stra­tegic Aims and Pri­or­it­ies ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ and bey­ond 8
• Key Issues and Risks 10

• Per­form­ance Ana­lys­is 11

  • Fin­an­cial Per­form­ance Sum­mary 11
  • Oper­at­ing Per­form­ance Sum­mary 15 Part 2 — Account­ab­il­ity Report 22

• Cor­por­ate Gov­ernance Report 23

  • Dir­ect­ors’ Report 23
  • State­ment of Nation­al Park Authority’s Respons­ib­il­it­ies 25
  • State­ment of Board and Account­able Officer’s Respons­ib­il­it­ies 26
  • Gov­ernance State­ment 27
  • Remu­ner­a­tion and Staff Report 32
    • Remu­ner­a­tion Report and key inform­a­tion on staff 32
  • Account­ab­il­ity Report: dis­clos­ures to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment 41
  • Inde­pend­ent Auditor’s Report 42

Part 3 — Fin­an­cial State­ments 46

• State­ment of Com­pre­hens­ive Net Expendit­ure 47
• State­ment of Fin­an­cial Pos­i­tion 48
• State­ment of Cash Flows 49
• State­ment of Changes in Tax­pay­ers’ Equity 50
• Notes to the Fin­an­cial State­ments 51

Appen­dices 61

• Accounts Dir­ec­tion 61
• Staff Uni­on Time 62

Key Per­son­nel and Spon­sor­ing Body

Board Mem­bers

• Peter Argyle – Con­vener to 30 Septem­ber 2018
• Rebecca Badger – stood down 21 March 2019
• Geva Black­ett – deputy Con­vener from 7 Decem­ber 2018 – reappoin­ted 21 March 2019
• Car­o­lyn Caddick
• Angela Douglas – stood down 30 Septem­ber 2018
• Deirdrie Fal­con­er – appoin­ted 21 March 2019
• Dave Fal­lows – stood down 21 March 2019
• Pippa Had­ley
• Janet Hunter
• Gregor Hutcheon – stood down 30 Septem­ber 2018
• John Kirk – appoin­ted 28 March 2019
• John Lath­am
• Douglas McAdam – appoin­ted 1 Novem­ber 2018
• Dr Fiona McLean – appoin­ted 1 Novem­ber 2018
• Anne Rae Mac­Don­ald – appoin­ted 1 Novem­ber 2018
• Elean­or Mack­in­tosh – chair Plan­ning Com­mit­tee – reappoin­ted 21 March 2019
• Ian Maclar­en
• Xan­der McDade – Con­vener from 1 Octo­ber 2018
• Wil­lie McK­enna – reappoin­ted 21 March 2019
• Wil­li­am Mun­ro – appoin­ted 1 Novem­ber 2018 – chair Fin­ance and Deliv­ery Committee
• Gor­don Rid­dler – stood down 30 Septem­ber 2018
• Dr Gaen­er Rodger – appoin­ted 1 Novem­ber 2018
• Derek Ross – appoin­ted 1 Novem­ber 2018
• Judith Webb – chair Audit and Risk Committee
• Wal­ter Wilson – resigned 18 June 2018
• Bri­an Wood – Deputy Con­vener, stood down 30 Septem­ber 2018

Board mem­ber pro­files can be found at http://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​a​u​t​h​o​r​i​t​y​/​b​oard/

Chief Exec­ut­ive and Account­able Officer

Grant Moir

Dir­ect­ors

• Dav­id Camer­on – Cor­por­ate Services
• Mur­ray Fer­guson – Plan­ning & Rur­al Development
• Dr Peter May­hew – Con­ser­va­tion & Vis­it­or Experience

Spon­sor­ing Body

Envir­on­ment and Forestry Dir­ect­or­ate, Nat­ur­al Resources Divi­sion, Scot­tish Government

Part 1 — Per­form­ance Report

Over­view

For­ward

I have pleas­ure in present­ing the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority’s (the Park Author­ity) Annu­al Report and Accounts cov­er­ing its fif­teenth year of oper­a­tion, from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019.

The Park Author­ity has worked this year to pro­gress pri­or­ity object­ives set out in our new Cor­por­ate Plan, 2018 to 2022. Our Cor­por­ate Plan sets out how we will alloc­ate our resources and explains how our use of these resources will help to deliv­er the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan along with our wide range of part­ners, and through this con­trib­ute to achiev­ing the Scot­tish Government’s Stra­tegic Objectives.

The Park Author­ity is respons­ible for deliv­er­ing across con­ser­va­tion, vis­it­or exper­i­ence and rur­al devel­op­ment. This involves us in our stat­utory func­tions, such as, plan­ning and access but also in our role of work­ing with a wide range of part­ners to deliv­er pro­jects on the ground that deliv­er on our out­comes. This has been achieved through lever­ing in addi­tion­al fund­ing into the Nation­al Park on con­ser­va­tion pro­jects, rur­al regen­er­a­tion pro­jects, access pro­jects and much more besides.

It has been a busy year and some of the key high­lights of our work in the Nation­al Park are in this Annu­al Report and Accounts, with more detailed inform­a­tion avail­able in our Annu­al Review of ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉.

A major high­light of the year was the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, and the Park Author­ity, play­ing host to the annu­al EURO­PARC Con­fer­ence in Septem­ber 2018. This brought around 500 del­eg­ates from 36 coun­tries to Scot­land and the Cairngorms. Of these del­eg­ates, 100 were under 30 years of age: itself mak­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion to the Year of Young People in Scot­land and enga­ging the next gen­er­a­tion in con­ser­va­tion and sus­tain­able communities.

