Resources Committee - Paper 2

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 2 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 16 May 2025 Page 1 of 4

For dis­cus­sion

Title: Budget monitoring

Pre­pared by: Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Operations

Pur­pose This paper sets out an over­view of the Park Authority’s budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion at the end of April — month one of the ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ fin­an­cial year.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Resources Com­mit­tee is asked to: α) Con­sider the budget man­age­ment pos­i­tion for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆.

Over­view

1. As the Com­mit­tee is aware from pre­vi­ous years’ Month one reports, the first month of the year is too early to con­sider trends in expendit­ure. This report sets out budget changes and explores spend against the payroll budget, our biggest single item of expendit­ure, as an indic­at­or of budget sufficiency.

Budget changes

1. Fund­ing from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment was con­firmed in mid-May as shown below:

	£’000
Resource	7,866
Cap­it­al	1,750
Total Grant in Aid	9,966

1. The final fig­ure for Resource fund­ing is £50,000 lower than the ini­tial indic­a­tion from Scot­tish Government.

2. Fund­ing for peat­land res­tor­a­tion is still to be confirmed:

	£’000
Resource	3,000
Cap­it­al	630
Total Grant in Aid	3,630

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 2 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 16 May 2025 Page 2 of 4

1. We await noti­fic­a­tion of poten­tial fund­ing through the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund (NRF) and for Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment (CLLD).

2. Changes to CLLD fund­ing will have little impact on the Park Author­ity, as dis­tri­bu­tion of grants to the com­munity will match the level of fund­ing received.

3. The avail­ab­il­ity and amount of NRF fund­ing is likely to require a review of the budget, either to re-estab­lish spend­ing pri­or­it­ies or to extend our poten­tial deliv­ery. This review will also con­sider how to accom­mod­ate the £50,000 reduc­tion in grant funding.

Staff and Board

1. The budgeted invest­ment in staff over the year is a key ele­ment of the budget, at £5.991 mil­lion equi­val­ent to 45% of the total expendit­ure budget resourced by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment fund­ing. The pos­i­tion against this budget fig­ure of the first month’s payroll there­fore rep­res­ents a key test of the robust­ness of this sig­ni­fic­ant budget figure.

2. This year, pay awards were imple­men­ted from 01 April. Actu­al value of payroll and asso­ci­ated costs for April is £478k. An even split of the full year’s payroll budget across 12 months would give expect­a­tion of a monthly cost of £499k. We are there­fore show­ing a favour­able vari­ance of £21k against budget (4.2% under budget).

3. There are a num­ber of factors that affect the dis­tri­bu­tion of cost across the year. These include vacancy sav­ings and pen­sion options chosen by new staff.

4. A recon­cili­ation of budget to actu­al costs is set out below:

	Gross	Anti­cip­ated
	payroll costs	vacancy sav­ings	Budget
	6,141	(150)	5,991
Even dis­tri­bu­tion by 12 months	512	(13)	499
Adjust for front load­ing of ranger costs	11		11
Anti­cip­ated cost in April	523	(13)	510
Addi­tion­al vacancy sav­ings (actu­al)		(8)
		503
Estim­ated pen­sion sav­ings (Rangers)		(5)
Adjus­ted April projection			498
Actu­al cost			478
Favour­able variance			20

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 2 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 16 May 2025 Page 3 of 4

1. An even split of the budget across 12 months has been adjus­ted for Ranger salar­ies, which are spent over the first eight months of the year. The Ranger team tend not to join our gov­ern­ment pen­sion scheme, as when mem­ber­ship of this scheme lasts few­er than two years, con­tri­bu­tions made are returned to the mem­ber, with no pen­sion accru­ing. This means that the Rangers tend to join our auto-enrol­ment scheme, which is less costly to the Park Author­ity. How­ever, the Rangers do have a right to join the gov­ern­ment scheme, and for this reas­on we always budget for the cost of this more expens­ive option. The lower cost of Ranger pen­sions has been included in the recon­cili­ation, as has addi­tion­al vacancy sav­ings arising for posts included as a full-year appoint­ment in the budget, but which have not yet been filled. The res­ult­ing vari­ance is favour­able, with £20,000 less spent on payroll than might have been expected.

2. On the basis of April pro­jec­tions from our payroll mod­el­ling, it appears that the payroll budget will be suf­fi­cient to see us across the year. As is always the case, the fin­ance team and Seni­or Man­age­ment Team will play close atten­tion to this budget pos­i­tion over the early months of the year to determ­ine wheth­er any budget real­loc­a­tions are needed.

Pro­gramme management

1. Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) pro­ject costs for the month have been £145,000 includ­ing £97,000 in recharged salar­ies. We have had no prob­lems with our claims over the past five quar­ters and at this stage, we do not anti­cip­ate that there will be any impacts from pro­gramme claims on the cent­ral budget for the Park Authority.

2. As dis­cussed at the last meet­ing of the Com­mit­tee in Janu­ary, the risk with­in the C2030 pro­gramme is largely with the Act­ive Com­munit­ies ​‘trans­port’ pro­jects. We await noti­fic­a­tion of fund­ing for these pro­jects from Trans­port Scot­land. We are also mind­ful of fin­an­cial risks around the likely cost of design for these pro­jects; advance fund­ing made to C2030 in March 2025 is inten­ded to mit­ig­ate these risks.

Over­heads and oper­a­tion­al plan

1. At the time of writ­ing, cash spend, with no account­ing adjust­ments (accru­als / pre­pay­ments) in April was a little under £80,000. Expendit­ure in the first month of the pri­or year was £90,000, and so we are see­ing a sim­il­ar pro­file of expendit­ure for Month one across the two years.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 2 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 16 May 2025 Page 4 of 4

Sum­mary

1. The key points arising from the review of the fin­an­cial pos­i­tion at the end of April 2025 are:

α) Con­firmed grant-in-aid fund­ing for resource costs is £50,000 lower than ini­tially indic­ated when the budget was agreed by the Board. b) We await noti­fic­a­tion of addi­tion­al fund­ing streams, includ­ing those for Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion, Nature Res­tor­a­tion and Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment. c) Ini­tial indic­a­tions are that the payroll budget provided for the year will be suf­fi­cient. d) Expendit­ure on the second year of the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme has com­menced. To date, there have been no issues with claims. e) Run­ning costs and oper­a­tion­al plan expendit­ure in Month one are con­sist­ent with those incurred in the pri­or year.

Louise Allen 01 May 2025 louiseallen@​cairngorms.​co.​uk