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CAIRNGORMS NATIONAL PARK AUTHORITY 
Finance Committee Paper 2 08/09/06 


CAIRNGORMS NATIONAL PARK AUTHORITY 
FINANCE COMMITTEE


FOR DISCUSSION 


Title: OUTTURN FOR THE FOUR MONTHS TO JULY 2006 

Prepared by: Denby Pettitt, Finance Manager 

Purpose 

To provide Members with an update and information on the outturn for the four months to 
July 31, 2006. 

Recommendations 

a) That the Committee note the draft outturn for the four months to July 31, 2006. 

Executive Summary 

a) Annex 1 shows the Income and Expenditure account for the four months to the end 
of July. A commentary is also included on each line, the accounts and commentary 
in this format are sent each month to Finance Committee members. 

b) Cash expenditure to date exceeds that for the first four months last years being 
£1,104,000 compared with £915,000 last year. In percentage terms, expenditure to 
date is 24% of the annual budget compared with 22% last year. 

c) Expenditure to date is running below the 2006/07 budgeted levels as we are still 
waiting for approval of the Authority’s pay award for 2006/07 and Operational Plan 
expenditure is dependent on a number of large value projects that will be finalised 
before the year end. No adverse impact is expected on the 2006/07 full year results. 

d) The Q2 Operational Plan review will be undertaken in September and reported back 
to the Committee the following month. The review will identify where the budget 
needs to be changed both in terms of overall spend and the phasing of the expected 
spend. Future reports to the Committee will be reported against this new budget 
once approved by the Committee. 



OUTTURN FOR THE FOUR MONTHS TO JULY 2006 – FOR 
DISCUSSION 

Overview 

1. Annex 1 includes the latest Income and Expenditure account together with 
commentary on each line which focuses on actual income or expenditure against 
budget. This revised format has also been used to present monthly e-mail updates to 
Finance Committee members in response to a demand to have a comment against all 
account lines. 

2. Due to the level of detail now presented in the Annex, the main body of the paper 
concentrates on an overall review of the results to date together with comments as to 
how future month’s results and forecasts may be affected. 

Grant in Aid drawdown and expenditure patterns 

3. The chart below summarises the monthly GIA drawdowns for the last two financial 
years, with 2006/07 on the left and 2005/06 grant on the right of each month’s 
columns. This provides a broad overview of the Authority’s expenditure pattern 
over the course of these two years. 

CNPA 
Grant in aid drawdown 
(Chart not available in full text format)


4. The chart below shows the cumulative expenditure over the course of the year 
compared with budget and last year’s expenditure profile. 


CNPA 
Cumulative expenditure percentages 
(Chart not available in full text format)


5. Expenditure is ahead of last year’s level, both in monetary and percentage terms, 
although we are underspent by £204,000 compared with budget. The fact that we are 
ahead of last year’s expenditure is due, in part, to the improvements we have made 
in budgeting and monitoring methods including the use of detailed action plan 
schedules. 

6. There is, however, some work still to be done in improving the accuracy of budget 
forecasts developed by the project managers and also ensuring that more 
expenditure can be targeted for the first three months. This latter point should be 
helped by the fact that the CNPA’s staffing complement is almost complete and, for 
next year there may be a number of ongoing projects that can be worked on in the 
first part of the year. We have also recently implemented a procedure allowing 
Heads of Group to commit up to 30% of their current year’s Operational Plan budget 
for future year’s projects and this should enable advance planning of projects rather 
than starting from scratch at the start of each financial year. 

7. As shown in Annex 1, almost £50,000 of the under spend relates to salary costs as we 
are still waiting for approval for the 2005/06 salary increases. 

8. Operational Plan expenditure is almost £150,000 below budget but this is very 
dependent on timing of payments at present. We have some relatively large 
payments to make on the Point of Entry Marker and Outdoor Access projects in the 
coming months that will bring this in line with budget. 


Next Steps 

9. Once the August monthly accounts have been closed off the Q2 Review of 
Operational Plan expenditure will be undertaken with Heads of Group and the 
outcome of this advised to members at the October meeting. 

10. As part of the review we will identify where the budget needs to be changed both in 
terms of overall spend and the phasing of the expected spend. Future reports to the 
Committee will be reported against this new budget once it has been approved by 
the Committee. 


Denby Pettitt 
30 August 2006 

denbypettitt@cairngorms.co.uk 



CNPA 
Income & Expenditure account (July 2006) 

(Table not available in full text format)