“We con­sider this Con­fer­ence a great suc­cess … the par­ti­cip­a­tion num­bers were high­er than ever … the agenda took place as sched­uled and the enjoy­ment of the del­eg­ates was tan­gible from the begin­ning till the end!” EURO­PARC Federation

This con­fer­ence was the biggest gath­er­ing of Nation­al Parks and pro­tec­ted areas ever held in Europe with world class speak­ers present­ing their views on how to get young people more involved in nature. The major out­put from the con­fer­ence was the Youth Mani­festo which pro­tec­ted areas across Europe are now deliv­er­ing and which in the Cairngorms has led to the co-design of a Youth Coun­cil which we will launch later this year.

We will con­tin­ue to con­trib­ute to the Scot­tish Government’s Nation­al Out­comes as set out in the Nation­al Per­form­ance Frame­work, and we remain com­mit­ted to ensur­ing that ​“our pub­lic ser­vices are high qual­ity, con­tinu­ally improv­ing, effi­cient and respons­ive to loc­al peoples’ needs.” We aim to deliv­er high stand­ards of ser­vice with­in our agreed budget alloc­a­tion while achiev­ing a break even fin­an­cial outturn.

Fun­da­ment­ally we are determ­ined to work with people and con­tin­ue to deliv­er the pro­jects that make a sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ence to all those that are involved in this Nation­al Park. That is what pub­lic ser­vice is all about.

Grant Moir Chief Exec­ut­ive and Account­able Officer

The Park Authority

The Park Author­ity is a Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Body sponsored by the Envir­on­ment and Forestry Dir­ect­or­ate, Nat­ur­al Resources Divi­sion, Scot­tish Government.

The Des­ig­na­tion Order for the Nation­al Park was approved on 7 Janu­ary 2003, came into force on 25 March 2003, and the Park Author­ity was oper­a­tion­al from 1 Septem­ber 2003. The bound­ar­ies of the Nation­al Park were fur­ther exten­ded on 4 Octo­ber 2010 to include areas of the North Perth­shire glens includ­ing Blair Atholl and Glen Shee.

Stra­tegic context

Scotland’s Nation­al Parks are set up as mod­els of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment work­ing towards achiev­ing 4 aims set out in sec­tion I of the Nation­al Parks (Scot­land) Act 2000 in a co-ordin­ated way:

• to con­serve and enhance the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age of the area;
• to pro­mote sus­tain­able use of the nat­ur­al resources of the area;
• to pro­mote under­stand­ing and enjoy­ment (includ­ing enjoy­ment in the form of recre­ation) of the spe­cial qual­it­ies of the area by the pub­lic; and
• to pro­mote sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic and social devel­op­ment of the area’s communities.

Strategy and busi­ness model

The Park Author­ity has a key role in lead­ing the deliv­ery of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. The Plan sets the con­text for close cooper­a­tion and part­ner­ship across pub­lic, private and vol­un­tary organ­isa­tions in the Park. The Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan sets out three long term out­comes for the Park. These have been used as the basis for devel­op­ing the Cor­por­ate Plan. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2017 – 2022 (CNPPP), which was approved by Min­is­ters, provides the over­all guide for stra­tegic align­ment between pub­lic agen­cies with­in the Park, and also with private and com­munity organ­isa­tions who are sig­nat­or­ies to and part­ners in deliv­ery of the CNPPP.

The Park Authority’s new Cor­por­ate Plan was approved by the Board and Scot­tish Min­is­ters in Spring 2018 to cov­er our work up to the end of the cur­rent CNPPP and the devel­op­ment of the next one. In the wider Scot­tish con­text, the Park Author­ity will also work on ensur­ing great­er stra­tegic align­ment to ensure deliv­ery of key nation­al strategies such as, cur­rent and future Pro­grammes for Gov­ern­ment, 2020 Chal­lenge for Scotland’s Biod­iversity, Scot­tish Cli­mate Change Act, the Land Use Strategy for Scot­land, Scotland’s Eco­nom­ic Strategy, Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work, the Com­munity Empower­ment Act, the nation­al Tour­ism Strategy 2020, the Nation­al Walk­ing Strategy and the Cyc­ling Action Plan for Scotland.

Our stra­tegic work includes being an act­ive mem­ber of the Envir­on­ment and Eco­nomy Lead­ers’ Group.

Our com­mit­ment

Fol­low­ing engage­ment with staff and our Board in 2016 the Park Author­ity adop­ted a vis­ion, mis­sion state­ment and a set of val­ues, as part of its cor­por­ate plan­ning pro­cesses, which are cent­ral to our pur­pose and stra­tegic context:

Our vis­ion – an out­stand­ing Nation­al Park, enjoyed and val­ued by every­one, where nature and people thrive together;

Our mis­sion – to lead the way in deliv­er­ing for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park by bring­ing people togeth­er towards a com­mon pur­pose; enhan­cing the Park for every­one and inspir­ing new gen­er­a­tions to be Park Champions;

Our val­ues – the CNPA is an open, inclus­ive, innov­at­ive and pro­fes­sion­al organ­isa­tion that behaves with integ­rity. The CNPA will also oper­ate in an envir­on­ment­ally friendly way that provides lead­er­ship in this area.

Our cul­ture – …to be the best small pub­lic body in Scotland.

We want to be the best small pub­lic body in Scot­land. The Best Com­pan­ies Sur­vey has shown that we are a people ori­ented organ­isa­tion that is per­form­ing well. We will build on our Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy and build on new oppor­tun­it­ies, such as the exten­sion to the main office which was com­pleted in the year, to strive to ensure a high per­form­ance cul­ture. The Park Author­ity will be innov­at­ive, quick to act and empower staff to deliv­er the strategies put in place by our Board.

