CAIRNGORMS NATIONAL PARK AUTHORITY 
Finance Committee Paper 2 7/11/03 
CAIRNGORMS NATIONAL PARK AUTHORITY 
FINANCE COMMITTEE 
Title: DRAFT BUDGET FOR 3 YEARS 2004-2007 
Prepared by: JANE HOPE, INTERIM CHIEF EXECUTIVE 
Purpose 
To provide Members with an early sight of the draft 3 year budget to accompany the 
corporate plan. 
Recommendation 
• That the Committee note the approach taken in preparing the draft budget, in particular 
the difficulty of bidding for sufficient funds to fulfil our remit before the CNPA has had 
enough time to work with partners to properly define its priorities, or for the National 
Park Plan to be prepared to define the priorities for the Park and all the agencies who 
operate within the Park and help to deliver its aims. 
• That the Committee support the approach taken, and the total budget figured for each of 
the 3 years as being reasonable and comparable with other NPAs and the original 
recommendation by SNH. 
Executive Summary 
As a Non Departmental Public Body funded by and accountable to Scottish Ministers, the 
CNPA is expected to submit a 3 year corporate plan to Ministers, setting out the 
organisation’s budgetary needs for the coming 3 years and an explanation of how this will be 
deployed to fulfil the CNPA’s remit 

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DRAFT BUDGET FOR 3 YEARS 2004-2007 
Discussion 
1. The CNPA is required to submit a 3 year corporate plan to Scottish Ministers by early 
December, setting out its funding requirements and how it intends to deploy its funds 
to deliver its key objectives. This paper presents a draft 3 year budget which will 
form part of the corporate plan. The supporting text, will be discussed informally by 
the Board on 7 November, and then formally at its meeting on 5 December. 
2. Annex 1 shows a draft 3 year budget for 2004/05 to 2006/07. Annex 2 shows the 
makeup of the budget line “programme expenditure”. 
3. In Annex 1 Column B shows the original budget of £2.01 million agreed by the Board 
on 27 May 2003. Column C shows a revised version of this budget to take account of 
some changes in pattern of expenditure that have occurred during the year. These are 
explained more fully in paper 1 to the Finance Committee (7 November). The total 
spend remains unchanged, but the major changes in pattern of spend are: 
• Higher costs of staff recruitment than expected (higher advertising costs); 
• Higher costs of office refurbishment 
• Lower costs of corporate ID work 
• Delays in programme spend and hence reductions in this year’s spend because of 
shortage of staff resources to take work forward. 
4. Columns F, G and H show the projected expenditure for the next three complete 
financial years (years 2,3, and 4 of the CNPA’s existence). Year 1 (2003/04) includes 
a number of significant one-off items of expenditure associated with getting the 
organisation set up, namely: recruitment, office refurbishment, corporate id (including 
website), IT and other equipment, costs of a pay and grading review. 
5. Against this, a significant growth in staff will have taken place during the first year of 
the CNPA, with staff numbers growing from 16 on 1 April 2003, to around 40 by 
April 2004. Continued steady growth in staff numbers is planned over the following 
two years, with a staffing complement of 60 planned by the end of 2006/07. This is a 
relatively small number compared with Loch Lomond & The Trossachs (just over 100 
permanent staff), or the Lake District (206 staff). Although to be treated with caution, 
comparisons are shown for interest with the Lake District (second largest NP after 
Cairngorms) and Yorkshire Dales (similar in size to Loch Lomond & The Trossachs): 
Lake District Yorkshire Dales Cairngorms 
Area (sq miles) 885 680 1467 
Population 42,239 19,654 16,973 
Staff 206 110 60 (year3) 
Budget £8.086m £5.301m £6m (year3) 
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(Note: Budget for English NPAs excludes EU funds, grants and sponsorship, but 
includes central government grant in aid, levy from local authorities, income from 
sales, fees and charges.) 
6. Staffing costs remain at a constant 40% of the total budget for the CNPA – at LL&TT 
NPA the proportion is somewhat higher at 50% or more. The lower staff numbers in 
the Cairngorms reflects the different approach taken in the Cairngorms NPA which 
aims to be an enabling authority, rather than a front line deliverer – hence the CNPA 
aims to have a smaller number of highly skilled staff who are able to work with and 
through other partners. The CNPA does not plan to employ and manage its own 
ranger service or visitor centres – it nevertheless will require funds to ensure that the 
functions of a Park-wide ranger service are delivered through existing services. (Note 
that the Lake District NPA allocates £980,000 to the ranger service, and Yorkshire 
Dales allocates £450,000, while the CNPA budget allocates £500,000.). Another 
major difference is that the planning function is smaller in the CNPA than in all other 
UK NPAs. 
7. Other than staffing, other running costs in the 3 year budget remain relatively stable 
and predictable, given that the one-off start-up costs have largely fallen into the 
previous year 2003/04. The most significant expenditure in the budget over the 
corporate plan period is the programme expenditure – the expenditure required to 
“make things happen” through projects, grants, research. This is difficult to predict at 
this stage because: 
• The CNPA is still only 6 months old, and policy and priorities are still being 
developed. A number of working groups have been set up, involving partners, to 
help take this work forward; 
• The development of the National Park Plan will be of fundamental importance in 
setting priorities and direction for the whole Park, and therefore for the CNPA. 
Preparing the NP Plan will be a consultative and lengthy process, and it will be the 
middle of the corporate plan period before it is sufficiently firm to determine 
spending priorities. 
• The amount of funding which the CNPA can lever in from outside sources and 
from partners to support projects is difficult to predict in advance. 
8. Some policy aims can be identified at this stage, and these are indicated in Annex 2. 
However, the precise way in which these aims will be taken forward, and the amount 
of expenditure required in total, as well as the balance between the amount from 
partners and the amount from the CNPA, has still to be worked out. It will be 
important to maximise funding from “outside” sources, as well as to avoid loss of 
additionality – in other words, avoiding the CNPA contributing money to an initiative 
simply to substitute for the withdrawal of funding from another public sector body. 
9. But in addition there are likely to be other policy aims and initiatives which emerge 
from the processes of the working groups and the drafting of the NP Plan. The draft 3 
year budget therefore simply makes estimates of amounts of expenditure under the 
heading “other” to account for these needs. 
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10. The total expenditure figures grow from £3.8m in 2004/05, to £4.9m the following 
year to £5.8m in 2006/07 (year 4 of the CNPA’s existence). The total budget for 
LL&TT NPA in year 1 was £4.8m, rising to £5.5m in year 2 – but this was effectively 
year 5 given that the Interim Committee had existed for 3 years previously to pave the 
way for the NPA. The CNPA has had to grow more quickly. The CNPA year 4 
figure of £5.8m therefore bears comparison with the year 5 figure for LL&TT NPA of 
£5.5m. It is also worth noting that in its 2002 advice to Ministers on the 
establishment of a Cairngorms National Park, SNH suggested that by year 3 the 
CNPA should required core funding of £4.1-£5.5m. The midpoint of £4.8m compares 
well with our proposed year 3 figure (for 2005/06) of £4.9m. 
Jane Hope 
28th October 2003 
janehope@cairngorms.co.uk