Performance Paper 2 - Wrap up of Climate Adaptation Fund 2025-26

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 2 12 June 2026

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For dis­cus­sion

Title: Wrap up of Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ Pre­pared by: Brid­get Trus­sell, Com­munity Grants Manager

Pur­pose

This paper presents the status of the Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund as it com­pletes deliv­ery of year two (2025÷26) and looks for­ward to deliv­ery of year three (2026÷27).

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is asked to: a) Review the deliv­ery of the fund and note how the applic­a­tion pro­cesses and cri­ter­ia have changed to respond to capa­city and user exper­i­ence. b) Review and note the impact of two years of funding.

Deliv­ery

1. Fol­low­ing the deliv­ery of the ini­tial ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ fund the ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ deliv­ery was refined and some changes made. a) Time­frame — It was iden­ti­fied that the time­frame for the applic­a­tion pro­cess was too short. Expres­sions of interest opened in mid-Feb­ru­ary 2025 instead of in May as in the pre­vi­ous year. b) Fol­low­ing trail­ing Microsoft Forms (online) in the ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ round along­side Microsoft Word (hard copy) applic­a­tion pro­cesses: Word ver­sions were avail­able but only by request to help stream­line the pro­cess. This ensured that the inform­a­tion received for scor­ing was con­sist­ent between applic­ants, whilst still sup­port­ing those pre­fer­ring to work on a hard copy. c) Expres­sions of interest phase was open from mid-Feb­ru­ary 2025 to 13 April 2025. A total of 70 expres­sions of interest were received. 47 were invited to com­plete full applic­a­tions, five were invited to com­plete full applic­a­tion for oth­er avail­able funds, the remain­ing 18 were giv­en advice on oth­er poten­tial fund­ing streams out with the Author­ity; or giv­en capa­city by Con­ser­va­tion and Land Man­age­ment teams to devel­op their ideas with­in core work. d) The expres­sions of interest were con­sidered by officers from the Land Man­age­ment and Con­ser­va­tion teams. e) Com­mon reas­ons for expres­sions of interest not being invited to apply were: large scale pro­jects that risked not deliv­er­ing with­in the fund­ing timeline, pro­jects at con­cep­tion not deliv­ery stage, pro­jects for rev­en­ue not cap­it­al, not meet­ing fund cri­ter­ia (ie food pro­duc­tion not cli­mate adapt­a­tion), fund not sup­port­ing pro­jects where a nation­al fund exists (ie EV Char­gers) f) Restric­tion on grant value to 30% inter­ven­tion was imple­men­ted for those apply­ing for altern­at­ive energy sources. This was to avoid repla­cing exist­ing nation­al schemes. g) Applic­a­tions were open from 13 April to 11 May 2025. We received 28 full applic­a­tions. Of those invited to apply 19 did not com­plete an applic­a­tion, 12 were suc­cess­ful, 16 were unsuc­cess­ful with com­mon reas­ons being; Pro­ject not deemed to be cli­mate adapt­a­tion, were still request­ing too high an inter­ven­tion rate, did not have a good pro­ject plan or unable to show wider impact. h) Applic­a­tions were reviewed by two Dir­ect­ors and two Board mem­bers with decisions made to award a total of £283,775.97. i) The pan­el agreed con­di­tions on sev­er­al of the pro­jects. For example, those installing altern­at­ive energy sources to have a Busi­ness Energy Scot­land assess­ment com­pleted and share the report. This helped them to plan their pro­ject and identi­fy where oth­er sources of grant were avail­able for oth­er parts of the wider pro­ject. This was par­tic­u­larly pop­u­lar with com­munity pro­jects who act­ively engaged with the CARES scheme with good suc­cess. j) At the end of pro­gramme deliv­ery there was an under­spend of £16,224.03. Three pro­jects under­spent; one gained altern­at­ive fund­ing, one didn’t start the pro­ject, and the third struggled to deliv­er with­in the time­frame of the fund.

Fund impact

1. This fund­ing has strengthened cli­mate adapt­a­tion, biod­iversity, renew­able energy use, and wild­fire resi­li­ence across the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. a) Pro­jects sup­por­ted loc­al busi­nesses, improved land man­age­ment capa­city, and accel­er­ated invest­ment that would oth­er­wise have been delayed. b) Fund­ing enabled envir­on­ment­al, eco­nom­ic, and com­munity bene­fits that align with the Park’s long-term cli­mate and con­ser­va­tion goals. Sev­er­al pro­jects, not­ably sol­ar install­a­tions and the robot­ic mower, high­lighted they would not have pro­gressed without the Park Author­ity sup­port due to high upfront costs. c) Wild­fire resi­li­ence, nature friendly farm­ing, ripari­an plant­ing, altern­at­ive energy solu­tions and sup­port­ing loc­al busi­nesses were all out­comes. d) There has been a pos­it­ive link with farm­ing, land man­agers and busi­nesses that has car­ried through into oth­er fund­ing streams. e) Unsuc­cess­ful applic­ants have always been presen­ted with a pos­it­ive des­tin­a­tion. f) Aware­ness of C2030 and oth­er core pro­jects has been raised by the pro­mo­tion of this funding.

Next steps, for­ward look

1. Wild­fire equip­ment applic­a­tions have dom­in­ated applic­a­tions to the ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ fund, far exceed­ing the total avail­able for dis­tri­bu­tion. Funds were tar­geted at an effect­ive response to wild­fire, rather than man­aging fuel load which was con­sidered to be a land man­age­ment decision and prac­tice. Fund­ing for multi-pur­pose estate equip­ment was restric­ted and fund­ing for spe­cif­ic fire­fight­ing equip­ment prioritised.
2. The demands for fire-fight­ing equip­ment are likely to remain high with a sim­il­ar impact on future Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund pro­grammes. An asset register, as per the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan, will sup­port the tar­get­ing of Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund both spa­tially and based on the type of equip­ment and human resource, how­ever there could be oppor­tun­ity for the Park Author­ity to work with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment in devel­op­ing a spe­cif­ic strand of fund­ing for wild­fire management.
3. More com­plex nature-based pro­jects are often ill-defined and present sig­ni­fic­ant deliv­ery risks, largely as a res­ult of lack of capa­city for pro­ject devel­op­ment. There is cur­rently no pro­vi­sion in oper­a­tion­al plan­ning for Park Author­ity staff to meet this need. An option could be to build capa­city in third party organ­isa­tions to sup­port pro­ject devel­op­ment, eg The Spey Catch­ment Initiative.
4. A mid-term meet­ing to dis­cuss the for­ward look, poten­tially com­bined with some site vis­its could offer oppor­tun­ity for the pan­el to fur­ther devel­op the fund’s aims. A series of case stud­ies, maps and impact reports will form part of the year three deliv­ery report­ing now the fund has dis­trib­uted just under £950,000 over three years.

Brid­get Trus­sell 01 June 2026 Bridgettrussell@​cairngorms.​co.​uk