New ways of working

The Park Author­ity will con­tin­ue to look at new ways to oper­ate to deliv­er our com­mit­ments in the cur­rent Nation­al Park Plan. This will include look­ing for altern­at­ive fund­ing oppor­tun­it­ies, includ­ing applic­a­tions to funds, such as the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund, spon­sor­ship oppor­tun­it­ies and mer­chand­ising. It also includes work­ing col­lab­or­at­ively with part­ners to deliv­er improved services.

Per­form­ance monitoring

Per­form­ance indic­at­ors have been set for each of our key themes against which we will meas­ure and mon­it­or per­form­ance. By the nature of the Park Authority’s role, in seek­ing to lead col­lab­or­at­ive effort in tack­ling the big issues for the Cairngorms, these per­form­ance meas­ures are rarely entirely con­trol­lable by the Park Author­ity. Rather, they require col­lab­or­a­tion and engage­ment with our part­ners and are meas­ures of the effect­ive­ness of our lead­er­ship and influ­en­cing, com­bined with our dir­ect invest­ment of fin­ance and staff resources, in address­ing our priorities.

Stra­tegic Aims and Pri­or­it­ies ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ and Beyond

To deliv­er the long term out­comes in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, the Cor­por­ate Plan recog­nises Themes and Pri­or­it­ies. The main Themes are Con­ser­va­tion, Vis­it­or Exper­i­ence and Rur­al Devel­op­ment. The deliv­ery of the main themes and their out­comes is sup­ple­men­ted by two sup­port themes – Cor­por­ate Ser­vices and Communications.

Con­ser­va­tion – to be a spe­cial place for people and nature with nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age enhanced

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park is the premi­er area in the UK for nature con­ser­va­tion, with 50% of the area recog­nised as import­ant on a European scale through Natura 2000 des­ig­na­tion. Home to some of the most extens­ive and inter­na­tion­ally import­ant mont­ane, wood­land, river and wet­land hab­it­ats, our role is to bring part­ners togeth­er to deliv­er con­ser­va­tion at a land­scape scale and engage the pub­lic in this endeavour.

Pri­or­it­ies:

• sup­port land­scape-scale con­ser­va­tion, espe­cially the expan­sion of nat­ive and mont­ane wood­land, peat­land res­tor­a­tion, nat­ur­al flood man­age­ment and caper­cail­lie management;
• ensure deer man­age­ment is focused on deliv­er­ing pub­lic interest pri­or­it­ies spe­cific­ally the expan­sion of nat­ive wood­lands and peat­land restoration;
• sup­port sus­tain­able moor­land man­age­ment to deliv­er great­er hab­it­at diversity and good man­age­ment practice.

Vis­it­or exper­i­ence – people enjoy­ing the Park through out­stand­ing vis­it­or and learn­ing experiences

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park is an inter­na­tion­ally renowned vis­it­or des­tin­a­tion with an out­stand­ing range of out­door recre­ation oppor­tun­it­ies. Our role is to ensure the qual­ity of vis­it­or exper­i­ence matches the qual­ity of envir­on­ment by coordin­at­ing invest­ment in the core infra­struc­ture, car­ry­ing out our role as an Access Author­ity, pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able tour­ism and ensur­ing people of all ages, back­grounds and abil­it­ies are able to exper­i­ence and enjoy the Nation­al Park.

Pri­or­it­ies:

• con­tin­ue to ensure vis­it­or infra­struc­ture meets the expect­a­tions of vis­it­ors to the Nation­al Park and help deliv­er a sus­tain­able tour­ism economy;
• increase phys­ic­al activ­ity in both res­id­ents and vis­it­ors and sup­port deliv­ery of Scot­land Nat­ur­al Health Service;
• cre­ate a ​‘Park for All’ by encour­aging people from all back­grounds to come and recre­ate, learn in or vis­it the Nation­al Park.

Rur­al devel­op­ment – a sus­tain­able eco­nomy sup­port­ing thriv­ing busi­nesses and communities

Deliv­ery of our pri­or­it­ies with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park can only come through close joint work­ing with the people who live and work in the com­munit­ies of the Park. Our role is to pro­mote invest­ment in a diver­si­fied eco­nomy, help com­munit­ies plan and achieve their own vis­ions and deliv­er a Plan­ning Ser­vice to guide the right devel­op­ment to the right place.

Pri­or­it­ies:

• sup­port deliv­ery of hous­ing for loc­al needs through an effi­cient and effect­ive plan­ning service;
• sup­port com­munit­ies, spe­cific­ally focus­sing on the most fra­gile, to deliv­er their agen­das for change;
• work closely with the busi­ness com­munity and part­ners to sup­port a sus­tain­able Park economy.

Sup­port themes

The deliv­ery of the themes and pri­or­it­ies is sup­por­ted by Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Cor­por­ate Ser­vices teams. Our Com­mu­nic­a­tions team works with vis­it­ors, com­munit­ies and stake­hold­ers to raise the pro­file of the Park and cre­ate a con­nec­tion and com­mit­ment to care for it. Our Cor­por­ate Ser­vices team ensure the deliv­ery of effect­ive, effi­cient and sus­tain­able ser­vices in addi­tion to pro­mot­ing the highest stand­ards of gov­ernance, both with­in the Park Author­ity itself and also in work­ing with com­munity and vol­un­tary organ­isa­tions involved in deliv­ery of NPPP priorities.

Cor­por­ate services

Deliv­er­ing effect­ive, effi­cient and sus­tain­able ser­vices and pro­mot­ing the highest stand­ards of gov­ernance, to sup­port deliv­ery of the Cor­por­ate Plan and Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan by the Park Author­ity and our com­munity and char­ity part­ners. We will also play an act­ive role in the Envir­on­ment and Eco­nomy Lead­ers’ Group.

Pri­or­it­ies:

• imple­ment the Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy and embed the organ­isa­tion­al and cul­tur­al improve­ments to make the Park author­ity the best small pub­lic body in Scotland;
• ensure that the office exten­sion, exist­ing accom­mod­a­tion and ICT facil­it­ies are ​‘fit for pur­pose’ and help to deliv­er the Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy;
• deliv­er ongo­ing ser­vice improve­ment, includ­ing appro­pri­ate shared ser­vices devel­op­ment and oper­a­tion, to the Park Author­ity, oth­er pub­lic bod­ies and the com­munity and char­it­able organ­isa­tions we support;
• pro­mote and sup­port the highest stand­ards of gov­ernance and man­age­ment, includ­ing equal­it­ies actions, with­in the Park Author­ity, oth­er pub­lic bod­ies and the com­munity and char­it­able organ­isa­tions we support.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions and engagement

Com­mu­nic­at­ing with vis­it­ors, com­munit­ies and stake­hold­ers is vital for the work of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity. It sup­ports the work being under­taken across the organ­isa­tion to deliv­er on con­ser­va­tion, vis­it­or exper­i­ence and rur­al devel­op­ment. Our role is to raise the pro­file of the Park and cre­ate a con­nec­tion and com­mit­ment to care for it with iden­ti­fied audi­ences so they act­ively sup­port the Park and bene­fit from doing so.

Pri­or­it­ies:

• deliv­er the Com­mu­nic­a­tion and Engage­ment Strategy and increase aware­ness, engage­ment and involve­ment with the Park;
• ensure high qual­ity intern­al com­mu­nic­a­tions that help deliv­er the key pri­or­it­ies of the Cor­por­ate Plan.

Key Issues and Risks

Risk man­age­ment and con­sid­er­a­tion of issues arising that may impact on the deliv­ery of our stra­tegic cor­por­ate pri­or­it­ies are cent­ral to our man­age­ment activ­it­ies with­in the Park Author­ity. The Man­age­ment Team reviews stra­tegic risks at least quarterly, and we have developed and embed­ded stra­tegic and oper­a­tion­al risk man­age­ment prac­tices, togeth­er with pro­ject man­age­ment pro­cesses, to take full cog­nis­ance of these core aspects of effect­ive organ­isa­tion­al and stra­tegic con­trol arrangements.

The Park Author­ity has developed a Stra­tegic Risk Man­age­ment Strategy and asso­ci­ated Stra­tegic Risk Register, which, in tan­dem with our cor­por­ate per­form­ance and mon­it­or­ing sys­tem, details the key issues and risks around deliv­ery of our Cor­por­ate Plan togeth­er with the stra­tegic object­ives and key per­form­ance indic­at­ors set out in that plan. The Board receives detailed reports and com­ments on key issues and risks twice annu­ally, with the Board’s Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee review­ing stra­tegic risk man­age­ment between these Board meetings.

Sig­ni­fic­ant pro­jects will also have their own embed­ded risk registers and risk mit­ig­a­tion plans. More inform­a­tion on risk and intern­al con­trols can be found in the Gov­ernance State­ment with­in this doc­u­ment and in our Risk Man­age­ment Strategy.

Per­form­ance Analysis

Fin­an­cial Per­form­ance Summary

The main sources of the Park Authority’s fund­ing for the year were the resource budgets and grant-in-aid fund­ing from the spon­sor­ing body the Envir­on­ment and Forestry Dir­ect­or­ate, Nat­ur­al Resources Divi­sion, of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment. The Author­ity also acts as Account­able Body for the Cairngorm LEAD­ER pro­gramme and The Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF) and part­ner fun­ded pro­jects, the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape part­ner­ship, Great Place Badenoch and the Caper­cail­lie Framework.

Our income — total income for the year was £7.002million:

Our expendit­ure — total expendit­ure for the year on oper­a­tion­al costs was £6.941million:

Pro­ject income and expendit­ure levels for the year have again increased on 2018 levels as a res­ult of the increase in activ­ity in both the LEAD­ER pro­gram and on NLHF sup­por­ted projects.

Our expendit­ure on main themes

The Park Authority’s expendit­ure is also broken down over key themes and pri­or­it­ies of oper­a­tion­al activ­ity in note 3 (seg­ment­al report­ing) to the Fin­an­cial State­ments. The above table shows our invest­ment in the main oper­a­tion­al themes before the alloc­a­tion of any oth­er income or part­ner­ship fund­ing. (Depre­ci­ation on tan­gible and intan­gible assets is not attrib­uted to any theme or pri­or­ity in intern­al reporting.)

Our out­turn

We are tak­ing £0.061m for the year (2018: £0.121m) to Tax­pay­ers’ equity. After account­ing for cap­it­al invest­ment cre­at­ing £0.2m in new tan­gible and intan­gible assets, and cap­it­al grants of £0.002m, the planned break­even out­turn for the year was achieved.

Out­turn to budget

A budget is agreed with the spon­sor­ing depart­ment (Depart­ment­al Expendit­ure Lim­ited [DEL]) which cov­ers all expendit­ure net of income from all oth­er sources. DEL is fur­ther split between cash alloc­a­tions (resource [RDEL] and cap­it­al [CDEL]) and non-cash alloc­a­tions. Non-cash DEL cov­ers depre­ci­ation and impair­ment of non-cur­rent assets, which are cap­it­al­ised tan­gible and intan­gible assets included in the State­ment of Fin­an­cial Pos­i­tion at the year end.

Net incom­ing resources

The net incom­ing resources for the year to 31 March 2019 com­prises income received from part­ners reim­burs­ing costs incurred, includ­ing reim­burse­ment of grant out­lays and admin­is­tra­tion costs incurred on the Cairngorms LEAD­ER pro­gramme 2014 – 20, and the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund pro­jects — Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship, Great Place Badenoch and the Caper­cail­lie Frame­work. Fees are also received from called in plan­ning applic­a­tions sub­mit­ted in the first instance to the five loc­al author­it­ies with­in the Nation­al Park’s boundaries.

Changes in non-cur­rent assets

Move­ments in non-cur­rent assets are shown in note 8.

In August 2018 we took pos­ses­sion of a pur­pose built office exten­sion. Expendit­ure of £41,641 was incurred in year and the total cap­it­al cost of the pro­ject, includ­ing fit­ting out and addi­tion­al equip­ment, to the Park author­ity was £322,955.

Char­it­able donations

There were no char­it­able dona­tions made in the year or pre­vi­ous year.

Rela­tion­ship with sup­pli­ers and partners

Our sup­pli­er pay­ment policy com­plies with the terms of the Bet­ter Pay­ment Prac­tice Code. Dur­ing the year to 31 March 2019, the time taken to pay cred­it­ors achieved an aver­age of 7.4 days (2018: 8.8 days) against a tar­get of 10 days (2018: 10 days), with 89.6% (2018: 71.4%) of pay­ments being made by the tar­get date.

Our oper­at­ing model

Much of the work under­taken by the Park Author­ity involves work­ing in part­ner­ship with oth­ers: influ­en­cing, build­ing rela­tion­ships and facil­it­at­ing pro­jects through tak­ing a lead or host­ing roles where oth­er deliv­ery part­ners per­haps do not have the full oper­a­tion­al or busi­ness sys­tems capa­city to deliv­er the full range of activ­it­ies required.

Organ­isa­tion­al development

Our people and our organ­isa­tion­al struc­tures are there­fore crit­ic­al to our con­tin­ued suc­cess. We brought the second phase of our Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment (OD) Strategy to a con­clu­sion in ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉, and set the ground­work for the next phase of our work on phase three of our OD Strategy from April 2019 onwards. Our OD Strategy sets the frame­work through which we aim to improve and devel­op as an organ­isa­tion through innov­a­tion, embra­cing digit­al tech­no­lo­gies and the oppor­tun­it­ies they afford, and improv­ing our pro­vi­sion of ser­vices to the pub­lic. We con­tin­ue to har­ness our integ­rated change man­age­ment pro­gramme in deliv­er­ing ongo­ing intern­al and pub­lic ser­vice improvements.

Improv­ing effi­ciency, effect­ive­ness and eco­nomy and deliv­er­ing best value

The Park Author­ity focuses on the deliv­ery of best value, and on the improve­ment in effi­ciency, effect­ive­ness and eco­nomy in exer­cising our functions.

We main­tain our over­sight of effect­ive­ness of ser­vice deliv­ery through a dir­ect link­age between our com­plaints hand­ling pro­ced­ure and devel­op­ment of best value ser­vices. We ensure com­plaints and any oth­er forms of feed­back on our ser­vices are used to inform ser­vice devel­op­ment and help identi­fy ser­vice improve­ments where these are required. We ensure in our hand­ling of com­plaints that the best pos­sible ser­vice is provided to our stake­hold­ers and cus­tom­ers, and also that we make the most effect­ive con­tri­bu­tion to our own ser­vice improve­ment from our invest­ig­a­tion of feed­back and com­plaints. We also value input from intern­al audit, which sup­por­ted our work on com­plaints hand­ling, and oth­er areas of extern­al review to identi­fy poten­tial areas for ser­vice improve­ment and enhanced effectiveness.

In terms of the Park Authority’s deliv­ery of effi­cien­cies in its oper­a­tions, we con­tin­ue to deliv­er against tar­get cumu­lat­ive effi­ciency sav­ings. Con­sequently, the Park Author­ity is able to main­tain invest­ment, through its Oper­a­tion­al Plan, in pro­jects with­in the Nation­al Park des­pite reduc­tions in pub­lic sec­tor fund­ing, by redir­ect­ing these effi­ciency sav­ings from organ­isa­tion­al sup­port into pro­ject investment.

Our deliv­ery of ser­vices through shared ser­vices and joint pro­cure­ment with vari­ous part­ners has been a con­trib­ut­ory factor to suc­cess­ful deliv­ery of effi­ciency sav­ings and also to devel­op­ment of eco­nom­ic, effect­ive ser­vice pro­vi­sion. The Park Author­ity both deliv­ers and receives shared ser­vices as a con­sequence of vari­ous joint deliv­ery arrange­ments, in par­tic­u­lar with Loch Lomond and the Trossachs NPA. All func­tion­al areas of cor­por­ate ser­vices have been involved in the devel­op­ment of these shared ser­vices arrange­ments: gov­ernance and stand­ards, audit, human resources, fin­ance, and inform­a­tion technology.

Gael­ic lan­guage: our duty as a pub­lic body to devel­op and deliv­er our Lan­guage Plan

The Park Authority’s first five year Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan, adop­ted in 2013 came to an end in March 2018. All actions iden­ti­fied in the Plan have been delivered except intern­al and extern­al bilin­gual sig­nage at our offices which we are tak­ing for­ward as part of our office redevel­op­ment project.

We have now developed and agreed our second Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan to be delivered over 2018 to 2022. A high­light of our Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan deliv­ery in ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ was the recruit­ment and man­age­ment of our first Gael­ic stu­dent intern to sup­port our Gael­ic as an Asset pro­ject. We also con­tin­ued our work with our LEAD­ER deliv­ery and Cairngorms LEAD­ER Loc­al Action Group on the devel­op­ment of Comunn na Gaidhlig’s Spors Gaidh­lig pro­ject, sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of Gael­ic Lan­guage deliv­ery of out­door activities.

Fin­an­cial instruments

Due to the non-trad­ing nature of our activ­it­ies, and the way fin­ance is provided by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, we are not exposed to the degree of fin­an­cial risk faced by com­mer­cial entities.

Oper­at­ing Per­form­ance Summary

²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ Activ­ity highlights

As part of the Year of Young People the Nation­al Park hos­ted the 2018 EURO­PARC Con­fer­ence, ​“Inspired by the Next Gen­er­a­tion”, in Septem­ber 2018, atten­ded by over 500 del­eg­ates from all over Europe includ­ing around 100 del­eg­ates under the age of 30. The suc­cess­ful Con­fer­ence was opened by the Min­is­ter for Rur­al affairs and the Nat­ur­al Envir­on­ment, Mairi Gougeon, and closed by the Deputy First Min­is­ter and Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary for Edu­ca­tion and Skills, John Swin­ney, who spoke in sup­port of the Youth Mani­festo which was launched dur­ing the Con­fer­ence. Over 50 young people launched the mani­festo ask­ing for organ­isa­tions and com­munit­ies to engage with their young people to cre­ate new oppor­tun­it­ies for liv­ing, learn­ing and work­ing in rur­al com­munit­ies and pro­tec­ted areas. As its con­tri­bu­tion to the Youth Mani­festo, the Nation­al Park will recruit young people aged 16 – 30 to be part of a steer­ing group to co-design a Cairngorm’s Nation­al Park Youth Group or Youth Council:

• to be the voice of young people in the Park;
• to devel­op a pro­ced­ure to fund young people’s ideas about liv­ing, learn­ing and work­ing in the Park;
• to put on excit­ing and innov­at­ive events for young people in the Park.

The EURO­PARC Fed­er­a­tion is ded­ic­ated to nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age in Europe and works to improve the man­age­ment of Pro­tec­ted Areas in Europe through inter­na­tion­al cooper­a­tion, exchange of ideas and exper­i­ence, and by influ­en­cing policy.

Our achieve­ments and key areas of work in the first year of the new four year Cor­por­ate Plan included the following:

Land Man­age­ment

• Cairngorms Nation­al Park Forest Strategy was launched on 1 March 2019, provid­ing stra­tegic dir­ec­tion on future forest man­age­ment and the res­tor­a­tion of wood­lands in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park over the next two dec­ades. This is import­ant not just for the Nation­al Park but for Scot­land. The chal­lenge is now to encour­age more landown­ers to adopt the Strategy’s vis­ion and object­ives and we are in dis­cus­sion with oth­er Gov­ern­ment agen­cies, and NGOs, on cre­at­ing a ​“chal­lenge fund” to assist in the cre­ation of more wood­land with­in the Nation­al Park;
• Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship is now well into the Deliv­ery Phase with a num­ber of indi­vidu­al pro­jects com­pleted and the full part­ner­ship pro­gramme due to com­plete by Septem­ber 2020;
• Peat­land Action officers con­tin­ue to deliv­er res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment across the Nation­al Park with 13 Pro­jects under­way, 8 of which were com­pleted by the end of March 2019, cov­er­ing 1,100 hec­tares of peat­land with a budget of £1.48m. Devel­op­ment work has iden­ti­fied 1,200 hec­tares across 11 peat­land sites for poten­tial res­tor­a­tion when fund­ing is available;
• East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship, fun­ded and sup­por­ted by 6 Estates and the Park Author­ity, focused in the year on col­lect­ing data on muir­burns, moun­tain hares, waders and wood­land creation.

Con­ser­va­tion

• Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Frame­work, sup­por­ted by The Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund and LEAD­ER, star­ted its devel­op­ment phase to answer the ques­tion ​“How can people who live, work and play in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park help secure the long-term future of Caper­cail­lie” pilot­ing an innov­at­ive approach to seek­ing con­ser­va­tion solu­tions from with­in loc­al communities;
• the review of the first Cairngorms Nature Action Plan (2013−18) was well received by stake­hold­ers and part­ners at the Cairngorms Nature sem­in­ar in June 2018. The on-line report is avail­able at and describes the partnership’s main achieve­ments and pro­gress against tar­gets. The Cairngorms Nature action plan 2019 was launched nation­ally at Holyrood on 21 Feb­ru­ary 2019 and loc­ally with the launch of the Forest Strategy on 1 March 2019;
• the Author­ity coordin­ated anoth­er suc­cess­ful Cairngorms Nature’s ​“BIG WEEK­END” out­ing in May 2018 with over 60 events held across the Nation­al Park, with an estim­ated 1,600 people tak­ing part. A rur­al skills day organ­ised with Forestry Enter­prise Scot­land res­ul­ted in over 200 young people learn­ing about out­door job oppor­tun­it­ies in the Nation­al park. The ​“Rewild­ing Re-peopling” dis­cus­sion was sold out with 150+ attendees.

Vis­it­or Experience

• the Park Author­ity, with sup­port from Paths for All and NHS High­land obtained a three year LEAD­ER fund­ing pack­age to sup­port volun­teer­ing and Health Walks in the Cairngorms, with the second year of the pro­ject suc­cess­fully delivered over ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉;
• Long Dis­tance Routes (1) Spey­side way plan­ning con­sent is now in place with fund­ing from Low Car­bon Travel and Trans­port Chal­lenge Fund to com­plete the new build to extend this LDR to a new ter­minus in New­ton­more by Autumn 2019. (2) Deeside Way plan­ning con­sent for the path line from Brae­mar to Inver­cauld Bridge has been gran­ted. Both pro­jects seek to expand high qual­ity vis­it­or exper­i­ences with­in the Cairngorms while sup­port­ing the sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment of the area with­in the out­door activ­ity sector;
• the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund sup­por­ted pro­ject, Moun­tains and People Pro­ject, cov­er­ing both Loch Lomond & the Trossachs Nation­al Park and the Cairngorm Nation­al Park, star­ted in sum­mer 2015 with deliv­ery led by the Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land com­plete anoth­er year in the five year pro­ject, with some 67% of planned moun­tain path upgrade work in the Cairngorms now complete;
• Act­ive Aviemore, a part­ner­ship com­pris­ing the Park Author­ity, High­land Coun­cil, Hi Trans and Sus­trans, has now com­pleted out­line plans for deliv­er­ing segreg­ated multi-paths through­out the village;
• we were suc­cess­ful in obtain­ing fund­ing from the Vis­it Scot­land Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund to con­struct a multi-use path through Glen­more link­ing car parks, vis­it­or attrac­tions and the path network;
• 14 trained volun­teer rangers con­tin­ue to sup­port the work of the 6 part­ner ranger ser­vices. Volun­teer out­put to date amounts to 1.5 years’ worth of work across the Park. This sig­ni­fic­ant out­put has helped secure an addi­tion­al 10 months LEAD­ER funding;
• Our edu­ca­tion and inclu­sion work over the year includes sup­port­ing devel­op­ment of the Euro­parc Youth Mani­festo with assist­ance from Cairngorms LEAD­ER Pro­gramme, and fur­ther pro­gress­ing this into sus­tain­able youth engage­ment in con­ser­va­tion and com­munity work with a LEAD­ER young people pro­ject in part­ner­ship with a group of Finnish Young people. ​‘Into the Moun­tains’ and ​‘Writer in Res­id­ence” pro­jects, both sup­por­ted by Cre­at­ive Scot­land and the Wood­land Trust, com­menced to encour­age people to cre­at­ively cel­eb­rate the out­stand­ing cul­ture of the Cairngorms;
• inform­a­tion and inter­pret­a­tion are being installed at 2 key vis­it­or attrac­tions — Land­mark in Car­rbridge and the Spey­side Centre in Dul­nain Bridge;
• Fol­low­ing on from the Authority’s innov­a­tion in devel­op­ment and cre­ation of the Snow Road Scen­ic Route, a ​‘Snow Roads’ web­site was launched by the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship (CBP) togeth­er with an app at their con­fer­ence in Novem­ber 2018. CBP also raised aware­ness in com­munit­ies along the route with 4 half-day work­shops. This work won the Aber­deen City and Shire 2018 Tour­ism Award for innov­a­tion. CBPA also secured fund­ing from the Vis­it Scot­land Growth Fund to tar­get the Snow Road to tar­get vis­it­ors from France, Ger­many, Scand­inavia and North America.

Rur­al Devel­op­ment and Planning

• Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020 con­sulta­tion ended on 5 April, with 7 drop in events held across the Nation­al Park. Social Media was used as part of the con­sulta­tion, par­tic­u­larly a video fly­over of each com­munity, which proved very suc­cess­ful and has been viewed over 25,000 times;
• Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er showed a quarter 4 2018 decline in vis­it­ors and turnover com­pared to pre­vi­ous quar­ters. The funicu­lar clos­ure and neg­at­ive nation­al pub­li­city around this clos­ure and also wider cov­er­age of uncer­tain­ties around the UK’s planned exit from Europe is likely to have played a sig­ni­fic­ant role in the decline;
• Eco­nom­ic Action Plan was approved by the Board in Decem­ber and goes out to con­sulta­tion in the spring;
• plan­ning per­mis­sion was gran­ted for 108 Afford­able Hous­ing units in the Nation­al Park over ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉, mak­ing a good con­tri­bu­tion to the tar­get of 200 afford­able units over the peri­od 2017 — 2022. Afford­able hous­ing units were com­pleted in Grant­own-on Spey, while con­struc­tion star­ted on 44 units across Aviemore, Inver­druie and Car­rbridge; 16 units were gran­ted con­sent in Bal­later and 8 at Blair Atholl. CNPA also provided sup­port for com­munity-led hous­ing pro­jects in Bal­later, Brae­mar, Dul­nain Bridge, Tomin­toul and Boat of Garten;
• Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject is now well estab­lished and 1 year into the 3 year pro­ject. Mul­tiple pro­jects are pro­gress­ing, includ­ing the inter­pret­a­tion and Mar­ket­ing Strategy and scop­ing an Altern­at­ive Tour­ist Route for Badenoch.

Cor­por­ate Services

• Office exten­sion pro­ject, the new offices were occu­pied in August and were form­ally opened on 16^th Novem­ber by the cur­rent and pre­vi­ous Con­ven­ors. The £1m part­ner­ship build pro­ject has been man­aged with­in budget since incep­tion and the build­ing was nom­in­ated for a Roy­al Incor­por­a­tion of Archi­tects in Scot­land design award in March 2019. The suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of this four year pro­ject is a key achieve­ment of our Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Strategy 2;
• dur­ing the year youth devel­op­ment includ­ing sup­port­ing a short term intern­ship for a Gael­ic officer and a one year Fin­ance Intern post. We plan to con­tin­ue our com­mit­ment to Youth by sup­port­ing at least 2 intern posts a year;
• as part of our Organ­isa­tion Devel­op­ment Strategy 2 we are now imple­ment­ing the Digit­al Cus­tom­er Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment sys­tem (CRM) which will sig­ni­fic­antly enhance organ­isa­tion man­age­ment inform­a­tion on con­tacts and engage­ment with key stake­hold­ers while enhan­cing our records man­age­ment pro­cesses. The sys­tem is planned to be in full oper­a­tion by mid 2019 after which we plan to fur­ther enhance our com­mit­ment to digit­al work­ing with a com­pli­ment­ary elec­tron­ic doc­u­ment man­age­ment system;
• in addi­tion to con­tin­ued close work­ing on shared ser­vices with the Loch Lomond and Trossachs Nation­al Park we also con­tin­ue to provide Human Resource Ser­vices sup­port to the Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion (devel­op­ment of new policies, recruit­ment, and devel­op­ment, staff con­sulta­tion and on the sub­mis­sion of the ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ pay remit) and the Cairngorms Trust on sup­port­ing staff on devel­op­ing a vis­it­or giv­ing scheme;
• the Cairngorms Trust has approved 32 pro­jects in the Cairngorms LEAD­ER pro­gramme, with a total value of over £3.8 mil­lion — 12 pro­jects cov­er Park-wide oper­a­tions, 2 cov­er all of the Aber­deen­shire area of the Park with the remain­ing applic­a­tions com­ing from 13 dif­fer­ent com­munit­ies with­in the Cairngorms. Almost £1.5 mil­lion of the pro­ject value sup­ports eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and farm diver­si­fic­a­tion pro­jects. The pro­gramme is now fully committed.

Com­mu­nic­a­tion and Engagement

• Make it Yours Cam­paign has now trained 290 vis­it­or-facing staff across the Nation­al Park. The train­ing pro­gramme cov­ers why the Cairngorms is des­ig­nated a Nation­al park, its spe­cial qual­it­ies, and using vis­it­or sur­vey data looks at exper­i­ences and inform­a­tion wanted by our visitors;
• Part­ner Vis­it­or Inform­a­tion Centres (VIC) are now being sup­por­ted with pro­mo­tion, inform­a­tion, inter­pret­a­tion and know­ledge sharing;
• Cor­por­ate Com­mu­nic­a­tions saw the pub­lic­a­tion of the Cairngorms Forest Strategy and the Cairngorms Nature action Plans 2018 – 2024. Fol­low­ing pub­lic con­sulta­tion both were pub­lished on the Park Authority’s website.
• the quin­quen­ni­al Board Elec­tions saw a media cam­paign and pub­lic meet­ings in each of the 5 Park wards with 25 nom­in­a­tions as can­did­ates, the most ever. The elec­tions saw 3 exist­ing Board mem­bers returned and 2 new mem­bers elected.

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity and cli­mate change

The Park Author­ity has vol­un­tar­ily par­ti­cip­ated in the Scot­tish Government’s revised cli­mate change mod­el­ling and meas­ur­ing exer­cise since ²⁰¹⁵⁄₁₆. We con­tin­ue to revise and update our intern­al mon­it­or­ing meth­od­o­logy and due to our con­tin­ued effort to reduce our car­bon foot­print we have reduced emis­sions in the year by 33%, com­pared to our base year’s emis­sion levels. This rep­res­ents a reduc­tion of 100 tonnes of CO2.

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity and cli­mate change remain key under­ly­ing themes with­in our Cor­por­ate Plan and also with­in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, under­pin­ning the stra­tegic work of the Park Author­ity and all its part­ners in the Nation­al Park.

Future activ­it­ies

Many of our activ­it­ies for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ build on exist­ing work from pre­vi­ous plans and there­fore con­tin­ues the excel­lent work already star­ted. The main pri­or­it­ies for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ include:

• deliv­ery of the Caper­cail­lie Frame­work and the con­clu­sion of the devel­op­ment phase of the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund Caper­cail­lie pro­ject lead­ing to a full deliv­ery phase applic­a­tion in March 2020;
• devel­op­ing a Wood­land Chal­lenge fund with the sup­port of the Wood­land Trust and Forestry & Land Scot­land to provide sup­port to landown­ers and ten­ants on refor­est­a­tion pro­jects and gen­er­ate uptake of the Forestry Grant Scheme;
• com­plete the con­struc­tion of the Spey­side Way exten­sion in the autumn of 2019;
• Cairngorms Nature pro­gramme deliv­ery, includ­ing pro­ject and com­mu­nic­a­tions support;
• con­tinu­ing over­sight of the pro­posed devel­op­ment at An Camas Mòr;
• sup­port the Cairngorms LEAD­ER pro­gramme over the last ​“act­ive” year of pro­ject fund­ing awards togeth­er with ongo­ing mon­it­or­ing and fund­ing of pro­ject delivery;
• con­tinu­ing sup­port for the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship into the final stage of the deliv­ery phase;
• sup­port­ing Act­ive Cairngorms and espe­cially Act­ive Aviemore with fund­ing agreed to pro­duce detailed access designs into the pro­posed new hos­pit­al with £200,000 fund­ing secured for the con­struc­tion, with match fund­ing anti­cip­ated once the design and access infra­struc­ture improve­ments are agreed;